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Treasury Secretary Bessent confirms limited steps toward a $250 bill featuring Donald Trump
Large denomination currency & Trump were joked about in a Friday Fun Thread at some point, but we all know jokes-->reality is a short pipeline these days. Do I expect Congress to actually pass the bill necessary to carve out an exception? No. This seems more like Bessent (who looks like a cheap clone of Donald Rumsfeld in some of the photos) doing what his boss told him to do while knowing the project is probably DOA.
Even if the stars aligned and they did pass the exception, the bills would be not be that useful. Considering how many businesses there are now that refuse to take $50 or $100 bills, a $250 would be even more limited. Aside from collectors and usual unsavory types that caused the original high denomination bills to go out of circulation, I don't imagine the average American would have much use for these.
A lot of the time tradesmen prefer to be paid in cash, for example a plumber who charges $3000 to put a new boiler in. I suppose this qualifies as "unsavory," since it is likely that a lot of them are cheating on their taxes. But also, there are legitimate reasons -- they don't have to worry about a check bouncing and they don't have to pay any credit card fees. Having $250 bills would be handy in that type of situation.
It would also be useful if you didn't feel comfortable giving a credit card to a business. For example if I were organizing a bachelor party or some kind of boys' night out where we all planned to get completely drunk, I would prefer to bring a bunch of cash, knowing that my maximum exposure is the amount of cash in my wallet, as opposed to the limit on my credit card. It would be much easier to carry a couple thousand in $250s than $100s for such a purpose. I suppose this also counts as "unsavory."
Last, cash has emotional impact which is lacking in checks and similar instruments. If you are giving someone a gift or a bonus or the like, it has more impact to hand them cash. For example, the annual Christmas tips to building service workers.
I guess we are headed towards a cashless society, which is great in many respects but I certainly would miss cash.
No tradesman doing sidework will be reporting it to anyone(either his boss who might write him up or to the IRS) if he can possibly avoid it. I've been 100% commercial at my day job for years, but most people I talk to who work for residential companies describe accepting checks.
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