I realize sarcasm, but I wish to note the following facts about the world:
* All currency and barter systems ever successfully deployed have been used by criminals, terrorists for money laundering. The use of these systems by such people is merely a sign of widespread adoption and ease-of-use.
* In the modern world every human is a criminal because the laws contradict each other and almost all human actions involve the violation of laws.
Completely agree with you. But the money laundering argument seems to become the CP of financial services. If you somehow establish the notion that a) for "something" illegal, b) money laundering (&terrorists), and c) tax evasion, you pretty much can rally up any political spectrum against it.
Yes. You can legally ship cash and precious metals up to a certain limit, although I think I read something about the EU trying to ban these kind of shipments soon.
I don't have a specific source, but there was a lot of talk about this kind of thing in Europe earlier this year, around the time certain governments proposed or implemented big cash grabs, particularly in Cyprus. Likewise there have been draconian restrictions proposed or implemented on withdrawing large amounts of cash from bank accounts, taking currency out of the country, and so on.
Presumably those governments can't afford for the wealthy to run from centrally controllable banking systems to tangible assets like gold, because short of raiding everyone's home the cash grab strategy fails at that point. If those assets are small enough to be smuggled out, then even raiding homes wouldn't help.
The problem they now have, of course, is that some places have lost anything resembling public trust in either the government or the banking sector. The moment they lift the restrictions, they're going to see a large chunk of wealth leaving their borders. Moreover, their chances of getting serious investment from anyone to help their countries recover from the financial mess of recent years are now very low, and any investment they do get is going to have all kinds of horrible strings attached and high interest rates.
Totally get that. The only thing that somewhat surprises me is why gold / bitcoins are so that stable despite the ongoing distrust in the system. Either people don't care or their impact is way to small to impact the markets.
They're generally part of customs import/export restrictions by country. This includes cash and precious metals, but also other items. Australia and New Zealand, for example, have very strict limits on plant or animal product imports.
Cash is good, would be even better if it wasn't regulated by the Fed. We need a currency whose value is not determined behind closed doors. Cash is fine as long as it is backed by something tangible.
The value isn't determined behind closed doors; the strategies that they are going to use to push the value of cash to a desired value are determined behind closed doors. This can be done for any (crypto)currency or commodity, because nobody gets to determine what other people are willing to pay for something, you can just try to make that thing more attractive or less attractive.
