The Reserve Bank (RBA) has recently called out “hoarding behaviour” by Australians who continue to panic about the pandemic. They're not hoarding toilet paper. Or hand sanitiser. Or even pasta, rice, or lamb chops. This is about cash.
Australian banks are very, very safe. Very. Not only are they forced by law to carry lots of capital that means they won’t go broke, the deposits in them are also guaranteed by law. If they do somehow fail, depositors get their money back (up to $250,000 per account).
And yet, when difficult times strike Aussies get scared and try to take solace in cold hard cash. It happened in the dot-com bubble. It happened in the GFC. And during the pandemic it happened more than ever before.
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