John Mauldin Warns of the Efforts Pushing Cashless Society

John Mauldin posted an astounding column opposing the coming cashless society and negative and low interest rates:  http://www.talkmarkets.com/content/economics--politics/monetary-mountain-madness?post=105833&uid=4798

He posted Fed vice Chairman Stanley Fischer's flippant comments:

DR. FISCHER: Well, clearly there are different responses to negative rates. If you’re a saver, they’re very difficult to deal with and to accept, although typically they go along with quite decent equity prices. But we consider all that, and we have to make trade-offs in economics all the time, and the idea is, the lower the interest rate the better it is for investors.

 And Mauldin's response was as follows:

I have to say, reading that last part made my blood boil. For the vast majority of people with savings all over the world, zero or negative rates are not just “very difficult to deal with.” They are in many cases the difference between living with a modicum of dignity and living in abject poverty. Or, if you’re slightly better off, you may feel forced to take too much risk in your portfolio at the very time of your life when you should be taking few risks. But that’s okay with Dr. Fischer, because negative rates also bring “quite decent equity prices.” [Emphasis mine]

After showing that the Fed is sacrificing mom and pop America, the retirement system and the insurance system, he goes on to warn that the Fed was seriously talking about negative rates at its Jackson Hole annual meeting:

Having established that it has legal authority to use NIRP, the Fed can now develop specific plans for doing so.
What better way to learn the NIRP ropes than by huddling with fellow central bankers who have actually taken the plunge? Jackson Hole gave them the chance. And sure enough, high on the agenda was that session on “Negative Nominal Interest Rates.”
The lead presenter in that session, Marvin Goodfriend of Carnegie Mellon University, is an unabashed cheerleader for NIRP. In the first paragraph of the first section of his paper, he says that he “… makes the case for unencumbering interest rate policy so that negative nominal interest rates can be made freely available and fully effective as a realistic policy option in a future crisis.”

 Then Mr Mauldin made this astonishing statement:

Again, remember that Jackson Hole is not a summer-long retreat. Whatever makes it onto the agenda is there for good reason. The attendees didn’t discuss NIRP for its entertainment value. They were carefully considering its effects and mulling over the practical aspects of implementing it. They also had the Group of Thirty leader in the room, ready to inform the big banks what was brewing.
Obviously this is all conjecture on my part, but I think it fits. I believe the Fed wants to have NIRP in its toolbox when the next recession hits. Having NIRP at the ready doesn’t mean they will actually use it, but it does mean they could. The previously unthinkable is now fully thinkable.

Wake up America, the previously unthinkable is now thinkable.