
Germany’s Social Democrats have proposed an upper limit on cash transactions - csomar
https://global.handelsblatt.com/edition/354/ressort/finance/article/the-death-of-cash
======
molecule
HN headline: Germany to make cash payments of more than 5,000 Euro illegal

Article: ... Germany’s Social Democrats _have proposed_ an upper limit on cash
transactions and the abolition of the €500 note. It could prove a tough sell
in a country that still loves paying with paper money.

Edit: headline updated by dang, thanks.

~~~
dang
Yes, that's ridiculous. (The submitted title was "Germany to make cash
payments of more than 5,000 Euro illegal". We replaced it with the relevant
part of the subtitle.)

Submitters: here is the relevant HN guideline:

 _Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait._

Note how replacing a title to make it _more_ misleading and linkbait is the
exact the opposite of that.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
this is really good to know. I love checking HN comments first before clicking
because often top comments point out clickbait and sometimes even provide a
little tl;dr ... This is awesome and just saves me so much time. One of the
main reasons I love this site and community

~~~
dang
Glad you feel that way.

The bit about replacing original titles to make them less linkbaity has been
surprisingly slow to feed into the community consciousness. But not rewriting
them to make them _more_ so, at least, should be a no-brainer.

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forfengeligfaen
Perhaps a prerequisite to banning cash altogether which is necessary to
introduce negative interest rates. A total cash ban has been proposed in
Norway by Norway's biggest bank, DNB
[http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/oekonomisk-
kriminalitet/d...](http://www.vg.no/nyheter/innenriks/oekonomisk-
kriminalitet/dnb-vil-fjerne-alle-kontantene-i-norge/a/23599855/)

~~~
s_q_b
That was my thought as well.

High denomination notes used in the underground economy essentially represent
a zero interest loan to the currency issuer. The United States actually
considered reissuing the $1000 bill since the $100 greenbacks were losing
criminal market share to the Euro.

Any major money laundering is done via asset purchases, primarily using banks
in the City, the Caribbean, and (for the VIP Platinum Club Elite oligarchs)
Luxembourg.

So money laundering is an excuse to ban high denomination cash transactions.
The question is why.

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wslh
Not an expert in the subject but not accepting cash gives banks and credit
card oligopolies almost all the keys to financial transactions.

Also interesting, how cryptocurrencies play with these rules. If they are
accepted they should force the POS providers to be open to new ways of payment
instead of using them as a barriers of entry.

~~~
hguant
Not to mention severely limiting freedom of the individual.

Look at the Eich's ousting - donate to the wrong party, support an
"objectionable" point of view, and you stand to lose everything. Maybe CEO's
should expect this sort of scrutiny. Maybe it's even justified. However,
removing one of the few means of privately utilizing wealth left in the world
(Bitcoin isn't there yet, and might never be) means that private individuals
can expect that same sort of public scrutiny over all their actions.

Reading this sounds like strident distopian conspiracy ravings, but I honestly
do believe there is a push by governments and large corporations (Google, BoA,
etc) to have total information awareness about the day to day dealings of
everyone, be it for "security" or data mining or what have you. I believe that
push is fundamentally opposed to the spirit of liberalism that let us develop
advanced democracies. Quite frankly, I think the possibility of a bit (or more
than a bit) of money laundering is an easy price to pay in exchange for
personal privacy.

------
542458
Hunh. Title is a bit misleading, but anyways.

Does Germany not have populations religiously opposed to banks or electronic
currency, similar to the amish?

When I was younger, I would sometimes help out at the family lumber yard.
Local amish folks would occasionally come in and purchase enough lumber to
build one or more barns and/or houses, all in one go. This could easily be
thousands to tens of thousands of dollars in lumber, all paid in mixed bills
(and sometimes rolled coins) or varying sizes. They never tried to cheat us,
but we had to spend they day sitting around counting the money anyways out of
principle.

~~~
johnchristopher
I am not aware of any active Amish communities in Germany or Europe.
[http://amishamerica.com/do-amish-live-in-europe/](http://amishamerica.com/do-
amish-live-in-europe/)

There seems to be some small congregations but nothing like the Amish living
in America.

------
JoshTriplett
Because such a ban would obviously prevent illegal transactions from taking
place; people might be committing other crimes, but they would _never_ think
of breaking _this_ one.

~~~
Someone1234
So your point is, what? Because something is imperfect that the status quo
where nothing is done is inherently superior?

Plus a lot of people involved in money laundering have no idea they're
involved in anything illegal: auctioneers, realtors, sometimes accountants,
sometimes lawyers, etc. Or if they do know it is shady they can play ignorant.

Laws like this make it harder to involve law abiding parties in illegal
activity.

PS - I actually feel like 5K is too low, 10K seems like a more reasonable
lower limit.

~~~
adrusi
The point is that money laundering is _already_ illegal, everyone who's doing
it is already breaking the law. The only purpose this serves is to create a
new law that is easier to prove violation of. A law that makes it easier to
indict criminals at the expense of making legitimate acts illegal is
fundamentally at odds with the physical underpinnings that give us the
"innocent until proven guilty" doctrine.

~~~
Someone1234
> The point is that money laundering is already illegal, everyone who's doing
> it is already breaking the law.

No.

Knowingly laundering money is illegal, being used to launder money unknowingly
is not.

For example if a money launderer buys your property with cash (car, house,
painting) and then goes ahead and resells that property later to clean money,
by your logic the seller would also be laundering, which is obviously absurd.

With this law the seller has the responsibility not to accept cash over a
certain amount, which makes the launderer's life more difficult.

Most people who take part in money laundering do so unknowingly. The law
provides a better paper trail to detect laundering.

> A law that makes it easier to indict criminals at the expense of making
> legitimate acts illegal is fundamentally at odds with the physical
> underpinnings that give us the "innocent until proven guilty" doctrine.

That's circular logic. You claim something is a "legitimate act" but all
illegal things were at one time legitimate acts: drinking & driving, guns on
aircraft, drug usage, all computing crime, all financial crime, etc.

You can use that exact sentence and the logic held within to argue that all
new laws of any nature violate "innocent until proven guilty" because
inherently before the law was passed these were "legitimate acts."

------
SCAQTony
Imagine trying to sell a used car or other high asset items like fully loaded
computers and Swiss watches. Who is going to take a check?

[edit]

“Limits on cash transactions would discourage foreign criminals from coming
here to launder money,” says the Social Democrats’ paper. If sums over €5,000
have to pass through traceable bank transactions, laundering would be severely
hampered, it adds.

Other European states have already imposed such restrictions. In 2011,
Bulgaria was the first country to set a limit, restricting cash deals to
€2,500. Italy followed suit a year later, with a radical limit of €1,000,
although this was later relaxed to €3,000. Portugal is considering similar
measures..."

~~~
Someone1234
I haven't seen a cheque in almost twenty years... Do people still use them?

The answer is bank transfers. I can send someone money within minutes from my
phone and it will arrive within a couple of hours.

I myself wouldn't want to walk around the streets with 5K+ in cash anyway,
just asking to get ropped.

~~~
sliverstorm
So you're selling your car, the buyer initiates the bank transfer, and the two
of you hang around in a coffee shop for a few hours waiting for it to clear?

Or do you actually let them drive off with the car before the transaction
clears?

~~~
Someone1234
I said up to a couple of hours, not a "few."

And the point is irrelevant as here you now need valid insurance and road tax
to drive off into the sunset which itself can take a couple of hours.

So private or commercial sale is often a "pick up the next day" kind of
affair.

~~~
sliverstorm
My apologies, at least where I live "a couple" is basically the same as "a
few", 2-3.

------
rm_-rf_slash
"Citizen, what is in that briefcase?"

"€5,000, officer. I am purchasing a used car today for €4,900. Then I am
taking my wife out to dinner."

"Carry on, then."

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
also you should know that in Germany the Frau pays half of the bill for dinner

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Maybe it's a very expensive dinner.

------
DyslexicAtheist
anonymous crypto currences (zerocash) could maybe fill that void (I strongly
hope ... otherwise our privacy is going to be totally buggered). The real
reason is probably not money laundering but the German Finanzamt (IRS) who
wants to closer monitor what you do. They already have access to your bank
account and can check any time without your knowledge.

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pmontra
It was 1000 Euro in Italy, recently raised to 3000 (to be pedantic, it's
2999.99)

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johnchristopher
It's behind a paywall, I can't read it without registering.

