After power over food, crops and farmers through genetic engineering, MNCs and banks are conspiring to enslave people through access-denial to their own money. All they want is to control Governments through falsehoods
Terrorists are no longer public enemy number one nor are they 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 1,000 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 former broker “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 cashless. On June 9, 2015, Google chairman, top global bankers and G-7 leaders met in Austria to hasten it.
Why is this war on cashIJ Cash serves as a means of exchange in which relevant rent seekers (banks, credit card companies, 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. Apart, it helps the intermediaries — banks — earn trillions as charges for “facilitating” transactions, which could have been done for free in cash deals.
In the West, non-cash are seen as a move of the multi national corporations (MNC) 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 Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents raided a convenience store and took $1,07,702 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. laws have already been used extensively to seize cash from the US nationals. Any seizure, done on suspicion, is known as “policing for profit”, which is fully endorsed by the US Government.
Trusting the banks or Visa-type organsiations 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. Post-November 8 income tax raids yielded over Rs3,100 crore. If assessees 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 has flaws. From initial estimates of Rs67,000 crore declared, within a few days, it came down to Rs55,000 crore.
At least Rs12,000 crore declarations were found to be fake — rivals allegedly filed each other’s false statements. The Government got mere Rs3,000 crore tax from these against expected Rs30,000 crore.
The income tax department got wide publicity for raid raj. But if their figures are taken into account (Rs55,000 plus Rs3,100 crore) and it is even trebled, black money would not be more than Rs1.74 lakh crore almost equal to the income tax, the Government receives. The operation demonetisation cost the nation not less than Rs30,000 crore in junking Rs500 and Rs1,000 notes, and printing new currency. Apart, there are losses of over five lakh jobs, millions of man-hours, industrial production, closures and troubles at banks.
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 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 will probably look 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 Rs1,000. She has been joined by some other bank CEOs. Are they cartelisingIJ
This is dangerous not only for the citizens but for the Government too. Freedom is at stake. During recession, banks could use the banking system to deliberately corrode people’s deposits via negative charges, inspiring them to spend rather than save — strength of 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 them still often rely upon the informal flexibility of cash for everyday transactions. The World Bank does not say cash is criminal. So why give it upIJ
Banks and card operators like Visa are no friend of any Government. They want to control the 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, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank UBS and Credit Suisse. The RBI also the same day imposes fines on five foreign banks for violating FEMA.
After power over food, crops and farmers through genetic engineering, MNCs and large banks are conspiring to enslave people through the cashless.
(The writer is a senior journalist)