BERLIN. In the jargon they call it “Bin Laden”. And it is doomed. The bigliettone 500 EUR beloved by drug lords, by money launderers, mafias from all over the world and from arms dealers, has the hours counted. The European Central Bank may decide to abolish it today. The debate is still on as if made for a date by which declare it off course, or simply stop printing it, but in the Governing Council would prevail the second hypothesis, that in short to let it go while avoiding “trauma” as a real date expiration.
a move announced months ago by the President, Mario Draghi, who has reasoned as follows: “it is more and more a tool for illegal activities.” But since it is known that the meeting of the Governing Council may decide on this morning the end, Germany is controversy. And the curious fetishism by banknote of a people often associated with rationality and technological progress, has begun to produce outraged editorials and paranoid comments. One of which says that the end of “Bin Laden” would cost the beauty of 500 million euro.
The pathos no wonder: on cash, the Germans are the most nostalgic people of the world. And in recent weeks they are putting together, how does Thiele, disparate dossier to feed an atavistic paranoia: that that someone wants to snatch from their hands forever coins and banknotes. As he wrote not the popular Bild , but the very bourgeois Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in a vibrant editorial: “Cash is freedom.” But in reality, beyond the discussion of “Bin Laden” or the limit of cash payments, no one ever dreamed of in Germany propose the abolition of “cash”. It ‘a ghost that travels around the country without a real referent.
The recent threat of Georg Fahrenschon, president of the Sparkassen, the powerful savings banks, to transfer the negative rates that the ECB is applying to deposits for banks, even the accounts of German savers, it is rather real. It only serves to make even more aggressive tone. Throws gasoline on the fire of those who argue that in the face of a monetary policy that you are eating the savings, it is also an affront to freedom of refuge in cash.
The truth is that the Germans are buying a lot of “cash” , the car used in the washing machine to the TV, who was in Berlin or Monaco even just an hour, you know how hard it pay with a credit card. And for the elderly, the abolition of the piece of 500 euro will be even more incomprehensible. Up to fifteen years ago, when there was the German mark, the big cut was by a thousand, the equivalent of one million old lira. In Italy the maximum were the banknotes by 500 thousand, but were used much more rarely than a thousand brands.
And to understand fetishism of tickets and coins that afflicts the people of Angela Merkel, is sufficient even think the recently broken out mania around the first five coin euro ever printed in the world. They manufactured their course, and in spite of the English name, “Planet Earth”, a glance to understand that is very German. And ‘in fact identical to the old “Heiermann”, to coin five brands. This too is an aspect that we must never forget: the only symbol of power that Germany has ever granted in the post-war period, after the tragedy of Nazism, has been the mark. And if they are detached with great effort.
The fear of being deprived of cash has also emerged when on the eve of regional elections in March, the Finance Ministry had floated the idea of introducing a 5,000 limit EUR to “cash payments”. The outcry came up to the Bundesbank until Wolfgang Schaeuble rebounded the hot dossier in Brussels. Where reflection on the possible introduction of a ceiling on cash has been ongoing for some time. Yesterday, a source in the ministry reminded that “there is no news.” The ECOFIN mandated in February the Commission to examine such a hypothesis. “Now it’s just wait. The results are not yet.” A sigh of relief. At least, for Berlin.
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