The Fed’s Fear Scale: Holdings of Cold Hard Cash At A Record

by Wolf Richter, Testosterone Pit.com:

In 1969, notes greater than $100, including the cool $10,000 note  that would still pay for a lot of things, were retired due to “declining demand.” Prematurely, it turns out. Because demand for cold hard cash, despite plummeting use of it for transactions, has surged. Reason: fear.

Modern payment technologies have been taking over transactions. Since 2000, transaction volume via debit cards skyrocketed 18.4% per year, electronic bank transfers 13.5% per year, and credit cards 3.7% per year, reported San Francisco Fed President and CEO John Williams in “Cash Is Dead! Long Live Cash!” Conversely, use of checks dropped by 5.8% per year.

Cash does have advantages: it’s reliable even during blackouts or after earthquakes when nothing works anymore; and it’s anonymous so that companies can’t track you when you by pita bread and hummus, information that years later might lead a promotion-hungry genius at some counter-terrorism office to send drones after you. Because cash is murky, the San Francisco Fed could only estimate transaction volume. And it’s down sharply.

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