Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by backtoiam » Wed Sep 21, 2016 9:24 pm
by JackRiddler » Wed Sep 21, 2016 9:42 pm
by backtoiam » Wed Sep 21, 2016 9:45 pm
jackriddler
And you know what the "elite banking status quo" is thinking, how? Because Rogoff (ooh! Harvard) is just a courtier long on the outs, mouthing off.
Objective. Assess the bank’s policies, procedures, and processes, and overall compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements for monitoring, detecting, and reporting suspicious activities.
Suspicious activity reporting forms the cornerstone of the BSA reporting system. It is critical to the United States' ability to utilize financial information to combat terrorism, terrorist financing, money laundering, and other financial crimes. Examiners and banks should recognize that the quality of SAR content is critical to the adequacy and effectiveness of the suspicious activity reporting system.
Within this system, FinCEN and the federal banking agencies recognize that, as a practical matter, it is not possible for a bank to detect and report all potentially illicit transactions that flow through the bank. Examiners should focus on evaluating a bank's policies, procedures, and processes to identify, evaluate, and report suspicious activity. However, as part of the examination process, examiners should review individual SAR filing decisions to determine the effectiveness of the bank's suspicious activity identification, evaluation, and reporting process. Banks, bank holding companies, and their subsidiaries are required by federal regulations53 to file a SAR with respect to:
Criminal violations involving insider abuse in any amount.
Criminal violations aggregating $5,000 or more when a suspect can be identified.
Criminal violations aggregating $25,000 or more regardless of a potential suspect.
Transactions conducted or attempted by, at, or through the bank (or an affiliate) and aggregating $5,000 or more, if the bank or affiliate knows, suspects, or has reason to suspect that the transaction:
May involve potential money laundering or other illegal activity (e.g., terrorism financing).54
Is designed to evade the BSA or its implementing regulations.55
Has no business or apparent lawful purpose or is not the type of transaction that the particular customer would normally be expected to engage in, and the bank knows of no reasonable explanation for the transaction after examining the available facts, including the background and possible purpose of the transaction.
A transaction includes a deposit; a withdrawal; a transfer between accounts; an exchange of currency; an extension of credit; a purchase or sale of any stock, bond, certificate of deposit, or other monetary instrument or investment security; or any other payment, transfer, or delivery by, through, or to a bank.
https://www.ffiec.gov/bsa_aml_infobase/ ... LM_015.htm
by identity » Tue Nov 08, 2016 5:29 pm
Modi's surgical strike on black money
₹500, ₹1,000 notes withdrawn to check black money, counterfeits; new notes from Nov 10
NEW DELHI, NOV 8:
* ATM will not function till November 10
* Banks will be closed on November 9, Wednesday.
* People can deposit from November 10 to December 30, 2016 in banks and post offices,
* Withdrawals from bank accounts will be limited to Rs 10,000 a day and Rs 20,000 a week.
In a shock and awe move, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced withdrawal of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes in a bid to check black money and cross-border monetary transactions of counterfeit currency.
“Notes of ₹500 and ₹1,000 not valid from midnight November 8, 2016,” said Modi in a late-evening address to the nation, evoking strong reactions from the man on the street to his political opponents.
While most financial experts and India Inc honchos said it was not unexpected, the timing of the announcement caught everyone by surprise. An obvious reason for this would be to ensure that unaccounted wealth is not siphoned off via other channels like gold or property. In his address, Modi asked people to exchange these notes for other denominations from November 10, 2016 till December 31, 2016. This can be done in banks and post-offices.
Government hospitals will continue to accept old ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes for 72 hours. Similarly, rail, airline and government bus ticket counters, as well as milk booths, petrol pumps, consumer cooperative societies, crematoriums and burial grounds, and foreign currency exchange facilities at airports will accept these notes for the next 72 hours. Transactions through debit and credit cards, cheques and demand drafts will continue as usual.
There will be a cap on ATM withdrawals from ₹2,000 per day per card. This will be raised to ₹4,000 in the coming days. New ₹500 and ₹2,000 notes will be issued on November 10.
“This is the biggest and the boldest step by the government for containing black money. It is like a surgical strike on black money,” said Revenue Secretary Hasmukh Adhia.
Soon after the Prime Minister’s address, in a joint press conference Economic Affairs Secretary Shaktikanta Das and RBI Governor Urjit Patel said high denomination notes of ₹500 and ₹1,000 were being used for black-money transactions, terror financing and had also led to an inflow of fake currency into the country. “The long shadow of the ghost economy has been a problem of the real economy,” Das said.
He noted that the economy grew by 30 per cent between 2011 and 2016 and currency notes in circulation rose by 40 per cent. In contrast, the circulation of ₹500 currency notes grew by 76 per cent and ₹1,000 notes by 109 per cent. The RBI Governor said that despite the high number of fake currency, the security features of the currency have not been breached. “The RBI has ramped up production of the new series of notes,” he said.
Das also announced the new series of ₹500 and ₹ 2,000 currency notes with new size specifications and security features.
Das warned that people with unaccounted income would be monitored and banks have installed video cameras to monitor the exchange of notes. “Do not allow yourself to be used for exchanging illegal cash,” he appealed.
by Freitag » Wed Nov 09, 2016 11:07 pm
by Freitag » Sat Nov 12, 2016 1:58 pm
Anger grows in India as banks struggle to swap banned notes
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Anger intensified in India on Saturday as banks struggled to dispense cash following the government's decision to withdraw large denomination notes in an attempt to uncover billions of dollars in undeclared wealth.
Tempers frayed as hundreds of thousands of people queued for hours outside banks for a third day to swap 500 and 1,000 rupee bank notes after the notes were abolished earlier in the week.
The banned bills made up more than 80 percent of the currency in circulation, leaving millions of people without cash and threatening to bring much of the cash-driven economy to a halt.
"There's chaos everywhere," said Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, a rival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, accusing the premier of wreaking havoc on poor and working Indians while the wealthy found ways to skirt the new rules.
by Joe Hillshoist » Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:19 pm
mentalgongfu2 » 19 Sep 2016 16:42 wrote:Thanks identity, sounds like a book worth checking out even though I expect I will continue to disagree vehemently with its premise.
David Wilmon said:“In an era when books, movies, music,
and newsprint are transmuting from atoms to bits, money remains irritatingly
analog,” I declared. “Physical currency is a bulky, germ-smeared,
carbon-intensive, expensive medium of exchange. Let’s dump it.”
"Irritatingly analog" ???
I don't even know where to start. Why should analog anything irritate anyone? The world is full of choices. Make your own and leave mine to me.
I suppose he thinks MP3s are the bees knees and would urge us to burn our LPs and CDs, because, Digital!
by Joe Hillshoist » Sat Nov 12, 2016 8:24 pm
by Freitag » Mon Nov 14, 2016 8:15 pm
Baby dies after Indian hospital refuses to accept parents' money because of country's new cash note ban
A baby died when a hospital in India refused to accept a deposit paid in banknotes which were withdrawn from circulation the day before.
[...]
by Freitag » Wed Nov 16, 2016 9:46 pm
War On Cash Intensifies: Citibank To Stop Accepting Cash At Some Branches
Less than a week after India’s surprise move to scrap its highest denomination cash notes, another front in the War on Cash has intensified down under in Australia.
Yesterday, banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia’s $100 and $50 bills would be “good for the economy and good for the banks.”
(How convenient that a bank would propose something that’s good for banks!)
This isn’t the first time that the financial establishment has pushed for a cashless society in Australia (or anywhere else).
In September 2015, Australian bank Westpac published its “Cash Free Report”, suggesting that the country would become cashless by 2022.
In July 2016, Australian payments firm Tyro published an enormously self-serving blog post touting the benefits of a cashless society and saying, “it’s only a matter of time.”
Most notably, two days ago, Citibank (yes, THAT Citibank) announced that it was going cashless at some of its Australian branches.
The media and political establishments have chimed in as well.
In February of this year, the Sydney Morning Herald released a series of articles, some of which were written by officials from Australia’s Department of the Treasury, suggesting that eliminating cash will “save billions”, and that “moving to a cashless society is the next step for the Australian dollar”.
This is how it works.
The government, media, banks, and even academia have formed a single, unified chorus to push this idea out to consumers that “cashless” is good for everyone.
And it’s happening across the planet, from Australia to India to Europe to North America.
They’re partially right.
Going cashless probably will save a lot of money; paper currency is costly to transport in large quantities due to the need for security.
It’s also accurate to suggest that going cashless will be “good for the banks.”
As UBS pointed out yesterday, “de-monetizing” Australia’s $50 and $100 bills would force anyone holding those notes to deposit them back in the banking system.
Bank deposits would rise as a result, and consequently, so would bank profits.
Governments would benefit from a cashless society because all savings would be in the banking system, and they have full regulatory control over the banks.
This means that your politicians would have more control over your savings and fewer obstacles to impose capital controls or engage in Civil Asset Forfeiture.
Even policy wonk academics would have a rare opportunity to take their lousy theories and PhD dissertations for a test drive.
Everyone benefits from a cashless society… except for you.
For individuals, cash still has plenty of important advantages.
Cash is one of the few remaining options for financial privacy that doesn’t create a permanent record of every purchase or transaction you make.
It’s also an easy way to reduce your exposure to risks in the broader financial system.
Think about it– the banking system is full of institutions that never miss an opportunity to demonstrate they cannot be trusted with our money.
Hardly a month goes by without some major banking scandal; they’re caught colluding on exchange rates, manipulating interest rates, fraudulently establishing fake accounts without customer consent (and then charging us fees on top of that).
It’s disgraceful.
In addition, bank safety is far from certain.
In many banking systems across the world (especially in Europe right now), banks have precariously low levels of capital and are already suffering the effects of negative interest rates.
Even in the United States, banks routinely employ very clever accounting tricks to conceal their true financial condition.
There’s also the fact that, the moment you make a deposit at a bank, it’s no longer your money. It becomes the bank’s money.
And they can do with it as they please, whether it’s freezing you out of your account or making idiotic investments with minimal reserve requirements.
You have no say in the matter.
As a bank depositor, you’re nothing more than an unsecured creditor of a financial institution which may or may not allow you to withdraw your own savings.
If you don’t believe me, take a trip down to your bank and ask to withdraw $25,000. See how quickly they treat you like a criminal terrorist.
Bottom line, conventional banking is not risk-free. And holding cash is one way to reduce that risk.
Cash essentially eliminates the middleman between you and your savings… at least, the portion of your savings that can be easily exchanged for goods and services in the economy.
Cash is a pitiful store of value over the long-term. Precious metals and other real assets are much better alternatives.
But we still can’t walk into Starbucks and pay for a cup of coffee with a quarter-ounce silver coin.
So until that day comes, cash remains an asset that you’ll want to hold.
Just make sure you don’t go overboard. The War on Cash is very real. So if you have more than a couple of months worth of living expenses, you’re taking on unnecessary risk.
Also, keep the denominations low.
As the case with India shows (see the photo), governments have no compunction about violating the public trust with immediate effect and without warning.
So if you’re in the US, don’t keep a mountain of $100 bills in your safe. Keep 10s, 20s, and 50s.
If you’re in Europe, definitely avoid the 500 and 200 euro notes, opt for 20s and 50s.
by MacCruiskeen » Thu Jan 12, 2017 7:17 pm
A well-kept open secret: Washington is behind India’s brutal experiment of abolishing most cash
01 January 2017 | By Norbert Häring
http://norberthaering.de/en/home/27-ger ... eiterlesen
In early November, without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80 percent of circulating cash by value. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this. That is surprising, as Washington's role has been disguised only very superficially.
weiterlesen
US-President Barack Obama has declared the strategic partnership with India a priority of his foreign policy. China needs to be reined in. In the context of this partnership, the US government’s development agency USAID has negotiated cooperation agreements with the Indian ministry of finance. One of these has the declared goal to push back the use of cash in favor of digital payments in India and globally.
On November 8, Indian prime minster Narendra Modi announced that the two largest denominations of banknotes could not be used for payments any more with almost immediate effect. Owners could only recoup their value by putting them into a bank account before the short grace period expired at year end, which many people and businesses did not manage to do, due to long lines in front of banks. The amount of cash that banks were allowed to pay out to individual customers was severely restricted. Almost half of Indians have no bank account and many do not even have a bank nearby. The economy is largely cash based. Thus, a severe shortage of cash ensued. Those who suffered the most were the poorest and most vulnerable. They had additional difficulty earning their meager living in the informal sector or paying for essential goods and services like food, medicine or hospitals. Chaos and fraud reigned well into December.
Four weeks earlier
Not even four weeks before this assault on Indians, USAID had announced the establishment of „Catalyst: Inclusive Cashless Payment Partnership“, with the goal of effecting a quantum leap in cashless payment in India. The press statement of October 14 says that Catalyst “marks the next phase of partnership between USAID and Ministry of Finance to facilitate universal financial inclusion”. The statement does not show up in the list of press statements on the website of USAID (anymore?). Not even filtering statements with the word “India” would bring it up. To find it, you seem to have to know it exists, or stumble upon it in a web search. Indeed, this and other statements, which seemed rather boring before, have become a lot more interesting and revealing after November 8.
Reading the statements with hindsight it becomes obvious, that Catalyst and the partnership of USAID and the Indian Ministry of Finance, from which Catalyst originated, are little more than fronts which were used to be able to prepare the assault on all Indians using cash without arousing undue suspicion. Even the name Catalyst sounds a lot more ominous, once you know what happened on November 9.
Catalyst’s Director of Project Incubation is Alok Gupta, who used to be Chief Operating Officer of the World Resources Institute in Washington, which has USAID as one of its main sponsors. He was also an original member of the team that developed Aadhaar, the Big-Brother-like biometric identification system.
According to a report of the Indian Economic Times, USAID has committed to finance Catalyst for three years. Amounts are kept secret.
Badal Malick was Vice President of India's most important online marketplace Snapdeal, before he was appointed as CEO of Catalyst. He commented:
„Catalyst’s mission is to solve multiple coordination problems that have blocked the penetration of digital payments among merchants and low-income consumers. We look forward to creating a sustainable and replicable model. (...) While there has been (...) a concerted push for digital payments by the government, there is still a last mile gap when it comes to merchant acceptance and coordination issues. We want to bring a holistic ecosystem approach to these problems.“
Ten months earlier
The multiple coordination problem and the cash-ecosystem-issue that Malick mentions had been analysed in a report that USAID commissioned in 2015 and presented in January 2016, in the context of the anti-cash partnership with the Indian Ministry of Finance. The press release on this presentation is also not in USAID's list of press statements (anymore?). The title of the study was “Beyond Cash”.
„Merchants, like consumers, are trapped in cash ecosystems, which inhibits their interest” in digital payment it said in the report. Since few traders accept digital payments, few consumers have an interest in it, and since few consumers use digital payments, few traders have an interest in it. Given that banks and payment providers charge fees for equipment to use or even just try out digital payment, a strong external impulse is needed to achieve a level of card penetration that would create mutual interest of both sides in digital payment options.
It turned out in November that the declared “holistic ecosystem approach” to create this impulse consisted in destroying the cash-ecosystem for a limited time and to slowly dry it up later, by limiting the availability of cash from banks for individual customers. Since the assault had to be a surprise to achieve its full catalyst-results, the published Beyond-Cash-Study and the protagonists of Catalyst could not openly describe their plans. They used a clever trick to disguise them and still be able to openly do the necessary preparations, even including expert hearings. They consistently talked of a regional field experiment that they were ostensibly planning.
"The goal is to take one city and increase the digital payments 10x in six to 12 months," said Malick less than four weeks before most cash was abolished in the whole of India. To not be limited in their preparation on one city alone, the Beyond-Cash-report and Catalyst kept talking about a range of regions they were examining, ostensibly in order to later decide which was the best city or region for the field experiment. Only in November did it became clear that the whole of India should be the guinea-pig-region for a global drive to end the reliance on cash. Reading a statement of Ambassador Jonathan Addleton, USAID Mission Director to India, with hindsight, it becomes clear that he stealthily announced that, when he said four weeks earlier:
“India is at the forefront of global efforts to digitize economies and create new economic opportunities that extend to hard-to-reach populations. Catalyst will support these efforts by focusing on the challenge of making everyday purchases cashless."
Veterans of the war on cash in action
Who are the institutions behind this decisive attack on cash? Upon the presentation of the Beyond-Cash-report, USAID declared: “Over 35 key Indian, American and international organizations have partnered with the Ministry of Finance and USAID on this initiative.” On the ominously named website http://cashlesscatalyst.org/ one can see that they are mostly IT- and payment service providers who want to make money from digital payments or from the associated data generation on users. Many are veterans of,what a high-ranking official of Deutsche Bundesbank called the “war of interested financial institutions on cash” (in German). They include the Better Than Cash Alliance, the Gates Foundation (Microsoft), Omidyar Network (eBay), the Dell Foundation Mastercard, Visa, Metlife Foundation.
The Better Than Cash Alliance
The Better Than Cash Alliance, which includes USAID as a member, is mentioned first for a reason. It was founded in 2012 to push back cash on a global scale. The secretariat is housed at the United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDP) in New York, which might have its reason in the fact that this rather poor small UN-organization was glad to have the Gates-Foundation in one of the two preceding years and the Master-Card-Foundation in the other as its most generous donors.
The members of the Alliance are large US-Institutions which would benefit most from pushing back cash, i.e. credit card companies Mastercard and Visa, and also some US-institutions whose names come up a lot in books on the history of the United States intelligence services, namely Ford Foundation and USAID. A prominent member is also the Gates-Foundation. Omidyar Network of eBay-founder Pierre Omidyar and Citi are important contributors. Almost all of these are individually also partners in the current USAID-India-Initiative to end the reliance on cash in India and beyond. The initiative and the Catalyst-program seem little more than an extended Better Than Cash Alliance, augmented by Indian and Asian organizations with a strong business interest in a much decreased use of cash.
Reserve Bank of India’s IMF-Chicago Boy
The partnership to prepare the temporary banning of most cash in India coincides roughly with the tenure of Raghuram Rajan at the helm of Reserve Bank of India from September 2013 to September 2016. Rajan (53) had been, and is now again, economics professor at the University of Chicago. From 2003 to 2006 he had been Chief Economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington. (This is a cv-item he shares with another important warrior against cash, Ken Rogoff.) He is a member of the Group of Thirty, a rather shady organization, where high ranking representatives of the world major commercial financial institutions share their thoughts and plans with the presidents of the most important central banks, behind closed doors and with no minutes taken. It becomes increasingly clear that the Group of Thirty is one of the major coordination centers of the worldwide war on cash. Its membership includes other key warriers like Rogoff, Larry Summers and others.
Raghuram Rajan has ample reason to expect to climb further to the highest rungs in international finance and thus had good reason to play Washington’s game well. He already was a President of the American Finance Association and inaugural recipient of its Fisher-Black-Prize in financial research. He won the handsomely endowed prizes of Infosys for economic research and of Deutsche Bank for financial economics as well as the Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Prize for best economics book. He was declared Indian of the year by NASSCOM and Central Banker of the year by Euromoney and by The Banker. He is considered a possible successor of Christine Lagard at the helm of the IMF, but can certainly also expect to be considered for other top jobs in international finance.
As a Central Bank Governor, Rajan was liked and well respected by the financial sector, but very much disliked by company people from the real (producing) sector, despite his penchant for deregulation and economic reform. The main reason was the restrictive monetary policy he introduced and staunchly defended. After he was viciously criticized from the ranks of the governing party, he declared in June that he would not seek a second term in September. Later he told the New York Times that he had wanted to stay on, but not for a whole term, and that premier Modi would not have that. A former commerce and law Minister, Mr. Swamy, said on the occasion of Rajan’s departure that it would make Indian industrialists happy:
“I certainly wanted him out, and I made it clear to the prime minister, as clear as possible. (…) His audience was essentially Western, and his audience in India was transplanted westernized society. People used to come in delegations to my house to urge me to do something about it.”
A disaster that had to happen
If Rajan was involved in the preparation of this assault to declare most of Indians’ banknotes illegal – and there should be little doubt about that, given his personal and institutional links and the importance of Reserve Bank of India in the provision of cash – he had ample reason to stay in the background. After all, it cannot have surprised anyone closely involved in the matter, that this would result in chaos and extreme hardship, especially for the majority of poor and rural Indians, who were flagged as the supposed beneficiaries of the badly misnamed "financial-inclusion”-drive. USAID and partners had analysed the situation extensively and found in the Beyond-Cash-report that 97% of transactions were done in cash and that only 55% of Indians had a bank account. They also found that even of these bank accounts, "only 29% have been used in the last three months“.
All this was well known and made it a certainty that suddenly abolishing most cash would cause severe and even existential problems to many small traders and producers and to many people in remote regions without banks. When it did, it became obvious, how false the promise of financial inclusion by digitalization of payments and pushing back cash has always been. There simply is no other means of payment that can compete with cash in allowing everybody with such low hurdles to participate in the market economy.
However, for Visa, Mastercard and the other payment service providers, who were not affected by these existential problems of the huddled masses, the assault on cash will most likely turn out a big success, “scaling up” digital payments in the “trial region”. After this chaos and with all the losses that they had to suffer, all business people who can afford it, are likely to make sure they can accept digital payments in the future. And consumers, who are restricted in the amount of cash they can get from banks now, will use opportunities to pay with cards, much to the benefit of Visa, Mastercard and the other members of the extended Better Than Cash Alliance.
Why Washington is waging a global war on cash
The business interests of the US-companies that dominate the gobal IT business and payment systems are an important reason for the zeal of the US-government in its push to reduce cash use worldwide, but it is not the only one and might not be the most important one. Another motive is surveillance power that goes with increased use of digital payment. US-intelligence organizations and IT-companies together can survey all international payments done through banks and can monitor most of the general stream of digital data. Financial data tends to be the most important and valuable.
Even more importantly, the status of the dollar as the worlds currency of reference and the dominance of US companies in international finance provide the US government with tremendous power over all participants in the formal non-cash financial system. It can make everybody conform to American law rather than to their local or international rules. German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has recently run a chilling story describing how that works (German). Employees of a German factoring firm doing completely legal business with Iran were put on a US terror list, which meant that they were shut off most of the financial system and even some logistics companies would not transport their furniture any more. A major German bank was forced to fire several employees upon US request, who had not done anything improper or unlawful.
There are many more such examples. Every internationally active bank can be blackmailed by the US government into following their orders, since revoking their license to do business in the US or in dollar basically amounts to shutting them down. Just think about Deutsche Bank, which had to negotiate with the US treasury for months whether they would have to pay a fine of 14 billion dollars and most likely go broke, or get away with seven billion and survive. If you have the power to bankrupt the largest banks even of large countries, you have power over their governments, too. This power through dominance over the financial system and the associated data is already there. The less cash there is in use, the more extensive and secure it is, as the use of cash is a major avenue for evading this power.
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About this blog: This is the English-language section of a weblog, which is mostly in German. If I deem a subject particularly important for an international audience, I either write in English outright, or provide an English translation. There is an E-mail-newsletter that will inform you only of new English language entries. If you would like to subscribe, just click on "keep me informed" on the left. You can unsubscribe easily any time.
About the author: Dr. Norbert Haering is a German business journalist and blogger. His best-selling book on “Abolishing cash and the consequences” was published in 2016 by Bastei-Luebbe (in German). More ...
German version of this article.
Follow up article: More evidence of early US involvement in Indian demonetisation
http://norberthaering.de/en/home/27-ger ... eiterlesen
by Freitag » Fri Feb 10, 2017 3:51 pm
Europe Accelerates Move To Begin Elimination Of Paper Money
In the shadow of Donald Trump’s spree of controversial actions, the European commission has quietly launched the next offensive in the war on cash. These unelected bureaucrats have boldly asserted their intention to crack down on paper transactions across the E.U. and solidify a trend that has been gaining momentum for years.
The financial uncertainty amplified by Brexit has incentivized governments throughout Europe to seize further control over their banking systems. France and Spain have already criminalized cash transactions above a certain limit, but now the commission has unilaterally established new regulations that will affect the entire union. The fear of physical money flowing out of the trade bloc has manifested a draconian response from the State.
The European Action Plan doesn’t mention a specific dollar amount for restrictions, but as expected, their reasoning for the move is to thwart money laundering and the financing of terrorism. Border checks between countries have already been bolstered to help implement these new standards on hard assets. Although these end goals are plausible, there are other clear motivations for governments to target paper money that aren’t as noble.
Negative interest rates and high inflation are a deadly combination that could further destabilize the already fragile union in the future. With less physical currency circulating, these trends ensure that the impact of any additional central bank policies will be maximized. If economic conditions deteriorate, the threat of citizens pulling cash out of their accounts and starting a bank run is eliminated in a cashless system. So long as the people’s wealth is under centralized control, funds can be shifted at will to conceal any underlying problems. But the longer this shell game is allowed to persist, the more painful it will be when reality overrides the manipulation.
Since former Chief Economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kenneth Rogoff, published a paper last year advocating for the U.S. $100 bill to be removed, governments around the world have pushed forward their agendas towards a cashless society. He wrote:
“There is little debate among law-enforcement agencies that paper currency, especially large notes such as the U.S. $100 bill, facilitates crime: racketeering, extortion, money laundering, drug and human trafficking, the corruption of public officials, not to mention terrorism. There are substitutes for cash—cryptocurrencies, uncut diamonds, gold coins, prepaid cards—but for many kinds of criminal transactions, cash is still king. It delivers absolute anonymity, portability, liquidity and near-universal acceptance.”
This announcement comes just months after the 500 euro note was discontinued, and it follows India’s lead in subverting the financial independence of their citizens. The incremental steps currently being taken may look trivial in isolation, but the ultimate end is to lay the foundation for an entire network for economic repression.
The German people have placed themselves in strong opposition to the action and previously pushed back hard against domestic legislation that would have limited cash. Nearly 80% of all transactions in Germany are made with paper currency, putting Europe’s economic engine in direct conflict with the vision coming out of Brussels.
The spillover effect has affected new forms of investment, like Bitcoin, which witnessed an astronomical rise over the last months and has been brought back into the discussion as a viable alternative to fiat currencies. Of course, the E.U. Commission is also attempting to impose similar limitations on crypto-currencies to make sure no transactions fall outside of their domain. The ECB and BOJ are working towards a trojan horse blockchain network that will serve only to entrap those naive enough to trust it.
Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote last year that the E.U. would likely be the trailblazer of the West towards this new digital model:
“But a moratorium on printing new high denomination notes would make the world a better place. In terms of unilateral steps, the most important actor by far is the European Union. The €500 is almost six times as valuable as the $100. Some actors in Europe, notably the European Commission, have shown sympathy for the idea and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi has shown interest as well.”
Since the public’s attention has been drawn to emotional manipulations and political stunts, the threat the war on cash represents has gone unrecognized. Instead of feeding energy into systems meant to divide and conquer, individuals must educate themselves to secure their own financial futures. By submitting to the hive mind and following the media down whichever rabbit hole they choose, the most important issues of today will go unnoticed. The value of advocating for decentralized and physical alternatives to the banking system may not be easily grasped by the activists of today, but few other things have the potential to erode freedom on such a massive scale.
by identity » Wed Feb 15, 2017 4:20 am
PayPal reaches agreement to buy Vancouver-based TIO Networks in $304-million deal
February 14th, 2017 at 4:05 PM
A Vancouver company that processes payments through a cloud-based system may be bought by PayPal Holdings Ltd.
TSX-listed TIO Networks Corp. handled more than $9 billion in consumer bill payments in its last fiscal year. (All figures in this story are in Canadian currency.)
According to a news release issued by both companies, PayPal has announced a "definitive agreement" to pay $304 million for TIO.
The deal still requires the approval of two-thirds of votes cast at a special meeting of TIO shareholders.
The meeting is expected to take place in April. Shareholders representing 50.4 percent of the company's equity have already granted approval, including company directors and officers, and funds managed by Core Innovation Capital, Napier Park Financial Partners, Edison Partners, Inter-Atlantic Advisors, and Inductive Capital.
"In addition to TIO securityholder approvals, the transaction is also subject to other closing conditions, including the receipt of approvals relating to TIO’s money transmitter licenses, the expiration or early termination of the applicable pre-merger waiting period under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976, and court approval in British Columbia, Canada," the news release states. The purchase prise is slightly more than 25 percent above TIO's average value over 90 trading days.
“By acquiring TIO and integrating bill payment into our global payments platform, PayPal adds another key service in our efforts to become a part of a consumer’s everyday financial life," PayPal president and CEO Dan Schulman said in a news release. He added that two billion people around the world don't have "affordable access to basic financial services". "TIO’s digital platform, and physical network of agent locations make paying bills simpler, faster, and more affordable," he stated. "We are excited by the opportunity to extend this valuable service to our existing customers and welcome new billers and customers to PayPal."
The chairman and CEO of TIO, Hamed Shahbazi, said that his company's mission "fits perfectly with PayPal's vision to democratize money".
by divideandconquer » Wed Feb 15, 2017 11:59 am
Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has never been better
This article is part of the Annual Meeting of the Global Future Councils
For more information watch the What If: Privacy Becomes a Luxury Good? session from the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting 2017.
Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city - or should I say, "our city". I don't own anything. I don't own a car. I don't own a house. I don't own any appliances or any clothes.
It might seem odd to you, but it makes perfect sense for us in this city. Everything you considered a product, has now become a service. We have access to transportation, accommodation, food and all the things we need in our daily lives. One by one all these things became free, so it ended up not making sense for us to own much.
First communication became digitized and free to everyone. Then, when clean energy became free, things started to move quickly. Transportation dropped dramatically in price. It made no sense for us to own cars anymore, because we could call a driverless vehicle or a flying car for longer journeys within minutes. We started transporting ourselves in a much more organized and coordinated way when public transport became easier, quicker and more convenient than the car. Now I can hardly believe that we accepted congestion and traffic jams, not to mention the air pollution from combustion engines. What were we thinking?
Sometimes I use my bike when I go to see some of my friends. I enjoy the exercise and the ride. It kind of gets the soul to come along on the journey. Funny how some things seem never seem to lose their excitement: walking, biking, cooking, drawing and growing plants. It makes perfect sense and reminds us of how our culture emerged out of a close relationship with nature.
"Environmental problems seem far away"
In our city we don't pay any rent, because someone else is using our free space whenever we do not need it. My living room is used for business meetings when I am not there.
Once in awhile, I will choose to cook for myself. It is easy - the necessary kitchen equipment is delivered at my door within minutes. Since transport became free, we stopped having all those things stuffed into our home. Why keep a pasta-maker and a crepe cooker crammed into our cupboards? We can just order them when we need them.
This also made the breakthrough of the circular economy easier. When products are turned into services, no one has an interest in things with a short life span. Everything is designed for durability, repairability and recyclability. The materials are flowing more quickly in our economy and can be transformed to new products pretty easily. Environmental problems seem far away, since we only use clean energy and clean production methods. The air is clean, the water is clean and nobody would dare to touch the protected areas of nature because they constitute such value to our well being. In the cities we have plenty of green space and plants and trees all over. I still do not understand why in the past we filled all free spots in the city with concrete.
The death of shopping
Shopping? I can't really remember what that is. For most of us, it has been turned into choosing things to use. Sometimes I find this fun, and sometimes I just want the algorithm to do it for me. It knows my taste better than I do by now.
When AI and robots took over so much of our work, we suddenly had time to eat well, sleep well and spend time with other people. The concept of rush hour makes no sense anymore, since the work that we do can be done at any time. I don't really know if I would call it work anymore. It is more like thinking-time, creation-time and development-time.
For a while, everything was turned into entertainment and people did not want to bother themselves with difficult issues. It was only at the last minute that we found out how to use all these new technologies for better purposes than just killing time.
"They live different kinds of lives outside of the city"
My biggest concern is all the people who do not live in our city. Those we lost on the way. Those who decided that it became too much, all this technology. Those who felt obsolete and useless when robots and AI took over big parts of our jobs. Those who got upset with the political system and turned against it. They live different kind of lives outside of the city. Some have formed little self-supplying communities. Others just stayed in the empty and abandoned houses in small 19th century villages.
Once in awhile I get annoyed about the fact that I have no real privacy. No where I can go and not be registered. I know that, somewhere, everything I do, think and dream of is recorded. I just hope that nobody will use it against me.
All in all, it is a good life. Much better than the path we were on, where it became so clear that we could not continue with the same model of growth. We had all these terrible things happening: lifestyle diseases, climate change, the refugee crisis, environmental degradation, completely congested cities, water pollution, air pollution, social unrest and unemployment. We lost way too many people before we realised that we could do things differently.
by Freitag » Sun Aug 06, 2017 2:12 am
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