nmlnn

What if someone whispers something in your ear?

It's the branding that they need to get rid of cash. Playing it off as an analogue to digital switch, rather than the removal of transaction freedom and privacy.

Here's the final paragraph for those who want to know if this is worth reading:

> The real solution, as I have argued elsewhere (and as many people have argued, back to Keynes at least) is for central banks to intervene at many more points in financial system. They have to set prices of many assets, not just one overnight interest rate, and they have to direct credit to specific classes of borrowers. They have to accept their role as central planner. It is the need for much more conscious planning of finance, and not crypto currencies, that, I think, is the great challenge and opportunity for central banks today.

> The concept is the bedrock of many religions anyway. It’s something that a lot of people want.

This is exactly the reason communist systems have to destroy religion and replace it with the state. Because if people realise they're not being watched over by some all powerful benevolent entity, and that it is just a bunch of other (self-interested) people, they lose "the faith" pretty quickly.

The black hole "observation" only happened a year or two ago, no?

Maybe force isn't required because they have some secret P=NP proof.

Don't they own FitBit?

Sure, it's better for them if their goal is total financial surveillance. It's not better for people who care about financial privacy, and it makes a mockery of the rule of law when laws are enforced selectively in secret like that.

Not really surprising that increasing numbers of people would just stop caring about breaking such laws.

Would be less cringy if they would go after the management of TBTF banks based on the same logic.

The solution to that is pretty simple.. end drug prohibition.

How is the number of employees relevant? The point is the massive hypocrisy and inconsistent enforcement. Personally I think the $10k SAR threshold is stupid, it hasn't been adjusted up for inflation since it was put in place in 1970 when an oz of gold was $35.

> The financial sector appears to be the one sector where US authorities actually do a good job to stamp out crime

Yeah, they're really great at that /s. It wasn't just last month that it was revealed that US banks laundered $2T. How many people got arrested for that? The Fed even said the disclosure of the banks internal reports was the crime.

I actually switched from a Leatherman to a Victorinox because the pliers were more comfortable to use.

https://www.swissarmy.com/us/en/Products/Swiss-Army-Knives/S...

Which corporations though? News Corp. wants one thing, Facebook the other. It's like having to decide which type of terminal cancer you'd prefer to get.