
ZH Preface: Washington’s Blog reached out to Dr. Haering after reading several excellent articles on India’s cash ban. Dr. Haering then combined the information into a single article for us. We lightly edited the article for spelling and grammar.
By George Washington | 12 January 2017
By Norbert Haering, a German financial journalist, blogger and PhD economist, who received the 2007 get Abstract Best Business Book award and the 2014 prize of the German Keynes Society for economic journalism. His best-selling book (in German) “The abolition of cash and the consequences” was published in 2016. Originally published on norberthaering.de (http://norberthaering.de/en/home/27-german/news/745-washington-s-role-in-india). Republished with permission of the author.
ZERO HEDGE — In early November, without warning, the Indian government declared the two largest denomination bills invalid, abolishing over 80 percent of circulating cash by value. Amidst all the commotion and outrage this caused, nobody seems to have taken note of the decisive role that Washington played in this. That is surprising, as Washington’s role has been disguised only very superficially.
U.S. President Barack Obama has declared the strategic partnership with India a priority of his foreign policy. China needs to be reined in. In the context of this partnership, the US government’s development agency USAID has negotiated cooperation agreements with the Indian ministry of finance. One of these has the declared goal to push back the use of cash in favor of digital payments in India and globally.
Four weeks earlier
Not even four weeks before this assault on Indians, USAID had announced the establishment of “Catalyst: Inclusive Cashless Payment Partnership”, with the goal of effecting a quantum leap in cashless payment in India. The press statement of October 14 says that Catalyst “marks the next phase of partnership between USAID and Ministry of Finance to facilitate universal financial inclusion”. The statement does not show up in the list of press statements on the website of USAID (anymore?). Not even filtering statements with the word “India” would bring it up. To find it, you seem to have to know it exists, or stumble upon it in a web search. Indeed, this and other statements, which seemed rather boring before, have become a lot more interesting and revealing after November 8.
Reading the statements with hindsight it becomes obvious, that Catalyst and the partnership of USAID and the Indian Ministry of Finance, from which Catalyst originated, are little more than fronts which were used to be able to prepare the assault on all Indians using cash without arousing undue suspicion. Even the name Catalyst sounds a lot more ominous, once you know what happened on November 9.
Catalyst’s Director of Project Incubation is Alok Gupta, who used to be Chief Operating Officer of the World Resources Institute in Washington, which has USAID as one of its main sponsors. He was also an original member of the team that developed Aadhaar, the Big-Brother-like biometric identification system.
According to a report of the Indian Economic Times, USAID has committed to finance Catalyst for three years. Amounts are kept secret. […]
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