MESSAGE
| DATE | 2016-11-17 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout-NYLXS] vanishing independence
|
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/war-cash-nuclear-citibank/
War On Cash Goes into Full Effect — Citibank Stops Accepting Cash at
Multiple Branches
Jack Burns November 17, 2016 11 Comments
cash
In 2015, as a guest on Ron Paul’s Liberty Report, Economics Professor
Joseph Salerno warned of a coming war on cash. Apparently, now, that
time has come. Governments loathe cash transactions because they’re
private and hard to tax. As a result, some countries are taking drastic
measures to reclaim their bank notes.
Salerno said, “The French premier last year (2014) drew a parallel
between the war on terror and the war on cash,” and warned the world’s
economic elite are now “using the war on terror as a cover to get at
cash.” The Mises Institute professor and VP predicted to Paul, “I think
this could come in the next couple of years. If they have to bail out
the financial system again…they’ll block the cash in the banks to
prevent it from escaping and destabilizing these fractional reserve
banks,” Salerno said.
At the time of the interview, 2015, Salerno said the war on cash has
already begun in the U.S. and pointed to Citibank’s new policy which
disallows patrons to use cash to pay their mortgages and credit cards
with cash. He also pointed to Louisiana’s new law forcing “second hand
dealers defined as Goodwill Stores, Flea Markets, Garage Sales, to
report any cash transactions in which they were receiving or paying
cash, and they had to report them on a daily basis to the local police
authorities.” He said, “they (secondhand stores) had to get the sellers’
names and license plate number and a number of other of private details.”
“This is only a first step,” even though it was only on a state level.
“It would be awful if it was on a federal level,” Salerno declared.
While it hasn’t happened yet on a federal level in the United States,
cash reclamation is occurring today in India. But before we get to
what’s taking place in India, we must first examine the reasons
frequently given by government to resort to controlling the public’s
access to cash. Salerno stated the government offers phony reasons why
it must control cash. It’s to prohibit terrorists, tax evaders, money
launderers, and profiteering by drug cartels. If one hears the
government making such claims, get ready, a cash grab is about to happen.
Salerno pointed to Greece’s implementing a “cash point charge” for
withdrawing Euros from their bank accounts, allowing government to
charge citizens for withdrawing their own funds. He says mainstream
economists have been promoting the war on cash for some time in order to
prop up fledgling banks.
“I assure you other governments are watching this experiment (in
Greece),” he said. Salerno also stated the real war on cash seeks to
“force the public to make payments to the financial system” in order to
“enable governments to expand their ability to spy on and keep track of
their citizens’ most private financial dealings in order to milk their
citizens out of every last dollar of tax payments that they claim are
due.” He stated another reason to destabilize cash is to “prop up the
unstable fractional reserve banking system which is in a state of
collapse all over the world.”
Keep in mind, Salerno made his comments a year ago.
Fast forward to 2016, and the world is now witnessing the first major
bank to announce it will no longer accept cash deposits or deal in cash.
Citibank Australia’s head of retail bank Janine Copelin offered an
explanation saying, “We have seen a steady decline in the demand for
cash services in our branches — in fact, less than 4% of Citi customers
have used this service in the last 12 months.” The company stated it
will no longer handle currency as a result.
“This move to cashless branches reflects Citi’s commitment to digital
banking and we are investing in the channels our customers prefer to
use…While the number of customers visiting our branches to access cash
handling services has fallen, the branch network remains an important
component of how we serve our high-net-worth customers,” said Copelin.
Maybe no one’s eyebrows are raising after Citibank made its declaration
because some advanced societies have quite naturally moved away from
hard cash transactions, preferring the ease of pay by phone, debit
cards, or credit card purchases. After all, someone in the United States
could very easily live without cash. Many do already.
According to the Guardian, Sweden leads the world when it comes to not
using cash. “Cards are now the main form of payment: according to Visa,
Swedes use them more than three times as often as the average European,
making an average of 207 payments per card in 2015.” But in some parts
of the world, cash is still king.
Just this week, India made a major move to control its citizens’ access
to their cash by banning the 500 and 1000 rupee notes. According to the
LA Times, “An exasperating cash crunch has gripped India in the week
since Prime Minister Narendra Modi took the unprecedented step of
withdrawing the country’s large currency notes from circulation. Modi
surprised the nation by announcing an instant ban on the 500-rupee and
1,000-rupee notes, worth about $7.50 and $15, respectively, and which
account for 86% of the cash in the market.”
And just as Salerno predicted governments would do, the Indian
government claimed the move was meant to serve as a ”sweeping move
against corruption that would force Indians who hold large amounts of
undeclared wealth to deposit the money at banks and make their assets
official.” In other words, just as Salerno declared, rich Indians, whose
private business dealings were done in cash, will now be forced to
deposit their banned bank notes — or risk losing all of their wealth.
The value of the currency, if deposited, will then be able to be tracked
by the Indian government, a move Salerno stated would lead to higher
taxes on its wealthy citizens, and greater returns for the banking
system. And the Indian government has already admitted that’s precisely
what they’re trying to do.
Also, as Paul and Salerno predicted, the move has had devastating
effects on the poor, many of whom have now reverted to bartering for
their needs, according to the Times. The financial decision “stunned
hundreds of millions of poor and working-class Indians who live an
almost entirely cash-based existence, paying in bills for everything
from rent to groceries to cellphone credit.” And they never saw it coming.
“The plan was shrouded in such secrecy that even India’s financial
institutions were ill prepared, creating long, sometimes unruly lines
outside banks, ATMs and chronically understaffed post offices that are
authorized to exchange the now-worthless notes and dispense new ones,”
writes the Times.
Exacerbating the financial crisis is the fact the government issued a
smaller-sized currency which no longer works with current ATMs, forcing
many customers not to be able to make any purchases at all, and thereby
creating a loss of revenue for businesses hit hard by fewer customers,
and chaos for everyone else. The best way to describe the upheaval in
India is by imagining all Americans attempting to pay all of their
purchases with one dollar bills.
In India, according to the Times, two-thirds of all transactions are
done in cash, an economy the government has labeled “black money.”
Modi’s administration aims to tax that money.
“Much of the wealth that India has accumulated since economic
reforms began in the 1990s has never been taxed or accounted for, parked
instead in real estate, gold, foreign investments and, in some cases,
bundles of cash sitting at home. It is those stacks of bills that Modi,
who took office 2½ years ago on promises to curb corruption, aimed to
bring into the open. Supporters of the prime minister’s plan said those
holding cash stockpiles would have to deposit them at banks, where huge
amounts would draw the scrutiny of tax authorities, or allow their value
to evaporate.”
Sounding, as some would say, like Donald Trump, Modi said over the
weekend, “I promise you I will give you the India of your dreams.” But
right now, India is living a nightmare.
India’s decision to reclaim its currency has some questioning whether
the United States would attempt to follow suit and reclaim its own currency.
For free thinkers everywhere, it may be time to take those 100 dollar
bills and swap them out for one dollar denominations, or even begin to
purchase gold and silver as many preppers have done already. If the
proverbial shit hits the fan, taking notice of what’s happening in the
world may prove to be a wise decision. With Australia’s Citibank
declaration it will no longer deal in cash, with Sweden’s cashless
society as a model of the future, and with India’s reclamation of bank
notes, it’s anyone’s guess what the American economic crisis may look
like. But it probably won’t involve cash.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
http://www.coinhangout.com - coins!
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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