By Jay Syrmopoulos
![](https://thefreethoughtproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/war-on-cash-696x366.jpg)



<p>&nbsp;Canberra, Australia – The Australian government <a href="http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/federal-budget/cash-payments-over-10000-to-be-banned-as-government-targets-50-billion-black-economy/news-story/9df0646ba704bd170df5b3996d512f52">announced</a> &nbsp;that it will soon be illegal to use more than $10,000 cash to purchase &nbsp;anything, forcing individuals that wish to buy more expensive items to &nbsp;use a cashier’s check or electronic transfer, ostensibly in the name of &nbsp;fighting organized crime and money laundering. The move reportedly comes in response to the government’s Black &nbsp;Economy Standing Taskforce. In addition to the cash purchase ban, the &nbsp;government has allocated a $319 million package to the Tax Office to &nbsp;develop new strategies to target the black economy.&nbsp;</p>
<p>Treasurer Scott Morrison said the Black Economy Standing Taskforce &nbsp;will include a rigorous identification system and “mobile strike teams,” &nbsp;in an effort to detect people making suspicious cash transactions, as &nbsp;well as a&nbsp;black economy hotline for citizens to report anyone suspected &nbsp;of engaging in illegal transactions.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>“Cash provides an easy, anonymous and largely untraceable mechanism for conducting black economy activity,”</em> the response said<em>. &nbsp;“Cash payments make it easier to under-report income and avoid tax &nbsp;obligations. This allows businesses transacting in cash to undercut &nbsp;competitors and gain a competitive advantage.</em>”&nbsp;</p>
<p>It said the task force had identified examples of <em>“large undocumented cash payments being made for houses, cars, yachts, agricultural crops and commodities”</em>, which contribute to the $50 billion black economy and <em>“hurt honest businesses.”</em></p>
<p>&nbsp;Revenue Minister Kelly O’Dwyer said the ban on cash purchases of more than $10,000 would begin on July 1 of next year. <em>“This cash payment limit will capture high-value transactions and &nbsp;help stamp out opportunities for criminals to launder the proceeds of &nbsp;crime into goods and services, or for businesses to hide transactions to &nbsp;reduce their tax liabilities,”</em> she said. This of course is not a phenomenon unique to Australia, as there is &nbsp;an ongoing international “war on cash.”&nbsp;</p>
<p>In the United States, Larry &nbsp;Summers, a former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Harvard president, pushed &nbsp;and effort during the Obama administration to abolish $50 and $100 &nbsp;bills. There has also been talk within the EU of doing away with the &nbsp;€500 note.&nbsp;</p>
<p>India has <a href="https://thefreethoughtproject.com/fingerprints-eye-scans-required-buy-food-india-banks-cut-cryptocurrencies/">already made such moves.&nbsp;</a> While the publicly stated reason for these policies is to fight &nbsp;criminals, terrorists, money launderers, drug dealer, etc., by making it &nbsp;more difficult for them to move cash, the actual reason for the &nbsp;international “war on cash” is to give government more control and &nbsp;power.&nbsp;</p>
<p>A&nbsp;<a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/the-technocrats-who-want-to-take-your-cash-away/372322/">report</a>&nbsp;in&nbsp;<em>The</em> <em>Atlantic</em> &nbsp;explains that while some believe that a cashless system would be &nbsp;“simple and elegant,” there are ominous implications about further &nbsp;centralization of power that must be considered:&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote>Federal, state, and local law enforcement, as well as tax &nbsp;authorities, want to bring as much of the economy under their direct &nbsp;supervision as possible. … Forget folks who like cash. Never mind &nbsp;worries about forcing us all to run all spending through a corrupt &nbsp;corporate-banking system. Never mind the resilience of having a medium &nbsp;of exchange in the non-digital world that works when the power grid is &nbsp;down, when one’s smart phone is dropped in water, when one’s identity is &nbsp;stolen by hackers, or one’s account frozen by Visa or Bank of America &nbsp;because a purchase on vacation was deemed suspicious.</blockquote>
<p>Friedersdorf goes on to clarify how the elimination of cash could &nbsp;dramatically erode financial privacy; pointing to Supreme Court&nbsp;<a href="http://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/425/435/case.html">case</a> <em>U.S. v. Miller</em>:&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote>There is no legitimate “expectation of privacy” in the &nbsp;contents of the original checks and deposit slips, since the checks are &nbsp;not confidential communications, but negotiable instruments to be used &nbsp;in commercial transactions, and all the documents obtained contain only &nbsp;information voluntarily conveyed to the banks and exposed to their &nbsp;employees in the ordinary course of business.</blockquote>
<p>In a report for Forbes magazie, founder Steve Forbes elaborates on this line of thinking:&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote>The real reason for this war on cash–start with the big &nbsp;bills and then work your way down–is an ugly power grab by Big &nbsp;Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it &nbsp;easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it &nbsp;simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, &nbsp;sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.</blockquote>
<p>The movement against cash is clearly about centralized control of the &nbsp;economy, as international bureaucrats believe they can control the &nbsp;global economy better than the free market. Forbes goes on to explain:&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote>The move to destroy cash feeds into the economic &nbsp;commissars’ fantasy that they can better control the economy. &nbsp;Policymakers in&nbsp;Washington, Tokyo and the EU think the reason that their &nbsp;economies are stagnant is that ornery people aren’t spending and &nbsp;investing the way they should. How to make these benighted, recalcitrant &nbsp;beings do what they’re supposed to do? The latest nostrum from our &nbsp;overlords is negative interest rates. If people have to pay fees to &nbsp;store their money, as they do to put their stuff in storage facilities, &nbsp;then, by golly, they might be more inclined to spend it. To inhibit cash &nbsp;hoarding—when Japan announced it was imposing negative interest rates, &nbsp;the sale of safes soared—the authorities will want to do away with large &nbsp;notes.</blockquote>
<p>Of course, one of the primary purposes of the Australian government’s &nbsp;movement against black markets and large cash purchases comes down to &nbsp;lost revenue for the state. In fact, the government reported that the &nbsp;package against black markets could potentially net the state billions &nbsp;of dollars more in revenue. So, while governments like to use fear mongering about terrorism and &nbsp;drugs as a means of eliciting support for policies restricting the use &nbsp;of cash, the real motive behind these laws is clearly to give government &nbsp;more power. The ability to track every transaction provides an &nbsp;invaluable asset to a global spying apparatus (Five Eyes) that aims to &nbsp;sweep up all available information with no regard for the existence of &nbsp;individual privacy.&nbsp;</p>
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