Keynesians Hate Cash and Gold

A Brief Recap

India’s Prime Minister announced on 8th November 2016 that Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 banknotes will no longer be legal tender. Linked are Part-I, Part-II, Part-III, and Part-IV , which provide updates on the rapidly encroaching police state

Expect a continuation of new social engineering notifications, each sabotaging wealth-creation, confiscating people’s wealth, and tyrannizing those who refuse to be a part of the herd, in the process destroying the very backbone of the economy and civilization.

There are clear signs that in a very convoluted way, possession of gold for investment purposes will be made illegal. Expect capital controls to follow.   Chaos from people’s inability to access the money in their bank accounts is now spreading to the people who have so far been unaffected: the middle class.

This is a completely unnecessary man-made disaster, with the single aim of glorifying  Narendra Modi.

Fracturing Institutions

Several petitions in various courts across India were immediately filed against the central bank, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), for repudiating its IOU obligation which the currency bills represent, after Modi’s announcement on 8th November.

Several postponements later, the first hearing at the Supreme Court will likely take place on 5th December 2016, almost a month after the announcement of the ban. That does not mean that the court did not deliberate over “more important issues” affecting this wretched poor country.

It inter alia heard a petition and passed a judgment that makes playing the national anthem compulsory at cinema halls before the start of every movie, to promote nationalism. It also decreed that people have to stand up while the anthem is played. Henceforth one can be charged with sedition for not actively showing proper respect to the flag and the anthem.

Only someone very numb can avoid being horrified by this.

Throngs of desperate people are storming a bank. How can such scenes possibly strike anyone as symptomatic of “good economic policy”? [PT]

But now, with the month of November having ended, salaried people are starting to get hit as well. The money that they thought was safe in the banks is no longer available. It is now their turn to join the queues and return home empty-handed, as the banks have mostly run out of cash.

Gold Bullion Is Now Effectively Illegal

Assaults on people’s private property and the integrity of their homes through tax-raids continue.  In a recent notification, the government has made it clear that any ownership of jewelry above 500 grams of gold per married woman will be put under the microscopic scrutiny of tax authorities.

Steep taxes and penalties will be imposed on those who cannot prove the source of their gold. In India’s Orwellian new-speak this means that because bullion has not been explicitly mentioned, its ownership will be deemed to be illegal. Courts will do what Modi wants. Huge bribes will have to be paid.

Sane people are of course cleaning up their bank lockers. The secondary consequence of this will be a steep increase in unreported crimes, for people will be afraid of going to the police after a theft, fearing that the tax authorities will then ask questions. At the same time, the gold market has mostly gone underground, and apparently the volume of gold buying has gone up.

The salaried middle class is the consumption class, often heavily indebted. Poor people have limited amounts of gold. The government is merely doing what pleases the majority and their sense of envy, to the detriment of small businesses and savers. Now, the middle class is starting to face problems as well. This will worsen once the impact of the destruction of small businesses becomes obvious.

India has always had a negative-yielding economy. It has suddenly become even more negative-yielding. Business risk has gone through the roof. Savers will be victimized. It is because of negative yields that Indian savers buy gold. They will buy more going forward.

Sane Indians should stay a step ahead of their rapacious government and the evolving totalitarian society, which are less and less inhibited by any institutions or values in support of liberty.

Conclusion

India will become a police state, likely with the full support of most Indians. Nationalism will be the thread that weaves them together. But it is a fake thread, devoid of any value. Eventually, there will be far too many stresses in the system, whose institutions are already in an advance stage of decay.

India, as it exists today, is a British creation. With the British now gone for 69 years, it is an entity has less and less reason to exist in its current form. The glue of reason that the British have applied is flaking, and it is doing so rapidly under the catalyst by name of Narendra Modi.

Reprinted with permission from Acting Man.

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