because the crime lords are too hassled by $50 and $20 bills obviously.
You know what else is used by almost all criminals? $1 bills. Bullets. Vehicles. Email. Food. Water. A mother’s love.
When Ben Franklin is outlawed, only outlaws will be Ben Franklin!
Funny how the perceived big increase in criminals using $100 bills comes at the same time as the big increase in police using civil forfeiture laws to seize any large sum of money for themselves, simply by declaring it to be suspected proceeds of crime without any evidence whatsoever.
I’m sure if only women were more biologically suited to scientific reasoning, we wouldn’t have this problem.
Larry may be right every once in a while (perhaps by accident), but given his past support for and architecting of deregulation of the U.S financial system (including the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) while he was in the Clinton admin., along with support for the disastrous privatization of the economies of the Post-Soviet states that’s lead to massive human suffering and political failure, as well as running a program with directors using their position to profit from the policies they advocated in Russia, as well as gambling with Harvard’s endowment and losing the school $1.8 billion, triggering layoffs and budget slashing, I think we’d do well to find advice from those with a less predictable and disastrous track record. To be fair he was probably right when he called the Winklevoss twins “Assholes,” though. Why does this corrupt tool get attention and respect?
Logistics. $50 make it 10x more volume, as in 10 suitcases full of cash instead of 1, for example.
But… but… but how on earth will CIA than ship funds to various “freedom fighters” and other assorted armed groups around the world?
How am I supposed to buy guns? 
good luck collecting taxes on legal marijuana businesses. They’ll need to build much bigger safes.
Wouldn’t it just be twice the volume? I mean, to pack/store the same monetary value.
This is more proof that anybody who wants to get rid of the penny is a terrorist.
I would characterize Mr… Summers’ comment as specious bullshit (pardon the redundancy). Some have posited that this is the first step in going to all digital money so the government can track everything.
I think I read somewhere the Britain has brought up something similar.
I don’t know what his motive is, but I know what it’s not. It’s not for the dumb reason he gave. The ruling class sure live on another planet.
It’s his specialty.
re: women in science and engineering: “in the special case of science and engineering, there are issues of intrinsic aptitude, and particularly of the variability of aptitude, and that those considerations are reinforced by what are in fact lesser factors involving socialization and continuing discrimination.”
“I’ve always thought that underpopulated countries in Africa are vastly underpolluted.”
“There’s probably no innovation more important than the idea of generally accepted accountancy principles.”
“Many children are taught to believe in God. I came to believe in the power of systems analysis.”
“I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want. But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: They don’t criticize other insiders.”
It sounds, in my perhaps slightly jaundiced view, like Mr. Summers (probably correctly) dislikes high-value paper bills because they are a useful tool for trashy, low-class, practically blue-collar criminals. It’s just disgusting that we have something that allows criminals who are basically poor to easily and cheaply move their crummy little gains around without the services of respectable financial institutions; and the appropriate management fees paid thereto.
It’s like the people with a hard on for terminating social security and pensions and getting everyone into 401Ks, because no retirement plan could possibly be worthwhile unless Team Finance gets paid to manage it, whether they succeed or not.
A little corruption among the right sort of people is a respected tradition, and a prerogative of status that helps keep society moving; but people whose dirty deeds can be done cheap enough that a stack of hundreds will cover it? Who wants to be associated with such classless grubbing?
Nailed it. This is pure classicism.
Sorry had 500€ bill and $50 in my mind for some reason.
