>> judith reisman joining us on the tv. "sexual sabotage", how one man's scientist released a plate of corruption and contagion in america. thank you for joining us. >> thank you. it was a delight to talk with you. i appreciate it. >> next, david wolman looks at a future world where paper money is no longer used. mr. david wolman live without physical cash for a year. this is one hour. >> i want to thank you all for being here. to delve into this conversation about money and everything, i thought it would be helpful to tell you all the people who are furious with me right now. they are fears about the idea

that just might be gone. i think this is a helpful way to touch on some of the themes that i was going to introduce in the book. afterwards we can do some q. and day. the angry people. what happened to me about four or five years ago is like many people, i was getting interested in the cost of manufacturing pennies and nickels. it costs about 3.5 cents to make a penny. it cost more than the value into the object itself. nichols right now are around 10 cents per nickel. 10 cents per nickel. i did see a lot of this in the news. there is a group related to this, they were getting mocked on wall street journal, those of us that have a rational, it's crazy, but we understand were not going to get anywhere. then i started looking into the

cost of cash more broadly in society. an editor wired this idea that maybe we could get rid of cash. so much of our lives are moving to the digital down. ..

>> most transaction and most of the money zipping around the goal is all on computers. and yet if you pseudo officially or publicly suggest well, maybe it's time has come, people go crazy. so the haters, where are they coming from? they're coming from every ideological and localization on the spectrum. so first is sort of you will have to pry it from my cold dead hand. this is kind of your militia inside the they are not hiding income, they don't want to be connected to the gun. they want all transactions to be a anonymous. then you have your sort of aclu on hyperdrive. everybody has kind of submitted to the idea that electronic money in our lives is useful. you have a bank account, maybe have a credit card. that's a payment option. that's not electronic money in general but most of us have given into this idea. if you say let's nuke cache, everyone says weight, they will be watching me now.

they will be monitoring all my transactions. as if you already live in that world. you get that record of response. another group you have less, sort of in passion and, but i hear from a lot of people i don't know, there's just something about the physical. there's just something about the physical. a lot of like people who don't love e-books ranker. they love to hold something. i think embedded in that response is also a much more serious -- sincere concern. the credit card affect, it catalyzes spinning and that is a huge problem for a lot of people. americans right now are on the hook or about $800 billion in credit card debt. so not small number settled. some of the other haters. i assume a lot of mafioso after and drug dealers don't like me very much because caches course is the courtesy of crime.

they are not writing e-mails per say but i'll let you know if they stop by my house or anything like that. so on the cost of cash a little bit before i tell you more about this, what's actually in this book, you go from the penny and the nickel and zoom you up to the 100-dollar bill, the 50-dollar bill. and right now roughly speaking no one knows the exact number, cash management in the u.s. is about $150 billion a year. so that's three times the budget of the department of education. so that's just making it available to you at the register, at the atm. and even at the atm in some far-flung corner of the country. what that number doesn't include is anything to do with crime, for example. there were 10,000 bank robberies in 2009-2010. that's just people going after the physical stuff.

of course there is electronic crime and there is financial crime in cyberspace your that's not really this conversation, per se. so that is a huge cost. we have to pay the cops to go after those folks. we have to pay to prosecute and incarcerate them. we the taxpayers are funding the war on drugs. well, the drug lords, they love benjamin's. that's how they transact. and so you see these costs kind of struggling back against us, or on us. so this is where the ideas i want to suggest in this book, cash, who doesn't love it to a certain extent. of course, i want a big pile of the. you want a big pile of it, in a way. but when you scrutinize cash, for the length of time from 12,000 feet up, you see it has a much wider cost. then no one would ever really consider. cash is filthy. at this point i'm kind of a german phone and have been unhealthy stage for caches

yuckiness. but still it is an issue. is on the ideas i wanted to pursue. and early on in the project i really thought this is kind of going to be a crock the valentine for cash and eulogy. it's on its way out. indigo, -- here we go. i thought i would be writing just about these rectangle slips of paper and metal slug. that be the extent of it. but as soon as you start to wonder more about where cash comes from and what it means and what a place in her life, you can't help but touch on many of these wider questions about the history, the gold standard, without national currency. what is the central bank? when i was composing this project, when my fans -- great advise, criticize. centura struggling to shape your narrative. the reality is you cannot talk

about cash in any intelligible without at least talking about where it comes from, where it is born. so this was another angle that i wanted to take. then, of course, there's the technology side and will talk more about mobile phone technology and what that means, especially in poorer parts of the world. solsona it's kind of going off in al all of these different directions, and what i wanted to do as best i could is can keep the lens, okay, what is mike of what is cash, what is value? how do these things were? and it always trying to come back to the tactile stuff but what i mean by that is i flew to iceland to do a postmortem on the financial collapse that they experienced a couple years ago. if this is unfair to anyone here, iceland had what is to date the biggest banking collapse in history of humanity. overnight they lost about 90% of the value. the icelandic currency lost like two-thirds of its value overnight.

so i went over there to explore this idea, but just wondering about the cash a national currency. what does it mean to the country? what does it mean to have your own money? at the time, this might sign incredibly dated he goes where in the midst of the ongoing euro crisis but at the time they were wondering maybe we should get rid of it. we don't necessarily need to be a country. maintain our economy. again, that sounds crazy but now they're so happy they don't have the euro. but at the time that was sort of the conversation but i went over there to india woman hussein ice and snow national bank notes. talking about this quote unquote heritage that you can hold in your hand. because physical money of course is like one of the last touchstones of national identity really. and jet should some very practical things to say when it comes to the fate of money and what it means to be a nation. so anyway, i'm pursuing all of these different angles. the last not touch on is kind of

the psychology question. circles back to the credit card affect and how we seem to be hypnotized really by credit card and spend more compared to using cash. there's this great study that i discuss in the book by these researchers at the university of minnesota that i will tell you about just briefly. they split the subject into two separate groups, and this half of the room, to ask people to cannot just rectangle rectangle slips of paper. the same dimension of banknotes, let's say. no artistry, no images whatever. this ledger accounting out regular cash. it's not even your own money. you are just touching stuff. then ask both groups of people to put their hands in pots of hot water and report back to the researchers how hot they think it is and how much pain they are experiencing. to assist physically different margin or difference, the group

that just handle the cash, they're just exposed to stuff, they are somehow immune to the temperature and the pain because they said it's not that hot and it doesn't hurt them. so anyway those of us who are cashless future visits, these are the hurdles we have to surmount, difficult to say the least. so okay, how do we get the? we can have a cashless future tomorrow. we have millions of people who depend on cash for the reliance -- for the lion's share of their income. until you can deal with tipping waiters and bellmen, poured at the airport, et cetera, you can't get rid of cash. that's reason number one. another reason that people bring up i think is valid is what he going to do when electricity is off, not just for an hour, but three days? on the west coast, people have earthquake preparedness kits.

have low valid you bills in your stash. i love this idea of a cashless future. i spent a whole year not touching cash but i'm not going to not follow that recommendation. not quite yet. but what you're seeing is really cash is undergoing this kind of death by a thousand cuts. we don't know if it's cut number 890 or 952 just yet but it is happening. and it won't be be any kind of proactive decision on the part of government, or anyone really. it will be pushed to the margins by new technology. so one is new technology. the mobile phone especially. and part of the book i traveled to india to look at this idea, something i never ate any understanding of before i launched into this project. this is the idea that cash is the enemy of the poor. for those people who don't have much of it, and it sounded so

counterintuitive at first avenue to follow around an economist to get him to explain it to me clearly. but in short, the issue, for those of us lucky enough to live in a wealthier country, earn a paycheck, we can toggle between money and in electronic form, and money in its physical form as it is a. i don't like cash that much. i don't use it that much. if you really like using cash and want to wander to an atm tonight and use cash to pay for dinner, that's all right. when you are poor and you are trapped only using cash, you are excluded from the formal economy in ways that are crippling. and they are specially crippling because you can't grace from financial stock. you can't save in a way that people need to save it had any hope of not just climbing out of poverty, but staying out of poverty. what's happening is a lot of development experts are encouraging this idea to get people transacting with their phones so that they don't need the cash. because when you have cash on

hand, a tea canister or stuff under the bed, not only is all of your wealth, however much or however little, that could be lost overnight in a flood or a fire, earthquake. the other problem is that everyone around is making claims on the money, that you are trying to say. so for us we cling to cash a little more because of these tricks a place on her mind. for the poor is the opposite. caches turbo liquid. they can't hold onto. you can hold onto it because a drunk uncle isn't making claims of cash or an abuse of spouse is making claims on the cash. usually involving parts of the world it's the women who are looking after the household funds. so those are the most terrible examples of people making claims on your money. but then you even have legitimate ones. you have a neighbor who needs aspirin, or you have somebody needs a new pair shoes for the kids. it's hard to say no, especially

in a very tightknit urban slum, for example. and yet you're trying to say to send the dog to school in 10 months, or divide some farm equipment in 15 months. and you can save cash. so every sunday give these people involved in banking. not end the abusive wall street since i'm thinking. is the old-fashioned stuff. a safe and secure stuff under source to secure well. i flew to india to interview a guy to see what this is like. out of changed his life. he said he is have to ride the bus today spend an today's back to deliver a very small amount of money to his grandmother in the countryside. so that's four days of income generation lost. he has paid want to look after his shop, the wealth that may be a still hidden somewhere in the shop is now in jeopardy. tonight basically send a text message to his granny in the countryside, and she wanders to

a kiosk with a merchant is essentially part of this huge network of merchants involved a system, and she shows the text after some quick back and forth and she can cash out. i asked him to all the security concerns i think a lot of you will maybe wonder about and choose look at me like i was from mars. the value proposition of this whole feel. so that was pretty eliminating. and suddenly he pulled me into a much more sensitive area of discussion. i like talking about the germs of banknotes am i talking about, wishing -- when you're talking about fighting poverty now it's a different book, frankly. so, before the reading, you have this war against cash as one huge front on the technologies i. the other side that i tried to jump into any book are these alternative currency, virtual currencies, they of all kind of occurred to this idea out there.

to a lot of people it sounds kooky at first. and that's a testament to the achievement of the u.s. dollar for a acceptable pretty much everywhere, except on an airplane. of the reality is these things are real money. talk about crypto currency, berkshires in western massachusetts or ithaca hours in new york. they are everywhere and they are sprouting up. they are real money. this gets to the idea, what is money exactly? money is only an idea. if you and i agree tomorrow at this ball of suntan lotion is a sufficient meaning of change and we can do tomorrow to obtain some usual, it's money. and so that's what these alternative currencies are doing. they also had this idea that it's time to in the government monopoly on issuing national

currency. and again you see this really diverse group of people are excited about this idea. definitely get to end the fed types, one that i will read about the falls under that umbrella. they believe the federal reserve is depleting the dog to high hell. then you also get sort of hyper progressive keep our money local, because better to buy from the furniture maker on main street or at the bookstore in your neighborhood than to buy a sofa on the internet that is shipped overseas in india. so those two groups are coming together on this alternative currency idea. from a writing perspective, it's really fertile terrain. because here you have people who are not just interested in what is money and how does the monetary system work. these are people who then say

you know what? i think hosted that and come up with something better. shall right away, as a writer you're looking around for interesting characters and you find someone, real wild ones in that world. so i'd like to read to you all a bit of the chapter of the book called the traitor. about one such gentleman is a little trouble with a lot right now but we can talk about that. on a sunny october morning, he shoots west out of honolulu and a toyota camry. he has a habit of seeking eye contact which right now is looking over at me as he rambles through his wandering monologue. with each had turned the car swerves, but he always manages to return his attention to the highway just pass it up to jerk the car back into line. he may be in any of safe

driving, but he hardly looks like a domestic terrorist federal prosecutors say he is. he was a black into hawaiian shirt tucked into lightly depends with a thin black belt. his delicate wire rim glasses, frame and narrow, almost gone. his hair curls up that he pulls into a tiny ponytail. aside from arthritis, the 67 euros man who calls himself the monetary architect makes a point of mentioning his good health in light of the decades of motorcycling, freewheeling romantic exploits with drug consumption them all of which he recalls often and fondly. i never expected to live this long. really. we once drove a truck into the lobby of the hotel. after von nothaus fun except the idea that i'm not an undercover fbi agent, the smiley and

magnanimous. his speech, although saturated with shouting and f. bombs, also contains a hearty dose of self-deprecation and hawaii is him, mellow, cool. giving an overall impression of the dude introduced to stress which is remarkable. considering that he is facing criminal charges for conspiracy, counterfeiting, mail fraud, and get this, quote, got to go to some, one count of doing passing and attention to other and pass silver coins in resemblance of genuine u.s. coins in the nominations of $5 or greater. he has lost or temporarily lost possession of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of other peoples money, cling putting his own mothers. and one of his sidekicks has been in jail for more than two years. two months before i met him, von nothaus himself was incarcerated for five nights after filing the terms of his bail allow him to hunker down in hawaii while awaiting trial.

passed pearl harbor we turn north. we pass a chinese food restaurant called the golden coin. before injuring a small industrial park, von nothaus pulls into this space next week and and blue building that is part factory, part warehouse. yellow hibiscus blossoms in jamaica with the chain-link fence across the street. inside we greet the owner of specific mills, but gregor, who mills precious metal into material making passionate used for making sure the machine shop was filled with rolling dice, prices and an oily smell. what we've come to see is the great six-foot tall machine set in the corner nicknamed hammer. it looks like a three-ton hourglass. this is the tool of von nothaus' chosen trade and life passion to commission. it looks fantastic. i could just kiss this baby.

and then he does. wrapping his arms around one of the egg columns. according to the fbi, and federal prosecutor, this court press court press is also the mechanical accomplice to von nothaus' crimes. right now he says i'm not allowed to meant anything. he folds his hands together as if taft. dissension is another term of his bail, as our unannounced visits from a parole officer. coins have always been a part of von nothaus' life. growing up outside of kansas city, he inherited a modest collection of his grandfathers, and his mother instilled in him a respect for the value of silver. giving and silver coins as gifts and lecturing him about the medals tendency for appreciation. i saved every one of those quarters he said, referring to meant quarters that before 1965 contained 90% real silver. but von nothaus runs a meeting business called the royal hawaiian mint company producing merchandise for war veterans,

country clubs, academic institutions anyone else willing to pay for special is coins or medallions. and none of this is illegal. over the years, von nothaus' business has produced coins celebrating hawaiian statehood, commemorating icons of ally history by captain james cook, saluting winners of the hawaii state numismatic convention. back at the mill, i asked if i can see some of the coins, the hawaii dollar in particular. the dollar is one of the coins they got von nothaus in trouble. although i don't recommend using the word coins in front of him. do not call them coins. coins are made and issued by the government. do i look like the government to you? the whole idea of this private voluntary border real value currency is that it is not the government. never call them coins.

eyed and permitted, however, to call them pieces, species, silvers or liberty dollars. von nothaus' unusual legal case rests partly on parsing such terminology, not to mention use of the symbol, the dollar symbol. the miniscule numerals pressed into coins, for charges that include uttering prohibited utterances about coinage, no detail is too arcane. a moment later greater returns from his office with a small box containing a dozen plastic cases. each housing a single coin. he hands me one. the picture is of hawaii's revered king standing proudly in water headdress, left on race as his about to to address his loyal subjects. turning it over to inspect the other side i read hawaii dollar across the top.

hawaii state seals both in the image with the world passionate word liberty on the left and 20 on the right below this you. $20.1000 your silver minted in u.s.a. so this was minted here on this, on hammer? von nothaus not. and he has another one. the king again. the coin is the same size, weight and composition. by turning it over refrozen image of a traditional boat. and estate model which translates, the life of the land is perpetuated by righteousness. this coin is also stamped with one ounce pure silver, but here's the crux. no denomination, no dollar symbol, and no declaration of value. this one with a boat is a collectible. i hold of the two silver pieces in the palm of each hand as if

there have to might offer some clues as to their variable consequence. then i placed the two sides by side on the tube alleged counterfeit on the left, knickknack on the right. that is what they are kissing over yells von nothaus. do i look like a counterfeiter to you? i will stop there. thank you very much. [applause] >> so, i have cruised through a lot of different ideas but hopefully we can get some conversation going, and you can hurl some criticism at me for this idea that cashless miss would be good. >> how did you manage, you're talking about tipping people and the way caches important in our

society, coffeehouses you might go to when they say under $5 you have to use cash, how did -- >> how was my year without cash. largely successful. again, i'm not a way. it's a different game and a not so cutesy game if i need for income. i didn't go to the chinese restaurant that only takes cash like. i had to pay over and above the price of a don't want him at a donut shop because i am had a credit card i was a screwed running by the same lemonade stand at one time i tried to hop a train into manhattan. i couldn't pay with anything but this filthy old paper. and then when i got to india, the whole experiment went on hold before he even left the airport. i'm not going doubled to do anything there, outside my hotel room if i don't have some cash. that was reminder of how far certain place in the world have to go.

rent a taxi or pay my translator, buy a souvenir, a bottle of water, anything. so that was like five or six days without. there was a babysitter incident i was convinced that you like hurry up and establish a paypal account, but -- object. >> check is still kind of paper money so i felt like that would be a copout, not that asking my wife to pay instead of me was much better project it was not like this is crazy, brave journalism like lining up against the detroit lions kind of thing. it was much more like the soundtrack to my dear. edges get me thinking about this thing. even if i'm sitting in a coffee shop writing, i am noticing the trucks nearby or the atm on my street that looks like it's straight out of 1982 as first technological innovation goes. so just get me moment atop a. i discuss in the book were i

feel like it adds to the conversation. but at other points, i don't think the reader wants to hear me talk about trying to find a parking meter is going to accept a credit card. so i was a little more sparse with anecdotes in that regard. >> you said that the government has control over the money, you know, this tremendous power. it's the banks that have control over credit cards, and that currency of money. i'd rather trust the government than trust the banks. ..

>> unless you have cash under your bed, we are engaged with them. that is not to give them a pass. that is to say that maybe once we say goodbye to cash, people become savvy about the different best essentially the friction in their economic lives and where it is coming from. if one bank is charging bisbee and another is charging back, and another has disclosed this wonderfully detailed privacy policy, and another hassan -- people will think and seek out the better ones. if you are dropping, people are sending money back and forth.

i think that people get it. we need to provide a safe and robust system for consumers. there is ample reason to be skeptical of the banks. i don't think this idea is about ending national currency. but i do think cash will only go so far already. if we do at coming across everman agency of how much cash costs, the treasury makes money by issuing money for all of us. but they are not talking to the dea or fbi about hunting down money launderers. a guy that is a former agent of the secret service told me that 90% of their workload is not protecting the highest people in the nation. it is about hunting down money launderers. 90% of the secret service workload. there is a way to trim

government expenditures a little bit. i think once there is this accounting across government agencies, we will see cash a little bit differently. >> can you talk about the cash and drugs. people who have legitimate reasons but they declare that they make less than they do. you have any idea of how that is? >> it is colossal. it is the tax gap. people don't know what it is because it is anonymous. the cash gap includes money that people hide overseas. that includes electronic money. in 2000, the most recent irs estimates for this, i think it

was $300 billion. some people are talking -- actually, a guy i'm talking to in a couple of weeks. i think it is up to $.5 trillion. most americans pay what they think they owe or what they owe. that is 85% of us. that is somewhat encouraging when it comes to living in a civil society. but that 15% are skimming off the top, hiding income, not filing. it matters for school funding and other things. as far as the language of things, the tax gap has to be the most boring descriptor of a very serious problem that i've ever heard. they need some marketing help, i think. >> in the back inouye. >> you are exactly in the right ballpark. it is taking them five years to get out audits to actually have a sense for how large the problem is.

>> thank you. we are kin. that is great. >> you said it is about $150 billion of all kinds of different expenditures and counterfeiting. how well does cash used have to get? you still have to have bank accounts and stuff to make it and find a method. does cash drop to 10% or 5%? what would make a dent in 150 billion? >> i don't know. in sweden, for example, they have a union of bank employees bitter so sick of robberies and threat of robberies that they are lobbying the government to get rid of cash altogether. most countries of the world are

getting rid of their penny and nickel. and here we are. in the white house i don't think it's want to happen anytime soon. other countries are looking at us. it is the banks that are saying we don't like cash. it is expensive, it's dangerous, and our customers don't really want it and our employees don't want it. there might be a push from the banks. and i think the other places -- these areas were cash is in the field. tipping, public transit, where you can't use a device. you would be a fool to say that we should get rid of cash tomorrow before there is a sufficient substitute for tipping and things like that. i just don't think that's i think it's a short-term view. that is not saying that the

industry is failsafe. obviously, there is a value proposition for thousands of millions of people who say yes, this is more convenient for me. those are some ideas that come to mind. now it is our job to act like the airlines. the airline said lowe, does cash management for us is a problem. a lot of people are skimming off the top. they said no, this is a cashless cabin. someone asked me the other day, which is interesting. the shorthand and, obviously, you don't have to accept u.s. dollars for payment. the idea being that if you have a debt denominated in u.s. dollars, so i owe you a hundred dollars, and we agree on a sale two weeks ago, and it was denominated in dollars. you can't say that i want uncut

rubies. we are to have our deal. but before you give me a rapid design consultation for $100 an hour, you can save i want to get paid in rubies or donuts or whatever. i can say okay. that is what the airlines are saying. no more cash. they are eating away at cash expunge ability. you can use it anywhere except at 35,000 feet. >> [inaudible question] have you found out about the increase or decrease of bartering? >> the question has to do with its potential for a barter economy. the first section of the book zips through how money was born and how the dollar as we came to know it came about.

for a long time, you have a surplus. i have lots of potatoes and i am cool, you are hungry. we trade. then it becomes a problem when you want to buy something from someone else and you don't want my potatoes. that is where money is born. the exciting thing about the digital age is a central clearinghouse for people offering services so you can -- or a product -- so you are still bartering comest you can find each other and you don't have to have a double coincidence. you can go to this place and if you are looking for someone to mow your lawn or you are looking for a lawnmower, you go to this place and you see you find somebody in this network who is offering them. and you are offering something us. you can see and over surgeons of barter potential. some of these alternative currencies are a souped-up version of bartering. not the virtual stuff like that,

but i think the central clearinghouse is pretty exciting in that regard. in oregon, there is a very tightknit barter exchange for people trading. the problem is expect ability. it is a chicken and egg issue. if you go there and you don't want fresh bread and a massage or graphic design service, it seems to be what everybody is offering -- exchanges what you hope for. there is still a ways to go. >> i think a couple hundred years of currency, we have identified deficiencies and everything like that. but what about some of the

inefficiencies that may show up in a cashless society? >> an example is when china declares war or when the light and turn the electricity grid is off forever and your devices have run out of power and the sun is covered up because we can't charge any solar devices -- then you are in trouble. people will go back to something else. there was a painting strike in ireland in the 1960s. people started writing handwritten iou is. they worked his money. they kind of work. i don't think it would be approved too quickly. that being said, i do think when things are calamitous, when the calamity is so enormous, you are probably not going to be worrying about an exchange. you are going to be fighting for bullets and blankets and shelter like everyone else. end of the world kind of stuff,

which is less interesting to me. >> [inaudible question] >> i think counterfeiting is a big problem. being cashless is easy enough, you relinquish it. but i think that concern about the private sector versus government could be an issue. depending on if there is a great flowering of currency and payment and instead of just visa or mastercard, it is 35 companies. that sounds inconvenient to you remember that your cell phone can just do conversions on-the-fly. if you want to pay with a different currency, you can flip back and forth. compared to what people see

right now is a huge pain in the rear. i will take a little bit more questions about inefficiencies. >> [inaudible question] >> about getting rid of cash? well, they make money off of it. people who are conspiracy theorists think that that is -- the more boring fate is that it gets transferred to treasury at the end of the year. depending on your politics, that is ripping off the taxpayer or that is governor meant raising resin -- revenue. in short, they also know that we need it now. for the tipping example and etc. it is also a big franchise. how can you not want to make the money? it cost 7 cents to make 1

dollar. >> go head. richard? >> assuming after the next election that we don't go back on the gold standard, do you have any thoughts about what might happen to all that gold? well, no i do not. on one hand, a lot of people laughed at the gold standard idea. but it is a weird footnote that so many banks hold so much gold. but they might just be holding onto it because it is a commodity that happens to be appreciating like crazy right now. some people say solid gold. they use that money for whatever your cost might be. it could be for some who don't

have a good grasp of the monetary system and they think that the dollar's value is connected to gold somehow. of course, the dollar is only valuable because we believe it is. and around and around we go. a lot of that language of religion comes up in the book. i don't know what will happen to the gold. >> in your research, did you come across family members and, you know, i know people that want their spouses to know how they are spending money. and also having college-age kids, i have a young son that is a broad. he is traveling to where he's going. and if he just uses cash, it would be basically -- he calls

me up and basically i am wondering if someone would like to hang onto cash -- that people just want to hang up to cash. >> i think that is fair. there are two varieties to that question. one is tax evasion and buying presents for your mistress, a lot of things. more interesting is an anonymous donation to a cheery, for example, or a valentine for yourself and you don't want the transaction to be seen. i think that is fair. the way i talk about this in the book is the difference between privacy and anonymity. i think a lot of people jump to the defense saying that we need to protect our anonymity.

you don't have anonymity, and you don't actually deserve it in a civil society if you're participating in playing by the rules. you are a nonentity to a degree. of course we need privacy concerns, we don't want facebook and google having data about us. but i think it is very bogus to say that we deserve anonymity. there is nothing in the constitution that says we have the right to that. i think there is this contract of participation. but a lot of people like cash for that, and they are not doing things that are -- you know, and another reason to keep cash around, it is an issue where you hang onto it. every month these peoples go to the bank, they take out money for rent, food, some money for

leisure, and it helps people maintain discipline. that is an argument in cashes favor that i think, again, you can't just disregard that too quickly. that was an idea that we tried to bring up in the book. we can have our bias for different types of spending. economists will tell you it is the exact same thing. everyone knows in your heart that it is not the same thing. in fact, let's say you have something like an e-mail reminder that a bill is due in a few days. that is a technology solution to help make up for human frailty. people forget. or a coffee cup that shuts off automatically so you don't burn down the kitchen. this is trying to protect us from ourselves, essentially.

when it comes to dealing with cash and money in general, i think there are ways to engineer systems to re-create the pain of spending that we see now with cash. that is how economists describe parting with 100-dollar bill versus electronic cash. one example in that area is an app called [inaudible name]. name.com. if you are a lot of americans, that number is a negative number because you have a mortgage. there has to be a significant influence on spending behavior just from seeing a negative network every time you turn on your phone. there is a similar kind of influence on spending behavior. is it the same? who knows. there is a great dissertation to

be done there. what if you had benjamin franklin's face pop up on your phone every time you did something, or you have to sing a song loudly before it transactions to go through, we can come up with systems to make out for our bias and say, we always love the penny, we should keep it around. oh, we love cash and i am more careful with cash, we should keep it around. to me, that is kind of defeated. by the way, it ties into the people that are furious with me. what is this idea we are getting rid of cash? maybe i am not quite such a pessimist as of yet. >> i just want to say that i am one of those people that is really -- i mean, there are so many people, elderly people, poor people, more and more poor

people, they want to grab their cell phones and do transactions. there is a network of people who have an idea of everything being done by technology. you walk by the lemonade stand. you are a scrooge. and you are a scrooge. that is one of my joys in life if you can't give money for something like that. it is incredible. i am -- i don't want to use the words that i am hearing, but not respectful. a whole, huge, segment of society. >> like this guy who i feature in the book. >> [inaudible question]

>> there are about 20 million people in the country that don't have a bank account. what they have to do, because they are excluded from having electronic money at all, they have to go to a chest and turned check and caching service. they get charged fees just to turn their money into cash. if they were included in banking and included in basic financial services, they wouldn't get screwed like that. or when you talk to people about getting money through their phones -- who? >> [inaudible question] >> there are about a billion people who don't need an apple or iphone, they have cheap gnocchi opponents, and if anyone can tell you, the press currently is just plummeting.

the cost of that is only coming down. people will spend first on the phone before medication for their family. the connectivity is important. the key thing is that this is a tool to enable people to climb out of poverty. that is not me ripping. that is what they are saying. and i think that is a pretty important distinction. i hear you. people will still be excluded, especially the elderly that have a habit of operating cash. the idea is let's scrutinize the cost of cash a little bit more because it might be in punitive for the elderly. in japan there are a couple of days a year when old people receive their pensions. the country has to flood the

streets with police to meet and chat all the old people who go to banks and atms, because right at the atm they will get robbed or swindled into a scam by younger people because they are holding cash right then and there. i just don't think it is cut and dry that this is a classic idea. you can't get rid of cash tomorrow because of the working class, for example, tipping and all of that. it is implicit to think that this is a process idea. >> talking about bartering and the different types of currency that are being played with, how does that play into this? i was asked if there was any bartering going on.

>> you have to declare income and alternative currency on your taxes. i don't know exactly how to track that stuff, but you have to. as long as you are doing that, it is legit. most of these -- >> is their way for it to be measured against the dollar? >> yes. that is not really a problem. bartering is trickier. you have to estimate the cost of service order the product. i don't want to be an accountant. >> i have lived in this area ever since college, actually. the rent is extremely high, as anyone around here to tell you. finally, i saved enough to try to buy a place, and i wanted to buy a place that would have some rentals. i managed that a little over 20 years ago.

on lousy salary, pretty much. now i am trying to get a better salary, rather, a better bank account at a lower interest rate. they won't give it to me, although i have -- i have several -- not just buildings, but i have iras, which i don't want to take out on. and other investments. right now, one of them that i apply that is the very same thing that i have my current, and they won't issue a lower interest rate. they want to see me take out or sell something like investments, and data loss order bells and turned -- and show that his

income. then they will give me a new mortgage at a lower rate. but of course, they have been paid automatically. they are the third one because interest rates have gone down. this would be the third time that i have tried. >> i don't know what to say. it seems like it might be out of the scope of the tax versus the electronic money conversation. >> in a sense the sense that makes me feel like i was among the bottom 5% or whatever you said of people who live on cash income alone. it is putting in the same position. >> yes. >> they know i have the

investment and they see the statements i did, and they are way above the cost of simply wiping out the whole realm. >> this whole idea of cash being the enemy of the poor, there is a vulnerability of the savings you have and then there is the fact that once you are excluded from the formal economy, you can earn credit to get a loan or save up for a loan or mortgage, you have to deal with neighborhood lenders at best. some people in poor parts of the world have to pay someone to hold their money. they are paying someone else to safeguard their cash. those are the kinds of ideas that i was trying to express here. cash is the enemy of the poor, i've never would've thought about that. >> [inaudible] [inaudible question]

>> yes. >> they say that they are under some kind of government regulations, that they can't do it unless it shows that i have had income from one of those investments. and i said, you mean if i am too well, that's. >> we should discuss after. come bug me up at the table. >> [inaudible question] >> i do, right up at the front. the fumes of the armored truck depots. the process of extraction 25,000 tons of of copper, and zinc and mining in the rest of it. dirty stuff.