Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Balamurali Krishna


He came to provide us a glimpse
Of what it means to go beyond;
Was he cause, or mere instrument,
Giving tongue to his Master's voice?

The singer gives birth to the song,
Every time he sings, a new life;
Into mere words he breathes a soul,
A glimpse of somewhere, something beyond.

A genius is a soul immortal,
Who happens to be passing by,
Giving us a peep into our past,
And the potential the future has.

We are bound in our space and time,
Limited by what we can see;
A genius taps into that fount,
beyond time, space, and causality.

A comet that blazed in glory,
In its passage through the heavens;
He continues on his journey,
We just happened to get a glimpse.



Tuesday, November 22, 2016

The Tata Mistry Brawl


A public brawl is always fun,
Panders to the voyeur in us;
Nothing like watching someone else,
making a perfect ass of themselves!

Two drunks roll on the pavement,
Virile young men use their fists,
Hysterical women pull hair,
Middle aged South Indians glare!

The Sardar pulls out his kirpan,
Mallu hoists lungi in the air,
The Bong maintains a safe distance,
The Gujju growls from inside his lair!

But these executives take the cake,
With their slanderous ways of war;
Each of the charges they now make:
As if things were different before!

They just discovered to their shock,
That the other fellow's a cheat;
Two Emperors without any clothes:
now children, calling each others' bluff!

Everyone likes to watch a strip show,
but aged corporate males are not done;
it not only excites no one, 
but thoroughly shames the clowns!

Corporate governance is a joke,
Truth and fairness is but a myth;
Shareholders' trust resides in the Board,
in whose eyes, they do not exist!

Cosy club of red-carpet dwellers,
with lots of dirt brushed under;
They are all always holier-than-thou,
Patronising us from far above!

Time we threw the pedestals away,
Recognise everyone has feet of clay;
Each of us may be exposed one day:
Can we stand naked without shame?



Friday, November 18, 2016

The nature of money, and why demonetisation is not the answer


We humans are very addicted to fairy tales and stories where the knight in shining armour kills the evil giants and rescues the people of the town. Modi's demonetisation move has evoked gleeful reactions from the general population. They are imagining that the blackmarketeers and the corrupt have hoards of cash in 500 and 1000 rupee notes stored under their beds, which now is not worth the paper it is printed on; and overnight a lesson has been taught to them. Justice! Retribution! The rich (and by extension, the corrupt) have been brought to their knees!

 

All this makes for good politics. But whether it is good economics is debatable.

 

To understand why demonetisaion will not solve the "black" money problem we need to understand the nature of money first. Money is primarily a medium of exchange and secondarily, a store of value. Human beings started with barter, and soon realized that you needed a common currency that has the following characteristics:

·      It is acceptable by everyone

·      It is not too easy to procure (e.g. sand cannot be money)

·      It is not too difficult to procure (e.g. rare earths cannot be money)

·      It needs some effort to procure (e.g. gold needs to be mined, and so do bitcoins) – the guy who makes the money cannot produce it out of thin air (nowadays they do, but more about that later)

·      It should be:

o   A non-life form (e.g. people have used livestock as money but they could die on them),

o   easily transportable (e.g. real estate can't be money),

o   divisible, i.e. one should be able to cut it into smaller pieces

o   exchangeable and transactable (can't be poisonous for example),

o   non-reactive with most other elements and things on earth (e.g. salt was used as money in the Roman army, which by the way is the origin of the word 'salary', but it could just dissolve in water and be lost),

o   hold a lot of value in a small volume,

o   cannot be liquid or gas, for obvious reasons

 

Of all the elements in the periodic table, most get eliminated due to the above reasons. What remains as ideal for money are gold, silver and copper.

 

Kings and governments started minting coins of the realm using these metals. This had a problem. The moment the currency was debased, which invariably happened, people would melt the coins for the value of the metal contained in them.

 

But then using gold as money is also a problem. It is not strictly divisible. So someone, initially the local banker, and later the Central Banks, offered to hold gold, and issue "notes" in their stead which people could easily use as money. The bank issued you a 'promissory note' saying 'I promise to pay the bearer x grams of gold', i.e. you could go back anytime and get gold by surrendering the promissory note. Slowly, an interesting thing happened. The banker realized that while the money was circulating in the economy, it was not possible that all the people would come and demand their money at the same time. So the banker issued more promissory notes than the stocks of gold he had! A scam of the highest proportions, which in modern economic parlance, is called deficit financing.

 

Exchange rates around the world were fixed with respect to the dollar, and the dollar was fixed to a particular exchange rate with gold. This was the gold standard. But every bank in the world, including the US, started printing more currency than the gold they had, and soon it was obvious that this promise could not be sustained.

 

So one fine day the United States unilaterally reneged from its commitment and withdrew its promise to pay gold in exchange for dollars. All the other countries followed. The currency note is essentially a promissory note to give you 'value' in exchange. Gold is one of the few things which have value across the world, and the promise to pay gold was acceptable. Once gold would not be paid in exchange for your currency, the promise becomes an empty one. They sanctified this emptiness by modifying the promise on the note. If you take your 100 rupee note and have a look it says: "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of hundred rupees"! Circular logic. The world's biggest empty promise. And who is the one who promises to pay? The Central Bank. What do they promise to pay you with? The same piece of paper!

 

So the currency note is essentially a piece of paper which is a promissory note signed by the Central Bank of the country; a note which promises to pay you nothing. It is also essentially a zero-coupon perpetual bond, one which bears no interest, and has no expiry date. So then how does this money become valuable? It is valuable only because we all say so. It is a delusion held by all by common acceptance that provides it its value; a faith that we place in each other to honour it and accept it as currency, a faith that is backed by law; all of these are man-made constructs.

 

So money now is merely a medium of exchange. It is no longer a store of value except for the limited period that the government says it is so. This is a very important point. In the public imagination, demonetizing notes is like killing a dragon; once it is killed, the problem is solved. There is no dragon here waiting to be killed, it is all a figment of our collective imagination.

 

So let us come to this whole black money issue now. What is black money? It is not a dragon which is waiting to be killed. It is merely the generation (flow) and the accumulation (stock) of money on which tax has not been paid. Where does black money sit? In assets of course. Are currency notes an asset? Of course not, not in the sense we are discussing it. Currency notes are at best temporary assets, exposed to the whimsical actions of the government of the day, held in order to exchange it for hard assets. So where is black money held? It is held in the form of gold, real estate, foreign exchange, money stashed abroad, etc. How much of the black money stock is then held in currency notes? No one knows for sure, but let us say, less than five percent, maybe much less.

 

How much money is in circulation in India today, before the withdrawal of these notes? About Rupees Eighteen Lakh Crores, of which about Rs. 15 lakh crores are in notes of 500 and 1000 denominations. ( I am rounding these numbers; they are close enough; and I have seen many numbers in this range being bandied about).

 

This money of 18 lakh crores is what lubricates the economy. Of and by itself it has no value. Its value arises from being something people can use as currency for exchanging with stuff of economic value. What happens when you suddenly demonetise 15 lakh crores out of this.

 

Chaos ensues.

 

The economy contracts in the short term. People are put to great hardship. We are already seeing this happening.

 

There are some attendant consequences like banks becoming flush with funds, interest rates coming down as a consequence, ailing and tottering banks being propped up due to the sudden inflow in deposits, sudden upsurge of 'white' money due to money coming into banks, etc. but these are merely side effects that are worth noting, but not significant in the sense they are not responsible for making the decision in the first place, and their effects may wear off over time.

 

 

How did our beloved Prime Minister justify the demonetisation to the nation? Primarily on the twin planks of terrorist-funding through fake notes, and control of black money. The Prime Minister either has a profound lack of understanding of the nature of money, or it is as much a political step as anything else (watch how the entire nation's consciousness is centred around him). I suspect the former is only partly true, since he is a smart cookie, and the latter is definitely true.

 

Let us examine these two reasons.

 

First the terrorist funding through fake notes: The amount of fake notes in the economy is estimated at 250 per 1 million notes. Hardly significant. Also, who holds these notes? Not the terrorists, but the common citizens since they are already in circulation. So what do you achieve by demonetising? Stop fresh notes from coming in. For a while. We are entirely glossing over the fact that they will soon start counterfeiting the new notes anyway. Also, it is an admission on the part of the government that they are unable to stem the supply chain. Ask the BSF jawans on the Bangladesh border. They know how the whole chain works, but it is impossible to stop, due to sheer logistical issues. So what changes with this step? Nothing. In any case, the scale of the problem in terms of materiality is insignificant for a step of this nature. So the argument of terrorist funding is a red herring – in recent times it has become fashionable to appeal to patriotism; goes down well with the public, and no one dares say anything against it.

 

Ok, let us now come to the black money issue.

 

How much black money are we targeting? Less than five percent (just a guesstimate, but you get the idea).

 

How much of this money will be impounded? Of the 15 lakh crores, very little. Assume about half of it is with the general public, and the balance with the desh-drohi scamsters. That makes it about 7.5 lakh crore so-called black money. Of these, part of it has been already converted to gold. Part of it has already been laundered by over-invoicing festival season sales in various businesses by raising back-dated invoices. The major part of it is being distributed to people who don't have cash to deposit in their bank accounts, to be returned later after retaining a slight premium. How much of this is going to happen? One clue is the 'premium' in the market as on date (today, 18th November) for exchanging old notes. The people who take it from you in turn have their channels. The premiums shot up initially but reports are that currently you can get them exchanged for 20 to 30 percent premium. Now why would someone give you 70 percent of the value of the worthless notes, unless he has ways of laundering it?

 

So how much of money is going to get extinguished? About two to three lakh crores, maybe even upto five lakh crores. Part of this will be genuine hard-earned money of honest people who are either unable or unwilling (a large part of the poor still don't trust the system) to exchange the old notes, a part that is put off by the effort involved, NRI's who just will not bother, and a large part of it just because someone forgot.

 

What happens when this money gets extinguished? The RBI makes a profit. Since its liabilities have just reduced by five lakh crores. The government can use it to reduce the fiscal deficit for the year, or use it on fresh spending.

 

Does black money generation stop? As result of demonetisation, not at all.

 

Other steps need to be taken for that, which are anyway not linked, like:

 

·      Make people declare the value of their assets with their tax returns (already begun in a small way with real estate holdings being declared along with returns in excess of fifty lakhs)

·      Have a public database of transacted prices especially for real estate and punitive measures for under-reporting; there are many ways to bell this cat

·      Attack agricultural income which is non-taxable and a source of much laundering. In India, the total "sales" of agricultural commodities are far in excess of actual production. People with unaccounted money simply show it as income earned from farming activities. This is the holiest of holy cows, and difficult to tackle due to political reasons

·      Introduce single-point taxation with full traceability like GST and slowly strengthen the systems (already started)

·      Control election funding (Modi is making some noise about it; but that is just noise, nothing will come of it)

·      Control laundering through religious trusts and temples (can be done with some effort)

 

Do the above measures have any connection with demonetisation? There is a school of thought that says demonetisation will put the fear of God in people, and that other steps will follow. Fear of God is like the mother telling the child in Sholay "So ja beta, nahi to Gabbar Singh aa jaayega". The child is scared, but not the village sahukar. It is a specious argument if ever there was one. As to "other steps will follow", they anyway should – they are an ongoing process, but what connection does demonetisation have with that?

 

Are we stopping issue of large denomination notes, since it is supposedly the favourite staple of the ungodly corrupt to stash their ill-gotten lucre? On the contrary. We are now talking about keeping note-disgorging machines which will disgorge 2000 rupee notes at petrol pumps!

 

Will black money generation stop as a result of demonetisation? As we already discussed, we have only attacked the stock, and that too not of the asset but of the lubricant. The activities that generate black money will continue; and the assets that hold black money still exist.

 

You cannot kill the dragon by confiscating its droppings. The dragon will continue to shit.

 

What are the attendant consequences? Any person with even a rudimentary knowledge of economics always knew that currency has no value on its own, it runs on faith alone. The person who wants to store unaccounted income will now store it in the form of gold, bitcoins or bitcoin equivalents, and foreign currency. And what prevents any of these from being converted from a store of value to a medium of exchange? Nothing. If a section of people decides to do that, there is nothing the government can do about it, except passed toothless laws outlawing the practice.

 

Meanwhile, what of the establishment? The establishment is supporting the move. Witness the interview published yesterday of Deepak Parekh. He skirts over the real issues, and talks as if he is unschooled in the basics of economics. He of course knows his stuff, but he is just toeing the establishment line. There is also a large mass of people who are equating this with patriotism and any move to oppose demonetisation as anti-national. This kind of mass psychology that is taking hold is insidious and diabolical. I have not seen any arguments from any of these desh-bhakts rebutting any of the points that have been outlined above, and few will be forthcoming, since religion and patriotism don't operate based on logic.

 

And, finally, what about the common man? Are you joking, my friend? The common man is only a pawn in this game! 

Thursday, November 10, 2016

Trumped!

We always like to profess, 
that democracy delivers,
Where the people hold the powers,
But, we the wise, can teach them sense!

The rulers always become cosy,
In comfort of their feathered nests;
Keep the crowd fed and entertained,
the proverbial bread and circuses!

The tyrant who rules by brute force,
Or with fear of death Put-In,
Or takes the help of alien force,
So that they are not Sheikh-en;
The capitalists who line Wall Street,
and their cronies in Washington;
They are all birds of a feather,
And the people, poor sods, are prey!

There always rises a demagogue,
from this sorry sordid mess;
Who promises deliverance,
Feeding on the people's fears!

Ugly, brootish, ill mannered, 
cocking a snook at those in power;
The crowd cheers in eager hope,
And carries him in, on their shoulders!

They will soon learn to their dismay,
That once he reaches there he forgets;
Reneges on promises made,
Joins those in power in their feathered nests!

There is no easy way to fight,
A rot that eats from within,
Cancer cannot really be cured,
By desperation, or medicine!

The minds that control are addicted,
To pleasure and unhealthy living;
The body, alas, writhes in pain,
Till, finally, they both are dead!

Dinesh Gopalan
10th November, 2016





Dinesh Gopalan
mob: 9845257313; blog: http://www.dineshgopalan.com

The Megalomaniac strikes!

The Megalomaniac strikes!

 

 

Modi's recent move of demonetising Rs. 500 and Rs.1000 notes is a masterstroke. He is a master at creating his own brand, and imprinting himself in the minds of the people. To do this, he can and does bypass everyone including seniors his own party. With this move, he would have antagonised many in his own party, as well as people across the political spectrum, and the trading community which was a strong supporter of BJP and RSS. Rather than count the costs to the party at large, the calculations in his own mind will be more to enhance his own image among the public at large, across the country.

 

And enhance his own image, he has. Who does not like a deliverer? The knight in shining armour who slays the dragon, and delivers the townspeople. That 'black' money is not a dragon, and that another dragon will in any case soon rise to take its place is forgotten in the euphoria. The knight is forever celebrated in stories and legends after that; the people's lives will anyway not improve by much, but the legends are then all the more important; like waiting for Kalki, the tenth avatar of Vishnu, to deliver us from the evil-doers of the current epoch.

 

Modi has enhanced his own image and obliterated other politicians from public consciousness, and this move is but one in the series of things he does in order to do that. Attending Sharif's birthday party in Lahore, was, I suspect a calculated velvet glove before the iron fist, planned in advance. Now the world admires him for being a he-man for taking the fight to the enemy, but no one can accuse him of not looking for peace first. I don't think he wanted the peace effort to gather any momentum; his brand only gains by being the he-man who can deliver the nation against the evil enemy.

 

Look at the justifications trotted out for the demonetisation. Terrorists are pushing in counterfeit notes into the country! This is an admission that notes can be counterfeited easily, but it is being celebrated as a victory over the evil terrorists. The notes have already been pushed into circulation, the people who are going to lose are the citizens. Is it not actually a failure on the part of the government to have allowed it to happen? What makes them think that the new 500 and 2000 rupee notes will not be counterfeited? It is a constant game of cops and robbers that goes on.

 

What about "we are attacking black money" with the demonetisation? Perhaps we are. But black money is not a dragon sitting there ready to be killed; black money is generated from activities, or flow, that enable people to avoid taxes. Some of this money sits around in the form of high value notes, but a lot of it stashed abroad, held in the form of gold, or held in foreign currencies. Demonetisation is a tool that can be used once in a while to disinherit some people of their money; in fact we have had demonetisation twice before, once in 1978 under Morarji Desai and once under the British in 1946. Has black money generation been curbed because of these moves?

 

What is needed to curb black money is to bring more and more transactions under electronic payments; it is a process of diffusion starting with the population with access to banking, with those who are higher educated, and with the urbanites, slowly moving to the others. Modern technology is making this possible with the penetration of mobile phones all across India, introduction of fintech solutions, spread of the internet, and biometric validation tools like Aadhaar. That process is underway and slowly we will see everything becoming electronic, and by extension, traceable.

 

So what is being achieved by this demonetisation? Certainly not an eradication of black money, since that is a process of generation, not accumulation; a flow, rather than a stock. What is being achieved are:

·      Modi's personal brand has gone up among the Indian public

·      He is being seen as a messiah, a deliverer; certainly not a bad thing for him

·      Politicians, and other 'hoarders' across the spectrum are impacted big-time; but temporarily; they will bounce back

·      The government is signalling its intent to fight black money very strongly

 

What is not achieved with demonetisation is:

·      Curbing black money needs long term solutions like traceability which is possible by slowly moving to electronic transactions

·      Tackling the major sectors which contribute to creation of black money and money laundering:

o   Politicians and election funding

o   Religious and other tax-free trusts which can accept anonymous donations which are used to launder money

o   Real estate transactions

o   Agricultural income which is non-taxable; a huge money laundering machine, but this is a holy cow.

What will be the impact on the economy? The impact will be short term. There is about Rs.16,50,000 crores in circulation in 500 and 1000 rupee notes. A lot of it will be deposited and converted to cash through the following means:

·      Giving money to people you know to deposit two lakhs at a time

·      Over-invoicing 'festival season' sales to the extent possible to show higher revenue

Depositing in excess of ten lakhs in your account is going to attract undue attention, where the tax plus penalty could even be hundred percent, thus forfeiting your money.

 

Assuming this will suck out about 40 to 50 percent out of the parallel economy, i.e. about 6 to 8 lakh crores, the consequences will be:

·      Deflationary in the short term. The biggest impact will be seen in real estate and luxury goods sales

·      Scope for the government to push more money into the system; in the form of 'infrastructure' and 'smart cities' etc., since this much money sucked out will leave a vacuum; these expenses in turn will result in creation of fresh black money because they involve political patronage and handing out of contracts

·      Black money is like a lubricant in the economy. In the short term there will be some pain, especially in some sectors; even employment could be affected in sectors like real estate

·      Real estate will take a beating, for a while. It is likely to bounce back, with higher guidance values, and lower 'cash component' till the new 500 and 2000 rupee notes take over for the cash component.

In all this there is a bigger philosophical issue that is at stake here.  In the guise of preventing 'black money' the government will slowly come to know everything that I do. All activities require the lubricant called money; this money is slowly going online and my entire life is traceable through these online transactions. It is not just the money trail and taxes; all my purchases, where I go, what I do, my thoughts, my motivations, the people I keep company with; and with the help of big data and analytics 'Big Brother' will be able to figure out my deepest motivations  and driving forces that even I am not aware of. A large part of this data gets trapped into the system by disabling cash payments which are anonymous. Big Brother, or the system, you can call it the Matrix, will soon know all my thoughts even before I think them, and everything about my life that is required to control me. This control is very subtle; without our own knowledge, right now we are all getting sucked into being part of the Matrix.  I don't trust too much central control, and I anyway value my independence. 

 

How do I keep transactions away from the prying eyes of the government? It is going to be increasingly difficult but I foresee that there will be parallel movements with people creating parallel currencies, some of them restricted to a specific geography, some of them restricted to specific interest groups, and some of them pretty much universal, like bitcoin. The same technology which enables the government to control more of our lives will come to our assistance in creating parallel economies that are out of the direct oversight of the government. Before you accuse me of being a tax dodger at heart, let me clarify, nothing of this prevents me from declaring and paying my taxes. I am not saying I necessarily will, but I am certainly not saying that I will not.

 

Amidst all this, do not underestimate the importance of gold. Just like the Rupee is a Fiat Currency, where a Mr. Modi, with a flick of his wand, can make it worthless, any solutions like those outlined in the previous paragraph are also promissory notes, which depend on the willingness of the other party to honour the promise inscribed in every note (which by the way is an empty promise. In those days it used to say "I promise to pay the bearer a quantity of gold"; nowadays it merely says "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of __" which actually means nothing).

 

Gold biscuits are a good currency. It can be stored away quite easily since it is not voluminous, its value is universal, definitely better than these useless promissory notes that the government can renege on on a whim, and it is not traceable. Think about it!