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> There is a lot of rumor and speculation about very benign things. There is certainly misrepresentation and rumour-mongering in these comments, but not in the

> There is a lot of rumor and speculation about very benign things. There is certainly misrepresentation and rumour-mongering in these comments, but not in the article, and there's nothing benign about international money laundering, or more precisely, nothing benign about the people it enables. > $50 Billion in cash is basically nothing. It's like 2% of currency in circulation. This is very far from the numbers quoted in the article, which shows two thirds (£50bn) of all British pounds sterling banknotes (£75bn) being unaccounted for, and then similarly one-half of all Euros apparently circulating outside the eurozone. This article wasn't written by, or from the perspective of, Americans. There's a brief mention, though - $7,000 per US citizen is in circulation. Somewhere. > this whole article is complaining There are no complaints registered in the article, unless you count the cash mule's plaintive wail about how heavy the suitcase was. This article is a careful discussion about folks in authority seeming unburdened by the discrepancy. > raise interest rates and increase law and order Parochialism doesn't solve global issues.

tristor 5y ago
One thing that's also benign but not mentioned by the grandparent is that any economy which has considerable foreign travelers passing through will likely end up losing some cash. I have two pint glasses sitting on my desk, one for coins, the other for bills, they are literally packed full of money from my various travels. Last time I checked, I had almost 300 euros in there and I haven't been in the Eurozone in quite some time (pandemic notwithstanding). I'm not sure if others are like me, but usually I just get cash from an ATM and pay the conversion fee but I refuse to convert back because the money changers at the train stations and airports rip you even harder than the ATM does. It just rubs me the wrong way to take it both coming and going on the conversion. So I keep the bills, and at worst case they're souvenirs.
- inopinatus 5y ago
  I too have a drawer of various currencies, some of them even since retired, or issued by governments/nations that no longer exist. However, given that international travel took a nosedive in the last 18 months whilst banknote production continued to stampede, I'd have to suggest that hoarding by globetrotters doesn't account for any current discrepancy in production vs use in observable trade.
- Symbiote 5y ago
  €300 seems a lot to have in cash anyway, regardless of tourism. That is probably more than most people would want to risk on loss/theft. It's three times what I routinely carry, which is still above average: https://www.bloomberg.com/toaster/v2/charts/892967a8146e4cc8992a5cf1d85dbfcb.html?brand=businessweek&webTheme=businessweek&web=true&hideTitles=true https://www.bloomberg.com/toaster/v2/charts/892967a8146e4cc8... or https://www.statista.com/statistics/787626/average-amount-of-cash-in-wallet-euro-area/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/787626/average-amount-of...
  - Hnrobert42 5y ago
    It’s about what I withdraw at the airport. I don’t know the next time I’ll find an ATM that accepts my card. I only want to pay the fixed fee once. I estimate my risk of a mugging, while non-zero, to be very low.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      At the airport is the start of the trip. Would you have €300 leftover in your cash jar?
      - Arrath 5y ago
        I'm probably in a minority, but I keep an envelope of $1000 in my safe next to my passport at home. Not quite the petty cash jar, but I have it handy in case.
  - hadlock 5y ago
    Paying electronically has improved a lot in the last dozen or so years, but my typical strategy had always been to keep $50-100 of local currency in my front pocket, and then another $200 usd in my money belt (along with my passport) for a typical day. Between food and drink, lunch, busfare etc $100 generally covered most expenses beyond tickets to events, and then $200 USD was usually enough to solve any significant problems if you miss your bus ride home or whatever. If you sprain your ankle in some castle ruins, you likely don't want to spend half the afternoon hobbling around historic cobblestone roads in a village somewhere looking for an ATM to get taxi fare back to the hotel. Taxi drivers rarely turn down USD. That said, ATM fees internationally, depending on your card issuer, can be pretty expensive, ATM fees + forex fees can amount to over 10% if you're only pulling out $100/day. If you don't mind the risk, pulling out the maximum amount of cash per day (usually $400 I've noticed) gets total fees down to about 4%. If you're a student backpacker on a budget for weeks on end these fees can be a substantial fraction of your travel savings/budget.
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"one-half of all Euros apparently circulating outside the eurozone." Its common for wealthy (upper middle class, not oligarch) folks in Russia to have proper safe at home, and to keep thousands of Euros in cash there. They often use Euro's because Ruble devalues a lot. Additionally, they have justified distrust in the ability of the government to run the economy and banking system, and it is their stash in case either collapses. So cash does not mean Crime, it could also mean you don't want to be left out in the cold.
- saba2008 5y ago
  Doesn't even need to be 'wealthy', just be above payday-to-payday survival and have savings.
bigger_inside 5y ago
"Money Laundering" is the narrative that always drives monetary controls, and by inference, when they're successful, everything that's not under digital surveillance is under suspicion of money-laundering. In practice, AML laws don't protect from large sums being washed by nefarious billionaires at all - as we well know, the existing banking systems with their tax and reporting havens are well able to handle large amounts of official money officially, and still out of sight. In practice, AML is a narrative that serves to legitimize controls on quite lower levels - in the 1000s. 2% of cash unaccounted for is nothing, and - I mean, preaching to the choir here - to try to hinder surveillance regimes (in the sociological sense, not the dictatorship sense) is absolutely legitimate for every normal person. Also, western privilege: western banks rarely close their doors and leave you without access to your digital money, and rarely hyperinflate it away without any recourse (though they also have, historically). While cash doesn't protect against the second danger, it well protects against the first -within- western countries. Now, in other places hoarding Euros and Dollars, it protects against both. Anit-Money-Laundering (AML) laws, in practice, do not protect us from greedy billionaires. They protect surveillance and hyperinflation states from citizens trying to protect themselves against them.
- roenxi 5y ago
  All that is to say nothing of the numerous times it turns out the banking system is itself the criminal actor. Just looking at the most recent scandal listed on Wikipedia [0] I see Madoff near-single-handedly exceeded the 50 billion in missing cash with his ponzi scheme. It isn't like removing privacy stops crime, it just makes corrupting the government more profitable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_an...
- mistrial9 5y ago
  I don't accept the parent description here because it makes everyone instantly into "law obeying" or "outlaw" in the first pass. Things are not that simple and our own ontologies can't force them to be so. I invite the reader to broaden the thinking here.. There is not one bright line of LEGAL|ILLEGAL, not even close. Those whose job it is to refer to this line, may say so. The effort of those whose job depends on these definitions, does not make it so. Let's go way back to the wild days of "utterly different tribes interacting." You know, really basic things are really very different, between people. What is legal are base definitions, but differences grow from there and increase. A system of physical currency bridges that divide. Now let's think of "the Empire that takes taxes from all tribes." Of course there is an effort to standardize practices, so that Empire can collect vastly larger sums than any one or ten tribes, and use that money to build roads, forts, harbors and hire police/troops. With this aggrandized example pair, think of the role of cash, banking and transfer of money. It is not "illegal" to handle money outside of accounting practices of Empire, but by keeping and holding your own money in your own ways so you are defining economic territory outside of the control of a centralized/tax system. Legions of accountants will oppose this, since the accountants are paid more by Empire.

tristor 5y ago

One thing that's also benign but not mentioned by the grandparent is that any economy which has considerable foreign travelers passing through will likely end up losing some cash. I have two pint glasses sitting on my desk, one for coins, the other for bills, they are literally packed full of money from my various travels. Last time I checked, I had almost 300 euros in there and I haven't been in the Eurozone in quite some time (pandemic notwithstanding). I'm not sure if others are like me, but usually I just get cash from an ATM and pay the conversion fee but I refuse to convert back because the money changers at the train stations and airports rip you even harder than the ATM does. It just rubs me the wrong way to take it both coming and going on the conversion. So I keep the bills, and at worst case they're souvenirs.

inopinatus 5y ago
I too have a drawer of various currencies, some of them even since retired, or issued by governments/nations that no longer exist. However, given that international travel took a nosedive in the last 18 months whilst banknote production continued to stampede, I'd have to suggest that hoarding by globetrotters doesn't account for any current discrepancy in production vs use in observable trade.
Symbiote 5y ago
€300 seems a lot to have in cash anyway, regardless of tourism. That is probably more than most people would want to risk on loss/theft. It's three times what I routinely carry, which is still above average: https://www.bloomberg.com/toaster/v2/charts/892967a8146e4cc8992a5cf1d85dbfcb.html?brand=businessweek&webTheme=businessweek&web=true&hideTitles=true https://www.bloomberg.com/toaster/v2/charts/892967a8146e4cc8... or https://www.statista.com/statistics/787626/average-amount-of-cash-in-wallet-euro-area/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/787626/average-amount-of...
- Hnrobert42 5y ago
  It’s about what I withdraw at the airport. I don’t know the next time I’ll find an ATM that accepts my card. I only want to pay the fixed fee once. I estimate my risk of a mugging, while non-zero, to be very low.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    At the airport is the start of the trip. Would you have €300 leftover in your cash jar?
    - Arrath 5y ago
      I'm probably in a minority, but I keep an envelope of $1000 in my safe next to my passport at home. Not quite the petty cash jar, but I have it handy in case.
- hadlock 5y ago
  Paying electronically has improved a lot in the last dozen or so years, but my typical strategy had always been to keep $50-100 of local currency in my front pocket, and then another $200 usd in my money belt (along with my passport) for a typical day. Between food and drink, lunch, busfare etc $100 generally covered most expenses beyond tickets to events, and then $200 USD was usually enough to solve any significant problems if you miss your bus ride home or whatever. If you sprain your ankle in some castle ruins, you likely don't want to spend half the afternoon hobbling around historic cobblestone roads in a village somewhere looking for an ATM to get taxi fare back to the hotel. Taxi drivers rarely turn down USD. That said, ATM fees internationally, depending on your card issuer, can be pretty expensive, ATM fees + forex fees can amount to over 10% if you're only pulling out $100/day. If you don't mind the risk, pulling out the maximum amount of cash per day (usually $400 I've noticed) gets total fees down to about 4%. If you're a student backpacker on a budget for weeks on end these fees can be a substantial fraction of your travel savings/budget.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

"one-half of all Euros apparently circulating outside the eurozone." Its common for wealthy (upper middle class, not oligarch) folks in Russia to have proper safe at home, and to keep thousands of Euros in cash there. They often use Euro's because Ruble devalues a lot. Additionally, they have justified distrust in the ability of the government to run the economy and banking system, and it is their stash in case either collapses. So cash does not mean Crime, it could also mean you don't want to be left out in the cold.

saba2008 5y ago
Doesn't even need to be 'wealthy', just be above payday-to-payday survival and have savings.

bigger_inside 5y ago

"Money Laundering" is the narrative that always drives monetary controls, and by inference, when they're successful, everything that's not under digital surveillance is under suspicion of money-laundering. In practice, AML laws don't protect from large sums being washed by nefarious billionaires at all - as we well know, the existing banking systems with their tax and reporting havens are well able to handle large amounts of official money officially, and still out of sight. In practice, AML is a narrative that serves to legitimize controls on quite lower levels - in the 1000s. 2% of cash unaccounted for is nothing, and - I mean, preaching to the choir here - to try to hinder surveillance regimes (in the sociological sense, not the dictatorship sense) is absolutely legitimate for every normal person. Also, western privilege: western banks rarely close their doors and leave you without access to your digital money, and rarely hyperinflate it away without any recourse (though they also have, historically). While cash doesn't protect against the second danger, it well protects against the first -within- western countries. Now, in other places hoarding Euros and Dollars, it protects against both. Anit-Money-Laundering (AML) laws, in practice, do not protect us from greedy billionaires. They protect surveillance and hyperinflation states from citizens trying to protect themselves against them.

roenxi 5y ago
All that is to say nothing of the numerous times it turns out the banking system is itself the criminal actor. Just looking at the most recent scandal listed on Wikipedia [0] I see Madoff near-single-handedly exceeded the 50 billion in missing cash with his ponzi scheme. It isn't like removing privacy stops crime, it just makes corrupting the government more profitable. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_and_scandals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_corporate_collapses_an...
mistrial9 5y ago
I don't accept the parent description here because it makes everyone instantly into "law obeying" or "outlaw" in the first pass. Things are not that simple and our own ontologies can't force them to be so. I invite the reader to broaden the thinking here.. There is not one bright line of LEGAL|ILLEGAL, not even close. Those whose job it is to refer to this line, may say so. The effort of those whose job depends on these definitions, does not make it so. Let's go way back to the wild days of "utterly different tribes interacting." You know, really basic things are really very different, between people. What is legal are base definitions, but differences grow from there and increase. A system of physical currency bridges that divide. Now let's think of "the Empire that takes taxes from all tribes." Of course there is an effort to standardize practices, so that Empire can collect vastly larger sums than any one or ten tribes, and use that money to build roads, forts, harbors and hire police/troops. With this aggrandized example pair, think of the role of cash, banking and transfer of money. It is not "illegal" to handle money outside of accounting practices of Empire, but by keeping and holding your own money in your own ways so you are defining economic territory outside of the control of a centralized/tax system. Legions of accountants will oppose this, since the accountants are paid more by Empire.