The International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington has published a Working Paper on “de-cashing”. It gives advice to governments who want to abolish cash against the will of their citizenry. Move slowly, starting with seemingly harmless measures, is part of that advice.
The war on cash that is currently being waged in India and other developing countries is the culmination of a “financial inclusion”-campaign originating in the US in the 1990s. The purported goal and the US institutions pushing the agenda are the same as in two earlier financial-inclusion-drives, which have been thoroughly discredited: the subprime mortgage banking […]
Microsoft’s Bill Gates is one of the richest and most influential people on earth. He announced in 2015 that his Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was aiming at achieving full digitalization of the payment systems of India and other populous developing countries by 2018. This “financial inclusion” program for India dates back to well before Narendra Modi came […]
The European Ombudswoman has announced that she will investigate the membership of the President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Mario Draghi, in the Group of Thirty. this is a shadowy forum of the most senior executives from large commercial banks and the most important central banks.The Group of Thirty meets behind closed doors without […]
When Prime minister Narendra Modi took the bulk of Indian cash out of circulation, he caused great hardship for many Indians, while a disruption-loving tech elite and political establishment asked for optimism and patience. In an earlier piece I have provided some indications for US involvement in that scheme. In this piece, I am adding some more, […]
By John Komlos.* The media is inundated with pundits analyzing the unexpected rise of demagoguery. I would like to add my own: the establishment’s utter loss of credibility. It has been fooling most of the people for more than a generation and Abraham Lincoln’s warning, “you cannot fool all of the people all of the […]
At a symposium of the GUE/NGL group in the European Parliament on “The ECB – Europe’s unelected government”, I gave a presentation on the nature and motives of central banks in general and the European Central Bank in particular, characterizing it as an integral part of the banking community. Harald Schumann presented a lot of […]