Well Doesn't This Sound All Mark of the Beastish?

 

 

Apparently President Puddin'head has got the Federal Reserve working on his truly disturbing all digital currency idea.  The Federal Reserve's Board of Governors has issued a White Paper titled: 

Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation, published January 2022. 

The paper as one conservative news pass-through pointed out "Promotes consumer protection and community development through consumer-focused supervision and examination… and administration of consumer laws and regulations." A Central Bank Digital Currency sounds like a good idea on the surface of it and admittedly it might work if this were a different world that didn't have evil megalomaniacs in it that live for the day when Marxist global socialism is the universal power. The Founding Fathers of the United States deliberately limited the power of government to do that sort of heavy-handed thing.

The White Paper admits that under current regulations, a central bank digital currency would be an overreach. "The Federal Reserve Act does not authorize direct Federal Reserve accounts for individuals, and such accounts would represent a significant expansion of the Federal Reserve's role in the financial system and the economy." No kidding. 

The paper outlines a process for gradually creating a digital currency as the standard US dollar to replace paper money. It begins by using intermediary financial institutions to shuffle money from sender to recipient. In practice, the paper points out, "this would mean that a Central Bank Digital Currency intermediary would need to verify the identity of a person accessing CBDC, just as banks and other financial institutions currently verify the identities of their customers." As the rollout of the system takes place, all human creatures great and small would have a Federal Reserve managed CBDC account.

This will be good says the Fed because, "A central bank could pay no interest on CBDC." Still because a liability of the central bank is essentially riskless, depositors (meaning us members of the proletariat) may prefer CBDC over bank deposits in a crisis even if the CBDC has a less attractive rate of return. 

And here's the tricky bit. "A central bank could potentially address this risk by limiting the total amount of CBDC an end user could hold, or it could limit the amount of CBDC an end user could accumulate over short periods."

The Fed worries about the "potential effects of CBDC on bank deposits and bank lending, QNE the potential effects of CBDC on the economic decisions of households and businesses." By expanding the power of the Fed to control money and with the eventual elimination of paper currency and coins, it also provides government authorities to see and potentially "to manage" every penny you've got. Potentially, a fully implemented digital currency could be used to control and individual citizens ability to buy and sell. Why does that sound familiar?

Central Bank Digital Currency, the paper claims, could "possibly" interact with the Federal Reserve's other tools in conducting monetary policy to achieve its "macroeconomic objectives."  In other words, a digital currency under control of the Fed could be used to implement government monetary policy. Socialism, by the way, is just such a monetary policy. The game could be rigged to cripple citizens who step out of whatever prescribed financial practices the government decides to implement.

For instance, if the government wanted people to stop buying corn because powerful politicians wanted all corn to go to make ethanol, it could. It could easily block any purchase of corn products like tortillas, Doritoes or cans of corn chowder effectively deciding what consumers buy and sell. If you wanted people to service the Fed's centralized economic plan, what better way than to make it impossible to guy or sell stuff the government disapproved of. The potential for abuse is stunning, given the proclivities of our self-appointed intellectual betters.

The trouble is, a digital dollar won't exist in print form. Once the CBDC transition is complete, you can't go to the bank or an ATM and get physical cash from your account, not even from your CBDC account that contains your digital currency. Even more creepy, digital currency will surely be designed so that government via the Federal Reserve would have substantial control over your money .

In general a Central Bank managed digital currency could and likely will "generate data about users' financial transactions in the same ways that commercial bank and nonbank money generates such data today." In intermediate stages of CBDC implementation intermediaries like banks, credit card companies or money market managers would address consumer privacy concerns using existing tools, basically luring folks into a false sense of security. Then the Feds take over all that.

The Fed now forces financial institutions to comply with what the paper describes as a "robust set of rules that are designed to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism. " Given who the sorts of people government enforcement agencies are and who they now consider "terrorists," bloggers, conservative pundits and journalists, conservative Christians, etc., a fully deployed digital currency would provide federal law enforcement agencies a relatively simple way to track down any resistance to government policy.

The Fed's rules not only enforce customer due diligence, record-keeping, and reporting requirements for corporations and large companies. According to the paper, any digital currency controlled by a Central Bank would "need to be designed in a manner that facilitates compliance with these rules." Even during the intermediary ramp up of the CBDC system, private-sector partners with established programs would help ensure compliance with Fed rules even before the system is fully implemented. They seem to believe that it's a good idea to hit the ground running; get everybody onboard as soon as possible.

The Federal Reserve Board's Technology Lab is researching how to use application programming interfaces to support the issuance, distribution, and use of privately issued digital currencies. Note, the interfaces would be designed to support the use of your personal digital money. The Fed sells the idea by claiming that "central bank money is the most trusted and safest form of money because the Federal Reserve, as a central bank issuer, presents no credit risk and no liquidity risk." This supposed "safest form of money" is considered safe because security agencies would have much easier access to your financial records. Doesn't sound safe to me.

Digital currency could well be a highly efficient way to get money around. Indeed, it already is, No paper, no shipping things around in boxes, and no cubicles filled with file clerks. But those who would control us need to simplify everything in order to effectively centrally plan our lives. Computers help these simple souls who completely buy-in to Marxist socialist ideas. 

Trouble is that making things simple through control of complex systems via computer, deceives the upper echelons who make decisions based on simplified data. Artificially simplified answers convince those using those systems that the decisions they make about complex issues about how more than 300 million of us live, where we live, where we work and whether or not we reproduce, that they are making wise decisions. 

They are not capable of making decisions for millions of us. There are too many of us and too few of them and the issues are too complex.

© 2022 by Tom King

 References:

1. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/crypto/us-government-digital-currency-rcna19248
2. https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/599768-biden-is-planning-a-new-digital-currency-heres-why-you-should-be-very-worried/
3. https://www.eutimes.net/2022/03/biden-announces-new-digital-currency-that-will-completely-replace-paper-us-dollar-by-the-end-of-2022/
4. https://www.newsweek.com/bidens-plan-digital-dollar-massive-threat-freedom-opinion-1688803
   

 

 

You're Money is No Good Here, Pardner!

Can you say "Mark of the Beast"?

 And so it begins.

I got a notice in the mail today.  My wife's HMO will no longer accept cash in payment for services.  Apparently it's a money-saving measure designed to reduce the insurance provider's costs.  When they doubled her premium in January, I called the customer service lady and asked about the higher bill.  She told me flatly that they had raised her rate.

"Is this some of that ObamaCare savings we've been hearing about?" I asked.  I heard a sound like someone dropping their coffee cup on the other end.

"Why no," she sputtered amidst the noisy shuffling of damp paperwork on the other end of the phone. "You see," she explained, "Your wife did use the insurance last year."

"Uh, huh," I shrugged.  You can't argue with logic like that.

Now her HMO will no longer take cash when you pay your copay at the doctor's office, lab or pharmacy.  They say it's in order to save themselves money.  You may only use a credit card, bank debit card or write a check which will be instantly verified electronically and debited from your account.  Of course that makes it difficult for anyone without a bank account.  I had that happen once when a client stiffed me for $1800 at a time I had no cash reserve.  It took me three months to find another project and pay back every cent that I was overdrawn at the bank.  The bank canceled my account and blackballed me so I couldn't get another bank account for the next 2 years and had to leave the state to do so.

"Ah, but never fear," says the HMO.  "We've thought of that."  All you have to do is go down to the Wal-Mart and buy one of those bill-pay debit cards and bring it with you to pay your bill. 

So let me get this straight. I have to take an extra trip to Wal-Mart, pay for a debit card that will necessarily be for more than my worst guess for how much my doctor bill will be and pay a fee for buying the card in order to pay my bill and save THEM money.

Even more interesting is an experiment Wal-Mart is conducting where you get these special bags and an electronic shopping card which you pay for with your debit card or you can use your debit card straight up and then you shop around, fill your basked and then skip the checkout. This machine up front scans your basket, automatically debits your card or bank account and hands you a receipt as you roll out the front door. You can refill the card next time, no cash needed. I don't know how it handles produce because I haven't tried the system yet.  Truth is, I'm a bit nervous about it.


I've watched too many episodes of NCIS. If Abby Scuito wanted to find a lacto-ovo vegetarian in the Puyallup area who has high blood pressure, wears contacts and spends a lot of money on antacids, she could hack into Wal-Mart's sales records and find my bank account number, address and be able to tell Gibbs I have dandruff and a medium-sized dog.

The technology already exists to implant an RFID chip into you with links to your complete medical record, bank account record and probably your criminal history which would be a handy tool for identifying potential shoplifters and enemies of the state. They've talked about planting it in two basic places - your hand and your head.  Someone suggested some place inconspicuous like your but, but some wag pointed out that you would probably have to call a CSM and pull down your pants in the Wal-Mart checkout line because the sensors had gotten dirty and weren't working right.

I know what they are planning. I worked with a tiger rescue group for a while.  We were talking about implanting such chips in tigers to track them anywhere by GPS and satellite tracking and to identify them, their birthdate, birthplace, medical history and DNA. Once we got the chips into wild tigers, we'd know exactly where they were at all times, where and with whom in the jungle they were having intimate relations. If you can do it with tigers, how long will it be before we get a chip at birth the way we used to be circumcised at birth (and I prefer the idea of circumcision).

I wonder if a tiger with a chip ate a man with a chip, how confusing would that be at the Wal-Mart checkout and would the tiger have to pay taxes?

Okay, I admit it.  I've read Revelation and it freaks me out a little.


I'm just saying.

Tom King:  ID# 41923-484tc89333-00y33