“Australia’s Liberal Party government says it’s ‘encouraging the transition to a digital society,’ and cracking down on tax evasion.”
Read more: https://gizmodo.com/australia-bans-cash-for-all-purchases-over-7-500-start-1825946888
“As long as I’m carrying my Black Opal, there’s that little shred of liberty. If this the hill I die on, at least you’ll never know how I got here.”
“New South Wales’ authorities deactivated the card under Meow-Meow’s name after his surgery in April 2017 made headlines. However, since the chip implanted in his hand wasn’t registered to him, he was able to use it for almost a whole year — only downside was that he sometimes had to swipe his palm over the scanner more than once. It was only after he traveled back to Australia from a cyborg convention in the US that authorities were successfully able to cut off the card he’s been using.”
Read more: https://www.engadget.com/2018/02/15/implanted-transit-pass-deactivated-australia/
“It took just a minute or two to launch the drone, fly it to the rescue site, and drop the pod. Any other day, reaching the teenagers could easily have taken three times as long. The drone’s camera also recorded the whole rescue.”
Read more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-42731112
“The Australian government on Wednesday launched an urgent investigation into the loss of thousands of classified documents that were sold with two second-hand filing cabinets and later obtained by a major news outlet. The cabinets were sold by a Canberra furniture shop at a discount price because they were locked and no one could find keys, the Australian Broadcasting Corp. reported.”
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/secret-documents-found-locked-cabinets-sold-australia-n843201
“Australia’s biggest gold refiner, the Perth Mint, is developing its own cryptocurrency backed by physical precious metals. The ambitious plan, which is subject to a confidentiality agreement, will make it easier for consumers to buy gold.”
“The city council felled an entire stretch of this Urban Food Street, even preventing residents from collecting the fruit before the destruction.”
Read more: http://www.thedailybell.com/news-analysis/7-years-of-work-on-food-forest-destroyed-over-permit/
The Venezuelan government, amid looting, protests, shootings, and extremely long lines at banks, decided that its ban on the most circulated 100-bolivar note was ill-advised at this time.
The Indian government caused its own outbreak of chaos and deaths by banning 500- and 1000-rupee bank notes, worth about $7 and $14 respectively. Amid the ensuing long lines and protests, in at least 6 cases bank employees were arrested aiding their customers in the conversion of banned notes. Indians have been employing a number of workarounds to get their cash converted to the new notes, but others have been simply buying gold from vendors. The government’s response is to now push for the income-tax office’s raids on families to target not only cash holdings, but gold as well.
An article in The Economist enumerates the failures of the India demonetization initiative:
The cash ban has also caused a diplomatic row, as a flight to the safety of US dollar notes and the ensuing shortage of dollars has left Pakistan unable to pay its diplomatic staff in India.
Turning a blind eye to the chaos in other countries that are banning their own citizens’ cash, the head of the Australian tax office suggested banning the Australian $100 note in an explicitly stated attempt to raise tax revenue. Earlier in the year, a surprise $34 billion increase in the Australian budget deficit over four years had been acknowledged.
Developed-world governments are joining their developing-world counterparts in governing by surprise and openly placing their citizens’ wealth at risk through anti-cash messaging and actions.
The stated reasons usually range from fighting the drug black market (created by global drug prohibition) to fighting terrorists (often created, funded, and armed by developed-world governments) to fighting tax avoidance, which could be fought more effectively by lowering tax rates and eliminating burdensome paperwork and reporting requirements.
However, regardless of the stated reasons, the underlying motivation is to move cash-based activity into banks. This benefits the global ruling class in several ways.
After all, depositors at a bank are no longer the bank’s true customers, thanks to privileged credit facilities at the central bank, state-sponsored deposit and loan guarantees, and myriad banking regulations erecting barriers to entry and thereby fostering consolidation of bank ownership. Banks can survive without customers’ deposits, thanks to state backing, but they cannot survive without regulatory compliance. In the cashless society, the banks will have an army of new unwilling customers from whom to extract fees, without being subject to the otherwise countervailing market force of consumer choice.
And the state wins, because all depositors’ economic activity is transparent to it through its control over the banks, making tax collection more thorough and dragnet surveillance more comprehensive. The state can also, through its control over the banks, order accounts frozen at will. This could prevent, for example, a defendant in a government action from retaining a specialist lawyer that could mount an effective defense, which wouldn’t be a problem if he had cash.
Other than control, the state can directly profit from cash bans: notes that are not turned in can be cancelled and converted into a ‘fiscal stimulus’ windfall for the state, a strategy openly floated during India’s cash ban.
Workers and savers lose; who else loses? As a Telegraph article describes, a cashless society would be a nightmare for the homeless, who generally do not possess the proper paperwork to satisfy the state’s requirements to open a bank account. Suddenly the class warfare inherent in cash bans comes into focus, and not in a way that was expected.
As The Economist states:
India is not the first country to introduce abrupt, drastic reform of its currency. But the precedents—including Burma in 1987, the former Soviet Union in 1991 and North Korea in 2009—are not encouraging. Burma erupted in revolt, the Soviet Union disintegrated and North Koreans went hungry.
Governments that now seek to ban cash in partnership with banks should consider whether they wish to be in the company of the above countries, whether in their motivation or in the outcome.
“Currencies of nations linked to commodity exports tumbled as crude oil reached almost its lowest level since February 2009, one day after the Federal Reserve’s decision to boost interest rates. The Canadian dollar has tumbled 17 percent this year amid a rout in oil, Canada’s second-largest export, reaching an 11-year low. The dollars of Australia and New Zealand tumbled more than one percent Thursday as a measure of raw materials prices fell to a 1999 low. Exporting nations have been hurt as commodity prices have fallen 27 percent this year, the most since 2008, as a glut in supply meets slowing demand for raw materials amid patchy global economic growth.”
“Police have raided the home of an Australian entrepreneur just hours after two US publications, Wired and Gizmodo, ousted him as the brain behind cryptocurrency Bitcoin. The Sydney home of Craig Wright was raided yesterday (9 December) following investigations in Wired and Gizmodo which stated that they believed Wright was the behind the Satoshi Nakamoto pseudonym – the creator of the digital currency. The investigations were based on leaked transcripts of legal interviews and files however reports say that people close to Wright have expressed serious doubts and believe the publications could even be the butt of an elaborate hoax.”
http://www.thedrum.com/news/2015/12/10/two-us-publications-lead-arrest-suspected-bitcoin-creator
