The Fight to Keep Cash
The Telegraph‘s Lauren Almeida has interviewed the former head of Interpol, Björn Eriksson, who says his chief security concern now is the erasure of cash, as worries grow about the vulnerability of electronic payment systems to attack. Here’s an excerpt.
It may seem strange for such a senior former security professional to be involved in the fight to keep coins and notes.
Indeed, Eriksson admits his campaign to preserve cash was once a fringe movement, dismissed as a group of “naïve” luddites fighting against the tide. Most Swedes stopped carrying cash years ago – note and coin transactions account for around 1% of gross domestic product.
But Russia’s invasion of Ukraine changed everything. “People started to realise that it is very easy for Vladimir Putin to switch everything off,” he says. “At first we were arguing for vulnerable people, the elderly, women in abusive relationships who rely on cash. They were handicapped by not sitting at the top positions.
“Now we are talking about national security. And it’s not only Putin, it could also be organised crime. Suddenly we have another type of argument, another group of politicians who are entering the scene.”
Legislators across the continent are beginning to take the matter more seriously: the European Commission has drafted laws that would ensure acceptance of and access to euro banknotes, so that anyone who wanted to pay with cash could do so.
“If the EU makes this decision … well, the Swedes are known for obeying. The British are a different story,” he laughs.
Britain is not far behind Sweden in its transition to a digital economy – here too cash is disappearing fast. Last year just 14% of payments were made using cash. A decade ago the figure was 54%.
But for millions of people this is not just a matter of convenience: it is about a lack of choice. More than 600 banks are due to close by the end of this year, leaving only around 4,000 across the whole of the U.K. In Sweden, the number of bank branches handling cash has dropped by half since 2017 to around 300.
“It is not about stopping cards,” Eriksson says, as he shows me a wallet stuffed with plastic. “I love cards and use them a lot, but the key point is we need to have an option.
“In Ukraine they have been able to defend their digital solutions. But they would never say ‘we do not like cash’ because it is important to have different options when the Russians attack. So even a country at war can have cash together with digital.”
Reliance on digital payments could put the whole nation at risk in the event of a cyber attack or electrical blackout, he adds.
Worth reading in full.
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Ok, go on, I’ll accept the argument. If the Russian bogeyman is what ensures we keep cash, I’ll take it.
Whatever convinces our bureaucratic dictatorship works for me.
We must fight to keep cash in use at all costs. Once cash is abolished, all bets are off for the aspiring totalitarian that are salivating like a Pavlov’s dog at the idea.
The campaign to keep physical cash, whilst very laudable, frequently ignores several big elephants in the room. Firstly, whilst an entirely electronic monetary system could well be used as a mechanism for controlling populations, more pressing objectives for abolishing cash probably include preventing the possibility of bank runs, as seen in 2008, and enabling negative interest rates by which all the bad debt built up by decades of recklessness can be eroded. Secondly, physical cash isn’t a great deal of good in a hyper-inflation scenario, which the corrupt oligarchies may try to provoke when their CBDC fantasies fail to materialise. Thirdly, the two-tier banking system has been progressively eroded over recent years resulting in a greater proportion of accounts being held on the ledgers of a small number of powerful and inter-related banks. This consolidation of accounts has continued with notable bank failures in the US and recent attacks on MetroBank and may, though presented as central bank ‘digital currencies’ presumably to discredit real digital currencies, be the real end goal. Whether as numbers written on bank notes or on a bank ledger or a block chain, money needs to be exchangeable on demand for something of real value, as… Read more »
The bonus of cash is it stops Jeremy *unt getting his grubby little hands on my hard earned money and pissing it up the wall. Plus I can spend as much as I like on the black market.
As we all know CBDC’s are all about control not convenience. The sheep are more than happy walking into this abattoir.
He gets his hands on your money by getting the banks to print money to loan to the government (this is why they need wars, pandemics and green nonsense). This causes inflation so the £ in your pocket is worth less. They then hike interest rates and get more money out of you. You also pay the interest of £50BN/year on the original loans the bank made. This is why we are worth 2.5TN in output as humans and the country is still insolvent. They don’t want the debt back (also a handy £2.5TN) they just want the interest which is from earnings, rather than the debt which was created out of nothing in the bank.
Yes we must keep cash, for the same reason that we must not rely on using electricity alone. This could result in the same outcome – a foreign power could take out access to both by destroying electrical and electronic connections. The country could not survive such an attack, nothing would work and people would starve because they couldn’t buy food. I just can’t understand why the establishment can’t see this… but there again, they don’t have much up top. Have they ever heard of putting all your eggs in one basket?
You are quite right about not relying on electricity alone – see South Africa where the traffic lights don’t work during power cuts. Our grid needs maintenance but money is being spent on renewables.
Get the message out regarding Central Bank digital currencies
Using fear of the Big Bad Wolf, Putin, may actually wake some people up.
Although most still don’t understand that it isn’t the wolf which the sheeple should fear; it’s the kindly shepherd who is “looking after them” ….. and which will round them up and send them to the abbatoir.
The problem with FIAT cash is that the BoE can call it in whenever it likes. Yes, we can still use it for local transactions, but shops won’t take it if they can’t bank it and even if the local farmer accepts it for food, what when he needs a new tractor? We need a different currency other than silver/gold/crypto which resembles cash, such as local currencies. This way we control the money supply (no inflation and interest) and take that particular disaster out of the hands of the psychopaths.