Political Penguin

Apparently the Bank of England is a bit concerned at the lack of shiny new fivers circulating in the economy. The lack of them that is. There’s plenty hauled up in the nations bank vaults but the ones that get exchanged by us commoners are getting increasingly older and on the worn side.

I heard the bank’s response to this that there’s no demand for them so they don’t put them in cash machines anymore.

I have a slighty different analysis of the situation. Fiver’s aren’t getting into circulation because waiting to get them from the cashier is a waste of time. We are often told by those ignorant little muppets on the right that the private sector runs things better. Been to a bank lately? Following mergers and branch closures the queues are long and indicative not of a competitive market but of one dominated by poor and slow service.

People invariably resort to the cash machine, although these are drying up even in towns like Willenhall. Of course cash machine don’t do fivers, they sometimes don’t even do tenners.

Why is this one wonders? Is it because as the banks state, there’s no demand from the public? No, it’s all about money, if you excuse the pun. There’s no fivers because it’s in the bank’s interest for there to be none. Banks know how much money people take out of machines. This doesn’t change that much in terms of actual value. After all it’s the same regulars taking out pretty much the same amounts of money. If however the banks offered fivers in the machines, they’d run out quicker and need to be restocked on a more regular basis. So what do we have? Consumer’s best interests of money grabbing greedy banks cutting back to save money, sorry, that should be make even more money than the obscene amounts they already make.

There is of course one other possibility. The larger the denomination that is only available encourages people to go overdrawn at the end of the month when they’re down to the last few quid and hey presto even more money in bank charges rolling in, of course all in the interests of the consumer as usual.