I’m far more interested by a current Fed official’s endorsement of Bernie’s stance: http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/trackers/2016-02-16/sanders-delighted-by-kashkari-s-comments-on-big-bank-breakups
We get this periodically in India, with people wanting to do away with the 500 and 1000 Rupee notes for exactly the same reason.
Sure, it’ll make petty bribes a bit more difficult, but really, who handles cash in that manner these days? It’s all quid pro quo, offshore shell companies and round tripping black money…
Always struck me as tilting at the wrong windmills. In my more cynical moments, I think it may have something to do with trying to click a monopoly on the mode of bribery - if you can’t pass a few hundred c-notes in an envelope, you have to go to hucksters like Summers to take your ill-gotten gains out…
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Paypal maybe?
It’s always amazed be that there’s a €500 note when in Britain our largest denomination is £50, and they are hardly ever seen in circulation. Most people go years without seeing a fifty (based on a sample size of one).
I will concur now a sample size of two.
Fair enough. But it does beg the question as to what they did with all that change after it was skimmed. 
You’re looking at this the wrong way: what makes you think you don’t have to launder drug money just because you got it out of the U.S.? Laws exist everywhere, and drug lords don’t want to just opt-out of the clean economy. They want to buy their personal luxuries, equip their staff, and get a good return on investments using leftover cash. Drug lords aren’t just sticking it in a money-bin somewhere. And many of those vendors and banks are probably right back in countries that make it easy to track this sort of money.
You still need to launder. Being back in your home country, where you’ve probably already set up a laundering operation of long standing – like a grocery chain or a keno parlor or pawn broker or something – makes it a lot easier to accomplish.
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When I was 20 I managed a small gas station, six pumps and 2 lifts. Across the street was another small station that never did much business; all day I could look out my window and see the on-duty mechanic idling away his time, rarely putting any car other than his own up on the lifts.
Imagine my surprise when that station got an award for the amazing amount of cash income they were pulling in from tuneups and similar auto work! You’d think the cars were lined up 24 hours a day. Service industries make great money laundries… lots of unverifiable cash transactions.
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I used to sell bit of this and that back in the day, and one of my regulars got £500 in fifties from a relative, and I swear, I got each of those notes back three or four times in different transactions from different people as they bounced around the local scene.
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Interesting, 50 EUR (~39 GBP) notes are a normal denomination here, 100 EUR (~78 GBP) quite common - but I rarely see 200 EUR notes and more or less never the 500 EUR one.
Could it be related to the more cash-based culture here in Germany? Especially in pubs and bars cash is the way to go, many of them don’t have a different method for payment.
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Could be. Anecdotally, many people in the UK use cards for a lot of transactions, and with the advent of contactless payment that’ll only increase.
I thought it may be that the banks are worried about forgery so don’t print as many, but according to the BBC there are 210 million £50 notes in circulation.
Tangentially: I used to have a job that routinely involved walking to the bank with a suitcase containing millions of dollars (some cash, some bank drafts) handcuffed to my wrist and an escorting sheriff.
Properly stacked and bound, large sums of high-denomination currency are distressingly small. It is discouraging to realise that your annual salary could easily fit in your pockets.
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Let’s extrapolate! Eliminate the $50 too, now you need at least 5 times the trips (or one 2500lbs trip). Eliminate the $20 and you double it again - 10 trips or one 5000lbs trip. Eliminate the $10 and you double it again - 20 trips or one 10000 lb trip. Eliminate the 5 and you make it 100 trips or one huge 50,000 lb trip.
So the obvious solution is to declare that all business shall henceforth be done using pennies only becuz terrorists. Anyone with a nickel or more must be a drug lord or a terrorist!
When money is outlawed, only outlaws will have money.
The world has gotten weird… I’m perplexed that this is even a topic of discussion.
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