"The business interests of the US-companies that dominate the global IT business and payment systems are an important reason for the zeal of the US-government in its push to reduce cash use worldwide, but it is not the only one and might not be the most important one.
Another motive is surveillance power that goes with increased use of digital payment. US-intelligence organizations and IT-companies together can survey all international payments done through banks and can monitor most of the general stream of digital data. Financial data tends to be the most important and valuable.
Even more importantly, the status of the dollar as the worlds currency of reference and the dominance of US companies in international finance provide the US government with tremendous power over all participants in the formal non-cash financial system. It can make everybody conform to American law rather than to their local or international rules."
Norbert Haering, A Well Kept Open Secret
"...and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
Tacitus
I hear that the speculation which I had about the US government's involvement in India's heavy handed program of cash suppression may in fact be true.
Thanks to Harald Malmgren et al. for passing along this blog which was originally published in German.
I certainly concur with the various motives ascribed to the India crash cash suppression campaign. The rentiers want everyone hooked on their digital dollars: one ring to rule them all. And to them, the public at large is just collateral damage, and their national interests are at best irrelevant, and most likely a genuine impediment to the broader 'globalisation' of the system ruled by the Anglo-American Banks.
But with regards to the big rush and the timing of this, I suspect that the Anglo-Americans are desperate to staunch the flows of physical gold and silver into Asia. Crushing the cash economy and driving the people of India into a digitalized banking system might have done the trick, in some alternate universe. If this is all true, talk about crazy desperate ideas from the bowels of the credibility trap.
Stocks were lackluster, with tech stocks once again playing their role as financial crisis bubble-born revenant.
Gold is struggling to take back the ground that it gave up into the year end, while silver continues pushing higher, trying to regain the 17 handle.
Let's see if the metals can break out.
As for stocks, it might not be bad to keep 'buy the election and sell the inauguration' in mind.
The Dems wish to de-legitimize the Trump presidency, and would like to set him up for a fall, and a possible impeachment. In that sense, they are certainly no better than the GOP, which would have followed a similar strategy it seems. Both parties are more like rival crime families than public servants.
Thanks to William Banzai (I am not worthy) and Zerohedge for reminding us all of one of Stanley Kubrick's classics, probably worth watching again as the ghosts of unscrupulous politicians past slither once again in new forms along the halls of power.
On the good news bad news front, President Obama will be giving his 'farewell address' tonight in Chicago. The bad news is that hope and change has left the building, and the worse news is that it actually happened sometime around 2008, when Mr. Obama sold out the American people to the Banks.
I would not exactly call myself 'hopeful' about the next four years. But they could be very good for things like gold and silver. If the world can escape from the neo-cons' dreams for a New American Century, and the proposed tyranny of the United States Dollar. Six to the six to the six-wise. lol.
Have a pleasant evening.
