Todays news of the ban on buying 500 Euro notes has left me somewhat puzzled.

It would appear the the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency has decided that 500 Euro notes are only used by drug dealers to enable them to move their ill-gotten gains around more easily :

Soca says that an eight-month analysis of movements of the note in the UK revealed that it was almost exclusively used by money launderers shifting cash for major crime gangs.

The British trade in the notes is thought to be worth some 500 million euros – but less than 10% of them are bought by legitimate tourists and business travellers. Financial crime investigators concluded that there was no credible or legitimate use for the note in the UK.

Lets just ignore the 50 million euros used by tourists and businessmen shall we?

What I cannot work out from any of the articles I have seen, is who exactly has decided on this ban but it would appear to be Soca itself – one of private company ACPOs pets (yes ACPO is a private limited company in charge of our policing).

If this is the case, then I find it absolutely disgusting that anyone other than the government can decide on what currency and in what denomination money is available to buy and hold. Especially, that is, given the utterly stupid hurdles people have to jump through just to buy some holiday money these days thanks to Labours anti-money laundering rules (name, address, phone number etc etc).

An alternative view of why this ban was being implemented comes from the comments at Zero Hedge in an article about the pound getting a bashing (the article is itself well worth reading) :

Add in capital control  as the UK “subjects” are now forbidden to buy 500 euro notes…..

Whilst this may fall into the tinfoil hat department of thinking, it does come at a time when the pound is under pressure from all comers and will probably need to fall some way further to make the UK’s fiscal austerity plans actually affordable without us all ending up on the streets wielding pitchforks. Taking that into account, the ban on 500 euro notes makes some sense as you cant get much in your suitcase or under your bed when they smaller denominations.

Anyway, for some light relief, the BBC once again wins the “least appropriate picture and caption award” :

The caption given is – “One cereal box (see picture) can easily conceal 300,000 euros”.

I am sure I am not alone in thinking firstly, what cereal box and secondly, how many euros has she got stuffed down her tee-shirt.!