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xxx The accumulating evidence on economic growth, meanwhile, has become damning. Between July and September 2016, India’s GDP grew 7.53 percent. Between January and March 2017 it grew 5.72 percent. Former head of the Reserve Bank of India Raghuram Rajan, now returned to the University of Chicago, links the drop to demonetization: “Let us not mince words about it — GDP has suffered. The estimates I have seen range from 1 to 2 percentage points, and that's a lot of money — over Rs2 lakh crore [i.e. trillion] and maybe approaching Rs2.5 lakh crore." Kaul adds that GDP does not well capture the size of the informal cash sector, where the losses from demonetization were greatest. From India's Failed Demonetization Program and Its Retreating Economic Defenders - Alt-M So why does the Bank of England think that getting rid of paper cash will boost the economy when the figures from India clearly show it didn’t. The answer, of course, relates to the stage of development of the...

xxx Chancellor Philip Hammond has announced a new National Productivity Investment Fund of £23 billion to be spent on innovation and infrastructure over next five years. From Chancellor announces £23bn Productivity Investment Fund - ITV News Since this announcement productivity has collapsed still further.

xxx Bank of England’s (BOE) Chief Cashier Victoria Cleland adamantly stating that “cash is not in decline.” Cleland made the remarks at the Future of Cash Conference in Vienna, Austria, on Oct. 5, continuing the argument that, despite the fact that non-cash purchases and transactions are on the rise in the U.K., the amount of currency being circulated in England’s economy is also increasing. “Very notable in the U.K. is the rise in the use of contactless cards, which tripled in 2016, accounting for 7 percent of payments. The shift in consumer preferences is also evident in online spending, where average weekly online shopping in the U.K. was £1.1 billion in August 2017; an increase of 16 percent compared with August 2016. Such developments have led many commentators to predict the demise of cash,” she said. “But the numbers show a different story,” Cleland continued. “In 2016, the value of Bank of England notes in circulation increased by 10 percent, reaching over £70 billion in t...

Well, this was fun. The BBC2 series “Billion Dollar Deals” had an episode on the “War on Cash”. As you might imagine, the reason I mention this is because I was on it, gratifyingly labelled a “Digital Money Expert”. xxx xxx xxx xxx xxx   xxx xxx

xxx European Banking Authority should require banks provide evidence that a customer was aware of the nature of the transaction and gave informed consent before they can hold the customer liable. From Liability for push payment fraud pushed onto the victims – Bentham’s Gaze Having worked on a European project about means of establishing informed consent, I can assure you that this is a non-starter.

The British interior minister (“Home Secretary”, as we call them) is the historian Amber Rudd, famous for being the “aristocracy co-ordinator” for the inexplicably popular film “Four Weddings and a Funeral”. She has been attracting headlines. Amber Rudd Says She Doesn't Need To "Understand How Encryption Works" To Know It Needs Changing From Amber Rudd Says She Doesn't Need To "Understand How Encryption Works" To Know It Needs Changing xxx xxx Rudd replied: "I don't need to understand how encryption works to understand how it's helping, end-to-end encryption, the criminals." From  Amber Rudd Says She Doesn't Need To "Understand How Encryption Works" To Know It Needs Changing xxx    

xxx That said, there does still seem to be a lot of cash used for potentially dodgy purposes (e.g. drug deals or tax evasion purposes). While the RBA doesn’t have any direct data, its damaged banknote facility has uncovered multiple examples of huge cash piles in excess of $20,000. From $100 notes: the heart of the black economy? - MacroBusiness xxx