The IMF’s latest Fiscal Monitor report, released on Oct. 15, projects that global public debt will exceed $100 trillion—equal to about 93 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP)—in 2024, and that it could approach 100 percent of GDP by the end of the decade. The United States, in particular, faces significant risks if fiscal policies are not adjusted urgently.

The report emphasizes that countries, including the United States, need to address debt risks with carefully crafted fiscal strategies. It warns that debt levels could be worse than anticipated because of large spending pressures, sizeable unidentified debt, and overly optimistic debt projections.

Unidentified debt, which refers to liabilities that do not appear explicitly in budget documents—such as contingent liabilities, losses at federally owned enterprises such as the U.S. Postal Service, and other off-balance-sheet obligations—poses a significant risk to debt sustainability, according to the IMF.

“There are good reasons to believe that future debt levels could be higher than currently projected,” the report’s executive summary states, highlighting that actual debt-to-GDP ratios three years ahead tend to be about 6 percentage points higher than originally forecasted, on average.

The IMF attributes the potential underestimation of debt levels to several factors, including a political climate increasingly favoring higher government spending. This spending is being driven by concerns around security, an aging population, and the push to invest in green transitions.

“Rebuilding fiscal buffers in a growth-friendly manner and containing debt is essential to ensure sustainable public finances and financial stability,” the report urges.

In a related blog post titled “Global Public Debt Is Probably Worse Than It Looks,” IMF economists assert that current efforts to curb debt growth are insufficient. Delays in fiscal actions, they argue, will lead to even higher costs and greater risks.

“Experience shows that high debt and lack of credible fiscal plans can trigger adverse market reaction, constraining room to maneuver in the face of turbulence,” the economists wrote, emphasizing the need for proactive measures such as paring back spending.

The IMF’s analysis shows that planned fiscal adjustments—such as reducing spending by 1 percent of GDP over six years—are insufficient to stabilize debt. Instead, a cumulative tightening of 3.8 percent of GDP is needed to significantly cut debt levels, the economists contend, with the effort required in the United States being “substantially greater.”

Without substantial fiscal adjustments, U.S. debt will continue on an unsustainable path, the report warns. The country faces mounting spending demands, largely because of health care costs, an aging population, and defense needs, all of which are exacerbated by growing geopolitical tensions.

The IMF identifies the reform of mandatory spending programs, such as Social Security and Medicare, as a crucial step. These programs account for a large and inflexible share of the U.S. budget, and reforming them could help rein in expenditures. Besides spending cuts, the IMF suggests that the United States could raise revenues by raising taxes or removing tax exemptions.

The IMF’s newly developed “debt-at-risk” framework—a tool used to estimate potential debt outcomes under different economic conditions—indicates that U.S. public debt could rise sharply under adverse scenarios.

Stronger fiscal governance is also essential, according to the IMF, which describes it as “key to mitigating the buildup of unidentified debt and containing debt vulnerabilities.” Countries with better fiscal governance—marked by budget transparency and adherence to fiscal rules—tend to have lower levels of unidentified debt, even during times of financial stress.

Speakers in the event’s myriad sessions invariably lay out an array of freedom-crushing and spirit-destroying plans designed to force us all to live smaller, less-mobile, less-prosperous lives, all in the name of climate change or any other global cause that can serve as a justification for the implementation of Klaus Schwab’s preferred authoritarian socialist system.

The supposed theme of this year’s WEF event was supposedly, “Restoring Trust.” That at least shows the people who style themselves as our globalist betters possess some modicum of self-awareness, given the reality of how they have destroyed any trust at all in what they’re doing among the segment of the world’s population with functioning BS detectors.

But while the event’s theme indicates some understanding of this inconvenient reality, a dig into the details betrays the same old authoritarian spirit prevailing unabated.

There was John Kerry, as usual droning on about the urgent need to stop using fossil fuels, a move that will inevitably leave billions in developing nations without access to adequate power. There was WEF Chairman Klaus Schwab, doing his best Bond villain imitation as he praised attendees for their fealty to this plan for a “great reset.”

There was U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, chatting openly with WEF President Borge Brende about the need to hasten the national sovereignty-destroying “new world order.” Truly, the more these zealots fail to achieve their goals, the more they double- and triple-down on the same awful ideas.

Another prominent speaker pushing another awful idea was IMF head Kristalina Georgieva. Ms. Georgieva appeared to have a multi-pronged assignment at this year’s festival consisting of comforting attendees that the world appears to be “poised for a soft landing,” while at the same time warning that elections are somehow a bad thing economically.

“This is going to be a very tough year, because fiscal policy has to rebuild buffers and deal with the debt that was accumulated in many countries,” Georgieva said in an interview conducted prior to arriving at the conference. “About 80 countries are going to have elections, and we know what happens with pressure on spending during election cycles.”

Then, in her address to the conference, she railed against what climate zealots refer to as “fossil fuel subsidies,” the vast majority of which is simply a tabulation of the very same business tax treatments available to every other business sector — common accounting items like deductions for depreciation and cost of goods sold. Her claim that these “subsidies” amount to $1.3 trillion globally is ludicrous on its face, but that didn’t stop her from making it.

Then, in her next breath, she advocated for the global collective cancel them and replace them with the most economy-killing idea currently in vogue — a tax on carbon.

“Put it back to support climate action. We cannot accelerate decarbonization fast enough without pricing carbon, with a predictable increase of the carbon price. It has to be USD 85 by 2030,” she asserted.

This is just pure economic sophistry. Any tax on any business engaged in the selling of any good or service will ultimately be paid by the consumer. This is just an inescapable reality of life – it is no secret. Well, apparently to anyone other than the global elites and heads of the World Bank, that is.

Georgieva is utterly dismissive of any of the little people who complain about this, though. “I am sick and tired of listening to people saying, ‘My g*d it’s so expensive, where are we going to find the money” she said, adding, “Let’s get to bringing in the money from where it hurts and putting it to where it helps.”

Where it hurts most, of course, is for the poor and lower middle classes. If that seems callous to you, well, you are not alone. But at least she puts her real views out there for all to see, and there is much utility for the rest of us hoi polloi in knowing that.

David Blackmon is an energy writer and consultant based in Texas. He spent 40 years in the oil and gas business, where he specialized in public policy and communications.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In case you did not know, the CFR is America’s foreign policy think tank. It is a long-established deep state kingpin that holds an obscene amount of power over national and global affairs, including over the U.S. State Department. The CFR also works in tandem with other deep state entities such as the Bilderberg group and the Trilateral Commission.

This past week, the CFR published a video in which Peter Trubowitz discussed what he believes are the reasons for the current rise in anti-globalism in Western countries and what it means for both the current and emerging world orders.

Trubowitz is a professor of international relations and director of the Phelan U.S. Centre at the London School of Economics, as well as an associate fellow at Chatham House. Chatham House is also known as the Royal Institute for International Affairs, and it plays a key role in the United Kingdom’s deep state apparatus.

Recognizing the current turn to “economic nationalism,” James M. Lindsay, senior vice president, director of studies, and Maurice R. Greenberg chair at the CFR, asked Trubowitz why he believes it is important to try to salvage the current international order, also known as the rules-based order.

“In the nineties when the U.S. and other Western democracies embraced what economists call hyper-globalisation [they] made a huge bet on supernationalism,” Trubowitz responded. “In opposition is frustration with the sovereignty costs that supernationalism entails.”

“We’re not going to be able to go back to the post-war, World War II, liberal international order. And those who are pining for it, I think are kind of barking up the wrong tree. What we need to do is to re-imagine the relationship between foreign and domestic policies.”

(Related: The globalist cabal is making its final moves to implement a Great Reset agenda followed by worldwide totalitarianism.)

Globalism is destroying the world

One day after this interview with Lindsay and Trubowitz took place, Kristalina Georgieva, managing director at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) talked about the same subject at the CFR’s Stephen C. Freidheim Symposium on Global Economics with CFR President Michael Froman.

Before joining the IMF, Georgieva worked as CEO of the World Bank. Before that, she was European Commission Vice President for Budget and Human Resources, during which time she played an instrumental role in developing the agenda of the European Union (EU).

Stating that she believes the global economy is performing much better than economists at the IMF and elsewhere expected for a time such as this, Georgieva denied that there are any problems economically – at least for the rich.

“We have gone through unthinkable events – COVID, then Russia’s war in Ukraine, then the cost-of-living crisis, now a very serious crisis in the Middle East,” Georgieva stated. “And yet, we are not experiencing a dramatic economic shock.”

There are, though, things that keep Georgieva up at night, including the prospect of slow global economic growth over the medium term. Right now, growth predictions in this timeframe are estimated to be around three percent, which is lower than the 3.8 percent pre-“pandemic” average.

“Secondly, what worries us even more than that is a very dangerous divergence that is taking place in the world economy,” Georgieva added.

Some countries, including the U.S., seem to be performing a lot better than other countries.

“As this divergence accumulates, what we should fear is not only economic trouble but also security trouble.”

More related news coverage can be found at Globalism.news.

Sources for this article include:

• Expose-News.com
• NaturalNews.com

IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack confirmed that Argentina paid off $1.1 billion of its $2.7 billion debt using the yuan, and that it may soon become the norm for other countries to do the same.

“As we have stated in the past, the Argentine authorities continue to remain current on their financial obligations to the IMF,” Kozack said at a press briefing.

“The RMB is one of the five freely usable currencies that members can and have used to settle their obligations with the IMF,” she added, RMB referring to the official name of China’s currency, renminbi.

Negotiations on the $44 billion program are still ongoing, Kozack clarified, rejecting the claim that the IMF received a letter from China stating that it would allow Argentina to use a swap line with the Chinese Central Bank to pay off its IMF dues.

“Our team has been working intensively with the Argentine authorities to make progress toward the completion of the fifth review,” she added. “And to help the authorities address a very complex and challenging situation.”

“In terms of the details of those discussions, because the teams are still in discussion, I will not pre-empt those discussions, and I will not get into the details other than to say that the discussions are frequent, and they are aimed at advancing the program.”

Argentina shifts away from U.S. dollar as sole official reserve currency

Last month, Argentina’s central bank forged a deal with China to renew the 130-billion-yuan ($18.4 billion) swap line for another three years, doubling the amount of freely accessible funds from 35 billion yuan ($5 billion) to 70 billion yuan ($10 billion).

The Argentine Ministry of Economy said the single-tranche swap will be freely available for any type of financial use, adding that the country hopes to promote more yuan spot and future operations.

While it used to be that the United States dollar was the sole official reserve currency of Argentina, the country’s banks will now accept deposits of Chinese yuan in savings and checking accounts.

“Financial entities will thus be enabled to open bank accounts denominated in renminbi yuan,” Argentine authorities explained, signaling a shift away from the U.S. dollar as the sole official reserve currency of the country.

The move comes as Argentine crops are failing due to severe drought, grain exports being Argentina’s major source of dollar earnings. The losses have caused the South American country’s foreign currency reserves to plummet, not to mention the fact that the peso currency has weakened dramatically due to 109 percent annual inflation.

Earlier this year, Argentina’s neighbor Brazil signed an agreement with China to allow for trade and investments to occur in their own currencies rather than in U.S. dollars. This has further weakened the U.S. dollar’s world dominance.

Despite all this, “the yuan is a long way from an international reserve currency such as the dollar,” claims Milton Ezrati, chief economist at Vested, a New York-based communications firm.

According to Ezrati, China lacks the financial markets to supports financial arrangements in the yuan, this being one of the requirements for a world reserve currency.

“If you are the world’s reserve currency, as the dollar is, then traders all over the globe have to hold your currency because that’s the way they do their business,” Ezrati says. “If they hold your currency, they want a place to invest it.”

It will not be long before the world’s fiat Ponzi schemes crumble into dust. Learn more at Collapse.news.

Sources for this article include:

• TheEpochTimes.com
• Newstarget.com
• NATURAL NEWS

Right now, the various currencies of the world are, for the most part, already controlled by unelected, private central banking cartels. A new IMF CBDC, however, would unify them all into one cashless cryptocurrency that everyone will be forced to use in order to buy and sell.

“If we are to be successful, CBDCs could not be fragmented national propositions,” Georgieva declared at a policy roundtable discussion with Bank Al-Maghrib in Rabat, Morocco about CBDCs.

“To have transactions more efficient and fairer, we need systems that connect countries. In other words, we need interoperability. For this reason, at the IMF we are working hard on the concept of a global CBDC platform to trade and to manage risks.”

Communist China currently has the world’s largest CBDC pilot program with 118 million participants

According to Georgieva, CBDCs offer “more people access to financial services, and at a lower cost, enhancing payment system ‘efficiency’ and ‘resilience’ and making cross-border payments ‘cheaper and quicker’ while reducing the number of needed intermediaries.”

If there are many different CBDCs, though, then there is a greater risk of “currency substitution and capital flow volatility,” she warned. This is why the IMF wants there to be just one single CBDC that is used by the entire world, which Georgieva says would enhance “international economic stability.”

Even without CBDCs, Georgieva said that “economic integration” under a new global world economic order is still possible. Still, if CBDCs are only used domestically rather than internationally, “we are under-utilizing their capacity,” she alleged.

When asked when the IMF plans to unleash a global CBDC, Georgieva dodged the question and apparently starting talking about something else entirely. She did, however, indicate with a smile that 114 central banks are in the process of at least exploring CBDCs, and that 10 have already “crossed the finish line,” the biggest one being in communist China with 118 million participants.

Georgieva revealed three primary “policy” challenges that exist in bringing to fruition a cross-border CBDC payment system. These include “common settlement asset,” “common legal and regulatory frameworks,” and “shared infrastructure,” all of which she claims can be remedied with the rollout of a global CBDC.

Back in April, the IMF announced the creation of a CBDC handbook that central banks and governments around the world can use to assist with their national CBDC rollouts. Former People’s Bank of China deputy governor and current IMF deputy managing director Bo Li indicated that this handbook will “hopefully help countries make as well-informed decisions as possible” regarding their respective CBDC programs.

Li further revealed, and quite boldly, that CBDC transaction data can be used to enforce social credit scoring systems similar to the one that controls people’s behavior in communist China.

“Those transaction data in terms of how many coffees I drink every day, where I buy coffee, do I use UBER every day and what kind of working hours I have,” Li said last October. “Those non-traditional data can be very useful for financial service providers to give me a credit score.”

According to Sam Callahan, a lead analyst for Swan Bitcoin, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) has been in the process of designing an international CBDC program, or a “multi-CBDC system,” since 2020 when everyone was distracted by the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19).

Are you ready for the global CBDC the powers that be are readying to implement? Learn more at DollarDemise.com.

Sources for this article include:

• LifeSiteNews.com
• Newstarget.com
• NATURAL NEWS

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.

I encourage you to read Daisy’s FedNow article.  It will give you a good idea of how digital payments will be initially billed as a convenience, then something we can’t do business without.  Read the article, and then imagine digital currency on a global scale.

This is in the works, too.

Worldwide digital currency

On April 10, the Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA) launched its international central bank digital currency.  Proponents claim that this Universal Monetary Unit (UMU, Ü) will be used exactly like any other form of digital money.

Side note: DCMA has also been referring to the Universal Money Units as Unicoin.  However, since there is a separate cryptocurrency also going by the name “Unicoin,” we’ll refer to this as UMU. (source)

You may be wondering, what is the DCMA?  What countries is it affiliated with?  Is it part of the  United Nations?

As explained in this Redacted video, DCMA is run by bankers and unnamed government officials from around the world.

The DCMA is described as “a world leader in the advocacy of digital currency and monetary policy innovations for governments and central banks.  Membership within the DCMA consists of sovereign states, central banks, commercial and retail banks, and other financial institutions.”

On its website, the DCMA states that its mission “is to enable trade globalization through the monetary integration of international payments and settlements while strengthening national economies [sic] monetary sovereignty.  The first wave of cryptographic cash was designed for public untrusted networks.  The DMCA reimagines the next wave of cryptographic innovations engineered for adoption by central banks, retail and commercial banks, Fintech, governments, and cryptocurrency exchanges.”

Here’s what makes UMU Unicoin different

UMU’s big advantage, what makes this different from individual countries’ proposed CBDCs, is that it can be used for cross-border transfers of money.  Offering UMU users discounted foreign exchange rates is part of the plan to encourage adoption.  International Monetary Fund (IMF) representatives claim that right now, exchanging currencies between different nations slows down transactions and increases the cost of doing business; they claim that UMU will dramatically speed things up.  Like FedNow, they are using the convenience of instant payments, coupled with the promise of the best foreign exchange rates, as a method of promoting this new payment framework.

As of January, 114 countries, representing over 95% of the world’s economy, are exploring CBDCs, and a few have already rolled them out.  However, as BeInCrypto noted, the rollouts haven’t gone particularly smoothly, which makes this rollout of a global crypto framework linked to the international banking system somewhat surprising.

Here’s what happened when the Nigerian government tried to force the issue.

China’s use of the digital yuan to enforce its rigid social credit system is well known.  However, we can also look to Nigeria to see what can happen when governments attempt to impose CBDCs on the population.

In 2021, Nigeria became the first African country to implement a CBDC, the eNaira.  Nigeria struggles a great deal with terrorism and counterfeiting operations; CBDC cheerleaders claimed that switching to digital currency would address some of these problems.  Since 35% of Nigerians use cryptocurrencies, government officials assumed that Nigerians would hop right into a CBDC system.

They were wrong.

35% of Nigerians may be comfortable with crypto, but less than 0.5% signed up for the government-issued eNaira.  The ones that did download it gave it lousy ratings.  No one really wanted it; many vendors wouldn’t accept it.

So, the Nigerian government tried forcing everyone to use it.  They restricted cash withdrawals to about US $44 a day or no more than about US $217 a week.

Authorities hoped that this would force people onto the CBDC. Instead, it resulted in chaos.  A tremendous cash shortage ensued, and some governors claimed their territories were “on the verge of anarchy.”

Since then, the Nigerian government has slowed down its rush to become a cashless society.  They had originally planned to be totally cashless by January. This did not work, and people will be able to use their bank notes until the end of 2023. (source)

No one would call this an inspiring success.  But no one seems to want to change courses, either.

Sweden is NOT actually a cashless society.

Mainstream media continually holds Sweden up as an example of a wealthy, functional cashless society, but this is disingenuous.  Sweden’s not actually cashless.  Yes, most Swedes choose not to use cash, but the government has actually passed laws saying that it has to be available.  Why?  Because the Swedish government, quite sensibly, admits that digital money is vulnerable to disruption, whether through natural disasters that disrupt the grid or something like an EMP.  They know that they need backup currency in case of emergency. (source)

Sweden is investigating CBDCs, just like everyone else.  We’ll see where they land.  Interestingly enough, their mostly-cashless society is being sold on digital currency for the same reason the Africans are: the ease of cross-border payments.  The Swedes have been functioning mostly without cash but also without a CBDC.  So why would they want an e-krona?  To make international trade easier, and that brings us right back to the UMU.

Things are not going well in the financial world.

Patterns are emerging.  Failures abound.  Fox just fired its most popular host.  Anheuser-Busch slapped its working-class customer base in the face with its hiring of TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney as a promoter.  It’s cost the company at least $5 billion.

And then the bank failures!  Three out of the four biggest bank failures in American history have occurred in the last two months.  Daisy wrote about First Republic failing on Monday. Signature Bank and Silicon Valley Bank both failed in March.  As of Tuesday, several other regional banks started to collapse, as reported by ZeroHedge.

When small businesses go under, bigger establishments win.  J.P. Morgan Chase is now the biggest bank in the U.S.  As there are fewer and fewer banks to negotiate, implementing new rules (like CBDC) becomes easier because fewer entities need to agree.

The bank bailouts of the past 15 years have been rewarding poor investment decisions and destabilizing the financial system, as explained by Peter Schiff.

We’re at the beginning of another round of crashes, but what is the financial sector doing?  As of May 1, the Biden administration will be slapping those with high credit scores with additional mortgage fees to subsidize home loans for people with poor credit.  We had a collapse in 2008; it looks like we’re at the beginning of another crash.

And yet we insist on incentivizing poor lending behavior.

Businesses are making poor decisions left and right, seemingly heedless of consequences.  Those trying just to make money are being hampered by ESG and CEI scores.  It’s like there’s a conscious effort to destroy business as usual.

The more time goes by, the more I suspect that’s the point.  As Daisy noted in the FedNow article, widespread bank failures will make people desperate, and desperate people become willing to sign on for “solutions” like CBDCs that they otherwise may not have.

Is this the road to global governance?

Once CBDCs are common among nations, UMU will follow.  And UMU will greatly facilitate global governance.

This probably sounds crazier than it should, but we’ve been sleepwalking toward global governance lately.  Look at the WHO’s most recent treaty.  If this gets ratified, which is very likely, all signers will have given sweeping powers to a huge, unelected group of global bureaucrats.  Global currency is just another nail in the global governance coffin.

I don’t think this will happen overnight.  I agree with Rebel Capitalist’s recent assessment that this will be a process. Getting everyone onboard with a CBDC will take time, particularly if governments want to avoid social disruption.  Nigerians were stripping their clothes off and smashing bank machinery in protest when they couldn’t get cash. I imagine American bank owners would prefer to avoid that.

Adding a global layer of infrastructure is that much more work.  But just because it’s five years down the road doesn’t mean we should ignore what’s going on right now.  Frameworks are being put in place that, in a perfect world, could conceivably lead to streamlined international business.  But we don’t live in a perfect world.

Between Covid, and the Afghanistan debacle, and the widespread dysfunction within the business community, I don’t think it’s far-fetched for anyone to harbor serious concerns about the competence and motives of those in power.

CBDCs are a danger to freedom.

The frameworks being constructed will enable a level of surveillance and control that past dictators could only dream about.  We need to call it what it is and do what we can to delay implementation.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Senator Ted Cruz are both calling for CBDC bans. I don’t live in Texas or Florida, but I applaud those politicians for speaking out about it

Most of us probably need to educate friends and relatives about CBDC, too.  I’ve been shocked at how many people have no idea that this is in the works.  Advertisements for instant payments are all over the place; if most people had better spending habits, this wouldn’t be anywhere near as appealing.  If you have teenagers and young adults in your house, talk about finances with them.  Solid budgeting skills make instant payments unnecessary.  Make the youngsters in your life aware of the costs of constantly doing whatever is most convenient.

Unfortunately, I agree with Daisy in that this is probably going to happen regardless of what we do.  However, we can still do our best to starve the beast by minimizing our digital footprints and doing as much as we can on our own or within a trusted network of friends.  We don’t have to stumble into the New World Order blindly.  We can be difficult.

Two years ago, there was a widespread push to mandate certain medical treatments across the workforce.  People stalled, argued, and filed lawsuits.  Mandates started going away, and just this month, the U.S. is finally ending its vaccine requirement for foreign travelers.

Do I think this is a permanent reprieve?  Oh no.  I think medical passports will come back in some other form, for some other disease.  My point is simply that dragging our collective feet might buy us a little time.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant for government policies as well as laundry.  By spreading awareness about the CBDC and UMU frameworks being put in place, hopefully, we can slow the adoption of these massive surveillance tools.

What are your thoughts?

Do you think UniCoin or Universal Monetary Unit is part of the plan to institute one global currency? Do you think this will move the world further toward digital currencies and cashless societies? What potential problems do you see with that, if any?

Let’s talk about it in the comments.

About Marie Hawthorne

A lover of novels and cultivator of superb apple pie recipes, Marie spends her free time writing about the world around her. Article cross-posted from The Organic Prepper.

Here’s another attempt with the help of Michael Snyder from The Economic Collapse Blog. We may be witnessing the birth of something I’ve been warning about for a while. It’s no secret that governments around the world, including the Biden-Harris regime, are plunging headlong into the freedom-killing quagmire of Central Bank Digital Currencies. But as I’ve noted, getting a bunch of CBDCs in play is only a step toward the end goal. I’ve been annoyed to read some journalists claiming CBDCs are the endgame. They are not.

A one-world currency that consolidates and centralizes CBDCs is the endgame, at least from a financial perspective. They don’t want a Digital Dollar, a Digital Yuan, a Digital Euro, and other digital currencies doing their own thing. They want everyone everywhere on the globe using the same Digital Enslavement Currency, and the International Monetary Fund may have just rolled it out in the form of Unicoin.

Read what Snyder says about it, then I’ll finish with some closing thoughts…

The IMF Has Just Unveiled a New Global Currency Known as the “Universal Monetary Unit” That Is Supposed to Revolutionize the World Economy

A new global currency just launched, but 99 percent of the global population has no idea what just happened.  The “Universal Monetary Unit”, also known as “Unicoin”, is an “international central bank digital currency” that has been designed to work in conjunction with all existing national currencies.  This should set off alarm bells for all of us, because the widespread adoption of a new “global currency” would be a giant step forward for the globalist agenda.  The IMF did not create this new currency, but it was unveiled at a major IMF gathering earlier this week…

Today, at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Spring Meetings 2023, the Digital Currency Monetary Authority (DCMA) announced their official launch of an international central bank digital currency (CBDC) that strengthens the monetary sovereignty of participating central banks and complies with the recent crypto assets policy recommendations proposed by the IMF.

Universal Monetary Unit (UMU), symbolized as ANSI Character, Ü, is legally a money commodity, can transact in any legal tender settlement currency, and functions like a CBDC to enforce banking regulations and to protect the financial integrity of the international banking system.

As the press release quoted above indicates, this new “Universal Monetary Unit” was created by the Digital Currency Monetary Authority.

So who in the world is the Digital Currency Monetary Authority?

Honestly, I had no idea until I started doing research for this article.

The press release says that the organization consists of “sovereign states, central banks, commercial and retail banks, and other financial institutions”…

The DCMA is a world leader in the advocacy of digital currency and monetary policy innovations for governments and central banks.  Membership within the DCMA consists of sovereign states, central banks, commercial and retail banks, and other financial institutions.

Basically, it sounds like a secretive cabal of international banks and national governments is conspiring to push this new currency down our throats.

We are being told that the “Universal Monetary Unit” is “‘Crypto 2.0”, and those that created it are hoping that it will be widely adopted by “all constituencies in a global economy”…

The DCMA introduces Universal Monetary Unit as Crypto 2.0 because it innovates a new wave of cryptographic technologies for realizing a digital currency public monetary system with a widespread adoption framework encompassing use cases for all constituencies in a global economy.

I don’t know about you, but this sounds super shady to me.

Of course the Digital Currency Monetary Authority is not the only one that has been working on a new digital currency.

The UK has also been working on one.

The same is true for the European Union.

And would it surprise anyone that the Biden administration is touting the potential benefits of a “digital form of the U.S. dollar”?  The following comes from the official White House website…

A United States central bank digital currency (CBDC) would be a digital form of the U.S. dollar. While the U.S. has not yet decided whether it will pursue a CBDC, the U.S. has been closely examining the implications of, and options for, issuing a CBDC. If the U.S. 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 U.S. within the international financial system.

I don’t think that it is a coincidence that governments all over the western world are simultaneously developing CBDCs.

And the IMF has actually already put together an extensive handbook “to assist central banks and governments throughout the world in their CBDC rollouts”…

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is putting together a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) handbook to assist central banks and governments throughout the world in their CBDC rollouts.

Published publicly on April 10, the “IMF Approach to Central Bank Digital Currency Capacity Development” report outlines the IMF’s multi-year strategy for aiding CBDC rollouts, including the development of a living “CBDC Handbook” for monetary authorities to follow.

A lot of people out there will cheer when these digital currencies are introduced.

But it is imperative to understand that once everyone is using them, your financial privacy will be almost totally gone.

Authorities will be able to track virtually everything that you buy and sell, and I am sure that they won’t hesitate to use that information against you.

Needless to say, the potential for tyranny in such a system is off the charts.

Can you imagine a world in which you are restricted from buying meat for a while because you have already used your “carbon credits” for the month?

Your “financial privileges” could potentially be restricted at any time at the whim of a government bureaucrat, and if you are a big enough troublemaker you could be “deplatformed” from the system permanently.

Of course in order for such a system to have real teeth, cash and other forms of payment will need to be phased out, and that is precisely what is happening right now in Europe.  The following comes from the official website of the European Parliament…

To restrict transactions in cash and crypto assets, MEPs want to cap payments that can be accepted by persons providing goods or services. They set limits up to €7000 for cash payments and €1000 for crypto-asset transfers, where the customer cannot be identified.

Ultimately, they will just keep lowering the limits until the use of cash is almost completely eliminated.

Everyone will be slowly but surely forced on to the new digital system, and it will be a system that they control with an iron fist.

And most people will willingly go along with it.  These days, most people are just scraping by from month to month and one recent survey found that 70 percent of all Americans are “financially stressed” at this point…

Inflation, economic instability and a lack of savings have an increasing number of Americans feeling financially stressed.

Some 70% of Americans admit to being stressed about their personal finances these days and a majority — 52% — of U.S. adults said their financial stress has increased since before the Covid-19 pandemic began in March 2020, according to a new CNBC Your Money Financial Confidence Survey conducted in partnership with Momentive.

Most Americans simply do not care that these new digital currencies could open a door for great tyranny.

They just want to be able to pay the bills and take care of their families, and if our politicians tell them that this new system is good for the economy they will be all for it.

But those of us that are awake know that more globalism doesn’t lead anywhere good.

Concentrating even more power in the hands of the international elite is always a bad idea, and hopefully we can start to get more people to understand this.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Editor’s Commentary

Those who have been attempting to expose the machinations of the New World Order, the globalist elite cabal, the Liberal World Order, or whatever they’re calling themselves these days have long said that a one-world currency will be required in order for the powers-that-be to have complete control over us. Unicoin really could be it, and hopefully my readers are cognizant of the fact that I do not jump on conspiracy theories very easily.

With that said, this particular conspiracy “theory” is materializing as fact. This is why it’s imperative that we do everything in our power to accomplish two things. First, we must fight this in any way that we can and unfortunately I’m not sure how that manifests. I know that making people aware is an important part of fighting the good fight because we will need to reach a tipping point of awareness to have a chance, but even then I’m not sure how to stop it. That’s above my paygrade. All I know is that people must be told the truth.

Second, it behooves us all to start (if you haven’t started already) building and/or joining localized networks for alternative commerce. Make friends. Build alliances. Get to know farmers, ranchers, shop owners… anyone who isn’t part of the corporate financial infrastructure. Again, I do not know exactly what that will look like or if alt-economies are going to be effective anywhere, let alone everywhere. I just know that smarter people than me are talking about it too, so there’s a good chance it’s on the right track.

The most important consideration for Bible-believing Christians is that we must never let our faith be secondary to anything. Surviving and thriving in this world is important to many of us, but we cannot allow that to ever supersede our faith. No matter how bad things get in this world, it’s our place in the next world that should be our greatest consideration.

God Bless you all.

The IMF’s Spring Meetings this year saw the announcement of the organization’s own, “international central bank digital currency” called the Universal Monetary Unit (UMU, aka Unicoin).

The IMF said in a statement that UMU functions like a CBDC and is a legal and global money commodity. The purpose of this particular iteration of a CBDCs is to make sure banking regulations are enforced, as well as to protect “the financial integrity of the international banking system.”

This currency will be used by banks via SWIFT codes and bank accounts linked to a UMU digital wallet.

The scheme is supposed to allow for digital cross-border payments modeled after SWIFT, and promises best wholesale exchange rates of settlement currencies and real-time settlement, “while bypassing the correspondent banking system.”

At the same time, IMF officials are describing the current cross-border payment system as slow, expensive, and risky, while declaring that UMU’s goal is not disruption of the international monetary system – such as it is – but rather, to further “strengthen” it.

Not only that, but the IMF looks set on rebranding the term “crypto” – normally associated with decentralized digital currencies that leave central banks and governments out of the equation. “Crypto 2.0” is how the IMF would market UMU, and likely, CBCDs in general.

Meanwhile, critics of CBDCs are using strong words to express their opposition to the trend, with some calling it a path toward financial slavery that is always a handy companion to political tyranny.

More criticism has to do with CBDCs being seen as a way of introducing social credit scores and digital IDs, thus having individuals fully ceding to the government control over their own assets and/or the amount they spend.

Unlike cash and decentralized crypto, CBCDs are feared to spell the end of private financial affairs, and usher in even more surveillance by the authorities.

Article cross-posted from Reclaim The Net.

Last year, there was a severe slowdown in the global economy following the obedient masses’ compliance with the ruling class’s rules over the scamdemic. The conflict in Ukraine is also set to continue in 2023 because the rulers need a war and an excuse to further destroy humanity. And this could persist for the next five years,  warned International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Thursday.

According to a report by RT, the global GDP will grow at about 3% over the next half-decade compared to an average of 3.8% seen in the past 20 years, representing the worst economic performance in more than three decades. The IMF expects global GDP to expand by less than 3% this year, which is in line with its January projection of 2.9%.

“With rising geopolitical tensions, with inflation still running high, a robust recovery remains elusive,” Georgieva said. “That harms the prospects of everyone, especially for the most vulnerable people and most vulnerable countries,” she added. Additionally, she urged the world community to “be vigilant and more agile than ever,” adding that regulators may come across more complicated choices to protect the financial system amid persistent inflation and challenges in the banking sector.

The IMF head also warned about the soaring inflation that is facing most of the world’s wealthy nations. This inflation will force central banks to continue interest-rate hikes, adding pressure to the banking industry despite financial uncertainty following recent turmoil with lenders in the United States and Switzerland.

At the end of all of this will be the control system of central bank digital currencies that will ensure the total and permanent enslavement of every single human being on this planet. CBDCs are absolutely the end game and necessary to make sure the slaves can never break free.

• The Endgame: Central Bank Digital Currency
• WEF Admits CBDC Is Inevitable

Article cross-posted from SHTF Plan.