The government’s schemes to swindle, cheat, scam, and generally defraud taxpayers of their hard-earned dollars have run the gamut from wasteful pork barrel legislation, cronyism and graft to asset forfeiture, costly stimulus packages, and a national security complex that continues to undermine our freedoms while failing to making us any safer.

Americans have also been made to pay through the nose for the government’s endless wars, subsidization of foreign nations, military empire, welfare state, roads to nowhere, bloated workforce, secret agencies, fusion centers, private prisons, biometric databases, invasive technologies, arsenal of weapons, and every other budgetary line item that is contributing to the fast-growing wealth of the corporate elite at the expense of those who are barely making ends meet—that is, we the taxpayers.

This is what comes of those $1.2 trillion spending bills: someone’s got to foot the bill.

Because the government’s voracious appetite for money, power and control has grown out of control, its agents have devised other means of funding its excesses and adding to its largesse through taxes disguised as fines, taxes disguised as fees, and taxes disguised as tolls, tickets and penalties.

No matter how much money the government pulls in, it’s never enough (case in point: the endless stopgap funding deals and constant ratcheting up of the debt ceiling), so the government has to keep introducing new plans to empower its agents to seize Americans’ bank accounts.

Make way for the digital dollar.

Whether it’s the central bank digital currency favored by President Biden, or the cryptocurrency being hawked by former President Trump, the end result will still be a form of digital money that makes it easier to track, control and punish the citizenry.

For instance, weeks before the Biden Administration made headlines with its support for a government-issued digital currency, the FBI and the Justice Department quietly moved ahead with plans for a cryptocurrency enforcement team (translation: digital money cops), a virtual asset exploitation unit tasked with investigating crypto crimes and seizing virtual assets, and a crypto czar to oversee it all.

No surprises here, of course.

This is how the government operates: by giving us tools to make our lives “easier” while, in the process, making it easier for the government to crack down.

Indeed, this shift to a digital currency is a global trend.

More than 100 other countries are considering introducing their own digital currencies.

China has already adopted a government-issued digital currency, which not only allows it to surveil and seize people’s financial transactions, but can also work in tandem with its social credit score system to punish individuals for moral lapses and social transgressions (and reward them for adhering to government-sanctioned behavior). As China expert Akram Keram wrote for The Washington Post, “With digital yuan, the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] will have direct control over and access to the financial lives of individuals, without the need to strong-arm intermediary financial entities. In a digital-yuan-consumed society, the government easily could suspend the digital wallets of dissidents and human rights activists.”

Where China goes, the United States eventually follows.

Inevitably, a digital currency will become part of our economy and a central part of the government’s surveillance efforts.

Combine that with ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) initiatives that are tantamount to social media credit scores for corporations, and you will find that we’re traveling the same road as China towards digital authoritarianism. As journalist Jon Brookin warns: “Digital currency issued by a central bank can be used as a tool for government surveillance of citizens and control over their financial transactions.”

As such, digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with a mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. Much like the war on drugs and the war on terror, this so-called “war on cash” has been sold to the public as a means of fighting terrorists, drug dealers, tax evaders and even COVID-19 germs.

In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal. The rationale (by police) is that cash is the currency for illegal transactions given that it’s harder to track, can be used to pay illegal immigrants, and denies the government its share of the “take,” so doing away with paper money will help law enforcement fight crime and help the government realize more revenue.

According to economist Steve Forbes, “The real reason for this war on cash—start with the big bills and then work your way down—is an ugly power grab by Big Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.”

This is how a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—plays right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

Despite what we know about the government and its history of corruption, bumbling, fumbling and data breaches, not to mention how easily technology can be used against us, the shift to a cashless society is really not a hard sell for a society increasingly dependent on technology for the most mundane aspects of life.

In much the same way that Americans have opted into government surveillance through the convenience of GPS devices and cell phones, digital cash—the means of paying with one’s debit card, credit card or cell phone—is becoming the de facto commerce of the American police state.

At one time, it was estimated that smart phones would replace cash and credit cards altogether by 2020. Since then, growing numbers of businesses have adopted no-cash policies, including certain airlines, hotels, rental car companies, restaurants and retail stores. In Sweden, even the homeless and churches accept digital cash.

Making the case for a digital wallet, journalist Lisa Rabasca Roepe argues that there’s no longer a need for cash. “More and more retailers and grocery stores are embracing Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay,” notes Roepe. “PayPal’s app is now accepted at many chain stores including Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Home Depot, and Office Depot. Walmart and CVS have both developed their own payment apps while their competitors Target and RiteAid are working on their own apps.”

So what’s really going on here?

Despite all of the advantages that go along with living in a digital age—namely, convenience—it’s hard to imagine how a cashless world navigated by way of a digital wallet doesn’t signal the beginning of the end for what little privacy we have left and leave us vulnerable to the likes of government thieves, data hackers and an all-knowing, all-seeing Orwellian corpo-governmental state.

First, when I say privacy, I’m not just referring to the things that you don’t want people to know about, those little things you do behind closed doors that are neither illegal nor harmful but embarrassing or intimate. I am also referring to the things that are deeply personal and which no one need know about, certainly not the government and its constabulary of busybodies, nannies, Peeping Toms, jail wardens and petty bureaucrats.

Second, we’re already witnessing how easy it will be for government agents to manipulate digital wallets for their own gain in order to track your movements, monitor your activities and communications, and ultimately shut you down. For example, civil asset forfeiture schemes are becoming even more profitable for police agencies thanks to ERAD (Electronic Recovery and Access to Data) devices supplied by the Department of Homeland Security that allow police to not only determine the balance of any magnetic-stripe card (i.e., debit, credit and gift cards) but also freeze and seize any funds on pre-paid money cards.

In fact, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment for police to scan or swipe your credit card. Expect those numbers to skyrocket once digital money cops show up in full force.

Third, a government-issued digital currency will give the government the ultimate control of the economy and complete access to the citizenry’s pocketbook. While the government might tout the ease with which it can deposit stimulus funds into the citizenry’s accounts, such a system could also introduce what economists refer to as “negative interest rates.”

Instead of being limited by a zero bound threshold on interest rates, the government could impose negative rates on digital accounts in order to control economic growth. “If the cash is electronic, the government can just erase 2 percent of your money every year,” said David Yermack, a finance professor at New York University.

Fourth, a digital currency will open Americans—and their bank accounts—up to even greater financial vulnerabilities from hackers and government agents alike.

Fifth, digital authoritarianism will redefine what it means to be free in almost every aspect of our lives. Again, we must look to China to understand what awaits us. As Human Rights Watch analyst Maya Wang explains:

“Chinese authorities use technology to control the population all over the country in subtler but still powerful ways. The central bank is adopting digital currency, which will allow Beijing to surveil—and control—people’s financial transactions. China is building so-called safe cities, which integrate data from intrusive surveillance systems to predict and prevent everything from fires to natural disasters and political dissent. The government believes that these intrusions, together with administrative actions, such as denying blacklisted people access to services, will nudge people toward ‘positive behaviors,’ including greater compliance with government policies and healthy habits such as exercising.”

Short of returning to a pre-technological, Luddite age, there’s really no way to pull this horse back now that it’s left the gate. To our detriment, we have virtually no control over who accesses our private information, how it is stored, or how it is used. And in terms of our bargaining power over digital privacy rights, we have been reduced to a pitiful, unenviable position in which we can only hope and trust that those in power will treat our information with respect.

At a minimum, before any kind of digital currency is adopted, we need stricter laws on data privacy and an Electronic Bill of Rights that protects “we the people” from predatory surveillance and data-mining business practices by the government and its corporate partners.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the ramifications of any government having this much unregulated, unaccountable power to target, track, round up and detain its citizens is beyond chilling.

In general, I do not like this. But if digital currencies are inevitable as some believe, then the smaller the centralization, the better. Gold-backed physical currency that is untraceable and easily redeemable would be ideal, but ship likely sailed decades ago. The good news here is that more people are looking to physical precious metals, which I wholeheartedly endorse. I, of course, recommend my America First, faith-driven sponsors for that. Here’s the article by JD Heyes from Natural News:

The Lone Star State is preparing to take yet another step to ensure Texans have a stable future as the U.S. economy continues to crater under the current Biden regime and the spend-a-holics on both sides of the aisle in Congress.

Proposed bills in the Texas House and Senate aim to establish a state-issued, gold-backed digital currency, providing an alternative option for individuals to conduct business with sound money.

The move would not only challenge the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money but also create a potential rival to the central bank digital currency (CBDC). If the legislation passes, Texas would join a handful of US states that have taken steps to establish sound money alternatives to the US dollar, the currency info site SchiffGold.com reported.

Senate Bill 2334 (SB2334) was introduced by Sen. Bryan Hughes (R) on March 10, with a companion House Bill 4903 (HB4903) introduced by Rep. Mark Dorazio (R) on the same day. The proposed bills mandate that the state comptroller establishes a digital currency, backed by gold and redeemable in cash or gold, and creates a mechanism to use this currency in daily transactions, the site’s report notes further.

“In establishing the digital currency the comptroller shall establish a means to ensure that a person who holds the digital currency may readily transfer or assign the digital currency to any other person by electronic means,” states the legislation.

The state would hold gold backing the currency in trust on behalf of the digital currency holders, the site reported.

“The trustee shall maintain enough gold to provide for the redemption in gold of all units of the digital currency that have been issued and are not yet redeemed for money or gold,” the legislation notes further.

Individuals in Texas would have the option to purchase digital currency from the state, which would then use the funds to purchase gold to be held in a secure vault like the Texas Bullion Depository. This gold-backed digital currency would be fully redeemable for cash or gold and could be used in everyday transactions.

A state-issued, gold-backed digital currency would provide an alternative for individuals and businesses to avoid a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Digital currencies are virtual banknotes or coins held in a digital wallet on a computer or smartphone.

Unlike peer-to-peer electronic cash such as Bitcoin, the value of a CBDC is backed and controlled by the government, similar to traditional fiat currency. The push for a CBDC stems from the “war on cash” which seeks to eliminate cash and allow the government to track and potentially control consumer spending.

A gold-backed digital currency would offer an alternative and potentially undermine the Federal Reserve’s monopoly on money, which appears to be the point Texas lawmakers are trying to make since the state has been stockpiling gold for years.

“Nigeria is already trying to get people to accept its CBDC (with a great deal of resistance), and  China, India, and the US have all launched pilot programs to test CBDCs,” the SchiffGold report noted, adding a warning:

Imagine if there was no cash. It would be impossible to hide even the smallest transaction from the government’s eyes. Something as simple as your morning trip to Starbucks wouldn’t be a secret from government officials. As Bloomberg put it in an article published when China launched a digital yuan pilot program in 2020, digital currency “offers China’s authorities a degree of control never possible with physical money.”

The government could even “turn off” an individual’s ability to make purchases. Economist Thorsten Polleit outlined the potential for Big Brother-like government control with the advent of a digital euro in an article published by the Mises Wire. As he put it, “the path to becoming a surveillance state regime will accelerate considerably” if and when a digital currency is issued.

“The creation of a state-issued gold-backed digital currency would create currency competition with Federal Reserve notes and undermine the Fed’s monopoly on money. It would also provide an alternative if the Federal Reserve implements a central bank digital currency,” SchiffGold noted.

Sources include:

• SchiffGold.com
• NaturalNews.com
• Mises.org

As Reuters reported on the 15th of November, “Global banking giants are starting a 12-week digital dollar pilot with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Citigroup Inc , HSBC Holdings Pl, Mastercard Inc and Wells Fargo & Co are among the financial companies participating in the experiment alongside the New York Fed’s innovation center, they said in a statement. The project, which is called the regulated liability network, will be conducted in a test environment and use simulated data, the New York Fed said. The pilot will test how banks using digital dollar tokens in a common database can help speed up payments.”

Shockingly enough, essentially zero attention was paid to the story. Most media outlets mentioned it in passing and offered little to no context that would make the unsuspecting reader aware of the implications of this development. There was no mainstream discussion or debate about what this means or about how it can affect the average citizen, and no politicians, Fed officials or other institutional figures called any attention to it and argued either for or against it. There was one notable exception, though, one high-profile individual that noticed what could mark the start of a tectonic shift and thought the rest of the world should notice too: Edward Snowden.

The aforementioned context that should have been provided to the average news reader that is not necessarily familiar with the concept of CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) would include at least a brief explanation what they are, what purposes they serve and how they compare to existing fiat paper money. As I outlined in previous articles, the stakes are too high for people to ignore this development. Whoever controls the money, controls everything and the rise of CBDCs threatens to make that control absolute, closing whatever little “loopholes” of freedom may still exist today.

To most citizens, savers and taxpayers, the transition to a digital dollar might seem harmless, or even beneficial, given that most of the population today associates digitalization with convenience and speed. Indeed, if one doesn’t understand the ins and outs of monetary history, of fiat money and of digital currencies, this concept appears totally innocuous. But even for many who do understand these things, it might seem like such a step would really make no difference. Junk money is junk money after all, be it physical or digital, it’s still backed by nothing, right?

Well, that is right indeed, but there’s a lot more to it. While the currency itself will continue to be worthless, its digital form will come with a bunch of perks and advantages for central planners. As Eswar Prasad, professor of trade policy and economics at Cornell University, puts it:

One should recognize that the CBDC creates new opportunity for monetary policy. If we all had CBDC accounts instead of cash, in principle it might be possible to implement negative interest rates simply by shrinking balances in CBDC accounts. It will become a lot easier to undertake helicopter drops of money. If everybody had a CBDC account, one could easily increase the balance in those accounts.

What this essentially means is that any choice that remains and any degree of financial sovereignty that is left in the present system could be easily wiped out by CBDCs. And its not only financial freedom that’s at stake: these centralized digital currencies can be used by governments to monitor, to control and even to directly punish dissenters, by blocking transactions, freezing their accounts or seizing they assets. Some might find that farfetched, but those are probably the same people who thought that China’s “Social Credit System” was implausible too, right up to the moment it was actually implemented.

About the Author

Claudio Grass is a Mises Ambassador and an independent precious metals advisor based out of Switzerland. His Austrian approach helps his clients find tailor-made solutions to store their physical precious metals under Swiss law. ClaudioGrass.ch.

Article cross-posted from Mises.

Since all Americans require medical care during their lives, the move was seen by critics as the ultimate authoritarian move; after all, if the government controls all healthcare decisions, tyrannical government bureaucrats could then begin to dictate behaviors and reward or punish people based on behavior.

Now, the government is attempting yet another major authoritarian move: The creation of a “digital currency” with the endgame objective being to control behaviors through “programmable” money that can influence and/or block certain spending habits.

“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Center, or NYIC, announced that it would be launching a 12-week proof-of-concept pilot for a central bank digital currency, or CBDC,” Coin Telegraph reported this week.

The outlet continued: “In a Nov. 15 announcement, the New York Fed said the program would explore the feasibility of an ‘interoperable network of central bank wholesale digital money and commercial bank digital money operating on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger’ on a regulated liability network. Banking giants including BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo will be participating in the pilot by issuing tokens and settling transactions through simulated central bank reserves.”

Mind you, the participating banks are advertising this simply as a concept to make interoperability more feasible, but make no mistake, this ‘test’ is research: The Fed wants to develop and then hone this technology so that a ‘programmable’ digital currency can be introduced to the general public for the express purpose of controlling spending habits by favoring or disfavoring products (think ‘yes’ for electric cars, solar panels, and fake ‘meat’ but ‘no’ for cigarettes, alcohol, gasoline, and anything deemed ‘harmful to the planet’).

“The NYIC looks forward to collaborating with members of the banking community to advance research on asset tokenization and the future of financial market infrastructures in the U.S. as money and banking evolve,” NYIC Director Per von Zelowitz said in announcing the pilot program.

“Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George said in an interview that inflation is at risk of growing entrenched in the economy, making it difficult for the Federal Reserve to fight inflation without a recession. George said that labor is the driver of inflation now, rather than supply chain or production shortages, and the real challenge for policymakers is prematurely ending rate increases,” private intelligence firm Forward Observer reported in a note to subscribers earlier this month.

An accompanying analyst comment noted: “Fed officials have previously waved off the risk of recession, so this admission is significant. George is now saying the proverbial quiet part out loud, as [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome] Powell has been engineering a deliberate recession since last year.”

Now, as an engineered recession is upon us, the same Fed will be introducing a digital currency that it can manipulate on behalf of the wishes of the deep state permanent government.

The N.Y. Fed said in a statement: “This U.S. proof-of-concept project is experimenting with the concept of a regulated liability network. It will test the technical feasibility, legal viability, and business applicability of distributed ledger technology to settle the liabilities of regulated financial institutions through the transfer of central bank liabilities.”

“The NYIC looks forward to collaborating with members of the banking community to advance research on asset tokenization and the future of financial market infrastructures in the U.S. as money and banking evolve,” said Per von Zelowitz, Director of the New York Innovation Center.

…’as money and banking evolve.’

Why do either of these have to “evolve” in the first place?

Sources include:

• ForwardObserver.com
• CoinTelegraph.com
• NATURAL NEWS