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Comment by brutus1213 | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand what happened wrt #1. Was the black money like the mythical WMDs and unicorns? Or did it just make its way into the new money supply?

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It got converted into white money by getting deposited into banks through other (mostly poor) people's accounts. Hence, a sum of 5 million rupees was distributed among 20 people (mostly domestic helps, gardeners, chauffeurs, etc). Each account's deposit is small enough to not raise suspicion. These amounts will slowly be withdrawn.

In addition, bank managers also acted in complicity with rich black money holders by documenting that their currency bills were actually exchanged by multiple ordinary folk, whose IDs' copies (necessary proof for exchanging) exist in large numbers at any bank.

Any media reports on this? Really sad that a great human toll was paid for naught.

80% of the demonetized currency was back into the banks, 20 days before the final date [0]. Bloomberg reports that the final number could be as high as 97% [1].

Now, the question you should ask is - How much of black money was in cash? The answer is approx. 6% according to Min. of Finance White paper on Black Money. So, effectively - 86% of the currency was demonetized to target 6% of unaccounted income. No matter how you slice/dice this policy, the costs significantly outweigh the benefits.

[0] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/8...

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-04/india-sai...

Multiple reports and research have said that black money in cash is approx. 6%. So, you can't get more than 6% back anyways and the government decided to demonetize 86% of the currency in the market.

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