Financial safety

The World’s Cash Is Disappearing. Bankers Aren’t Sure Where It Went.

Some Australians are burying it. The Swiss might be hiding it. The Germans are probably hoarding.

Banks are issuing more notes than ever and yet they seem to be disappearing off the face of the earth. Central banks don’t know where they have gone, or why, and are playing detective, trying to crack the same mystery.

The puzzle is especially perplexing since societies and companies are going cashless, given the boom in payments by cards and cellphone apps.

The value of U.S. dollars in circulation hit about $1.7 trillion last year ($12.4 billion of it in $1 bills; $1.3 trillion of it in $100 bills) according to the U.S. Federal Reserve. That is up from $1.2 trillion in 2013.

A Federal Reserve economist, Ruth Judson, wrote in a 2017 paper that about 60% of all U.S. currency, and about 75% of $100 bills, had left the country by the end of 2016—for a total of about $900 billion in U.S. dollars kept overseas. Socking those bills away provides some protection against economic turmoil, especially in countries with a record of instability in their own financial systems, the paper said.