Economic Highlights
New Delhi, 26 Dec 2016
Cashless Plot
MNCs ENSLAVE PEOPLE
By Shivaji Sarkar
“Terrorists
are no longer public enemies’ number one nor are the drug lords, human
traffickers, arms dealers, cyber terrorists or any other do-badder. Today, the
biggest threat to global peace and security is physical cash, a means of
exchange that has flourished for over 1000 years but which now stands accused
of being the world’s biggest enabler of criminality”, says Don Quijones, Spain & Mexico, editor at the US
newspaper Wolf Street.
“Banks, government, credit card
companies and fintech evangelists all want us to believe a cashless future is
inevitable and good, but this is not frictionless utopia”, says Brett Scott,
campaigner and UK broker adding “and it’s time to fight back”. The death of
cash is death of privacy.
The G-7 and G-20 prodded by bankers
are strangely promoting going cashless. On June 9, 2015 the Google chairman, top
global bankers and G-7 leaders met in Austria to hasten it. Why is this war on cash? Cash serves
as a means of exchange in which the relevant rent seekers (banks, credit card
companies and tech firms) are left out of the equation, unable to get
commissions, fees and collect the treasure of consumer data that comes with
electronic payments. This apart it helps the intermediaries i.e. the banks earn
trillions as charges for “facilitating” transactions, which could have been
done for free in cash deals.
In
the West, non-cash is seen as a move of the multi-national corporations (MNCs)
to control the citizens, businesses and governments. Once they succeed they can
keep the common man in awe of denial of access to their own money. On August
16, 2015, the US FBI agents raided a convenience store
and took $107,702 right from the owner’s bank account because he made two
cash deposits of $11,400 in 24 hours. The FBI told him this violated federal “structuring” laws,
so under civil asset forfeiture laws, they had the “right” to seize the money
in his account.
The laws have already been used extensively to
seize cash from the US
nationals. Any seizure can be done on suspicion is known as “policing for
profit’, which is fully endorsed by the US government. Trusting the banks or Visa type
organisations may be dangerous. They can manipulate election results, organise
coups or create wrong perceptions through propaganda.
The recent tirade
against black money in India
may be one. The post-November 8 income tax raids yielded over Rs 3,100 crore.
If assesses move the court at least half of it would be termed non-black and
returned to them. But it created euphoria. Even the income tax declaration (IDS)
2016 has flaws. From initial estimates of Rs 67,000 crore declared, within a
few days it came down to Rs 55,000 crore. At least Rs 12,000 crore declarations
were found to be fake -- rivals allegedly filed each other’s false statements.
The Government got a mere Rs 3,000 crore tax from these against expected Rs
30,000 crore.
The I-T department
got wide publicity for its raid raj. But if their figures are taken into
account (Rs 55,000 plus 3100 crore) and even if it is trebled, black money
would not be more than Rs 1.74 lakh crore -- almost equal to the I-T government
receives. The operation demonetisation cost the nation not less than Rs 30,000
crore in junking Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes, and printing new currency. This
apart there are losses of over five lakh jobs, millions of man-hours,
industrial production, closures and troubles at banks.
Are
Indians victim of global MNC propaganda? All over the planet, governments are
starting to place restrictions on the use of cash for “security
reasons”. Citizens are told other forms of payment are much easier for
governments to track. The use of cash is considered to be a “suspicious
activity” all by itself.
The
US Citibank does not accept cash payment in India
and they have stopped it in Australia
from November 15, a week after India
launched the cashless tirade. “These days, if you pay a large bill with cash
you are probably going to get looked at funny. You see, the truth is that
we have already been trained to regard the use of large amounts of cash to be
unusual. The next step will be to formally ban large cash transactions like France and other countries in Europe
are already doing”, says Scott.
India is no exception. State Bank of India
chairperson Arundhati Bhattacharya calls for levying penalties for cash
deposits above Rs 1000. She has been joined by some other bank CEOs. Are they
cartelizing? This is dangerous not only for the citizens but for the government
as well. The freedom of everyone is at stake. During
recessions the banks could use the banking system to deliberately corrode
people’s deposits via negative charges, inspiring them to spend rather than
save – strength of the Indian economy.
Cashless society is a euphemism for
the “ask-your-banks-for-permission-to-pay”. Cashless is only the invisible –
digital - bank ledger. Rather than an exchange occurring directly between the
seller and buyer, it takes the form of intermediaries. In a cashless society,
people would have no choice but to conform to the intermediaries, giving them a
lot of power, tradable data about the one’s economic life and power to extort.
The
anti-cash crusaders offer various reasons for banning cash, but they all share
a common distrust of free markets and a desire to give bureaucrats more control
over people. The World
Bank estimates that there are two billion adults without bank accounts, and
even those who do have these still often rely upon the informal flexibility of
cash for everyday transactions. The WB does not say cash is criminal. So why
give it up?
Banks and card
operators such as Visa are no friend of any government. They want to control
governments through illusive words -- lies. On December 21, Switzerland was
forced to levy a joint fine of about $100 million on eight global banks for
creating cartels and rigging international interest rates between 2005 and
2010. The banks include Barclays, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland
(RBS), Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank UBS and Credit Suisse. The RBI too
imposed fines the same day on five foreign banks for violating FEMA.
Unfortunately, after
power over food, crops and farmers through genetic engineering, the MNCs and
large banks are now eyeing and conspiring to enslave people through the
cashless plot. ---INFA
(Copyright, India
News and Feature Alliance)
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