Great minds discuss Ideas, Average minds discuss Events, Small Minds discuss People.
Your desire to discuss me and my private life is touching, only it betrays your 'size'.
The dire consequences of India’s demonetisation initiative
- Thread starter Banglar Bir
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Great minds discuss Ideas, Average minds discuss Events, Small Minds discuss People.
Your desire to discuss me and my private life is touching, only it betrays your 'size'.
Jacob Martin
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We are talking about it every single day because it has brought life to a standstill for much of the country. And if you cannot see it, it is because you are comfortable in your smug (upper) middle-class existence, in a bubble where the troubles of the rural poor does not reach you.
The reason why no honest analysis will be made in six months is the same reason why this discussion is sought to be quashed right now - why wash dirty linen in a Pakistani forum? Does it seem to you that the multitude of online Bhakts are interested in an honest discussion? They live in a post-factual bubble where no matter what arguments or historical precedents are suggested, they will continue to believe the right thing was done.
Blind bhakti is a menace that is causing immeasurable harm to us, and must be combated wherever seen.
What is right wing economics?
And since when did economic decision making become an exercise in consensus of the mediocre. The considered wisdom of the cream of our intelligentsia should prevail over the combined opinion of right wing savages, even those who managed to secure a degree in economics, and now suddenly find themselves with something to do thanks to regime change.
But coming back to the point, what exactly is "right wing economics"?
Great minds discuss Ideas, Average minds discuss Events, Small Minds discuss People.
Your desire to discuss me and my private life is touching, only it betrays your 'size'.
Great minds...et al...Did you learn this in KV/DPS/DAV or from His Excellency Jumla Maharaj himself?
Read your posts in this thread. You will get an idea as to why you are a sanctimonious hypocrite who likes to get personal and then takes the high-ground as soon as his mediocrity is exposed.
Yes we get it now.
We are all blind foolish "bhakts" living in "bubble", you are the smart one, the one true messiah of the poor and downtrodden with the ability for "honest discourse", while other are all "dishonest".
You are free to gulp down the "cream of our intelligentsia" and stick your nose into their bottom to smell the cream. Spare the rest of us your Fantasy.
Let us vote for the "right wing savages" and live our lives standing in queue for currency.
Your obsession with KV/DPS/DAV seems to be the result of getting @ss whipped by their students.
I pity your feeling of helpless ness but the only one calling names in this thread or any thread is you and your ilk. One when one continues to reject your OPNION as facts, you get agitated and again start calling names.
"blind" "bhakt" "kendriya vidyalaya" "right wing savage", "living in bubble", "smug"......etc...... Only your sanctimonious name calling is funny. So thank you for the jokes
Jacob Martin
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Interesting read,
@Joe Shearer
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-...dias-demonetization-massive-man-made-disaster
When Money Dies - India's Demonetization Is A "Massive Man-Made Disaster"
by Tyler Durden
Nov 25, 2016 2:32 PM
2.3K
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Submitted by Jayant Bhandari via Acting-Man.com
When Money Dies
In part-I of the dispatch we talked about what happened during the first two days after Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes, comprising of 88% of the monetary value of cash in circulation. In part-II, we talked about the scenes, chaos, desperation, and massive loss of productive capacity that this ban had led to over the next few days.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi – another finger-wagger, as can be seen in this photograph. Beware finger-wagging politicians, as we always point out. Modi now plans to impose income tax penalties on large bank deposits; the State’s rapaciousness knows no bounds and evidently the mere possession of some arbitrary amount of money considered “too large” now means one is deemed a criminal a priori in India. It goes without saying that the concept of property rights is alien to Modi. [PT]
Photo via indianexpress.com
Now, two weeks later, the situation is getting much worse, and more desperate. It is obvious that Modi single-handedly took the decision to ban the banknotes, with most people in his cabinet and virtually all in the central bank oblivious to his plan.
There is virtually no visible opposition to the enforced ban, for any politician who opposes the ban risks having his own misdeeds — and they are all corrupt — brought to the public space by Modi. A true demagogue, Modi, has already convinced the gullible, salaried middle class that anyone who opposes the ban is hiding corrupt money and is anti-national.
With every passing day, it has not only become clearer that the ban was of no use to eradicate hidden cash, but has also inflicted deep, wide and irreparable damage to the society. The economy is rapidly moving toward stagnation. The lives of literally hundreds of millions are in deep chaos.
This event may well go down in the history books as one of the worst man-made crises ever.
Cash conversion has been reduced to Rs 2000 ($30) per person. As a result people are facing humiliation and stand in queues for as much as 12 hours or more. Often repeated visits to the bank are necessary, with no guarantee that the bank will have cash available for the conversion. Old and disabled people, the 25% of India’s society without ID-cards, and women (unless they are prepared to be molested) don’t even have this chance. For those who are able join the queues, the scene has turned into a battlefield, with people fighting among themselves and getting brutalized by the police. But so far most people seem to still carry a favorable opinion of Modi, backed by cult-like “intellectual” climate created by the salaried middle class (who lack critical thinking and reasoning capability), and supported by the international media and institutions like the IMF, i.e., people who are sitting in Western cities have no clue about the realities on the ground. But all this will change as the stories of personal suffering should eventually start to dominate over the propaganda—reality does have a way of catching up. But India’s descent toward a police state is now written in concrete. Even if Modi eventually goes, a new demagogue will take his place.
Should a single person have so much power to be able to destroy the lives of almost one out of every five human beings on the planet? On this occasion it may be worth reminding ourselves that Modi also has the authority to launch nuclear bombs.
Modi suffers from worst possible type of corruption: an insatiable desire for personal glory at any cost, an extremely deep moral and spiritual corruption. He also represents the worst aspect of democracy: a demagogue who caters to an irrational populace’s cravings for self-identity and release from self-responsibility.
The government monopoly on cash economically connects 1.3 billion Indians. The perceived value of this paper currency does not comes not from any value inherent in it (it is just as irredeemable as other fiat monies), but from government edicts.
Cash is the thread that weaves relationships, transactions and commitments. For the proper functioning of society, it is absolutely crucial that people have a liquid medium of exchange, the essential lubricant to effect trade in today’s complex economy. Today, win-win transactions — except for barter, which has emerged in many parts of India — can no longer take place, for the monopolistic money instrument, India’s fiat currency, has been paralyzed by Modi.
Two millennia of progress in money have been destroyed. Rural places are increasingly falling back on barter. In a barter economy, economic calculation is no longer possible; only the most basic economic exchanges can take place. The market will have to adopt alternative media of exchange if the coincidence of wants problem is to be overcome.
Should a single person have the authority to flip a switch and bring all trade, transactions, indeed the entire economy to a halt?
As it stands, money is now dead in India – and a police state is rapidly encroaching. Both at home and abroad the only topic of conversation for Indians is the currency ban. If they are not busy planning how to escape the depredations of the tax authorities (whose minions are rapacious and will insist that people be obsequious and pay them large bribes), people exchange slogans, sound-bites and mere hopes – which seems to be the best India’s irrational society can do. Should this be all people are communicating about? Human beings were destined for higher things in life, not merely for the task of protecting themselves against the State.
What tyranny, socialism and an authoritarian order enforced from the top down mean for those who have been reduced to mere cogs
Crumbling Institutions
Most people — particularly the salaried middle class — still seem to have a favorable opinion of Mr. Modi. They have been indoctrinated – in India’s extremely irrational and superstitious society – to believe that this demonetization will somehow alleviate corruption and that anything but support of Modi’s actions is anti-national and unpatriotic.
This gives me pause to reflect.
What a crazy idea it is to have a State monopoly on money, particularly a money that carries no inherent value and depends on regulatory edicts. On a deeper level, it makes me reflect on why for the culture of India — which is tribalistic, nativistic, superstitious and irrational — “India” is actually an unnatural entity.
Such a society should consist of hundreds of tribes and countries, which is what “India” was before the British consolidated it. In a tribalistic and irrational society, decentralization makes life much safer and makes the market more free, as complex decisions will be taken on the local level, where they belong.
India’s institutions — not just organizations, but larger socio-political beliefs — have begun to decay and crumble after the British left, losing their underlying essence, the reason for which they had been institutionalized in the first place. This degradation is now picking up pace. They must eventually fall apart — including the nation-state of India – to adjust to the underlying culture .
Let us consider some of these institutions. Western education implanted in India has mutated. It is making individuals cogs in a big machine, all for the service of one great leader. Public education and the mass-media have become instruments of propaganda.
Complexity and the diversity of options that technology brings make an irrational thinker extremely confused, forcing him to seek sanity in ritualistic religion —hence the increase in religiosity in India and elsewhere in the region. This has happened despite the explosion in information technology.
The concept of the nation-state, when it took hold in Europe, was about the values the emergent rational and enlightened societies of Europe shared and had collectively come to believe in, at least among their elites. In India, the idea of the nation-state has morphed into a valueless thread, which binds people together through nothing but a flag and an anthem, symbols completely devoid of any values.
It has collectivized tribalistic and irrational people (an irrationality that is amply epitomized by the negative force Islam has become in the last two decades). In India and many similarly constituted countries, institutions that are not natural to their culture— the nation state, education, monetary system, etc. — must eventually face entropy, slowly at first, and then rapidly. India has now entered the rapid phase.
The death of money – amid a lack of respect for property rights (which again are a purely European concept that emerged from the intellectual revolutions of the last 800 years) – has been sudden and will very likely be catastrophic. It is a man-made disaster of gargantuan proportions. It will fundamentally change India in a very negative way, particularly if the demonetization effort succeeds, as it will have created the foundations enabling the rapid emergence of a police state.
A Rapidly Evolving Police State
After just a few years under Modi’s rule, there is no independent body left in India. Courts simply do not take a position against Modi. Not that the situation was much better earlier, mind. These days, journalists and opposing voices are increasingly stifled, while people at the fringe at least spoke their mind in the past.
For the first time, Hindus who were tolerant of intellectual differences have come to believe in Hindutava (fanatic Hindu nationalism, rapidly metastasizing as a particular mutation of nationalism).
Police now reserves the right to randomly search people’s possessions without a warrant. Those who live in India — in an economy in which 97% of all consumer transactions are in cash, most salaries are paid in cash, and most revenues are collected in cash — routinely transport and carry large amounts of cash on their person.
When policemen stop them, they often find some cash, which now ends up being confiscated and used for the Modi propaganda machine. None of this means that the confiscated cash is illegal, undocumented, or involved in tax evasion efforts. But truth has no place in propaganda.
A regular sight outside of bank branch offices, where poor desperate people laid off from work because of the monetary crisis must bear insults and physical harm from the police, all for the “greater good” and a “corruption-free” India
The fear among small businessmen and those with savings outside of the banking system, even if they are fully legitimate, is palpable. They are now deemed to be criminals and it is their job to prove themselves innocent.
They are extremely afraid of facing tax inquiries, which always involve heavy penalties and large bribes (the level of which has gone up noticeably in this police state). Whatever small focus they previously had on wealth-creation is now gone.
Historically, India has been a negative-yielding economy. Interest rates have mostly been negative in real terms. Stock market returns are negative-yielding, even before adjusting for business and jurisdictional risks. In such an environment, savers have no option but to keep their money in gold, or outside the formal economy.
Any oppression of savers forcing them to direct their money into the negative-yielding formal economy will only lead to even more of their savings going into gold and escaping to foreign jurisdictions, eventually making India much less well-off. Even in the short-term, India’s economy is rapidly going into paralysis.
An old man has died in the queue at the bank. No one came to help him, due to the risk of losing their place in the queue. A large number of people have died in similar circumstances.
Corruption is Entrenched Across India
There is indeed a belief that at the very top, financial corruption has declined. I have no way to be sure of this, but I am tempted to believe it. But India’s proximal problem is with its bureaucracy and lower-level politics.
I have yet to meet a public servant who does not ask for a bribe. Simple financial corruption would have merely redistributed wealth. But the real problem with the public servant is his utter moral and spiritual corruption.
He expects citizens to grovel, a sadistic pleasure every Indian public servant enjoys in his demeaned existence. He is incapable of taking a decision or of thinking straight. It is here that the State suffocates society and wealth-creation. This is the real corruption characterizing the State.
More fundamentally, the real problem of India is not even its bureaucracy, but Indians as such. Indians will pay and take bribes when given an opportunity. They will strive to get into positions that give them the power over other people. They know exactly how others should live. The fingers of my hands exceed the number of Indians I have known who are different.
But hasn’t the way Indians view corruption changed in recent times, given that they are supporting Modi in his fight against corruption, however erroneous his policies might be?
An irrational society is also deeply hypocritical and can exist with massive cognitive dissonance. If you delve deeper into the issue, you realize that Indians do indeed want corruption to end, but with a minor exception. They want everyone to stop giving and taking bribes simultaneously and collectively.
As in any collectivist society, the individual has no value or meaning, so the individual Indian excludes himself when he wants corruption to end. He does not see how any meaningful impact on society at large might be achieved if he were to stop his own corruption. As any rational person can see, this does not add up – but in the irrational society of India it does seem to add up.
I often find myself in social conversations in which everyone talks badly about corruption in others and in the public space and makes proposals how to end it, and in the next breath, the very same people collude between themselves, engaging in corrupt practices. When I point the contradiction out to them, they simply and honestly fail to see it.
A rational personal cannot truly understand this issue, even when repeatedly told about it, as rational people suffer from a major handicap: they fail to understand the true nature of irrationality and how entrenched it can be.
In 2013, shortly ascending to India’s most powerful political post, Modi was exonerated by the courts in the Gujarat riots case ex-post – an exercise that stretches credulity for many. It has taken many years for the SIT commission examining the case to release its report and quite a few people still think it was simply a whitewash attempt (we are in no position to judge or opine on the matter – we merely point out that it remains disputed – PT)
Cartoon by Narsimha P
Modi was allegedly behind the massacre and rapes of thousands of Muslims in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat. As a result of this, Modi was banned from entering most Western countries. Modi has no family. He left his wife soon after he married.
He does not let his 94-year-old mom stay with himself. He claims he has given up his family for the nation. In his narrow vision, he is indeed correct. While he may personally not have taken any bribes in recent years, there is no way he could have risen to his position without having made massive and horrendous moral compromises, as the massacre of Muslims to gain Hindu votes demonstrates.
Financial corruption is merely the tip of the iceberg. Those obsessed with financial corruption forget something very important. Financial corruption is the most enlightened aspect of corrupt activities, for at least it is win-lose. Ending financial corruption from the top down cannot or will not improve a society. If it could, Eritrea and North Korea would be the richest countries in the world.
What keeps India in continual penury is its irrationality, its tribalism and its superstitions, of which financial corruption is merely a visible expression. There is no easy way to make a society rational. In the past, European missionaries even tried removing babies from their parents in a desperate attempt to bring about change. This didn’t work. Making a society rational is a process that could last millennia.
For now, India is in essence becoming more corrupt, even if obvious financial corruption eventually recedes for fear of the autocrat, as has been the case in Eritrea. India is becoming rather more nationalistic, fundamentalist, tribalistic and irrational.
The cult-like status Modi enjoys in India is the result of a lack of self-responsibility among Indians, their hope that despite massive inherent contradictions, the pain that corruption imposes on Indians can be got rid of through a magic wand – without self-reflection, or without them giving up corruption themselves.
Modi’s biggest support comes from the salaried middle class, whose members are mostly unaffected by the ban, and who may even have benefited as food prices have fallen as a result of the masses of starving poor people now unable to buy. Hence the middle class can claim to occupy the moral high-ground, albeit on the back of other people’s suffering.
Protesting farmers in India. Buyers cannot buy products for they no longer have access to their own money. Unable to sell, sellers are stuck with their produce and cannot pay their debts, driving them and their creditors into bankruptcy. This is a very complex vicious cycle. Even if liquidity is eventually restored — which is unlikely — the demonetization has crippled the production system.
Depending on who you ask, even food market sales have fallen by 20% to 80%. It is too early to say if people are eating less or if they are consuming emergency stores they have kept at home; perhaps both. If farmers cannot sell their food, they cannot buy seeds for the next planting season. A vicious cycle is going to get entrenched.
Indian Express photos: Pavan Khengre
Gresham’s Law Gone Wild
In the past two weeks, the government has completely failed to reliquefy the monetary system. With 88% of outstanding currency now illegal, people are rushing to convert the banned currency they hold into Rs 100 or lower denomination banknotes. Once these or the newly printed banknotes end up with financially strong persons, they straight-away go under the mattress.
The result is that the remaining 12% of the monetary value represented by banknotes that are still legal is rapidly going out of circulation, and so is most of the newly issued currency. Markets are empty. This means cash is not trickling down. The poorest 50% of India’s population, who have no reserves, are the worst affected and are going hungry.
16th century British financier Thomas Gresham famously explained in a letter to Queen Elizabeth upon her accession to the throne that “good and bad coin cannot circulate together” and explained that due to the coin debasements practiced by her predecessors Henry VIII and Edward VI, “all your fine gold was convayed [sic] out of this your realm”.
Painting by Anthonis Mor
Ironically, the banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes are today the most used currency. Those who have these banknotes and are afraid of going to the bank, mostly because they are worried about unnecessary problems from the rapacious and extremely corrupt tax department, force their workers and suppliers to accept the banned notes.
In the local market, if you want to buy gold or silver, you must pay in the banned banknotes — ironically the sellers to do not want to accept official legal tender. The banned notes, when used in large quantities, are circulating at 80% or less of their face value. Mafias have spontaneously emerged around the country. They ensure that these banknotes are deposited across hundreds of millions of accounts. The mafia makes a neat 25% profit.
The mafia is also providing special favors to certain politicians by converting their ill-gotten money for no commission. Who thinks this will reduce corruption?
Many workers from factories and shops, even if they have not yet been thrown out of work for lack of demand or due to the cash-crunch affecting their employer, have found a very lucrative profession. They now work for the money-converting mafia. This system is already fully in place a mere two weeks after the announcement of the ban.
The underground system is rapidly distributing the banned currency notes across a large number of people who then deposit them. This market is so liquid and easily accessible, that for all intents and purposes there is no way that someone with the banned notes cannot exchange them, albeit at a loss. So much for Modi’s claim that those with large amounts of undeclared money won’t be able to convert or deposit it.
But this will get much worse. When all this is over, hundreds of thousands of small-time bullies trained by the mafia will have made a small fortune. They will have also have found out who the rich people with cash are. A social scientist will conclude that this segment of society will be extremely corrupt and criminal. These people will have gotten a taste for easy money, in contrast to patient and laborious wealth-creation.
Moral Dilemmas Galore
Poor people have traditionally never systematically robbed shops in India. Out of hunger, they are experimenting with this for the first time. They are learning that when a mob robs, the police disappears. Social relations have a taken a very serious hit, fragmenting society. Society stands hugely divided, except in terms of the thread that connects them to Modi, the autocrat.
Modi, the snake charmer?
Cartoon by Chappatte
What keeps transactions in any society going is liquidity in the money-markets. Given that most people are stuck with banned currency, they are telling anyone they owe money to that they will only make payment in form of the banned notes, which now trade at a discount.
This massive moral dilemma has come to appear because people found themselves stranded with banned notes overnight, and want to avoid the 20% hit in value that they will have to take by converting them through the mafia.
Imagine someone who has collected ten million rupees in cash, facing the ban a day before he had to return the money to someone he borrowed from. What is he likely to do? Force his creditor to accept these banned notes, or bear the loss of 20%, which he might not have the capacity to absorb?
Spouses are fighting, as they have suddenly become aware that their significant other has been hiding cash for a rainy day. Poor people are almost invariably getting paid in banned notes, which requires them to line up in queues the next day to convert what they received, wasting at least 50% of their productivity – assuming they have a job.
There are moral dilemmas galore. But this had to happen in a society run by rulers who have absolutely no sense of morals, reason, not to mention respect for private property.
Money deposited in the banks is mostly frozen, something that people are not yet paying much attention to, for all their focus is on getting rid of the banned cash. The problem of frozen bank accounts will surface once the current conversion stops by the end of this year. That is when the salaried middle class, which mostly supports Modi, will finally wake up.
It is also clear that Modi has to take more and more increasingly repressive steps to keep people from taking protective measures. As noted above, India will rapidly become a police state.
The worst sufferers are poor people, whose ownership of currency was neither unaccounted for nor corrupt. Not being street-smart and not understanding how banks work, as they are often bullied by standoffish bank officers, they are stuck with the old currency, clueless as to what to do.
They are the silent 25% to 50% of the India population. They cannot even participate in the money-converting mafia, because they don’t understand many of the things that look quite simple to members of the middle class.
Many tourists have found themselves stranded without money in India as well. Video by mint.
Conclusion
India faces a highly uncertain future. A vicious cycle has been set into motion by Modi and it will not end well. Unpredictable problems and unintended consequences are bound to surface incessantly. If Modi comes under sufficient pressure, he could easily go to war with nuclear-armed Pakistan
Modi, in his permament search for personal glorification could easily impose a state of emergency or martial law. This is in fact extremely likely, perhaps even inevitable, for the so-called intellectuals will beg for it.
As we have said previously: this will go down in the history books as one of the most naïve, least thought through policy decisions ever, a massive man-made disaster.
Who/what is "we"? What is the collective behind which you hide, and which you think validates your nonsense? Even Jumla Maharaj refers to himself in the singular as of now. Seems his Bhakts have already appropriated the trappings of grandeur.
So what again is "right wing economics"?
@Joe Shearer
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-...dias-demonetization-massive-man-made-disaster
When Money Dies - India's Demonetization Is A "Massive Man-Made Disaster"
by Tyler Durden
Nov 25, 2016 2:32 PM
2.3K
SHARES
Twitter Facebook Reddit
Submitted by Jayant Bhandari via Acting-Man.com
When Money Dies
In part-I of the dispatch we talked about what happened during the first two days after Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi banned Rs 500 and Rs 1000 banknotes, comprising of 88% of the monetary value of cash in circulation. In part-II, we talked about the scenes, chaos, desperation, and massive loss of productive capacity that this ban had led to over the next few days.
Indian prime minister Narendra Modi – another finger-wagger, as can be seen in this photograph. Beware finger-wagging politicians, as we always point out. Modi now plans to impose income tax penalties on large bank deposits; the State’s rapaciousness knows no bounds and evidently the mere possession of some arbitrary amount of money considered “too large” now means one is deemed a criminal a priori in India. It goes without saying that the concept of property rights is alien to Modi. [PT]
Photo via indianexpress.com
Now, two weeks later, the situation is getting much worse, and more desperate. It is obvious that Modi single-handedly took the decision to ban the banknotes, with most people in his cabinet and virtually all in the central bank oblivious to his plan.
There is virtually no visible opposition to the enforced ban, for any politician who opposes the ban risks having his own misdeeds — and they are all corrupt — brought to the public space by Modi. A true demagogue, Modi, has already convinced the gullible, salaried middle class that anyone who opposes the ban is hiding corrupt money and is anti-national.
With every passing day, it has not only become clearer that the ban was of no use to eradicate hidden cash, but has also inflicted deep, wide and irreparable damage to the society. The economy is rapidly moving toward stagnation. The lives of literally hundreds of millions are in deep chaos.
This event may well go down in the history books as one of the worst man-made crises ever.
Cash conversion has been reduced to Rs 2000 ($30) per person. As a result people are facing humiliation and stand in queues for as much as 12 hours or more. Often repeated visits to the bank are necessary, with no guarantee that the bank will have cash available for the conversion. Old and disabled people, the 25% of India’s society without ID-cards, and women (unless they are prepared to be molested) don’t even have this chance. For those who are able join the queues, the scene has turned into a battlefield, with people fighting among themselves and getting brutalized by the police. But so far most people seem to still carry a favorable opinion of Modi, backed by cult-like “intellectual” climate created by the salaried middle class (who lack critical thinking and reasoning capability), and supported by the international media and institutions like the IMF, i.e., people who are sitting in Western cities have no clue about the realities on the ground. But all this will change as the stories of personal suffering should eventually start to dominate over the propaganda—reality does have a way of catching up. But India’s descent toward a police state is now written in concrete. Even if Modi eventually goes, a new demagogue will take his place.
Should a single person have so much power to be able to destroy the lives of almost one out of every five human beings on the planet? On this occasion it may be worth reminding ourselves that Modi also has the authority to launch nuclear bombs.
Modi suffers from worst possible type of corruption: an insatiable desire for personal glory at any cost, an extremely deep moral and spiritual corruption. He also represents the worst aspect of democracy: a demagogue who caters to an irrational populace’s cravings for self-identity and release from self-responsibility.
The government monopoly on cash economically connects 1.3 billion Indians. The perceived value of this paper currency does not comes not from any value inherent in it (it is just as irredeemable as other fiat monies), but from government edicts.
Cash is the thread that weaves relationships, transactions and commitments. For the proper functioning of society, it is absolutely crucial that people have a liquid medium of exchange, the essential lubricant to effect trade in today’s complex economy. Today, win-win transactions — except for barter, which has emerged in many parts of India — can no longer take place, for the monopolistic money instrument, India’s fiat currency, has been paralyzed by Modi.
Two millennia of progress in money have been destroyed. Rural places are increasingly falling back on barter. In a barter economy, economic calculation is no longer possible; only the most basic economic exchanges can take place. The market will have to adopt alternative media of exchange if the coincidence of wants problem is to be overcome.
Should a single person have the authority to flip a switch and bring all trade, transactions, indeed the entire economy to a halt?
As it stands, money is now dead in India – and a police state is rapidly encroaching. Both at home and abroad the only topic of conversation for Indians is the currency ban. If they are not busy planning how to escape the depredations of the tax authorities (whose minions are rapacious and will insist that people be obsequious and pay them large bribes), people exchange slogans, sound-bites and mere hopes – which seems to be the best India’s irrational society can do. Should this be all people are communicating about? Human beings were destined for higher things in life, not merely for the task of protecting themselves against the State.
What tyranny, socialism and an authoritarian order enforced from the top down mean for those who have been reduced to mere cogs
Crumbling Institutions
Most people — particularly the salaried middle class — still seem to have a favorable opinion of Mr. Modi. They have been indoctrinated – in India’s extremely irrational and superstitious society – to believe that this demonetization will somehow alleviate corruption and that anything but support of Modi’s actions is anti-national and unpatriotic.
This gives me pause to reflect.
What a crazy idea it is to have a State monopoly on money, particularly a money that carries no inherent value and depends on regulatory edicts. On a deeper level, it makes me reflect on why for the culture of India — which is tribalistic, nativistic, superstitious and irrational — “India” is actually an unnatural entity.
Such a society should consist of hundreds of tribes and countries, which is what “India” was before the British consolidated it. In a tribalistic and irrational society, decentralization makes life much safer and makes the market more free, as complex decisions will be taken on the local level, where they belong.
India’s institutions — not just organizations, but larger socio-political beliefs — have begun to decay and crumble after the British left, losing their underlying essence, the reason for which they had been institutionalized in the first place. This degradation is now picking up pace. They must eventually fall apart — including the nation-state of India – to adjust to the underlying culture .
Let us consider some of these institutions. Western education implanted in India has mutated. It is making individuals cogs in a big machine, all for the service of one great leader. Public education and the mass-media have become instruments of propaganda.
Complexity and the diversity of options that technology brings make an irrational thinker extremely confused, forcing him to seek sanity in ritualistic religion —hence the increase in religiosity in India and elsewhere in the region. This has happened despite the explosion in information technology.
The concept of the nation-state, when it took hold in Europe, was about the values the emergent rational and enlightened societies of Europe shared and had collectively come to believe in, at least among their elites. In India, the idea of the nation-state has morphed into a valueless thread, which binds people together through nothing but a flag and an anthem, symbols completely devoid of any values.
It has collectivized tribalistic and irrational people (an irrationality that is amply epitomized by the negative force Islam has become in the last two decades). In India and many similarly constituted countries, institutions that are not natural to their culture— the nation state, education, monetary system, etc. — must eventually face entropy, slowly at first, and then rapidly. India has now entered the rapid phase.
The death of money – amid a lack of respect for property rights (which again are a purely European concept that emerged from the intellectual revolutions of the last 800 years) – has been sudden and will very likely be catastrophic. It is a man-made disaster of gargantuan proportions. It will fundamentally change India in a very negative way, particularly if the demonetization effort succeeds, as it will have created the foundations enabling the rapid emergence of a police state.
A Rapidly Evolving Police State
After just a few years under Modi’s rule, there is no independent body left in India. Courts simply do not take a position against Modi. Not that the situation was much better earlier, mind. These days, journalists and opposing voices are increasingly stifled, while people at the fringe at least spoke their mind in the past.
For the first time, Hindus who were tolerant of intellectual differences have come to believe in Hindutava (fanatic Hindu nationalism, rapidly metastasizing as a particular mutation of nationalism).
Police now reserves the right to randomly search people’s possessions without a warrant. Those who live in India — in an economy in which 97% of all consumer transactions are in cash, most salaries are paid in cash, and most revenues are collected in cash — routinely transport and carry large amounts of cash on their person.
When policemen stop them, they often find some cash, which now ends up being confiscated and used for the Modi propaganda machine. None of this means that the confiscated cash is illegal, undocumented, or involved in tax evasion efforts. But truth has no place in propaganda.
A regular sight outside of bank branch offices, where poor desperate people laid off from work because of the monetary crisis must bear insults and physical harm from the police, all for the “greater good” and a “corruption-free” India
The fear among small businessmen and those with savings outside of the banking system, even if they are fully legitimate, is palpable. They are now deemed to be criminals and it is their job to prove themselves innocent.
They are extremely afraid of facing tax inquiries, which always involve heavy penalties and large bribes (the level of which has gone up noticeably in this police state). Whatever small focus they previously had on wealth-creation is now gone.
Historically, India has been a negative-yielding economy. Interest rates have mostly been negative in real terms. Stock market returns are negative-yielding, even before adjusting for business and jurisdictional risks. In such an environment, savers have no option but to keep their money in gold, or outside the formal economy.
Any oppression of savers forcing them to direct their money into the negative-yielding formal economy will only lead to even more of their savings going into gold and escaping to foreign jurisdictions, eventually making India much less well-off. Even in the short-term, India’s economy is rapidly going into paralysis.
An old man has died in the queue at the bank. No one came to help him, due to the risk of losing their place in the queue. A large number of people have died in similar circumstances.
Corruption is Entrenched Across India
There is indeed a belief that at the very top, financial corruption has declined. I have no way to be sure of this, but I am tempted to believe it. But India’s proximal problem is with its bureaucracy and lower-level politics.
I have yet to meet a public servant who does not ask for a bribe. Simple financial corruption would have merely redistributed wealth. But the real problem with the public servant is his utter moral and spiritual corruption.
He expects citizens to grovel, a sadistic pleasure every Indian public servant enjoys in his demeaned existence. He is incapable of taking a decision or of thinking straight. It is here that the State suffocates society and wealth-creation. This is the real corruption characterizing the State.
More fundamentally, the real problem of India is not even its bureaucracy, but Indians as such. Indians will pay and take bribes when given an opportunity. They will strive to get into positions that give them the power over other people. They know exactly how others should live. The fingers of my hands exceed the number of Indians I have known who are different.
But hasn’t the way Indians view corruption changed in recent times, given that they are supporting Modi in his fight against corruption, however erroneous his policies might be?
An irrational society is also deeply hypocritical and can exist with massive cognitive dissonance. If you delve deeper into the issue, you realize that Indians do indeed want corruption to end, but with a minor exception. They want everyone to stop giving and taking bribes simultaneously and collectively.
As in any collectivist society, the individual has no value or meaning, so the individual Indian excludes himself when he wants corruption to end. He does not see how any meaningful impact on society at large might be achieved if he were to stop his own corruption. As any rational person can see, this does not add up – but in the irrational society of India it does seem to add up.
I often find myself in social conversations in which everyone talks badly about corruption in others and in the public space and makes proposals how to end it, and in the next breath, the very same people collude between themselves, engaging in corrupt practices. When I point the contradiction out to them, they simply and honestly fail to see it.
A rational personal cannot truly understand this issue, even when repeatedly told about it, as rational people suffer from a major handicap: they fail to understand the true nature of irrationality and how entrenched it can be.
In 2013, shortly ascending to India’s most powerful political post, Modi was exonerated by the courts in the Gujarat riots case ex-post – an exercise that stretches credulity for many. It has taken many years for the SIT commission examining the case to release its report and quite a few people still think it was simply a whitewash attempt (we are in no position to judge or opine on the matter – we merely point out that it remains disputed – PT)
Cartoon by Narsimha P
Modi was allegedly behind the massacre and rapes of thousands of Muslims in 2002 when he was the Chief Minister of the Indian state of Gujarat. As a result of this, Modi was banned from entering most Western countries. Modi has no family. He left his wife soon after he married.
He does not let his 94-year-old mom stay with himself. He claims he has given up his family for the nation. In his narrow vision, he is indeed correct. While he may personally not have taken any bribes in recent years, there is no way he could have risen to his position without having made massive and horrendous moral compromises, as the massacre of Muslims to gain Hindu votes demonstrates.
Financial corruption is merely the tip of the iceberg. Those obsessed with financial corruption forget something very important. Financial corruption is the most enlightened aspect of corrupt activities, for at least it is win-lose. Ending financial corruption from the top down cannot or will not improve a society. If it could, Eritrea and North Korea would be the richest countries in the world.
What keeps India in continual penury is its irrationality, its tribalism and its superstitions, of which financial corruption is merely a visible expression. There is no easy way to make a society rational. In the past, European missionaries even tried removing babies from their parents in a desperate attempt to bring about change. This didn’t work. Making a society rational is a process that could last millennia.
For now, India is in essence becoming more corrupt, even if obvious financial corruption eventually recedes for fear of the autocrat, as has been the case in Eritrea. India is becoming rather more nationalistic, fundamentalist, tribalistic and irrational.
The cult-like status Modi enjoys in India is the result of a lack of self-responsibility among Indians, their hope that despite massive inherent contradictions, the pain that corruption imposes on Indians can be got rid of through a magic wand – without self-reflection, or without them giving up corruption themselves.
Modi’s biggest support comes from the salaried middle class, whose members are mostly unaffected by the ban, and who may even have benefited as food prices have fallen as a result of the masses of starving poor people now unable to buy. Hence the middle class can claim to occupy the moral high-ground, albeit on the back of other people’s suffering.
Protesting farmers in India. Buyers cannot buy products for they no longer have access to their own money. Unable to sell, sellers are stuck with their produce and cannot pay their debts, driving them and their creditors into bankruptcy. This is a very complex vicious cycle. Even if liquidity is eventually restored — which is unlikely — the demonetization has crippled the production system.
Depending on who you ask, even food market sales have fallen by 20% to 80%. It is too early to say if people are eating less or if they are consuming emergency stores they have kept at home; perhaps both. If farmers cannot sell their food, they cannot buy seeds for the next planting season. A vicious cycle is going to get entrenched.
Indian Express photos: Pavan Khengre
Gresham’s Law Gone Wild
In the past two weeks, the government has completely failed to reliquefy the monetary system. With 88% of outstanding currency now illegal, people are rushing to convert the banned currency they hold into Rs 100 or lower denomination banknotes. Once these or the newly printed banknotes end up with financially strong persons, they straight-away go under the mattress.
The result is that the remaining 12% of the monetary value represented by banknotes that are still legal is rapidly going out of circulation, and so is most of the newly issued currency. Markets are empty. This means cash is not trickling down. The poorest 50% of India’s population, who have no reserves, are the worst affected and are going hungry.
16th century British financier Thomas Gresham famously explained in a letter to Queen Elizabeth upon her accession to the throne that “good and bad coin cannot circulate together” and explained that due to the coin debasements practiced by her predecessors Henry VIII and Edward VI, “all your fine gold was convayed [sic] out of this your realm”.
Painting by Anthonis Mor
Ironically, the banned Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes are today the most used currency. Those who have these banknotes and are afraid of going to the bank, mostly because they are worried about unnecessary problems from the rapacious and extremely corrupt tax department, force their workers and suppliers to accept the banned notes.
In the local market, if you want to buy gold or silver, you must pay in the banned banknotes — ironically the sellers to do not want to accept official legal tender. The banned notes, when used in large quantities, are circulating at 80% or less of their face value. Mafias have spontaneously emerged around the country. They ensure that these banknotes are deposited across hundreds of millions of accounts. The mafia makes a neat 25% profit.
The mafia is also providing special favors to certain politicians by converting their ill-gotten money for no commission. Who thinks this will reduce corruption?
Many workers from factories and shops, even if they have not yet been thrown out of work for lack of demand or due to the cash-crunch affecting their employer, have found a very lucrative profession. They now work for the money-converting mafia. This system is already fully in place a mere two weeks after the announcement of the ban.
The underground system is rapidly distributing the banned currency notes across a large number of people who then deposit them. This market is so liquid and easily accessible, that for all intents and purposes there is no way that someone with the banned notes cannot exchange them, albeit at a loss. So much for Modi’s claim that those with large amounts of undeclared money won’t be able to convert or deposit it.
But this will get much worse. When all this is over, hundreds of thousands of small-time bullies trained by the mafia will have made a small fortune. They will have also have found out who the rich people with cash are. A social scientist will conclude that this segment of society will be extremely corrupt and criminal. These people will have gotten a taste for easy money, in contrast to patient and laborious wealth-creation.
Moral Dilemmas Galore
Poor people have traditionally never systematically robbed shops in India. Out of hunger, they are experimenting with this for the first time. They are learning that when a mob robs, the police disappears. Social relations have a taken a very serious hit, fragmenting society. Society stands hugely divided, except in terms of the thread that connects them to Modi, the autocrat.
Modi, the snake charmer?
Cartoon by Chappatte
What keeps transactions in any society going is liquidity in the money-markets. Given that most people are stuck with banned currency, they are telling anyone they owe money to that they will only make payment in form of the banned notes, which now trade at a discount.
This massive moral dilemma has come to appear because people found themselves stranded with banned notes overnight, and want to avoid the 20% hit in value that they will have to take by converting them through the mafia.
Imagine someone who has collected ten million rupees in cash, facing the ban a day before he had to return the money to someone he borrowed from. What is he likely to do? Force his creditor to accept these banned notes, or bear the loss of 20%, which he might not have the capacity to absorb?
Spouses are fighting, as they have suddenly become aware that their significant other has been hiding cash for a rainy day. Poor people are almost invariably getting paid in banned notes, which requires them to line up in queues the next day to convert what they received, wasting at least 50% of their productivity – assuming they have a job.
There are moral dilemmas galore. But this had to happen in a society run by rulers who have absolutely no sense of morals, reason, not to mention respect for private property.
Money deposited in the banks is mostly frozen, something that people are not yet paying much attention to, for all their focus is on getting rid of the banned cash. The problem of frozen bank accounts will surface once the current conversion stops by the end of this year. That is when the salaried middle class, which mostly supports Modi, will finally wake up.
It is also clear that Modi has to take more and more increasingly repressive steps to keep people from taking protective measures. As noted above, India will rapidly become a police state.
The worst sufferers are poor people, whose ownership of currency was neither unaccounted for nor corrupt. Not being street-smart and not understanding how banks work, as they are often bullied by standoffish bank officers, they are stuck with the old currency, clueless as to what to do.
They are the silent 25% to 50% of the India population. They cannot even participate in the money-converting mafia, because they don’t understand many of the things that look quite simple to members of the middle class.
Many tourists have found themselves stranded without money in India as well. Video by mint.
Conclusion
India faces a highly uncertain future. A vicious cycle has been set into motion by Modi and it will not end well. Unpredictable problems and unintended consequences are bound to surface incessantly. If Modi comes under sufficient pressure, he could easily go to war with nuclear-armed Pakistan
Modi, in his permament search for personal glorification could easily impose a state of emergency or martial law. This is in fact extremely likely, perhaps even inevitable, for the so-called intellectuals will beg for it.
As we have said previously: this will go down in the history books as one of the most naïve, least thought through policy decisions ever, a massive man-made disaster.
Who/what is "we"? What is the collective behind which you hide, and which you think validates your nonsense? Even Jumla Maharaj refers to himself in the singular as of now. Seems his Bhakts have already appropriated the trappings of grandeur.
So what again is "right wing economics"?
Wow .... an article by Tyler Durden Himself ........ where is his alter ego Hobbes ?
Zero Hedge's content is conspiratorial, anti-establishment and economically pessimistic, and has been criticized for presenting extreme and sometimes pro-Russian views
Maybe Tyler Durden can help you ?
"we" are the church burning, right wing savages who live in a bubble and refuse to lick the "cream" squirted by your masters.
Zero Hedge's content is conspiratorial, anti-establishment and economically pessimistic, and has been criticized for presenting extreme and sometimes pro-Russian views
Maybe Tyler Durden can help you ?
"we" are the church burning, right wing savages who live in a bubble and refuse to lick the "cream" squirted by your masters.
Jacob Martin
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Wow .... an article by Tyler Durden Himself ........ where is his alter ego Hobbes ?
Zero Hedge's content is conspiratorial, anti-establishment and economically pessimistic, and has been criticized for presenting extreme and sometimes pro-Russian views
Maybe Tyler Durden can help you ?
"we" are the church burning, right wing savages who live in a bubble and refuse to lick the "cream" squirted by your masters.
The Editor uses the pseudonym. The article is redirected from another site. I wouldn't expect you to know the difference.
So what is right wing economics?
Joe Shearer
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LOL...... there you go AGAIN issuing me a "character certificate"
Either you are too dumb to realise that such trick's don't work anymore, or you are just trapped by your own stupidity and arrogance to be blind to your obvious limitations.
Heh. Not a character certificate. That would require a character to certify. What we have is an aimless waif who keeps crawling back to where he has been repeatedly expelled. Not much character on display, so where is the question of a certificate?
Furthermore, what was being discussed, if you want to put it in the zone of certification, was a proficiency certificate, of the kind that is issued to welders and plumbers. Unfortunately, your proficiency is also not in evidence. So, no proficiency certificate.
deckingraj
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Let me show you how you are making no sense and it would have been great had you not done exactly what you are accusing me of...
....Kindly list the things that you have done to ease people suffering apart from making judgement calls here and terming all as bhakts if they don't follow your line of thinking....I am staying in US right now...going to loose some of my hard earned money as I am not planning to come back anytime before 31st March and yet can share some of the steps that I personally took to help the needy...for the records I still support the move....
Now let me try to put some senses back...there have been a huge hue and cry about this move...yet govt. is not backing down...if govt. has not backed down for almost a month then they are not going to back down now....they believe this move is going to help the country....now people like you and me should ideally be helping out (in whatever ways possible) the poor out there who is suffering...you and I can disagree if this move will bring in any mid-term to long-term benefits but we both agree on the fact that it has brought in short term sufferings...so instead of name calling why don't concentrate on something we both agree....why waste time on keep harping about how bad this move is when there is not even a remote chance govt will back down on this?? Also the time frame we are talking here is not decades but coupe of quarters....Already news are out that 12Lakh crore is back into the banking system and govt. hopes of having windfall gains stay quashed(though again the whole story is one sided yet!!)...
So i am in some upper class existence and thus live in some bubble however you are connected to ground and know the people sufferings...sure
....Kindly list the things that you have done to ease people suffering apart from making judgement calls here and terming all as bhakts if they don't follow your line of thinking....I am staying in US right now...going to loose some of my hard earned money as I am not planning to come back anytime before 31st March and yet can share some of the steps that I personally took to help the needy...for the records I still support the move....The reason this discussion is sought to be quashed is exactly because of what you wrote above...Every single news channel/news paper is busy concentrating on short terms pains of people thereby making us all believe that this whole saga is only pain and no gain...and here you are giving an exactly opposite picture that how everyone(Bhakt) is busy in showing how grand a success is this move...b/w who cares about what we talk in Pakistani forum or for that matter in any forum...that should be my last concern so rest assured on that front...
but you are not...give me one bhakt that you have manage to combat...in fact by terming everyone as bhakt you are only increasing the number if nothing else...
Now let me try to put some senses back...there have been a huge hue and cry about this move...yet govt. is not backing down...if govt. has not backed down for almost a month then they are not going to back down now....they believe this move is going to help the country....now people like you and me should ideally be helping out (in whatever ways possible) the poor out there who is suffering...you and I can disagree if this move will bring in any mid-term to long-term benefits but we both agree on the fact that it has brought in short term sufferings...so instead of name calling why don't concentrate on something we both agree....why waste time on keep harping about how bad this move is when there is not even a remote chance govt will back down on this?? Also the time frame we are talking here is not decades but coupe of quarters....Already news are out that 12Lakh crore is back into the banking system and govt. hopes of having windfall gains stay quashed(though again the whole story is one sided yet!!)...
Jacob Martin
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Very few people write on such fora to convince the other person. You may have noticed that at any given time, the number of non-members viewing any thread here is 3-4 times the number of members. Some of those readers may also suffer from confirmation bias, but even if it helps one neutral person make up their mind, the debate's purpose is served.
Verve
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If this shock and awe monetary policy fails, to rescue will be the policy of grabbing the massive Gold holdings by temples and then public (one of the largest public gold holdings in the world).
Also I overheard on the London tube journey three Indian IT contractors (you lot usually have 'bhagwaan speakers' installed in throats so overhearing is nothing unusual) discussing the crackdown on 'benami properties' and the options they were discussing to escape it. So if no one claims the property, the government confiscates it.
Also I overheard on the London tube journey three Indian IT contractors (you lot usually have 'bhagwaan speakers' installed in throats so overhearing is nothing unusual) discussing the crackdown on 'benami properties' and the options they were discussing to escape it. So if no one claims the property, the government confiscates it.
Jacob Martin
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First of all, kindly punctuate your sentences. Writing in ONE single, long sentence and then expecting the reader to fill in the grammatical holes is not nice, and makes it extremely difficult to understand. However, I will try to un-package your continuous stream of words and respond to them.
Rhetorical repetition to be disregarded, I suppose.
1. I employ 47 people at last count.
2. I pay them higher wages than industry-standard.
3. I fund the education for all school-going children in a displaced Kashmiri Camp for the past 3 years.
4. I have built portable toilets and bathing cubicles for the slum nearest to my home.
5. I have, at last count, contributed Rs.4.60 lacs to various people on Milaap.org.
6. I work pro-bono for NIC in designing Government IT projects, as long before Jumla Maharaj came to power, some people had already began preparing the groundwork for a digitized India.
As for demonetization:
1. While in any case most of my colleagues work from home, I have let the essential staff members take a day off whenever they have had to miss a day for standing in a queue, etc.
2. I have extended a line of credit for transportation whereby everyone can use the office OLA account and the fare will be paid by OLA wallet.
3. I have personally gone to the Bank with the few of the more vulnerable colleagues and ensured that their net-banking is activated, and then either sat with them myself or had someone else explain how to transact, link payments etc.
4. I have ensured that everyone has installed Paytm for mobile recharge etc.
All this has cost my organization thousands of work hours, and a few lacs already, apart from ensuring that I have a 16 hour work schedule on Weekdays.
Your turn.
I really have no idea how to respond to your belief that the nominal cash you had in India is a loss comparable to what farmers, rural artisans, unorganized labour, whole sellers, fruits and vegetable vendors, elderly people, the sick and disabled are facing, shows you do not have any empathy or understanding. To think that you are in the same position as someone whose economic staying power is a week at best - that is precisely the bubble I was talking about.
Media - people who are in the profession of disseminating news and opinion. Sometimes compromised, accurate at others.
Social Media - a den of shrill noise where semi-educated yokel drown out sane voices with verbosity and vitriol.
Having been denied access to mainstream/alternate media (as hardly any respectable media house can rely on semi-educated, ill-informed buffoons to run the show), Bhakts have annexed social media, the final refuge of the incompetent.
And who is to decide that? The person who speaks their language? Or a neutral observer?
And the hypothesis from the beginning is that brain-washing is terminal and incurable.
So this is the "sense" that you were driving back into the conversation? That we should all play along because the government won't back down? That's it then, I suppose.
And:
1. Not point out as to who caused all this suffering.
2. Not ask what it is gaining us in the short/medium/long term.
Time frame for what? A recovery? There is something called Macroeconomic theory, and it contains a concept called recession, which other countries enter slowly, while we have entered it overnight - the first nation in history to do so.
Your meaning is unclear. If you are referring to the RBI writing-off the un-returned cash, the government's claim already has no legs to stand on. SBI's in-house research team has projected that instead of the initially claimed 4-5 lac crores, only around 2-2.5 lac crores may remain un-deposited. Out of which, atleast 1 lac crores will not be black money, but legitimate cash which people will end up losing.
This has two immediate implications:
1. The government's claim was that 4-5 lac crores of black money is in circulation. Turns out the actual amount is way lower. Time for a reality check.
2. The bonanza that the government was expecting in the form of RBI transferring the surplus to the government will be much lower than expected.
3. Out of this bonanza, a large portion will actually be money which poor people will end up losing. This is so because the rural poor are either unbanked or have accounts in Co-operative Banks, which have been barred from disbursing cash.
So whatever money the government makes, a large part will be by confiscating the savings of old, withered rural folk. Way to go.
Please do me a favour, I have listed my arguments and concerns on the subject in several posts here:
https://defence.pk/threads/india-rupee-ban-currency-move-is-bad-economics.460908/
If you go through all the posts, and can come up with valid counters, it would be appreciated. Even otherwise, while you may not agree with me on the issue, but I hope you do realize that it takes effort and diligence to read and encapsulate it into arguments. OTOH, simply talking over the top of one's head is quite easy.
SO far, I have not had ONE supporter of the move clarify these issues:
1. What is the macroeconomic basis for the decision? More specifically, monetary supply and recessionary pressure aspects.
2. What is the objective yardstick of deliverables? How will it be decided if the move has worked?
3. What are the acceptable costs? What happens if and when the cost exceeds the benefits?
4. How adequately prepared are we to digitize financial transactions?
5. What is the legal basis for depriving us of right to livelihood, which by inference, deprives us of right to life?
6. What is the legal basis for depriving us of right to property?
7. If it turns out that these moves (too early to call it a policy) increases the chaos and disruption, then who will be accountable - or do we have to wait for the next general elections?
If you have come across any sincere analysis of these pints on this forum, then feel free to direct me to it.
That they choose the name of a Fictional Terrorist and Anarchist did not rise any eyebrows ?
It would have had you been slightly better informed and had the intelligence to process that information.
Maybe the next time you can post from blogs where the author calls himself "Osama Bin Laden" as the pseudonym.
BTW talking about "bubbles", here is news about some of that bubble bursting.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com...-lakh-crore-in-value/articleshow/55601210.cms
Heh. Not a character certificate. That would require a character to certify. What we have is an aimless waif who keeps crawling back to where he has been repeatedly expelled. Not much character on display, so where is the question of a certificate?
Furthermore, what was being discussed, if you want to put it in the zone of certification, was a proficiency certificate, of the kind that is issued to welders and plumbers. Unfortunately, your proficiency is also not in evidence. So, no proficiency certificate.
So you admit all you can do is issue "certificates" as a desperate measure in the hopes that the lower intelligent life forms will be tricked into seeing you as the "headmaster" and "respect" you ?
Even a Welder and Plumber are men of substance. They are always in demand because they add value to human society. People who have only style and No substance are lower than plumber and welders in my eyes.
Jacob Martin
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Jumla Maharaj is treated as a terrorist and mass-murderer by millions. Did that raise your eyebrows?
I regularly read Zerohedge. I find it quite good. I also read at least 10 other alternate news sites. You should read more, and not less. Maybe then you will know enough to have an intelligible debate.
My first reaction was to inundate my response with a hundred articles about the disaster that demonetisation has become. And then I realized that I am dealing with a dimwit who thinks that the collapse of the housing market is a good thing. Congratulations. Now get your home loan and finally buy a house.
So what again, is "right wing economics"? Don't try to dodge the question.
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