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

[dreamdancer 0]

interesting...

Quote

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.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/146318/goodbye_paper_money%3A_does_it_mean_more_ways_for_the_banks_to_screw_us_

stay away from moving propellers - they bite
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[shropshire 0]

I'm all right Jack
Keep your hands off my stack

(.)Y(.)
Chivalry is not dead; it only sleeps for want of work to do. - Jerome K Jerome

[rhaig 0]

all a non-backed currency system is anyway is a way of tracking debt to someone.

--
Rob

[skybill 22]

Hi dd,
It's happening already, "No paper money!" No food stamps, ya' get a plastic debit card!! I'm sure though, that when green backs become collectors items like "Confederate Money," the "Black Market" will figure out a way to deal with it!! There was a photo of some major drug bust somewhere where in this house there were rooms just full stacked with CA$H!! Just think that in a flash the Fed declared CASH to be no longer legal tender!! Guess we'd have to go to the Barter System. When I was over seas in the Navy, American Cigarettes were as good as cash!

SCR-2034, SCS-680

III%,
Deli-out

[nanook 1]

I think that that the article mistakenly think that "currency" has the same meaning as "money".

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