Bill Maurer, an anthropologist at UC Irvine who studies payments, calls the decision to withdraw cash “contextually rational.” It’s not that people are worried about how the Fed distributes cash, he says. It’s that, as in any disaster, people are worried about everything else — the electrical grid or the mobile network. … Holding on to a stack of bills, says Maurer, is “the recognition that in a pinch I can use cash and it will work with anybody.

For the full story, please visit https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-07-16/cash-coronavirus-covid19.