9 ms·

People in Sweden are hiding cash in their microwaves

42 points by lelf 11y ago

mikkom 11y ago
What a silly headline. The actual quote is (emphasis mine) > Björn Eriksson, former head of Sweden’s national police and now head of Säkerhetsbranschen, a lobbying group for the security industry, told The Local, “I’ve heard of people keeping cash in their microwaves because banks won’t accept it.”
- blixt 11y ago
  Yeah, even if Swedes were hiding away their cash (which most people don't), they certainly wouldn't be hiding it in their microwave...
  - guard-of-terra 11y ago
    There is this bright idea of placing RFID chips into banknotes. If it is implemented, microwaves become logical choice to store cash in because they're practical Faraday cages.
    - blixt 11y ago
      The only viable RFID would be a passive chip, which would require the scanner to be in close proximity to the notes anyway, so putting them in a mattress would be equally efficient. You could probably build a superpowered scanner that would detect the location of these notes, but I would suspect there would be so much noise in a home that it wouldn't be too easy. From a practical standpoint, should people start "hiding" their notes in their microwaves, that would be the first place to look if you're a bad guy.
rwmj 11y ago
Can the Swedes turn their savings into some other resource which might not be deflationary, eg. gold?
- adventured 11y ago
  They certainly can, which is something the article intentionally ignores. They could choose to invest into any number of assets instead of holding cash. Open a brokerage account and buy a high quality stock that produces a dividend.
- alkonaut 11y ago
  I'm not sure what the hell this article is about, savings still have, and will continue to have, positive returns as long as someone can invest the money in the market at positive return. The interest of the central bank isn't really interesting from that perspective.
- mstade 11y ago
  Of course, which is one of the reasons the article is silly.
Kiro 11y ago
So microwaves basically have nothing to do with it. Could just as well have said "mattresses".
- alkonaut 11y ago
  Yes. But one person knew another person that had heard about a person that had put money in a microwave, so there you go. The obvious benefit of the microwave is that it's essentially a Faraday cage so you don't need a special tinfoil hat for your money, only for yourself.
  - tompark 11y ago
    A microwave does have some effectiveness as a Faraday cage, but it's not complete. I worked for a couple companies doing mobile games, and one of the certification tests during the 3G era was to make sure the app performed gracefully when the signal was lost. Putting the phone in a microwave was the first thing we thought of, but it didn't work well to cut the signal. We tried a couple different microwave ovens. Sometimes it worked if we put the phone in a ziplock bag and immersed it in salt water, then put it in the microwave.
csvan 11y ago
Swede here. It is always fascinating to read this kind of rabid BS about the very country you live and operate in - it is as if a completely different society is being described. Whatever brings the clicks, I guess. This kind of brings me back to Fox News reporting cataclysmic imagery about cars being burnt in my city (Gothenburg) some time back. External "perspectives" are comedic gold, indeed.
- vskarine 11y ago
  if you have time, could you please elaborate on what's actually happening? thanks!
  - elliotec 11y ago
    Nothing is happening in relation to this. People still use cash and they're not going to get arrested for it. And a microwave is a ridiculous place to store anything.
    - mstade 11y ago
      Yeah the microwave thing seems made up. But it is true that large amounts of cash (as in hundreds of thousands, not something like 10k) will raise suspicions. Banks are also legally obliged to report all amounts over 10k I believe, and do impose restrictions on the amounts of cash they will deal with at any given time. Many cards (and ATMs) also have a limit on the amount of cash you can withdraw, although this has been the case for years. I remember when buying a computer some 15 years ago or more – from a private seller who only accepted cash – and having to withdraw cash from three separate ATMs because there was a limit on withdrawing more than 8k or so per ATM. This was on a Sunday I believe, so the branches were all closed.
      - elliotec 11y ago
        All this is definitely true everywhere in the world though.
  - mstade 11y ago
colindean 11y ago
Why should anyone lose money because they've decided to save it for the future, with no inherent risk? It's one thing to lose it to investments. It's another thing to expect the money to sit without gaining appreciable interest, and effectively losing value because of inflation. If someone puts 1,000 units of currency into a bank, why should they ever not be able to retrieve that 1,000 units at any reasonable point in the future?
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Keep in mind that Sweden, like many european countries, has much stronger social policies than the USA. In the USA, due to the anemic social care programs for people in dire straits (long-term unemployed, sick, young, old), it is necessary for people to individually save up money to guarantee safety in emergencies. To that end, saving in banks is rewarded with interest rates. In more social countries though such emergency savings are spread across the entire population in big pots. People saving their money in bank accounts are effectively keeping it out of those pots, and from society at large, which society punishes by making such individual savings volatile.
  - adventured 11y ago
    How does this punish people that are holding their savings in property instead of a bank account though? Low interest rate policies rather massively encourage placing your cash into property. Which also explains why Sweden has such an extremely bad household income to debt ratio, with among the most over-leveraged households of any nation.
    - Mithaldu 11y ago
      Investing in property gets the money moving on the market, which is also a positive outcome.
      - adventured 11y ago
        Hoarding cash increases purchasing power for everyone else looking to spend, also a positive outcome. Is it a positive outcome if property prices inflate so much due to this, that it pushes Sweden's households into such extreme levels of debt that the economy barely grows and debt service levels become untenable? Sweden is at that point right now. Eg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/swedish-politicians-face-tricky-choice-on-hefty-household-debt http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/swedish-po... http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/09/sweden-grapples-with-massive-household-debt-as-rates-hit-zero.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/09/sweden-grapples-with-massive-... http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/06/03/riksbank-sees-increased-risks-to-swedish-financial-system/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/06/03/riksbank-sees-incr...
acd 11y ago
Central banking is central planning that gives the richest more money. There would not be negative interest rate in a true market economy where markets sets the interest rate. The new central printed money is flowing to the stock exchange and creating an epic housing bubble in Sweden. The banks here used internal risk weights so created a loan on a million just cost them around 2000 that was fractions of fractions of cash needed to create housing loans. Personally I think its housing market loan Ponzi scheme where the last ones in to loan when the prices no longer rise are set to loose.
- Steko 11y ago
  Central banking is the solution economies have come up with to the problem of the market shitting the bed every decade. It's outcompeted the alternatives basically everywhere and for good reason.
avian 11y ago
On a related note, I was recently surprised when I learned that the Euribor is also currently negative: http://www.euribor-rates.eu/ http://www.euribor-rates.eu/ Euribor is the basic interest rate that European banks use to determine interest rates on savings and mortgages. A negative value basically means that you have to pay the bank if you want them to store your savings (which they are free to invest or lend). Banks will typically give you some extra percentage points over Euribor though, so as a customer you currently see somewhere around positive zero of interest on your bank savings in my country.

42 points by lelf 11y ago

What a silly headline. The actual quote is (emphasis mine) > Björn Eriksson, former head of Sweden’s national police and now head of Säkerhetsbranschen, a lobbying group for the security industry, told The Local, “I’ve heard of people keeping cash in their microwaves because banks won’t accept it.”

blixt 11y ago
Yeah, even if Swedes were hiding away their cash (which most people don't), they certainly wouldn't be hiding it in their microwave...
- guard-of-terra 11y ago
  There is this bright idea of placing RFID chips into banknotes. If it is implemented, microwaves become logical choice to store cash in because they're practical Faraday cages.
  - blixt 11y ago
    The only viable RFID would be a passive chip, which would require the scanner to be in close proximity to the notes anyway, so putting them in a mattress would be equally efficient. You could probably build a superpowered scanner that would detect the location of these notes, but I would suspect there would be so much noise in a home that it wouldn't be too easy. From a practical standpoint, should people start "hiding" their notes in their microwaves, that would be the first place to look if you're a bad guy.

rwmj 11y ago

Can the Swedes turn their savings into some other resource which might not be deflationary, eg. gold?

adventured 11y ago
They certainly can, which is something the article intentionally ignores. They could choose to invest into any number of assets instead of holding cash. Open a brokerage account and buy a high quality stock that produces a dividend.
alkonaut 11y ago
I'm not sure what the hell this article is about, savings still have, and will continue to have, positive returns as long as someone can invest the money in the market at positive return. The interest of the central bank isn't really interesting from that perspective.
mstade 11y ago
Of course, which is one of the reasons the article is silly.

Kiro 11y ago

So microwaves basically have nothing to do with it. Could just as well have said "mattresses".

alkonaut 11y ago
Yes. But one person knew another person that had heard about a person that had put money in a microwave, so there you go. The obvious benefit of the microwave is that it's essentially a Faraday cage so you don't need a special tinfoil hat for your money, only for yourself.
- tompark 11y ago
  A microwave does have some effectiveness as a Faraday cage, but it's not complete. I worked for a couple companies doing mobile games, and one of the certification tests during the 3G era was to make sure the app performed gracefully when the signal was lost. Putting the phone in a microwave was the first thing we thought of, but it didn't work well to cut the signal. We tried a couple different microwave ovens. Sometimes it worked if we put the phone in a ziplock bag and immersed it in salt water, then put it in the microwave.

csvan 11y ago

Swede here. It is always fascinating to read this kind of rabid BS about the very country you live and operate in - it is as if a completely different society is being described. Whatever brings the clicks, I guess. This kind of brings me back to Fox News reporting cataclysmic imagery about cars being burnt in my city (Gothenburg) some time back. External "perspectives" are comedic gold, indeed.

vskarine 11y ago
if you have time, could you please elaborate on what's actually happening? thanks!
- elliotec 11y ago
  Nothing is happening in relation to this. People still use cash and they're not going to get arrested for it. And a microwave is a ridiculous place to store anything.
  - mstade 11y ago
    Yeah the microwave thing seems made up. But it is true that large amounts of cash (as in hundreds of thousands, not something like 10k) will raise suspicions. Banks are also legally obliged to report all amounts over 10k I believe, and do impose restrictions on the amounts of cash they will deal with at any given time. Many cards (and ATMs) also have a limit on the amount of cash you can withdraw, although this has been the case for years. I remember when buying a computer some 15 years ago or more – from a private seller who only accepted cash – and having to withdraw cash from three separate ATMs because there was a limit on withdrawing more than 8k or so per ATM. This was on a Sunday I believe, so the branches were all closed.
    - elliotec 11y ago
      All this is definitely true everywhere in the world though.
- mstade 11y ago

colindean 11y ago

Why should anyone lose money because they've decided to save it for the future, with no inherent risk? It's one thing to lose it to investments. It's another thing to expect the money to sit without gaining appreciable interest, and effectively losing value because of inflation. If someone puts 1,000 units of currency into a bank, why should they ever not be able to retrieve that 1,000 units at any reasonable point in the future?

Mithaldu 11y ago
Keep in mind that Sweden, like many european countries, has much stronger social policies than the USA. In the USA, due to the anemic social care programs for people in dire straits (long-term unemployed, sick, young, old), it is necessary for people to individually save up money to guarantee safety in emergencies. To that end, saving in banks is rewarded with interest rates. In more social countries though such emergency savings are spread across the entire population in big pots. People saving their money in bank accounts are effectively keeping it out of those pots, and from society at large, which society punishes by making such individual savings volatile.
- adventured 11y ago
  How does this punish people that are holding their savings in property instead of a bank account though? Low interest rate policies rather massively encourage placing your cash into property. Which also explains why Sweden has such an extremely bad household income to debt ratio, with among the most over-leveraged households of any nation.
  - Mithaldu 11y ago
    Investing in property gets the money moving on the market, which is also a positive outcome.
    - adventured 11y ago
      Hoarding cash increases purchasing power for everyone else looking to spend, also a positive outcome. Is it a positive outcome if property prices inflate so much due to this, that it pushes Sweden's households into such extreme levels of debt that the economy barely grows and debt service levels become untenable? Sweden is at that point right now. Eg: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/swedish-politicians-face-tricky-choice-on-hefty-household-debt http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-06-29/swedish-po... http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/09/sweden-grapples-with-massive-household-debt-as-rates-hit-zero.html http://www.cnbc.com/2014/11/09/sweden-grapples-with-massive-... http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/06/03/riksbank-sees-increased-risks-to-swedish-financial-system/ http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/06/03/riksbank-sees-incr...

acd 11y ago

Central banking is central planning that gives the richest more money. There would not be negative interest rate in a true market economy where markets sets the interest rate. The new central printed money is flowing to the stock exchange and creating an epic housing bubble in Sweden. The banks here used internal risk weights so created a loan on a million just cost them around 2000 that was fractions of fractions of cash needed to create housing loans. Personally I think its housing market loan Ponzi scheme where the last ones in to loan when the prices no longer rise are set to loose.

Steko 11y ago
Central banking is the solution economies have come up with to the problem of the market shitting the bed every decade. It's outcompeted the alternatives basically everywhere and for good reason.

avian 11y ago

On a related note, I was recently surprised when I learned that the Euribor is also currently negative: http://www.euribor-rates.eu/ http://www.euribor-rates.eu/ Euribor is the basic interest rate that European banks use to determine interest rates on savings and mortgages. A negative value basically means that you have to pay the bank if you want them to store your savings (which they are free to invest or lend). Banks will typically give you some extra percentage points over Euribor though, so as a customer you currently see somewhere around positive zero of interest on your bank savings in my country.