We understand that Larry Summers is the Mouth That Roars for TPTB when they want to see how high a balloon will fly.

All the comments I've read about Summers' recommendation are correctly condemnatory, but, all I've read, so far, miss two absolutely vital points.

The first is that this is not the first time that we've been told that banning notes of large denomination was necessary in the "War" on crime--read illegal drug trafficking.  We heard this same excuse years ago when the Wars on Drugs and Terrorism were declared.

The second point is that banning FRNs of large denomination has been spectacularly unsuccessful in combating both drug trafficking and terrorism.

In fact, Wikipedia points out that the banking industry has thrived because of it's easy access to drug money.  It's article says that in 2009 a United Nations official asserted that drug money enabled a number of troubled banks to survive the economic collapse. 

The same article has a stunning photograph of a small room in which a Mexican drug organization had neatly stacked $100 FRN notes.  The notes were stacked waist high in rows.  The rows appear to be approximately 35 bills wide and more than 20 bills deep.  In all--and not counting the non-US currency confiscated in the raid by drug enforcement agents--the pile contained some $207,000,000 in US dollars.  So, criminals will use currency of any kind, source, and denomination.  Criminals aren't too much inconvenienced by having to count money, and I suppose that if we were limited to using $1.00 FRNs, the criminal element would simply occupy larger rooms and stockpile the notes in taller stacks.

Larry Summers knows all this as well as we do, so, he--and those who speak through him--have another agenda: Currency Control.  Currency control is a euphemism for People Control, which is a hard concept for Americans to comprehend, especially when they are to be regarded as the controlled people. 

Americans have, for many generations, been brought up believing that they control government through elections and voting for representational government.  So, it is a jolt for US citizens and tax-payers to realize that they are being controlled by their government.  Many are in denial about it--downplaying and refusing to admit that they are being spied upon by bank personnel (who can be disciplined for not spying).

Americans still haven't gotten adjusted to the fact that they money they deposit in their account at the bank doesn't belong to them.  They can't believe that Congress has  given the bank ownership of their money.  Americans still live in the nostalgia of the  old days when they could withdraw money from the bank at their pleasure without having explain why.

Americans, who have grown up with all the freedoms of capitalistic society and a representative form of government, find it hard to admit that the government they thought they had is not the government they now have.  The words, the pledges, the Sousa marches, and the star-spangled flag are still there, but patriotism has morphed into support for whatever the government wants and does.  Something has changed. America has been changed, not from the grassroots up, but by a steady trickle-down from our multi-millionaire Controllers, who are sure they know better than America's millions how to manage money and freedom.