I think it's brilliant.<p>Re-register your money <i>NOW</i> (or within 50 days) or it's worthless.<p>It's probably one of the most ballsy brilliant plans in any modern economy pulled off.<p>The short turnover term makes sure that you can't really transform that money into gold or bitcoin or whatever, because who the hell is going to take the fall
Good things happening to India.<p>They just pushed a reset switch on the parallel economy. But its not something that won't grow up again. This step was necessary. After this, they will have to bring down taxes for effectively preventing a parallel economy. And sometime in the future, something like a max-100Rs note will push users to use digital payments everywhere.<p>I think this is a safe experiment towards removing high-value currency notes. Won't be surprised if 2000 notes are recalled after some time and those might have been introduced just for convenience.<p>Its also a veiled attack on political parties, including his own (and they can't even complain)
Even government establishments in India like bus/train transport love cash. They do NOT accept any other form of payment (including credit card) when you're booking a ticket over the counter. So many people who were traveling were caught by surprise when they were told that the money that they have cannot be accepted.<p>This move is going to hurt the labor class the most. A significant percentage of those don't have bank accounts, and I'm not sure how convenient would it be for them to exchange the <i>illegal</i> currency.<p>A majority of the those having tons of black money already stash it in safe havens abroad. A lot <i>invest</i> it in real estate.<p>The suggested reason for the move is not at all convincing and the method isn't well-thought out either.
I do business in India and travel there every month. The people I deal with are uniformly panning this as an anti-people move, specially for the hundreds of millions (yes, there are that many) unbanked citizens. Most people use cash for daily transactions. Banks and ATMs are closed today, and possibly tomorrow. This move was managed disastrously according to every single Indian I spoke with today.
I'm a bit worried about the small-time merchants and dealers.
They don't have enough money to pay the worker force or buy new stock of goods. I have a lot of friends who do manual labor in construction field, they usually receive a 500 rupee note at the end of the day, most of their bosses have ran out of 'cash in hand', they have bank balance, but they cannot withdraw it.
Lets hope that won't deeply effect the economy...... "You Should (Almost) Never Rewrite Your Software"
The Euro zone is also thinking about abolishing the 500 Euro bills to make dealing with "black money" a bit harder.<p>I just don't really see that it would have such big impact. Sure, 500 E in 100 euro bills takes up 5 times more space (thickness is the same), which makes it harder to transport and easier to find. But still.<p>Just for the sake of curiosity, the height of 1 Million Euros:<p>100 Euro notes = 1 meter<p>500 Euro notes = 20 cm<p>(Dimensions are 147 * 82 * 1 vs 160 * 82 * 1 mm, so not that much difference)<p>I'm just not sure if that would actually have a meaningful impact.
It has been fairly problematic. Cash withdrawals are extremely limited (and will continue to be for a few weeks), making paying people who don't have bank accounts difficult.<p>There have been quite a few exceptions that have come in a little late, such as making all tolls free (toll gates started refusing to give change) and allowing the usage of the old bills on public transportation, at hospitals, at fuel stations, etc.
All it did is fuck up the ordinary people's life. Don't you think those that has serious amount of money, keeps dollars, euro and gold ?? Hello Also this was very much like a dictatorship like move!!
Black money aside, there's going to be a lot of legitimately-held larger bills that will need to be swapped for the smaller ones. Do those 100 Rs bills even physically exist?
It is a smart move to shake up the hoarding of cash and pump it into the economy.<p>The big issue is the implementation. Are they going to be able to fully carry out the plan?
Too much chaos for nothing. New Rs 500 and Rs 2000 will be introduced. Off the book transcations will resume as usual.<p>I find Modi giving terrorism as one of excuses, very disingenuous.