About banks and cash

The European Commission of "European Union" published a document titled "Proposal for an EU initiative on restrictions on payments in cash". The date of roadmap is January 23, 2017. In it, we can read the following : The Action Plan states that Payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities… In this context, the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments could also be explored. Several Member States have in place prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold.

But, to this proposition, I object that :

• The bank system can be unstable. We have seen how unstable banks are, the Greece was a "great" example in 2015. An unstable bank system is a major threat to economy, and more importantly to people. Moreover, nothing significant have been made to avoid a new big financial crash (like in 2008). So it seems that a new crash of major banks will happen in the current context. For safety, the power of banks must be drastically reduce, the bank payment system is a major cause of this dangerous power.
• Banks can be used to do large scale illegal transactions. The Panama Papers and LuxLeaks are recent examples of this affirmation.
• Criminality and terrorism have causes that must be identified and then fought. Trying to reduce consequences must be considered significantly less important than reducing causes (at least in most cases).
• At least most banks protect the money obtained by exploiting workers, it is a fundamental injustice (because economy has an enormous impact on people) that must be put to an end.
• Banks are controlled by very few people, that are absolutely not representatives of citizens. It would be acceptable if the bank system was not important in the "European Union", but it is clearly not the case. So as few people have a big power that was not obtained in a democratic way, it is a tyrannic power that must be given to citizens. If the "European Union" does not do the necessary to transfer this power to citizens, they have full legitimacy to take it back by themselves.
• The payment system of the banks does not respect privacy, in fact transactions are stored. As privacy is a fundamental human right, a such non respectful system by design must be abolished.

To be honest, the privacy part is recognized. However, it is a very small part of the document. In consequence, it seems clear that it does not matter much (for the writers).

• Cash has the important feature of offering anonymity to transactions. Such anonymity may be desired for legitimate reason (e.g. protection of privacy). But, such anonymity can also be misused for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes.
• In that context, there remains the lack of readily available and solid evidence on legitimate vs illegitimate cash transactions.