Killer Cash!

The global elites’ latest volley in the “war on cash” is a weird one. They’re telling us cash is — drumroll, please — a public health issue.

If you’ve been reading us for any amount of time, you’re familiar with the war on cash — the increasing push to get us all to perform our transactions electronically, the better to be tracked and taxed. Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers figures the least that could be done is abolish the $100 bill; Harvard economist Ken Rogoff would just as soon do away with cash altogether, making his case in a book called The Curse of Cash.

There’s a compelling investment angle to the war on cash… and we’re not talking about anything like keeping gold in a safe at home. We’ll get to that shortly.

As you might already know, most of the arguments against cash are a variant on the following proposition: If we don’t do away with cash, then the money launderers and drug runners and terrorists win. Which is what makes the health gambit, if nothing else, novel…

“Studies have piled up in recent years describing exactly how filthy — specifically how bacteria-laden — our dollars and cents can be,” says an article in Scientific American.

“Fecal bacteria and other pathogens may have hitched a ride from someone’s hands, nose or apron onto our cash. And yeast or mold might have taken hold, too. The result could be a durable risk to our health whenever our money changes hands.”

Oh noes, teh germs!

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