Was demonitization really planned for Nov 8?

Let me start today with an exclusive pic of Rajdeep Sardesai getting ready for his interview with Madam ji.

Ok, so I got a lot of flak in the comments yesterday from all of you because I went off on a libertarian tangent about “legal tender” and voluntary exchanges 🙂 🙂

No problem. I guess I will have to keep my views on money to myself. I’ve been called an idiot several times before whenever I start talking about alternative currencies and advocating the abolition of central banks, etc, etc 🙂

On the good side, my blog got 1000 views yesterday, so that’s nice…

But there was something else in the comments that I found really exciting. Someone indicated that the move was initially planned for Nov 18 or so, but the date had to be advanced because the news about notes was beginning to leak out. I have been hearing many such rumors and for a while I was even believing them. Of course we will never know for exactly sure, but I have finally convinced myself that Nov 8 was indeed the day on which the Prime Minister planned the announcement. You may have an alternative hypothesis, but here are my reasons.

Let’s try to see what date of the month would be ideal for such an announcement. For daily wage laborers or weekly wage laborers, any day of any week would be an inconvenience, so we will unfortunately have to leave them out. Let us consider people who get paid and settle bills etc at the end of each month.

You can’t do the announcement in the first week of a month, because you have to give people some time to pay their bills after they got their money somewhere between 30 Oct and Nov 2.

So, the government surely couldn’t have done it before Nov 7.

Of course, once the announcement is made, there is going to be a week of panic, then one week of chaos and finally a third week in which things start getting better. By doing it on Nov 8, the govt was giving itself 3 full weeks before the end of the month when people start getting their own bills settled, after which they withdraw money to settle their own bills.

You may have a different guess, but I think 8th of the month…the banks closed on the 9th…so everything really began on the 10th is the best choice that could have been made. If there is a different logic, I would love to hear it.

 

For me, the more fun question is why November? Yes, it can’t be December or January because those are too cold, especially in the north and of course you can’t do it during the brutal summer months. Why not October? Maybe because its reaping season…I don’t really know.

But what I am really wondering is whether this had something to do with the RBI governor. Was Raghuram Rajan aware of this? Did Modi wait for Urjit Patel to take charge before the RBI started printing the notes? There is substantial credence to this idea because all the notes bear the signature of Urjit Patel. Others have told me that this does not mean anything, because the printing of the signature is just the last part of the process. Maybe. I don’t really know about the process of printing currency. But I would be surprised if the raw materials and all took 4 months to assemble, while the actual printing happened in 2 months.

What do you folks think?

I am actually in a great mood today, so I will end my post with some quick jabs at some of our great thought leaders of today.

Actually Rohan, it’s not a normal. It is barely 15 days old and will disappear within the next 10 days, probably much before that. I’ll tell you what IS normal. “Normal” is for ordinary citizens to be bribing corrupt thieves to get their completely legitimate rights. It’s been happening for nearly 70 years. But you rarely complain about that…precisely because it had become the “normal”.

Mr. M K Venu, I hope that you have heard about the bypoll results today, where people spoke from Madhya Pradesh to Assam and as far as Arunachal. Perhaps you are under the illusion that you are a journalist?

Actually, no way. There is no way you could be THAT stupid. You know exactly what you are and you know that you are surely no journalist.

This tweet from Rohini Singh is pure gold. Though I am not sure she knows exactly just how amazingly correct she really is… LOL

And finally:

Very well put, Marya! Here is an exclusive pic of Rajdeep giving himself and all of us that rare glimpse.