Yum Brands in general and Taco Bell in particular represent a pathway to normalization. It will not be the powers-that-be who are forcing people to embrace these draconian measures. It will be the growing number of “cashless normies” who will demand such measures be embraced by businesses and their peers alike. Keep that in mind as you read this story from Reclaim The Net…

Taco Bell’s recent announcement of transitioning to a cashless business model raises alarming concerns about privacy and civil liberties. While the company proudly touts its endeavor to become a fully digital establishment in the near future, it obscures the deeper implications for consumers.

The company’s aim to capitalize on impulse digital transactions over traditional cash exchanges might sound like a novel approach to modernize sales techniques. However, behind this façade lies a concerning benefit: to heavily surveil and monetize consumers’ preferences. Taco Bell’s new data platform, designed to analyze consumer behavior meticulously, embodies a step towards an invasive corporate oversight into what people eat, when, and how often.

Chris Turner, CFO of Yum! Brands, Taco Bell’s parent company, might express enthusiasm about the potential of this platform for “personalized marketing, joint branding, and future automation.”

Yet, such initiatives might just be a veneer for a more troubling reality – the erosion of consumers’ privacy.

Even more disconcerting is the potential societal exclusion this move could propagate. A cashless model marginalizes groups who predominantly rely on cash and prefer privacy.

Moreover, individuals in service industries, who primarily depend on cash tips, stand to lose the immediacy of their hard-earned income in a cashless landscape. Digital payments, while convenient for some, can become an impediment for others.

While Taco Bell seems eager to replace human interaction with cold, impersonal touchscreens across its franchises, the real cost of this move extends beyond just a changed payment method. It’s a dangerous precedent, risking the erosion of privacy and inclusivity in the relentless pursuit of digital dominance. As Taco Bell strives to redefine the fast-food industry with its digital-first approach, it’s essential to question: at what cost to individual freedom?

IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva told conference participants on Monday in Rabat, Morocco, that the transnational agency is developing a global platform for central bank controlled digital currencies.

“CBDCs should not be fragmented national propositions … To have more efficient and fairer transactions, we need systems that connect countries—we need interoperability,” Georgieva said. “For this reason at the IMF, we are working on the concept of a global CBDC platform.”

Georgieva said the IMF wants central banks to reach a consensus on a common global regulatory framework for digital currencies that would give global adoption a major boost.

The IMF believes that the absence of a global platform on which various countries’ CBDCs can interoperate would make a weaker case for their use and cryptocurrencies would step in to fill the void. CBDCs are controlled by central banks, while cryptocurrencies are generally decentralized.

“If countries develop CBDCs only for domestic deployment, we are underutilizing their capacity,” Georgieva said, adding that “the last thing we want” is the emergence of “settlement blocks” where CBDC transactions are settled within separate ring-fenced regional frameworks.

She said that out of 114 central banks around the world that are exploring issuing national CBDCs, around 10 have already crossed the finish line and that “we will pursue relentlessly together” the development of central bank digital currencies. A key benefit of CBDCs, Georgieva said, is that they help promote financial inclusion and make remittances cheaper.

The IMF chief’s remarks at the Morocco conference builds on prior statements that make clear the agency sees the widespread adoption of CBDCs as a near given. Georgieva told a conference on May 1 that the trend toward CBDCs is “not going to be reversed” and so the IMF had rapidly increased its staff dealing with digital money.

CBDC in the United States

CBDC adoption in the United States has slowly gained traction in recent times, with the Biden administration releasing a paper last September that examined the possibilities of introducing a  technical framework that would support a U.S. digital dollar.

“If the United States pursued a CBDC, there could be many possible benefits, such as facilitating efficient and low-cost transactions, fostering greater access to the financial system, boosting economic growth, and supporting the continued centrality of the United States within the international financial system,” said the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, detailing the technical framework possibilities for a central bank digital currency in America.

While the Federal Reserve has not made any definitive plans to introduce a CBDC, it’s looking into the matter and has announced the imminent launch of the FedNow service, an “instant payment” platform that some say lays the groundwork for the future adoption of a CBDC.

“FedNow appears to be a prototype CBDC,” Jordan Schachtel, publisher of “The Dossier” on Substack, stated in a tweet. “While instant, 24/7 payments seems good, there’s implications to leaning into credit-based system. FedNow can quickly transform to a surveillance system.”

The Fed has denied that FedNow is related to the adoption of a CBDC, insisting that it is a payment system that allows businesses and individuals receive instant payments in real time.

During congressional testimony in early March, Fed chair Jerome Powell was asked by a lawmaker whether there’s an advantage to the FedNow payment system over a CBDC or stablecoins that also tout faster payment services.

“A CBDC is going to be years in evaluation,” Powell replied. “And I think we can get this into the hands of the public very quickly, and we’ll have real-time payments in this country very very soon.”

FedNow “will enable all the banks—any bank in the United States, not just the big ones—to offer instantly available funds and real-time payments to their customers,” Powell said before the House Financial Services Committee on March 8. “That’s a great thing.”

A similar private-sector payment system that offers instant settlement features like FedNow has been around since 2017.

The U.S. government will use the current banking crisis to promote a central bank digital currency (CBDC), warned presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The candidate has come out in opposition to CBDCs in the United States, warning that its adoption would heighten financial surveillance and threaten basic freedoms.

“CBDCs grease the slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny. While cash transactions are anonymous, a #CBDC will allow the government to surveil all our private financial affairs,” Kennedy wrote in a tweet on April 5. “The central bank will have the power to enforce dollar limits on our transactions, restricting where you can send money, where you can spend it, and when money expires.”

Some Fed officials have warned that CBDCs could pose risks to the country. During a speech on April 18, for example, Federal Reserve governor Michelle W. Bowman stated that safeguarding privacy is a “top concern” when it comes to CBDCs.

“In thinking about the implications of CBDC and privacy, we must also consider the central role that money plays in our daily lives, and the risk that a CBDC would provide not only a window into, but potentially an impediment to, the freedom Americans enjoy in choosing how money and resources are used and invested,” Bowman said at the time.

Threat to ‘Core Freedoms’

In contrast to the view of the IMF and others that central bank controlled digital money has upsides, a recent analysis from the Cato Institute found that CBDCs pose a foundational risk to America’s economic systems while offering few benefits.

“While CBDC proponents present many potential benefits, those benefits do not stand up to scrutiny,” the think tank stated in an April analysis.

Proponents of CBDCs routinely cite the promotion of financial inclusion, faster payments, making fiscal policies easier to implement, and in the case of a U.S. central bank digital currency, it would help preserve the greenback’s status as a world reserve currency. Yet the Cato analysis says all four do not stand up to scrutiny.

On financial inclusion, the think tank said that the push for CBDCs as a solution fails to take into account the fact that there are private sector innovations taking place in this regard and that it doesn’t address the needs of the unbanked.

As to the faster payments argument, Cato analysts acknowledged that speeding up transactions is a “noble effort,” but that “a CBDC would fail to provide a unique, or even additional, benefit compared with the existing developments in the private sector.”

The think tank also dismissed the argument that a U.S. CBDC would help preserve the greenback’s status as the world’s reserve currency as the dollar’s attraction is not based on one particular financial technological platform or another but on factors like property rights and a strong economy.

“The dollar’s renowned status is owed to the strength of the American economy and its legal protections for private citizens relative to most other countries, not the specific technology enabling electronic transfers,” Cato analysts wrote.

The final argument—that a CBDC would help with the implementation of monetary and fiscal policy—also falls short, according to Cato, which called the idea that a digital dollar would let policymakers fine-tune the economy both “sanguine” and “concerning.”

At the same time, while a CBDC would not offer any unique benefits compared with existing technologies, it would pose “serious risks,” the think tank warned. This includes a “substantial” threat to financial privacy, financial freedom, as well as the foundation of the banking system itself.

Article cross-posted from our premium news partners at The Epoch Times.

It’s an issue that Jerome Powell warned about in 2012, years before he became Fed Chairman; the consequences of creating a stimulus dependent system and then abruptly cutting off the life support. As soon as he was installed as the head of the central bank he implemented the very policies he predicted would cause a crash.

The result? We just saw the beginning of the end with the latest banking crisis involving companies like SVB, First Republic and Credit Suisse – It’s not just US finances, but banks around the world that rely on liquidity injections from the Fed to stay afloat. The central bankers addicted the system to cheap easy debt and now they are taking away the drugs.

In other words, no one can honestly argue that the central banks are ignorant or unaware of the threat. They KNOW what’s about to happen and they do not care. But why does the establishment want a crisis now instead of five years ago, or five years in the future?

Thankfully, much of the public is becoming aware of the various programs to introduce CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), but what they may not understand is the manner in which such massive economic changes usually happen. Generally speaking, in order to institute a new economic system the banks have to take down the old system.

The last time we saw this happen was just after the Great Depression and WWII. The deflationary crash and the war conjured the proper amount of global chaos and before the dust settled western nations instituted the Bretton Woods agreement in 1944, making the dollar the defacto world reserve currency while locking down the price of gold.. Then they established the globalist International Monetary Fund (IMF) the same year and the United Nations in 1945. The world was centralized dramatically in a little over a decade.

I believe we are fast approaching another engineered singularity, a controlled demolition of existing systems to make way for a cashless society, a one world currency and global governance. I believe this because it’s all the globalists can talk about these days; it’s not as if they’re trying to hide it anymore.

The BIS and IMF are actively fielding one-world digital currency mechanisms right now; structures that would combine all national CBDCs under one umbrella. In the meantime, globalist think-tanks like the WEF (World Economic Forum) are ranting excessively about the coming era of an AI controlled economy and a “4^th Industrial Revolution” in which you will “own nothing, have no privacy” and will be forced to adapt to a cashless socialist sharing system.

All they need is a scapegoat to complete their crisis formula. War seems to work well in distracting the masses from the true culprits behind any financial calamity, and numerous institutions are hard at work to convince the public that countries like Russia are to blame for ongoing stagflation problems. Of course, the stagflation crisis started well before the war in Ukraine and many Americans are not buying the spin.

China, a dedicated partner to the globalist project, has shown consistent fealty to the IMF and is a key player in the move towards a one-world currency system. Because they are the largest importer/exporter on the planet and have considerable leverage over the US dollar, they have the ability to strike the final blow against the dollar’s world reserve status. A heightened conflict with China would be a perfect cover for the dumping of the Greenback, making way for the IMF’s new global currency, called the UMU (Universal Monetary Unit).

However, foreign conflagrations will not be enough for the establishment to keep the American public from scrutinizing the narrative. They need a domestic enemy, a frightening threat that lives right next door. That is to say, they need to find a way to blame conservatives and liberty activists for the impending crash that they caused.

Keep in mind that the Biden Administration and the leftist media have been pumping out propaganda asserting that all our fiscal problems including our national debt are somehow rooted in conservative policies. This is nonsense.

At bottom, the majority of our economic threats can be traced directly back to the Federal Reserve as well as large international banks, and these institutions enact policy REGARDLESS of the political party that is in control of the government. But, if we’re going to talk about the political group that has most helped the central bankers set the calamity in motion, the Democrats win the prize.

It was Barack Obama and Joe Biden that doubled the US national debt from $10 trillion to $20 trillion in the span of 8 years. Trump didn’t help matters and did not institute spending cuts at the level he should have, but the bulk of his debt contributions occurred because of the covid response. There are a number of issues to criticize Trump for, including the kinds of people he brought into his cabinet, but the current economic chaos is not rooted in anything Trump did.

It was the Biden White House that pressed for covid lockdown policies to stay in place for years when they should have been ended within months as soon as it became clear the covid virus was a non-threat to 99.8% of the population. Biden and the Democrats made it impossible for the country to continue functioning without trillions in covid helicopter money, and it was those fiat measures that finally broke the camel’s back. Prices on everything skyrocketed under Biden, not Trump.

The majority of our national debt problems were piled up during the reign of Democrats, and they CONTINUE to demand trillions more in spending without conditions. This brings us to the debt ceiling.

In the past, the debt ceiling debate has been a predictable farce. Republicans demand cuts, they haggle with the Democrats who want a blank check, nothing is ever really resolved and the debt ceiling gets raised yet again with no noticeable reductions in spending. The government keeps stealing from the American public at an exponential rate while also triggering more inflation.

It’s a Catch-22 for conservatives. No one in the mainstream criticizes the Democrats for wanting to spend more because most people don’t understand how inflation works. All the Dems have to do is agree to reasonable budget cuts, but they refuse. When they don’t allow cuts, the Republicans are forced to either cave in, which makes them look weak, or, they’re forced to stand their ground and be accused of reckless disregard for American debt obligations.

Democrats claim that ANY cuts to the budget will lead to economic crisis. They have no intention of negotiating to reduce US debt. They don’t have to – All the blame falls on conservatives regardless.

To be sure, there are multiple Neocon politicians that support the Democrats at every turn, but there are also some Republicans trying to pull the country back from the brink. We should give these people credit.  It’s easy to accuse all political participants of being part of the “false left/right paradigm,”, and maybe that was true ten years ago, but now I suspect this mantra is being exploited to divide conservatives and liberty proponents from any alliances at the government level.

The leftist argument on the debt ceiling is essentially this: “We must keep spending more to fix the problems created by spending too much.”

It’s a circular con job. Pursuing budget cuts is portrayed as an act of terrorism by the corporate media. Saving taxpayer money is considered evil, and conservatives who entertain the notion are painted as insurrectionists. Why is no one criticizing the Democrats and their all-or-nothing philosophy? After all, budget cuts can be made while ALSO paying off the national debt, right?

The tactic makes sense if you look at it from a villain’s perspective. All the Democrats have to do is not allow any cuts and continue to demand more spending without conditions. Then, when the contingent of Republicans in Congress that actually care about fiscal responsibility refuses to back down, the White House, the media and the majority of leftists initiate a propaganda wave; an artificial outcry suggesting that “radical” conservatives are destroying the economy.

If the conservatives give in, then the public blames them for bowing to the “Uniparty.” If they don’t give in, the establishment wraps up the stagflationary collapse and lays it right in our laps. They may try to force the issue of a debt ceiling impasse just to hide the crash that is happening anyway.

Or, maybe not. Maybe this time is like all the other times and Republicans will back down yet again and the ceiling is raised by another couple trillion dollars. The talking points I’m seeing in the media and on social media, though, suggest to me that something very strange is about to happen in the debt fight. If it goes down the way I suspect, then it will be vitally important to disrupt the narrative.

The economy is crashing for a lot of reasons and none of them have anything to do with the government trying to spend less.

Article cross-posted from Alt-Market. Join the conversation on my Substack.

Back in 2015, by contrast, fewer than one-quarter of consumers went cashless, according to Pew surveys. In a separate poll, three-fifths of consumers told Gallup they used cash only on occasion last year, twice the share of five years ago.  The ruling class and mainstream media continue to tell the public that paper currency and coins are unsanitary, inconvenient, costly to handle, and easy to steal. Criminal enterprises thrive on the portable anonymity of the hundred-dollar bill. Cashless transactions solve those problems, advocates say. They also allow Big Brother to track the American consumer’s every move.

COVID-19 hastened the cashless trend. The pandemic inspired fears, largely misguided, that the virus might spread on currency. Many consumers stopped carrying cash, spurring a national coin shortage. -The Hill

Oddly enough, even The Hill can’t admit that COVID-19 didn’t do anything. It has no power to regulate, control, or use propaganda. The ruling class is responsible for trying to panic the masses into doing exactly what they want. Disobedient slaves will not be tolerated and those who are masters are escaping by blaming it on something that isn’t a conscientious being.

• Government, Not Coronavirus, Is Killing Small Businesses

We are all about to be barcoded and marked so the master knows exactly what his slaves are doing, when, and where.

“When you pay cash, I give you money, you give me a good, end of story,” said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the ACLU. “If you’re using your credit card for all of your transactions, then data is being collected about an enormous range of your activities, including medical conditions, political donations, sexual activities, how much liquor you buy, how many cigarettes you buy.”

“People have literally been changing the way they pay for goods and services,” said Lee Rainie, director of internet and technology research at Pew.  That means they are making themselves easily trackable and traceable and data collection on them is becoming much too simple. Those who use cash can still have a moderate level of privacy. For now…

This doesn’t end with simply having people use debit or credit cards. The endgame and goal is a completely controllable and programmable digital currency.

• The Endgame: Central Bank Digital Currency

At some point, the rulers will attempt to roll out the CBDC and they’ll make it look appealing. Sadly, many will fall for it and will become permanent slaves with no chance of escape. It’s up to all of us to know this and resist it at all costs

Article cross-posted from SHTF Plan.

The video above by Greg Reese from Infowars highlights some of the risks we’re facing and why’re we’re facing them regarding the coming Digital Dollar. This is why I’ve been so adamant that people not only move their investments and retirement to gold and silver, but that they do so with America First companies only. Far too many precious metals companies, even many that are recommended by “conservative” shows and websites, are working on behalf of Democrats, the Chinese Communist Party, and/or the World Economic Forum. I found three companies so far that actually work on behalf of Americans. Here’s the transcript from Reese’s report:

A key component of human life is enlightenment, the awakening from the darkness of deception into the light of truth. The so-called Great Awakening has really been going on forever. And before MAGA and QAnon, the consensus was that the banks were at the top of the criminal pyramid structure. And while many of us assumed that a hidden hand was pulling their strings, as well, we realized that their main goal was a digital currency and a cashless society.

It was the subject of several documentaries. And it was also commonly discussed that they will likely use Big Pharma to get us there. But now it’s as if everyone has just accepted it and found something else to fight about, because the cashless society is being rolled-out right now and very few people seem bothered by it.

In November of 2019, right before COVID, the institute of politics at Harvard Kennedy School had a live tabletop exercise called Digital Currency Wars: A National Security Crisis Simulation, which looked at how the United States can continue to leverage economic power in a world of national digital currencies, such as the Chinese Digital Yuan, which is already heavily competing in trade against the US dollar and seems to be at the forefront of centralized digital currencies.

And it has an expiry date. If you don’t spend it by then, it becomes worthless, so people can no longer save money. The Bank for International Settlements has announced that the central bank will have “absolute control” on the rules and regulations and will have technologies to enforce it.

The Central Bank of Brazil is planning to launch their centralized digital currency in 2024. Israel is about to launch theirs. And the Bank of England is preparing a UK digital currency.

Italy’s new prime minister, Meloni is speaking out against a cashless society but she seems to stand alone on the world stage. In the Federal Reserve’s digital currency scheme, it appears that Hedera and Quant will be used on the technology side. They’re already connected to everything.

The Cashless Society is here but everyone is talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop. The goal was never to put an old, senile puppet into the presidency to ruin havoc. The goal was to create a cashless society. And so, while bringing Joe Biden to justice may feel like a victory, the tyrants are still getting exactly what they wanted.

And once it’s all said and done, then who will save you?

By limiting large cash payments, the EU will make it harder for criminals to launder dirty money. An EU-wide maximum limit of €10.000 is set for cash payments. Member states will have the flexibility to impose a lower maximum limit if they wish.

So this means that in some countries the upper limit could potentially be a lot lower than 10,000 euros.

But instead of framing it as a major move toward a cashless society, the EU is trying to claim that this is all about fighting terrorists.

The following is what Zbyněk Stanjura, the Minister for Finance in the Czech Republic, has said about this upcoming change…

Terrorists and those who finance them are not welcome in Europe. In order to launder dirty money, criminal individuals and organisations had to look for loopholes in our existing rules which are already quite strict. But our intention is to close these loopholes further, and to apply even stricter rules in all EU member states. Large cash payments beyond €10.000 will become impossible. Trying to stay anonymous when buying or selling crypto-assets will become much more difficult. Hiding behind multiple layers of ownership of companies won’t work any more. It will even become difficult to launder dirty money via jewellers or goldsmiths.

Meanwhile, the European Central Bank has been actively considering the possibility of introducing a “digital euro”.  The following comes from the official website of the European Central Bank…

We are working with the national central banks of the euro area to investigate whether to introduce a digital euro. It would be a central bank digital currency, an electronic equivalent to cash. And it would complement banknotes and coins, giving people an additional choice about how to pay.

Well isn’t that convenient?

As they take cash away from the general population, it turns out that they have already been working on the replacement.

Incredibly, the ECB even has the gall to claim that this new digital currency will be “like cash”…

A digital euro would offer an electronic means of payment that anyone could use in the euro area. It would be secure and user-friendly, like cash is today. As central bank money issued by the ECB, it would be different from “private money”, but you could also use a card or a phone app to pay with digital euro.

Yes, you will be able to spend it just like you can spend cash.

But unlike cash, a digital euro will allow authorities to track whatever you buy and sell with it.

Won’t that be wonderful?

By the way, the Federal Reserve is currently working on a digital currency as well.

And this is all happening as the private cryptocurrency industry is imploding all around us.

Many had believed that decentralized cryptocurrencies would be the future of commerce, but global central banks were never going to allow that to happen.

Instead, it appears that they intend to force all of us on to a cashless grid in which everyone uses digital currencies that are issued by them.

Needless to say, a lot of people out there are quite wary of any moves toward a cashless society because they believe that it is part of the “end times” scenario described in the Bible.  According to one recent survey, approximately 39 percent of all Americans are convinced that we are living in the “end times” right now…

Nearly two in five Americans, including half of self-identified Christians and a quarter of the religiously unaffiliated, agree “we are living in the End Times,” a new study has found.

That’s about 39% of Americans who believe we are living in the End Times, according to Pew Research, highlighted by Lifeway Research.

Other surveys have come up with similar results.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise to any of us, because global events have definitely started to spin out of control in recent years.  At this point, even secular websites are publishing articles about the surging popularity of “apocalyptic scenarios”…

There’s no denying that the apocalypse is currently having a moment, culturally and politically. It could be driven partly by the pandemic and fears of climate change. Those are actual, frightening apocalyptic scourges. Russia’s war has also set off alarm bells for certain evangelicals, as there was a Cold War tradition of identifying the country, variably, with Gog or Magog.

Seeing Slate discuss such things made me chuckle.

But this is where we are.

Just about every day, more crazy things take place that have literally never happened before.  For example, I came across the following story earlier today…

For past 12 months, scientists have been studying a 50-second burst of energy from over a billion light-years away that could change how we understand how stars live and die.

In December 2021, a massive blast of energy hit the Earth’s atmosphere. Its source was a gamma-ray burst – one of the most powerful explosions in the universe – but not just any gamma ray burst.

One scientist said at the time that the event – named GRB 211211A – “looks unlike anything else we have seen before”.

As time rolls along, things are only going to get even more weird.

If you have been waiting for life to “return to normal”, you can stop right now.

It simply is not going to happen, and I believe that global events will accelerate even more during the early stages of 2023.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.

I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Article cross-posted from End of the American Dream.