Monday, September 14, 2009

A cent is a cent, and fifty thousand cents is a big note

Since the introduction of the euro coins and banknotes on 1st January 2002, a Nessy monster appears regularly in the European populist press: one and two cent coins are going to disappear!

The rumor probably got its root into the Finnish old allergy to tiny coins. Add the legendary French-Mediterranean lazyness: to count.. bahhh! Plus the satisfaction of price-in-weight dealers to round their prices up to the next ten cents... only to make their clients happy. Even if these clients have been complaining on rounded inflating prices since 2002. Sigh.

Cent-Nessy has a little brother: Euro-Noty. The one euro coin will disappear in favor of a one euro banknote. Either to compete with the green dollar (the real ones and the false ones which are rumored to be everywhere in the world), or by lazyness again: too much weight in one's pockets.


On last Thursday, in France, Nessy and Noty have a brother. You swear it is not from the same family: the five hundred euro note is going to disappear!!!

Design: Robert Kalina for the European Central Bank (image source).

First, a picture for the reader who use their credit card as soon as twenty-five euros. Germans know it better, not by wealth, but because our European fellowmen like to weight in their hand how much their investments cost them: car, flat, rebuilding the house. Before to give the packet to the seller. A need born in an economic history marked by inflation and shortage between World War One and the rise of a strong Mark under the Federal Republic of 1949.

Le Journal du dimanche of yesterday, 13 September 2009, took notice of a report by Didier Migaud, Isère Member of Parliament. A text received by the Presidency of the French National Assembly on Thurday 10. It is about fiscal paradises and fiscal evasion.

Among the numerous solutions proposed by the Parliamentary Commission on Finances, there is the disappearance of the five thousand banknote. It is too easy to get thousands of euros out of the country because of this note's portability. More seriously, it is one step in a full policy: impose electronic or certified payment above a certain amount. Even to make an obligation for French banks to declare financial transferts to listed countries.

The more mediatic idea (no more five thousand notes) is not going to pass until many years because you need to get aboard all the Euro using States. But it will hide long enough the other more private life disturbing propositions.


Let's come back to collection: some dealers as Lutèce Diffusion are already trying to sell new euro coins by using the Nessy argument. Will they use the five thousand euro rumor to sell pristine banknotes well above their face value?

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