Goodbye Paper Money: Does It Mean More Ways for the Banks to Screw Us?

[marmar]

AlterNet / By Scott Thill

Goodbye Paper Money: Does It Mean More Ways for the Banks to Screw Us?
The spiral of economic calculation is dizzying, when you factor in inscrutable fees and other invisible transactions banks attach to the light-speed movement of our money.

April 6, 2010 |


Currency has come a long way in the past few thousand years of human existence. Ancient Turkey started using hybrid silver and gold coins around 640 B.C. and the Chinese started passing paper around 800 A.D. But it wasn't until the middle of the 20th century that Diners Club finally invented credit cards, or that electronic transfer payment systems like PayPal threw dirt on the century's grave in the late '90s. And now that the 21st century has fully arrived on the heels of both a harrowing terrorist attack targeting finance nerve centers in New York City and an economic depression downsizing everything from global bank accounts to job prospects, it is high time we rethought how we should pay and get paid to live and die.

Despite the deep thoughts and deeper concerns, it's not hard to see that our digital age perhaps deserves a fully digital currency, compliant across real and virtual geographies. In fact, we're pretty much already there, without admitting it.

"Nowadays, when the Federal Reserve prints money, it doesn't mint a new penny or dollar," Mikka Pineda, research analyst at famed economist Nouriel Roubini's think-tank Roubini Global Economics, explained to AlterNet. "It just changes numbers in bank accounts. Individuals can do this too, provided they have electronic access to their accounts. They can transfer money from one account to another, accept deposits and pay bills online."

With one major difference: Unlike the Fed, individuals actually have to back up their virtual ones and zeroes with so-called real money, in the form of deposits. So-called, because what they're really putting into their accounts, at least in America, are dollars, which are merely material symbols of real value made of paper. Or checks, which are even more hyperreal, given that they are just more paper signifying other paper that symbolizes real value. The spiral of economic signification is dizzying, especially when you start factoring in inscrutable fees, levies and other mostly invisible transactions that banks and other parasites attach to the light-speed movement of our money. ...............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/economy/146318/goodbye_paper_money%3A_does_it_mean_more_ways_for_the_banks_to_screw_us_

[Captain Hilts]

1. I've started using cash and checks because of fees, etc. nt

[marmar]

2. Me too.....

[Captain Hilts]

3. My last drive to Toronto, I paid cash for about half the gas. Checks for my

cat's vet bills.