Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Greece Bans Cash Transactions Over 1,500 Euros

The international meddlers are going after the Greek Underground Economy, aggressively. They are using the current government debt crisis to gain as much control over the GUE as thay can

Effective January 1, 2011 every transaction above 1,500 euros will be considered illegal if it is done in cash. Transactions will have to be done through debit or credit cards.

6 comments:

  1. between individuals and business, or between businesses. Transactions between private individuals can still be over 1500 EU and be legal from what I read.

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  2. All your cash money belong to us!!! Hahahaha, peons! I mean, helots!!! Hasta Lumbago, Diego. Mein leiderhosen ist foll mit aalen...

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  3. It will not work. They will find a way. There were quite a number of Greek businessmen in the best spots of the post-USSR economy, such as steel and chemicals export. Cash USD transactions were both illegal and common. So now they can either simply ignore this, or switch Euro to something else (*), or use a double currency pricing, or fake prices, or invent something different.

    * For example, "notional units" were used. Each unit was usually equal to 1USD, but the exact value was stated by every business at the counter. Say, an item costs EUR2000. The price tag shows "100 units", and "1 unit is 20 Euro". The value may be very different for the books. It worked for entire economies.

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  4. That would probably be because casg transactions between individuals are extremly hard to keep track of even when the parties AREN'T trying to hide them. Making them illegal would be counterproductive - it wouldn't stop the transactions, but it WOULD ensure they were hidden from site.

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  5. Bank reserves in Greece must be WAY beyond negative. Otherwise they would not try to make decent sized cash transactions illegal. I'll bet the typical bank in Greece has less than $1500 Euros available cash for depositors on demand to begin with. That and the government is probably losing tax revenues to the black market anyway, so this is the statist method to try and close that loophole. IF cash is banned people will go back to precious metals or barter. Bureaucrats have a harder time catching on to this concept...

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