I get it now and again in the business, I do not and will not have a card terminal, which stops everyone from paying me with plastic, which stops everyone who only has a credit card and no cash from paying me, and pay comes before play, but for all that it is still a largely electronic virtual fiat transaction.
Demonetisation day 9 in India, and of course it’s largely ignored in western media, when it really should be a top of the hour every hour story, because it is the story of what happens when the government decides that, in order to stop terrorism / black economy / donald-fucking-trump / drugs cartels / whatever, they just make all the higher denomination paper money bills invalid, if you hold any, you have to go to a bank and exchange them for the new replacement not so high denomination bills….
… in a country where a lot of the people don’t even have a bank account and where cash is king, you get paid in cash, you spend cash, there will probably be millions of indians whose nearest bank is far enough away that unless you want to spend 3 days walking there are 3 days walking back, the only way you’ll get there is to spend a bunch of money you can’t afford to get there and back, but most of the money you actually hold is now worthless, so you can’t spend it on a bus or train ride, because the bus and train companies won’t take it… because it’s now worthless until it is exchanged in a bank for the new notes, and that process is chaotic and slow.
If you have hundreds of millions of rupees in the bank down the road in a city you can of course easily enough do an electronic transfer to the Mercedes dealership to buy your new S class….
But make no mistake, the war on cash is already here in the west, and it is going to get bigger and badder and meaner because the move is to outlaw cash, like guns, only criminals have guns, so gun ownership is criminal, but an illegal gun fires bullets just as well as a legal gun, an illegal fiat currency is poor quality toilet paper at best.
We here in the UK used to have a cash economy, some time later after the introduction of fake paper substitutes like cheques and later still fake electronic substitutes like plastic and e-banking, there were still vestiges of the cash economy, but by then it was known as the black economy.
In the 2 years my business has been running I have seen a decline in the black economy, despite incentives of around a 20% discount on every bill, the amount of cash I take is decreasing steadily, with erstwhile regular cash customers now opting for paper invoices and cheque payments, and these are the old die hards who have bugger all “internet” and “e-banking” facilities / knowledge / inclination.
Bank branches are closing and those that are open are using machines instead of staff and fewer staff numbers, so it is increasingly a pain in the ass to go and draw cash to pay me or anyone else cash and get a cash discount, again, most of these regular customers are in a position to simply pass on the increased cost to their customers, and it saves them having to go to the bank and draw cash every time they give me an order.
“They” are creating a situation where the only people who will be using cash are those who are dealing in drugs and stolen goods, and those who cannot get a bank account and plastic debit card and have internet and e-banking, and ever here in the prosperous west, there are more of those than you would be comfortable believing exist… so many that there were initiatives to create an inclusive alternative for them in the shape of bank accounts lite with the Post Office, and even those some people can’t get.
Thus the initial premise that only the undesireables and criminals use cash becomes a self fulfilling prophecy, meanwhile billions at a time money launderers and criminals like HSBC et al continue to function perfectly because after all electronic virtual fiat currencies is their forte…
At this moment in time I do not have any outstanding bills, having drawn 200 quid in cash yesterday to hand to my local mechanic to ensure one of the vehicles in maintained in top condition, I have a whopping 100 quid left to last me until the end of the months, and a small cash in hand job to do tomorrow, and a not so small used to be cash but is now cheque (so takes 4 working days to clear” job, and about ten days until the next regular lump sum comes in, so basically I don’t have any financial problems, I have enough electronic virtual money to make the end of the month without any changes in lifestyle, and if push comes to shove I always have the zero balanced credit card with which I can draw or spend 500 quids worth of electronic virtual fiat, because basically I spend what I earn, I’d like to spend more, so I’d like to earn more, but in the meantime I live comfortably and can’t complain.
I have no fear of many of the things that others along side me in this electronic virtual fiat currency world should fear, I do not have any deposits to be annexed and bailed in, I do not have any deposits to be grabbed by law and exchanged at some ruinous rate for the new electronic virtual fiat currency, newquids, or noteuros, or jewbux, or anything else, nor do I have any loans of note other than a small overdraft facility to be used against me as leverage.
I have reason to suspect that I may be due to receive a small sum of capital from the estate of a dead relative, I do not know the amount, but it isn’t a huge pie to start with and it is being divided several ways plus legal fees, so it won’t be a life changing amount or even a significant one, but I do plan to spend all of it immediately on “stuff” , goods not services, because that turns it from a liability into an asset.
I have no clue what the future will bring, I am not a prophet, on the other hand, there are some things that I know to be facts.
Nobody who is behind the scenes working on this global push to outlaw cash and move to an electronic virtual fiat currency system has my interests at heart, they have THEIR interests at heart, and the mere disparity in power and influence between us suggests strongly that the two have little if any common ground.
Take a look at the Saudi’s, now they want to IPO the oil, what the fucking fuck, why would anyone float the golden goose, the tree of life, the cup of immortality??? If you could hold on to it you would, and you wouldn’t share, and they didn’t for 50 years, and now Hitlary has lost they decide to float it? give me a fucking break, and read some history, south sea bubbles and people investing in “great undertakings” that were guaranteed to make them a fortune but the workings of which were to remain secret from said “investors” because oh look over there at that distraction.. and it’s gone…
Course, world + dog’s pensions funds will be in there like gangbusters with promises of 25% year on year growth… and it’s gone… great way to dissolve already insolvent pensions schemes and bond markets and not actually shoulder any blame.. yeah we invested everything in Vulcan Pyro Futures and who coulda guessed, the whole fucking lot went up in flames the next Friday, there’s nothing left, not even the ground it sat on, there is just the huge molten magma pit.
You know the world is fucked by design when you compare Venezuela with Saudi, they both have similar volumes of commercially available hydrocarbon reserves, but Venezuela also has minerals and agri land, but guess which one has “minor royals” clogging the streets of downtown London and Manhattan with gold plated Bugattis and Hitlary donations wrapped around kilo bars of 99.999% pure gold plated titanium…
If you (India) wanted to do it right all you had to do was go to China, they managed to get rid of denominations higher than 100 yuan, so corrupt local politicos literally could not hide significant sums of paper money under the bed any more, you just put the mattress on the pile of paper money, and yet they also managed to build build build and become the world’s manufacturing giant.
But then as I have said before here and elsewhere, study history young man, China has over 2000 years of actual history of playing with fiat currencies…
Try and take your non chinese extended family to china and try and buy and open and run something as humble as a corner store or laundry or restaurant… not permitted.
This post starts with “In God we trust, all other pay cash” because the idea is that I don’t trust anyone else, but I trust the cash they hand me, what happens when I do not trust the cash they hand me, or they have no cash to hand me, just something else I distrust equally?
By luck or judgement or insight or fortune, you’ll end up with *some* fortunates like me, who quickly dispose of any positive positions that they have in that fiat in exchange for things like coffee and diesel and smokes, and who avoid like the plague any negative positions that they might have, in the form of any kind of debt whatsoever, or any possessions that can have a lieu or tax slapped on them, like land.