With Permanent Fund Dividend payouts approaching, Alaska needs cash -- lots of it.
In the age of electronic transactions, it would be easy to spend every cent of this year's $1,022 Permanent Fund dividend without converting it to cash.
But enough Alaskans still use paper currency that each fall, without fail, banks here ratchet up their orders for cash from the Federal Reserve, which is responsible for storing currency and distributing it to banks.
Different states have different quirks to their currency flows. Hawaii, for example, rarely orders cash because tourists bring it into the economy.
Alaska has the dividend.
"One of the things our people in Seattle running our cash facility are very attuned to is that every year there's going to be this big order," said John Williams, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Read more: http://www.adn.com/business-economy/2016/10/02/with-pfd-payouts-approaching-alaska-needs-cash-lots-of-it-heres-how-it-gets-here/
