Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Rupee Madness


While most reporters are obsessed with Trumps latest Tweets, there are monumental things taking place elsewhere in the world. India, with the world's second largest population, has just embarked on a radical "demonetization" effort pulling 86% of its cash out of circulation. To quote from the below  CNBC article:
Three weeks ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi surprised his country with an announcement banning 500- and 1,000-rupee notes — worth about $7 and $15 respectively — in a bid to tackle corruption and terrorism.
Clearly this has roiled the daily lives of the 1.3 billion people there to a fair-thee-well ... and might spill over to other world economies. The poor planning of this dramatic monetary move has caused untold hardship on particularly the poorest of Indian citizens. To see the details of their anguish ... see: CNBC Story.

3 comments:

ChillFin said...

There is a movement underway to stop the US$100 bill for similar reasons. See http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-larry-summers-wants-to-take-away-the-100-bill-2016-02-16 or Google "stop one hundred dollar bills".

George W. Potts said...

Could be ... but there are a few major differences ... 1) US is a credit economy while India is a cash one, and 2) the US recently updated the $100 bill with many more security measures which created difficulties for the underworld when trying to convert their old hoards. Clearly not 86% of our legitimate economy is not based on $100 bills and, although a larger % of the underground economy is, it may just take 2 times the space if it shifts to fifties.

Did you see that Bank of America no longer accepts cash at its branches?

George W. Potts said...

Besides how could we easily pay huge cash ransoms to Iran in the future?