Actually I remember a few years ago reading an article that said that the Federal Reserve was studying the feasibility of embedding RFID tags into paper curren

Actually I remember a few years ago reading an article that said that the Federal Reserve was studying the feasibility of embedding RFID tags into paper currency. Doing so would allow the banks to know how long a particular note had been out of the banking system and stuffed in a mattress. Then a penalty could be assessed when the note was redeposited. The article said that such a system could allow banks to pay negative interest rates but still be less of a penalty than the penalty for hording cash. As I recall the article said that a $100 bill would be worth about $10 less every month that it was kept out of the banking system – just as an example of how it could work. This is a different article that talks about the same idea in Japan http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article6531299.ece http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/art...