
People in Sweden are hiding cash in their microwaves - lelf
http://business.financialpost.com/business-insider/people-in-sweden-are-hiding-cash-in-their-microwaves-because-of-a-fascinating-and-terrifying-economic-experiment
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csvan
Swede here. It is always fascinating to read this kind of rabid BS about the
very country you live and operate in - it is as if a completely different
society is being described. Whatever brings the clicks, I guess.

This kind of brings me back to Fox News reporting cataclysmic imagery about
cars being burnt in my city (Gothenburg) some time back. External
"perspectives" are comedic gold, indeed.

~~~
vskarine
if you have time, could you please elaborate on what's actually happening?
thanks!

~~~
elliotec
Nothing is happening in relation to this. People still use cash and they're
not going to get arrested for it. And a microwave is a ridiculous place to
store anything.

~~~
mstade
Yeah the microwave thing seems made up. But it is true that large amounts of
cash (as in hundreds of thousands, not something like 10k) will raise
suspicions. Banks are also legally obliged to report all amounts over 10k I
believe, and do impose restrictions on the amounts of cash they will deal with
at any given time. Many cards (and ATMs) also have a limit on the amount of
cash you can withdraw, although this has been the case for years. I remember
when buying a computer some 15 years ago or more – from a private seller who
only accepted cash – and having to withdraw cash from three separate ATMs
because there was a limit on withdrawing more than 8k or so per ATM. This was
on a Sunday I believe, so the branches were all closed.

~~~
elliotec
All this is definitely true everywhere in the world though.

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mikkom
What a silly headline. The actual quote is (emphasis mine)

> Björn Eriksson, former head of Sweden’s national police and now head of
> Säkerhetsbranschen, _a lobbying group for the security industry_ , told The
> Local, “I’ve heard of people keeping cash in their microwaves because banks
> won’t accept it.”

~~~
blixt
Yeah, even if Swedes were hiding away their cash (which most people don't),
they certainly wouldn't be hiding it in their microwave...

~~~
guard-of-terra
There is this bright idea of placing RFID chips into banknotes.

If it is implemented, microwaves become logical choice to store cash in
because they're practical Faraday cages.

~~~
blixt
The only viable RFID would be a passive chip, which would require the scanner
to be in close proximity to the notes anyway, so putting them in a mattress
would be equally efficient. You could probably build a superpowered scanner
that would detect the location of these notes, but I would suspect there would
be so much noise in a home that it wouldn't be too easy.

From a practical standpoint, should people start "hiding" their notes in their
microwaves, that would be the first place to look if you're a bad guy.

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Kiro
So microwaves basically have nothing to do with it. Could just as well have
said "mattresses".

~~~
alkonaut
Yes. But one person knew another person that had heard about a person that had
put money in a microwave, so there you go.

The obvious benefit of the microwave is that it's essentially a Faraday cage
so you don't need a special tinfoil hat for your money, only for yourself.

~~~
tompark
A microwave does have some effectiveness as a Faraday cage, but it's not
complete. I worked for a couple companies doing mobile games, and one of the
certification tests during the 3G era was to make sure the app performed
gracefully when the signal was lost. Putting the phone in a microwave was the
first thing we thought of, but it didn't work well to cut the signal. We tried
a couple different microwave ovens. Sometimes it worked if we put the phone in
a ziplock bag and immersed it in salt water, then put it in the microwave.

------
colindean
Why should anyone lose money because they've decided to save it for the
future, with no inherent risk?

It's one thing to lose it to investments. It's another thing to expect the
money to sit without gaining appreciable interest, and effectively losing
value because of inflation.

If someone puts 1,000 units of currency into a bank, why should they ever not
be able to retrieve that 1,000 units at any reasonable point in the future?

~~~
Mithaldu
Keep in mind that Sweden, like many european countries, has much stronger
social policies than the USA.

In the USA, due to the anemic social care programs for people in dire straits
(long-term unemployed, sick, young, old), it is necessary for people to
individually save up money to guarantee safety in emergencies. To that end,
saving in banks is rewarded with interest rates.

In more social countries though such emergency savings are spread across the
entire population in big pots. People saving their money in bank accounts are
effectively keeping it out of those pots, and from society at large, which
society punishes by making such individual savings volatile.

~~~
cissou
This is completely inaccurate. Savings account in the US have one of the
lowest interest rates in the world, sitting at 0.06% right now [0]. If
anything, US citizens are rewarded for NOT keeping their money in the bank,
investing it anywhere else (but at a higher risk). Complete opposite of what's
happening in Europe.

[0]
[https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/resources/rates/#one](https://www.fdic.gov/regulations/resources/rates/#one)

~~~
Mithaldu
Keep in mind that the article talks about negative interest rates.

~~~
cissou
The article explicitly says that negative rates are not being passed on to the
banks' customers right now, and then goes on to speculate that it will in the
future.

Deflation means that 1 unit of currency will be worth more tomorrow than it is
today, hence it is explicitly rewarding keeping money instead of investing it.

~~~
Mithaldu
> not being passed on to the banks' customers right now

So who is paying them now? And once they get passed on, the scenario will look
like what i described, no?

I also do not understand why you bring up deflation.

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rwmj
Can the Swedes turn their savings into some other resource which might not be
deflationary, eg. gold?

~~~
adventured
They certainly can, which is something the article intentionally ignores.

They could choose to invest into any number of assets instead of holding cash.
Open a brokerage account and buy a high quality stock that produces a
dividend.

------
avian
On a related note, I was recently surprised when I learned that the Euribor is
also currently negative:

[http://www.euribor-rates.eu/](http://www.euribor-rates.eu/)

Euribor is the basic interest rate that European banks use to determine
interest rates on savings and mortgages. A negative value basically means that
you have to pay the bank if you want them to store your savings (which they
are free to invest or lend). Banks will typically give you some extra
percentage points over Euribor though, so as a customer you currently see
somewhere around positive zero of interest on your bank savings in my country.

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acd
Central banking is central planning that gives the richest more money. There
would not be negative interest rate in a true market economy where markets
sets the interest rate.

The new central printed money is flowing to the stock exchange and creating an
epic housing bubble in Sweden.

The banks here used internal risk weights so created a loan on a million just
cost them around 2000 that was fractions of fractions of cash needed to create
housing loans.

Personally I think its housing market loan Ponzi scheme where the last ones in
to loan when the prices no longer rise are set to loose.

~~~
Steko
Central banking is the solution economies have come up with to the problem of
the market shitting the bed every decade. It's outcompeted the alternatives
basically everywhere and for good reason.

