We were recovering from the flood at the time but I’d never heard of this before listening to a podcast last night. India’s $500 and $1,000 rupee notes are (or were) equivalent to about $7 or $15 dollar bills.

Imagine the POTUS coming on TV at 10pm nationwide unscheduled and announcing that in 2 hours, every one of those paper bills was worthless. The only way to exchange them was at a bank.

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Posted by My2ndFavCivilNgineer

Member since Jun 2013

586 posts

Posted on 8/17/18 at 7:41 am to GFunk

Even cooler is that some nobody came up with the idea and presented it to the Indian president.

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Posted by slackster

Houston

Member since Mar 2009

84886 posts

Posted on 8/17/18 at 8:58 am to GFunk

Didn't they have a rampant counterfeit problem that caused it?

ETA - looks like that was the justification and it failed miserably.

This post was edited on 8/17/18 at 9:04 am

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Posted by lsujro

north of the wall

Member since Jul 2007

3921 posts

Posted on 8/17/18 at 9:47 am to slackster

IIRC they were primarily concerned with shrinking the secondary economy where all dealings were in small denominations of cash. It is basically impossible to calculate the size and effect of the cash economy utilized primarily by the lower class.

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Posted by LSUSUPERSTAR

Member since Jan 2005

16312 posts

Posted on 8/17/18 at 12:26 pm to GFunk

Never trust any civilization that is that old and hasn't conquered basic sanitation.

This post was edited on 8/17/18 at 10:43 pm

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Posted by brian_wilson

Member since Oct 2016

3581 posts

Posted on 8/17/18 at 12:44 pm to GFunk

quote:
We were recovering from the flood at the time but I’d never heard of this before listening to a podcast last night. India’s $500 and $1,000 rupee notes are (or were) equivalent to about $7 or $15 dollar bills.

my boss (at the time) was in india when this happened. It was complete and utter chaos. He pretty much was stuck at the hotel the entire time, as the economy ground to a halt. I worked a lot with India at the time, and they were all completely crushed by it. They couldn't pay their servants, or do basic business for several weeks.

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