The conference to tax money was held on May 18, 2015, in London at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park in Knightsbridge. I can only assume that the lack press coverage was deliberate, and intended to avoid sending panic to the people, which would lead to a massive bank run if people understood what these guys are discussing.
Of course the main two characters behind creating this new Age of Economic Totalitarianism are Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Willem Buiter of Citigroup. Mainstream media coverage may have been non-existent regarding this gathering, but they have been cheering the demise of money in support of this new change.
The importance of eliminating cash is largely not discussed in any real depth. It is being marketed as one means to stop illegal trade in drugs and crime, such as terrorism. Yet there are financial, legal, and practical issues at stake here, which ends all privacy for individuals.
The mental-masturbation of economists advocating eliminating physical money is rather alarming. They see the zero lower boundary on interest rates as the point at which people will withdraw their money from banks and hoard it in a shoe box. Therefore, they still believe that lowering interest rates is the only direction. They propose that if currency were eliminated, nations could retain a zero inflation rate, and still get all the monetary stimulus it needs. This is truly an astonishing bit of reasoning, but that is why they are academics and not in the real world where they would be forced to watch how people react and move with trends.
Theses academics argue that nations (such as Japan) who are trying to raise their inflation rate, but are blocked by going negative because of concerns regarding the zero lower boundary, that there is only one direction and that is negative. These academics have been studying ways to eliminate the zero lower boundary on interest rates, trying to ascertain the costs and benefits of such policy. They argue that this is especially urgent, since increases in inflation are not easy to reverse.
