A Surprising Opponent of the War on Cash

It should come as no surprise that the German government has finally succumbed to the pressure to join the global War on Cash.  It is now considering the imposition of a limit of 5,000 euros ($5,450) on cash transactions.  The official reason involves the usual statist malarkey that cash facilitates terrorism and criminality.  Thus, according to Deputy finance minister Michael Meister cash transactions carry with them ”the risk of terror financing and . . . the problem of how to clear up money-laundering offenses properly.”  As many libertarians and conservatives have argued,  politicians and bureaucrats and their crony banksters actually fear and loathe cash because it protects personal and financial privacy of law-abiding citizens and facilitates the preservation of their wealth in the face of mass political surveillance, negative interest rates, bail-ins and other crimes against liberty and property perpetrated by government. In the response to the finance ministry announcement, German lawmaker Konstantin von Notz tweeted that limiting cash payments “is a new fundamental attack on data protection and privacy.”  Von Notz is a member of the radical left-wing Green Party.  War makes for strange bedfellows, indeed.