The War On Cash
Political, academic and business elite push for introduction of Cashless Society
The ' cashless society' has been a pipedream of technology nerds, control freak politicians and academics who favour global fascism for some years. The technology now exists, the political consensus appears to exist (because the elites have underestimated the strength of feeling against globalism around the world, and the voices raised in support of this latest attack by the technology tyrants on individual liberty and privacy are getting louder.Contact us:
War On Cash - The Banking and Political Elite's Bid To End Your Independence
(Click any headline below to jump to the article. First link in the RELATED POSTS table brings you back here)Contents
Posts tagged withMoney
The 'War On Cash' Endgame Is Here
How A Cashless Society Might WorkSweden Begins 5 Year Countdown Until It Eliminates Cash
The War On Paper Currency Begins: ECB Votes To "Scrap" €500 Bill
Norway's Biggest Bank Joins Push To Abolish Cash
Banks want us all to have 'tap and pay' cards... even though they're a criminals wet dream
Cashless Society: The Spy In Your Wallet
The "Better Than Cash Alliance" Has An Orwellian Plan
Why Europe Will Lead the Charge to Eliminate Cash – The Next Step in Global Meltdown
Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom
Banning Cash Will Stop Terrorism (and end war, poverty, disease and bad smells)
Cashless Society Equals Cashless People
Are We About To Return To The Gold Standard
Prepare For The Worst Case Scenario
Diversity Is A Lie -So Who Are The real Racist Bigots?
Ending The Ownership Of Money
War On Cash To Escalate In 2024
Early last week Boggart Blog learned Globalists within the US Government and the banking and finance industry have announced a plan to launch a Digital Fiat Currency that would enable seamless transfers of funds between banks and tax jurisdictions as a major step towards banning cash. Bankers and politicians claim this is essential to protect business and private funds against the actions of hostile nations and to eliminate money laundering by organised crime networks ... Continue reading >>>
War On Cash To Escalate In 2024
Early last week Boggart Blog learned Globalists within the US Government and the banking and finance industry have announced a plan to launch a Digital Fiat Currency that would enable seamless transfers of funds between banks and tax jurisdictions as a major step towards banning cash. Bankers and politicians claim this is essential to protect business and private funds against the actions of hostile nations and to eliminate money laundering by organised crime networks ... Continue reading >>>
Sweden Begins 5 Year Countdown Until It Eliminates Cash
How much louder can the “ban cash” calls get?
Recall it was just last year when we catalogued the growing cacophony of crazies for whom banning physical currency is the only way to ensure that depositors can’t simply reassert their economic autonomy under a low or zero rate regime..
Put simply, if interest rates get too low, depositors will simply take their money out the bank and put it in the mattress or the safe where, to quote WSJ from last week, “interest rates are always low no matter what central bankers do.
Most recently, Larry Summers called for the abolition of the $100 bill in the US and in Europe the €500 note is to go the way of the dinosaurs.
“It shows a vague sense of unease,” one Japanese lawmaker who brought up the soaring safe sales in parliament on Monday remarked.
Now, the excuse given for banning big bills is that it combats crime. And maybe it does. But in the end the rationale is simple: if there are no more physical banknotes, people have no economic autonomy. Let’s say consumer spending is stagnating. No problem, take rates to -20%. We bet they’ll start spending then - either that or see their deposits haircut by 20%.
In short, no cash means no effective lower bound and with no lower bound, the economy can be completely centrally planned - for all intents and purposes.
Consumers not spending? No problem. Just tax their excess account balance. Economy overheating? Again, no problem. Raise the interest paid on account holdings to encourage people to stop spending. So with Citi, Harvard, Denmark and Peter Bofinger, member of the German Council Of Economic Experts, all onboard, we’re surprised to hear that Sweden (already one of the leaders in the cashless society movement) is looking to phase out a series of new bank notes it just introduced last year and moved ever closer to the cashless utopia.
“Last year Sweden introduced a series of new banknotes replacing its old kronor notes. But figures suggest these too could be gone from circulation in half a decade if the development towards a cashless society continues,” The Local reports,” continuing that “cash transactions today represent no more than two percent of the value of all payments made in Sweden, [and that estimate] will drop to below 0.5 percent within the next five years.
Some welcome the trend - credit card providers, for instances - others have reservations. “It is happening at a furious rate. And it's important to many older people to be able to use cash. I mean, today it is legal tender and you have to be able to use it until parliament decides otherwise,” Christina Tallberg, chairwoman of
Swedish pensioners' organization PRO, told Swedish Radio on Friday.
Well, until parliament or perhaps more appropriately, until The Riksbank and Stefan Ingves decides it. Because at -0.55, it’s a “how much lower can you go type scenario.”
Well, if you go kronor-less, that question ceases to make sense. The "problem" simply goes away.
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How A Cashless Soiciety Might Work
by Phil T Looker
Calls by various mainstream economists to ban cash transactions seem to be getting ever more louder.
Cash, paper money and coins, makes up about 10% of what economists call 'M2' monetary aggregates (currency plus accessible bank deposits) in the Europe, USA and the developed world. Recently we have heard the voices of several leading economists, officials of the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Germany's Bundesbank and the European Central Bank (ECB), the financial arm of those European Union states that are members of the single currency system (Euro) and businessmen such as Bill Gates call for the abolition of cash and the switching of all transactions, even the most trivial, to electronic systems. Presumably the goal of such a policy is to bring the percentage of economic activity conducted in cash down to zero. In other words, eliminate your right to keep your purchasing power in paper currency, and your shopping habits private.
By forcing people and companies to convert their cash into bank deposits (held in government controlled bank accounts, several economists have insisted, the hope is that the public can be nudged into spending their money rather than save it. Towards this goal it is being suggested credit balances in those accounts will carry considerable costs through the imposition of fees or charging negative interest rates. In other words you will have to pay in order to be allowed to save a little.
In theory penalties on saving could boost consumption, GDP and tax revenues to help pay off the massive debts we have accumulated. The highly controversial notion that citizens might in the future have to pay the government for the privilege of holding their hard earned money in liquid form after it has already been taxed rather than tying it up in government approved financial services products seems to offer a way out of the current perpetual economic depression, but at what cost to the fabric of society.
The US adopted a similar approach to controlling personal finance in the 1930s, prohibiting its citizens’ right to own gold so they could no longer “hoard” it. At that time the US dollar was based on the gold standard so the goal was to restrict gold. Now that we are all in a “paper” standard the goal is to restrict paper.
However, while some economic benefits may arguably accrue in the short-run, this needs to be balanced in relation to some serious distortions that could rapidly develop beyond that.
Pros and Cons
To be most in any way effective, banning cash would have to be coordinated between the US and the EU. Otherwise if only one of the two Western economic blocks were to do it, the citizens of that block might start using the paper currency of the other, thereby circumventing the restrictions of this policy. Can’t settle your purchase in paper Euros? No problem, we’ll take US dollar bills. This is what used to happen in the USSR when currency controls prevented Russians from holding cash. Cood that could not be bought in Russian shops for Roubles were traded in the dark economy for US dollars, British pounds and German Deutschmarks.
To be most in any way effective, banning cash would have to be coordinated between the US and the EU. Otherwise if only one of the two Western economic blocks were to do it, the citizens of that block might start using the paper currency of the other, thereby circumventing the restrictions of this policy. Can’t settle your purchase in paper Euros? No problem, we’ll take US dollar bills. This is what used to happen in the USSR when currency controls prevented Russians from holding cash. Cood that could not be bought in Russian shops for Roubles were traded in the dark economy for US dollars, British pounds and German Deutschmarks.
This is just one aspect that can give us a glimpse of the wide ranging consequences the introduction by governments of a cashless economy. Here are a few more:
Pros:
Enhance the tax base, as most / all transactions in the economy could now be traced by the government;
Substantially constrain the parallel economy, particularly in illicit activities;
Force people to convert their savings into consumption and/or investment, thereby providing a boost to GDP and employment;
Foster the adoption of new wireless / cashless technologies. Cons:
The government loses an important alternative to pay for its debts, namely by printing true-to-the-letter paper money. This is why Greece may have to leave the euro, since its inability or unwillingness to adopt more austerity measures, a precondition to secure more euro loans, will force it to print drachma bills to pay for its debts;
We wonder if the banks would actually like to deal with the administrative hassle of handling millions of very small cash transactions and related customer queries; Illegal immigrants would be out of a job very quickly – a figure that can reach millions in the US, creating the risk for substantial social unrest.
If there is an event that disrupts electronic transactions (e.g. extensive power outage, cyberattack, cascading bank failures) people in that economy will not be able to transact and everything will grind to a halt.
Of course enforcing a government mandate to ban cash transactions must carry penalties. This in turns means more regulations, disclosure requirements and compliance costs, potentially exorbitant fees and even jail time.
Banning cash transactions might even propel the demise of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The share of US dollar bills held abroad has been estimated to be as high as 70% (according to a 1996 report by the US Federal Reserve). One thing is to limit the choices of your own citizens; another is trying to force this policy onto others, which is much harder. Foreigners would probably dump US dollar bills in a hurry and flock to whichever paper currency that can offer comparable liquidity. In light of the foregoing does banning cash transactions make sense to you? Aren’t the risks at all levels of society just too large to be disregarded?
Enhance the tax base, as most / all transactions in the economy could now be traced by the government;
Substantially constrain the parallel economy, particularly in illicit activities;
Force people to convert their savings into consumption and/or investment, thereby providing a boost to GDP and employment;
Foster the adoption of new wireless / cashless technologies.
The government loses an important alternative to pay for its debts, namely by printing true-to-the-letter paper money. This is why Greece may have to leave the euro, since its inability or unwillingness to adopt more austerity measures, a precondition to secure more euro loans, will force it to print drachma bills to pay for its debts;
Paper money costs you nothing to hold and carries no incremental risk (other than physical theft); converting it into bank deposits will cost you fees (and likely earn a negative interest) and expose you to a substantial loss if the bank goes under. After all, you are giving up currency directly backed by the central bank for currency backed by your local bank;
This could have grave consequences for retirees, many of whom are incapable of transacting using plastic. Not to mention that they will disproportionately bear the costs of having to hold their liquid savings entirely in a (costly) bank account;
Ditto for very poor people, many of whom don’t have access to the banking system; this will only make them more dependent, in fact exclusively dependent, on government handouts;
Ditto for very poor people, many of whom don’t have access to the banking system; this will only make them more dependent, in fact exclusively dependent, on government handouts;
We wonder if the banks would actually like to deal with the administrative hassle of handling millions of very small cash transactions and related customer queries; Illegal immigrants would be out of a job very quickly – a figure that can reach millions in the US, creating the risk for substantial social unrest.
If there is an event that disrupts electronic transactions (e.g. extensive power outage, cyberattack, cascading bank failures) people in that economy will not be able to transact and everything will grind to a halt.
Of course enforcing a government mandate to ban cash transactions must carry penalties. This in turns means more regulations, disclosure requirements and compliance costs, potentially exorbitant fees and even jail time.
Banning cash transactions might even propel the demise of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The share of US dollar bills held abroad has been estimated to be as high as 70% (according to a 1996 report by the US Federal Reserve). One thing is to limit the choices of your own citizens; another is trying to force this policy onto others, which is much harder. Foreigners would probably dump US dollar bills in a hurry and flock to whichever paper currency that can offer comparable liquidity.
Then there are the Unintended Consequences. The authors of 'great ideas for social progress' always forget about the inevitable unintended consequences.
Paper money can be thought of as a form of interest-free government borrowing and therefore as a saving to the taxpayer. Given the dire situation of Western government finances, probably the very last thing we should do right now is to ban cash transactions and discourage the holding of cash. If the government prints bills and coins to settle its debts, rather than issuing bonds, it does not add to its snowballing debt obligations. Of course the counterargument is that this might result in significant inflation once politicians put their hands directly on the printing press. But isn’t this what the mainstream economists are so desperately trying to do to avoid deflation?
And it’s not like people in the West still stuff their mattress with money. It is estimated 30% of US paper money is held by residents, about 2% of GDP. It is doubtful therefore that any boost to economic activity will be significant. In fact there is no empirical evidence that demonstrates this policy will work as intended (not that this has ever stopped a mainstream economist) Moreover, an economy’s ability to create money would be even more impaired if its banking system were to crash – exactly at the time when it would need it the most. In reality it could be hugely deflationary because there would be no other currency alternatives. Talk about unintended consequences.
As to who could replace the US and EU in providing paper liquidity to the world, we don’t need to look far. China will surely not ban cash transactions given that almost a billion of its citizens are still quite poor and most have no access to banking services. Replacing the US in offshore cash transactions would create substantial demand for the Chinese yuan, at that stage without any real competition from other major economies as presumably none would be using paper.
It is unlikely therefore that US political leaders would ever endorse such a policy; they would be effectively giving up on an incredible advantage to the benefit of their main geopolitical competitors. However, given the considerable influence of mainstream economists and academics, people who live in an akternative reality, in financial and political circles such a foolish move cannot be ruled out. Ideoogically driven theories about equality and wealth redistribution whould surely trump any practical considerations, especially if the name of the god Progress is invoked.
And it would be just the latest in a set of unprecedented economic policies:
“A depression is coming? Let’s put interest rates at zero. The economy is still in trouble? Let’s have the central bank print trillions in new securities. The banks are not lending? Let’s change the accounting rules and offer government guarantees and funds. People are still not spending? Let’s have negative interest rates. The economy is still in the tank? LET’S BAN CASH TRANSACTIONS!”
More Central Planning
The problem is that central planners never know how and where to stop. If a policy doesn’t work, they just find a way to tinker somewhere else – and with more vigor. Devolving the initiative back to the private sector is never an option.
Micromanagement of every single detail of our economic lives thus seems to be inevitable. And at that point there will be no more free markets. As pointed out by Friedrich von Hayek, “the more the state plans the more difficult planning becomes for the individual.”
Banning cash transactions seems like yet another excuse to postpone implementing real solutions to our financial problems. How can we have sustainable growth in the economy if:
The banks are not solid enough to lend?
Consumers are not solid enough to borrow?
Overindebted municipalities, states and governments seek ever more tax revenues?
An already overburdened private sector is underwriting the cost of every policy error?
The guys and gals who generate real wealth and employment need encouragement and support, not more penalties on how they choose to go about their business.
A cash ban does not address any substantive issues. What is needed is a sensible economic proposal and above all political courage to implement it, which so far seems to be lacking.
There are no free lunches in economics. A cashless society is promising to have very tangible costs to our liberties and future prosperity.
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War On Cash: Pin Numbers will be obsolete within five years, we will pay with mobile or fingerprints instead.The War On Cash gathers more momentum as political, business and academic elite attempt to advance and agenda that will destroy individual freedom and privacy and give them total control of our lives and finances via technology.
Trump catches attention of CFR, Bilderberg, Trilateral
Donald Trump is portrayed as a clown by mainstream media and his combover is the silliest I have ever seen. Still, he's a billionaie so I don't suppose he gives a flying fuck what The Daily Stirrer thinks of him. Not that we think he is all bad, anyone who attacks Obama's global naziism trade deals, TTIP and TPP mush have some good points.
Greece draws up drachma plans, prepares to miss IMF payment>
Greece is preparing plans to nationalise the country’s banking system and introduce a parallel coupon currency so that citizens can carry on their day to day activities in the event of the Eurozone taking steps to defuse the simmering debt crisis. Sources in the governing Syriza party said the government may be forced to take the unprecedented and high risk step of missing a payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as early as next week.
New Global Crisis Imminent, New Geneva Report Warns The Geneva Report refers to a “poisonous combination of high and rising global debt and slowing nominal GDP [gross domestic product], driven by both slowing real growth and falling inflation”. The total burden of world debt, private and public, has risen from 160 per cent of national income in 2001 to almost 200 per cent after the crisis struck in 2009 and 215 per cent in 2013. “Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to delever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs,” the report said.
Cashless Society - The Resistance Begins Here
A seaside market town in Norfolk may be less than 100 miles from the world's financial capital, London, , it may be the commercial centre of West Norfolk’ as the town website boasts, it may be home to 45,000 people — but there, unlike in London, cash is king.
Establishment Pushing ‘Cashless Society’ to Control Humanity
The global establishment is increasingly pushing the notion of what it calls a “cashless society” — a world in which all payments and transactions would be conducted electronically, creating a permanent record for governments to inspect and track at will.Multiple governments from Africa and Asia to Europe and ...
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War On Cash: Pin Numbers will be obsolete within five years, we will pay with mobile or fingerprints instead.The War On Cash gathers more momentum as political, business and academic elite attempt to advance and agenda that will destroy individual freedom and privacy and give them total control of our lives and finances via technology.
Trump catches attention of CFR, Bilderberg, Trilateral
Donald Trump is portrayed as a clown by mainstream media and his combover is the silliest I have ever seen. Still, he's a billionaie so I don't suppose he gives a flying fuck what The Daily Stirrer thinks of him. Not that we think he is all bad, anyone who attacks Obama's global naziism trade deals, TTIP and TPP mush have some good points.
Greece draws up drachma plans, prepares to miss IMF payment>
Greece is preparing plans to nationalise the country’s banking system and introduce a parallel coupon currency so that citizens can carry on their day to day activities in the event of the Eurozone taking steps to defuse the simmering debt crisis. Sources in the governing Syriza party said the government may be forced to take the unprecedented and high risk step of missing a payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as early as next week.
New Global Crisis Imminent, New Geneva Report Warns The Geneva Report refers to a “poisonous combination of high and rising global debt and slowing nominal GDP [gross domestic product], driven by both slowing real growth and falling inflation”. The total burden of world debt, private and public, has risen from 160 per cent of national income in 2001 to almost 200 per cent after the crisis struck in 2009 and 215 per cent in 2013. “Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to delever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs,” the report said.
Cashless Society - The Resistance Begins Here
A seaside market town in Norfolk may be less than 100 miles from the world's financial capital, London, , it may be the commercial centre of West Norfolk’ as the town website boasts, it may be home to 45,000 people — but there, unlike in London, cash is king.
Establishment Pushing ‘Cashless Society’ to Control Humanity
The global establishment is increasingly pushing the notion of what it calls a “cashless society” — a world in which all payments and transactions would be conducted electronically, creating a permanent record for governments to inspect and track at will.Multiple governments from Africa and Asia to Europe and ...
a href="http://.greenteethmm.com/google-being-evil.shtml">Being Evil? Just Another Day At The Office For Google Boss
Amazon's Human Robots: More and more people are finding themselves dehumanised in the modern workplace
Forget Recession, US banks Post Record Profits
Washington Signals Fears Over Dollar
Globalist Bankers Make Plans To Rob Your Bank Account
Slaves To The Machine
Holy City (slam poem)
Living Within The Conspiracy
New World Order
Internet Technology
London transport bans cash
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Norway's Biggest Bank Joins Push To Abolish Cash
The move by governments to eliminate cash as a means of trading goods and services is moving faster than we imagined. With another global financial crisis looming according to financial journalists and investment experts this is as understandable as it is undesirable for us ordinary punters.
A cashless society in which all financial transactions would have to be via electronic media and therefore make use of devices connected to the internet is being sold as a move that would be more convenient and secure for people. The more sinister implications are not mentioned of course.
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The first shot in the global war on cash was just fired, by none other than the ECB, which moments ago Handelsblatt Tweeted ...
Daniel Schäfer @schaeferdaniel
ECB wants to stop issuing 500 Euro bills - our exclusive https://global.handelsblatt.com
ECB wants to stop issuing 500 Euro bills - our exclusive https://global.handelsblatt.com
... and Bloomberg confirmed - ECB COUNCIL VOTES TO SCRAP EU500 NOTE: HANDELSBLATT - has voted to scrap the second highest denominated European bank note in circulation:
So what you might well ask. The people who like cash will still have 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 200 euro bills right.
The answer is not simple as that, people who browse the contents of this omnibus page will understand. Recall that the €500 note is the second highest currency denomination in G10, after the CHF1,000 note. More importantly, the total value of €500 notes in circulation amounts to €306.8bn and has been rising, which shows that as banks and government finance officers hint darkly of negative interest rates (to stimulate consumer spending now they've learned Quantitative Easing (QE) does not work) and that in future we can expect to pay banks interest on our savings and investments. As Zero Hedge pointed out:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-11/here-real-reason-why-authorities-want-ban-high-denomination-bank-notes" if overnight the €307 billion worth of €500 bills were eliminated, the notional value of the entire amount of European physical currency in circulation would decline by 30% to €700 billion!"
And there you have it: while it may not be banning all European cash outright, we are confident the ECB would be delighted if one third of it was to start, while pretending to be fighting financial crime, terrorism, corruption and drug dealers.
Of course, what Europe would be truly doing is setting the scene for ever more aggressive NIRP, and by removing the highest denomination bank notes, it would make evading negative that much more difficult and costly (albeit would certainly favor gold).
That's not all: as Bank of America pointed out, abolishing the €500 note may even end up even weakening the European currency:
... we would expect that abolishing a note that represents almost 30% of the total Euros in circulation would be negative for the currency, keeping everything else constant. The share of the €500 note in the total value of Euros in circulation has been falling since 2009 and this has coincided with a weakening Euro in real effective terms. This is not evidence of causality, but we should not ignore it.
If we are right, the Euro will weaken, primarily against the USD and the CHF. The USD is the most liquid currency and we would expect it to capture a large share of the drop in the demand for the Euro as a store of value. However, the CHF could also benefit, having the largest note denomination in G10 economies. Indeed, the CHF1000 note is already very popular, representing more than 60% of the CHF notes in circulation, unless the SNB follows the example of the ECB and also abolishes the CHF1000 note.
If we are right, the Euro will weaken, primarily against the USD and the CHF. The USD is the most liquid currency and we would expect it to capture a large share of the drop in the demand for the Euro as a store of value. However, the CHF could also benefit, having the largest note denomination in G10 economies. Indeed, the CHF1000 note is already very popular, representing more than 60% of the CHF notes in circulation, unless the SNB follows the example of the ECB and also abolishes the CHF1000 note.
BofA is probably right, unless of course, in this global race to the bottom where every central bank tit has other central bank tats as a direct response, first the SNB "scraps" the CHF1000 bill, and then the Federal Reserve follows suit and listens to Harvard "scholar" and former Standard Chartered CEO Peter Sands who just last week said the US should ban the $100 note as it would "deter tax evasion, financial crime, terrorism and corruption."
Not a bad way to launch a global ban on paper currency ahead of a global NIRP regime, and all, of course, in the name of fighting "tax evasion, financial crime, terrorism and corruption." Nothing at all to do with helping governments and bankers steal your money and mine through negative interest in a system where there is no alternative to the corrupt and criminal digital banking system.
Banks want us all to have 'tap and pay' cards... even though they're a criminals wet dream
by Xavier Connolly
Are any words in the English language more abused than ‘for your convenience’? As soon as you read them you know that it’s not your convenience an organisation has in mind, but its own.Last week, my bank sent me a contactless debit card. If you don’t have one yet, the chances are you soon will have.
It looks like any other credit or debit card, but contains a tiny radio receiver which - when it is waved within a couple of inches of a ticket machine or terminal at a shop checkout - can be used to make a payment.
Unfortunately while the banks and technology giants have been ironing out problems with contactless payment technology (like its habit of doing your good deed for the day by paying for other people's stuff), the crooks have been forging ahead with non-accidental ways to rip off your card. Thieves can easily steal key data from contactless credit and debit cards using equipment bought "easily and cheaply" online, consumers magazine Which? has warned UK consumers.
The technology, available "easily and cheaply" from a online retailer and catalogues such as CPC Farnell (and has many legitimate uses it must be said) can clone enough information from the contactless payment cards to make fraudulent orders.
Researchers tested six debit cards and four credit cards and were able to purchase a £3,000 television set with the stolen payment details, Which? has claimed.
All ten credit and debit cards tested revealed some data using the hack.
But while none gave up the three-digit CVV security code on the back of the card, one online store allowed the team to order a £3,000 TV with the incomplete data gathered.
Contactless cards are supposed to mask personal data during a purchase – however, the technology clearly has flaws, a Which? spokesperson added.
There are plenty of ways I wish my day-to-day life could be made more efficient: I wish the council would remove the bus lanes that jam the traffic into my nearest town; I would love it if it didn’t take five minutes to boot-up my computer; or if I could find an electrician who could come at the drop of hat, rather than leaving me waiting in the dark for several hours.
But it has never crossed my mind that I have been wasting valuable seconds by having to press four buttons each time I buy something with my debit card. The very idea that we can save a useful amount of time by being able to wave a card at a machine instead of entering a PIN is absurd.
The reality is that it isn’t my life that will be made easier thanks to my new contactless card, it is the lives of criminal gangs wanting to steal from my account.
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The "Better Than Cash Alliance" Has An Orwellian Plan
by Tyler Durden
Way back on the autumn of 1910, under the pretense of a duck hunting trip, a group of powerful bankers, political figures, and businessmen (a kind of proto Bilderberg group) met at Jekyll Island, GA to plan the creation of a central bank for the United States. The "game" that this elite group of "hunters" brought back to their ivory towers of Lower Manhattan and Capitol Hill was the blueprint for one of the most destructive financial institutions in modern history, the Federal Reserve.
One-hundred years later, another group of powerful bankers, political figures, and businessmen have converged to promote a cashless society, an economic system that would compel every man, woman, and child to utilize proprietary, government-monitored electronic systems to make purchases of any kind. This group, which calls itself the Better Than Cash Alliance, is as dangerous as the group of “outdoor enthusiasts” that met at Jekyll Island that fateful early-20th Century November.
And, just like the Jekyll Island group sold their grand plans based on a lie (they claimed that the Fed would guarantee liquidity in times of financial panics), the Better Than Cash Alliance is selling the idea of a cashless society based on the farce that eliminating cash would stimulate entrepreneurship among the poor.
In reality, the elimination of cash would reduce a great many opportunities for entrepreneurship for people of few means. Gone would be the informal businesses the working poor often operate: roadside produce stands, street performances, handicraft tables, and day labor. Contrary to the assertions of the BTCA, a cash-free society would limit entrepreneurship to those with the means to incorporate a business, afford the proprietary system required to accept payments, and understand the local, state, and federal tax burden the payment system would create.
Although they won’t admit it, the 12 central governments that currently support the BTCA (the U.S. is one of them) do so because a cashless society would enable them to track and tax every purchase made with sovereign currency within their borders. In addition to producing new government revenue streams, the payment systems would increase governments’ social engineering capabilities: They would compel consumers to purchase goods and services from tax-paying, licensed organizations.
Freelance service providers such as barbers, music teachers, and tutors would be forced to either jump through the hoops of incorporation or seek work with licensed businesses (which would inevitably take a cut of their earnings and subject the remainder to payroll taxes). The black market would also be squeezed, escalating the War on Drugs, and subjecting every “sin” and self-defense purchase to government scrutiny. Under the guise of “national security”, of course. READ MORE ...
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The Social cost Of Capitalism
Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.
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Secret Meeting in London to "End Cash"
from Red Ice Creations / Infowars
Central banks aim to institute "governmental approval" for all purchases and salesEconomist Martin Armstrong claims there is a "secret meeting to end cash" set to take place in London before the end of the month involving representatives from the ECB and the Federal Reserve.
Armstrong, who is known for successfully predicting the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse, expressed his shock that no news outlet has reported on this upcoming conference.
“I find it extremely perplexing that I have been the only one to report of the secret meeting in London. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, will address the central banks to advocate the elimination of all cash to bring to fruition the day when you cannot buy or sell anything without government approval,” writes Armstrong.
“When I googled the issue to see who else has picked it up, to my surprise, Armstrong Economics comes up first. Others are quoting me, and I even find it spreading as far as the Central Bank of Nigeria, but I have yet to find any reports on the meeting taking place in London, when my sources are direct.”
Armstrong first brought attention to the alleged meeting earlier this month when he revealed that representatives from the Federal Reserve, the ECB as well as participants from the Swiss and Danish central banks would all be attending a “major conference in London” at which Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, would give presentations.
“We better keep one eye open at night for this birth of a cashless society that is coming in much faster than expected. Why the secret meeting? Something does not smell right here,” concludes Armstrong.
Discussions and moves towards banning cash have repeatedly cropped up in recent weeks.
Willem Buiter, who Armstrong claims is speaking at the secret meeting, recently advocated abolishing cash altogether in order to “solve the world’s central banks’ problem with negative interest rates.”
Last year, Kenneth Rogoff also called for “abolishing physical currency” in order to stop “tax evasion and illegal activity” as well as preventing people from withdrawing money when interest rates are close to zero.
Striking a similar tone, former Bank of England economist Jim Leaviss penned an article for the London Telegraph earlier this month in which he said a cashless society would only be achieved by “forcing everyone to spend only by electronic means from an account held at a government-run bank,” which would be, “monitored, or even directly controlled by the government.”
Big banks in both the United Kingdom and the U.S. are already treating the withdrawal or depositing of moderately large amounts of cash as a suspicious activity. Reports emerged in March of how the Justice Department is ordering bank employees to consider calling the cops on customers who withdraw $5,000 dollars or more.
Meanwhile in France, new measures are set to come into force in September which will restrict French citizens from making cash payments over €1,000 euros. Armstrong suggests that “financial police” could enforce this new law by, “searching people on trains just passing through France to see if they are transporting cash, which they will now seize.”
As Armstrong notes, banning cash in order to eviscerate what little economic freedoms people have left to avoid disastrous Keynesian central bank policy is nothing short of economic totalitarianism.
“In the mind of an economic tyrant, banning cash represents the holy grail,” writes Michael Krieger. “Forcing the plebs onto a system of digital fiat currency transactions offers total control via a seamless tracking of all transactions in the economy, and the ability to block payments if an uppity citizen dares get out of line.”
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Cashless Society: The Spy In Your Wallet
Back In 1971 Libertarians Were Predicting Debit Cards Would Become A Spy Tool For Authoritarian Governments
In 2013 The Wall Street Journal reported that the Naional Security Agency (NSA) was monitoring the card transactions of American citizens. Following that, two Senators, Wyden and Udall – who both sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and thus have access to classified information about the government’s
Section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any type of records whatsoever … including information on credit card purchases, medical records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.
Many other government agencies track your credit and debit card purchases and other elctronic transactions. In fact, all U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA are spying on citizens finances. And you can bet if the US government are doing it, other governments are too.
This is not a new thing, I worked in computers and was aware from the 1970s that governments, banks and corporate businesses foresaw a world in which all business was conducted digitally and it would be possible to create an electronic Panopticon, a total surveillance society. Stories about how the world wide web was 'invented' by a mild mannered, self effacing British scientist are bollocks. A global netweork was being planned from the time computers exchanged information over telephone lines at a maximum of 1200 bits per second.
In late October 1971, Matt Novak of Gizmodo reports, a group of academics and technologists were invited to attend a conference in Georgetown, a suburb of Washington D.C.. They were tasked with devising a comprehensive but invisible surveillance system. Their solution looked a lot like our current debit / credit card system.
This was the problem statement given to that conference in 1971:br /
Suppose you were an advisor to the head of the KGB, the Soviet Secret Police. Suppose you are given the assignment of designing a system for the surveillance of all citizens and visitors within the boundaries of the USSR. The system is not to be too obtrusive or obvious. What would be your decision?
What amazing, unobtrusive surveillance system did they come up with? It wasn’t a network of intercepting every phone call or placing cameras on every street corner. They imagined an EFTS (electronic funds transfer system), that looks strikingly similar to the transaction processing software in use today.
"Not only would it handle all the financial accounting and provide the statistics crucial to a centrally planned economy, it was the best surveillance system we could imagine within the constraint that it not be obtrusive."
Paul Armer wrote in a 1975 edition of Computers and
People
recounting the KGB-infused thought experiment.
The full article gave readers a preview of the system that would evolve:
"Let’s look at one way it might work. Say you are about to buy a book. You present your card (sometimes called a “debit card”, although National Americard calls theirs an “asset card”) to a clerk who puts it into a terminal which reads it and then calls up your bank. If you have enough money in your account, or if your bank is willing to grant you that much credit, the transaction is okayed; your account is debited; and a credit is dispatched form you bank to the book store’s bank account.
Armer, a computer scientist at US Defence contractor RAND was an advocate of digital privacy long before most people had credit or debit cards and the internet was a pipedream usually referred to as 'The Information Superhighway'. Computers in Armer’s era were much larger and their networking tools were much more primitive. But Armer could see what was coming and was one of the few to predict this envisaged cashless society actually posed a threat to the liberty of individuals in democratic societies.
Think about all the data banks collect every time you swipe your card. There is nobody watching you as an individual of course, but while Artificial Intelligence will never be a reality unless we radically redefine what we mean by intelligence, the great advantages computers have over humans are first, they can parse huge amounts of information exteremely quickly, and collate results from masses of search results and secondly that they don't get bored. After a few weeks of digital transactions, anyone with access to that information can start to paint a pretty detailed picture of how you live your life.
Most importantly perhaps, that picture is being painted without you giving it much thought at all. Thus the bank official who will approve your loan application or decide to foreclose on your mortgage will know in a matter of seconds precisely where, when, and how you’re spending your money and whether you are a financially responsible person. Woe betide you if you like a bet on the horses, consult psychics or fortune tellers, visit massage parlours or indulge in dangerous sports.
This looks even more sinister when we observe that governments, academics, the finance industry and creepy individuals like Bill Gates of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt of Google are promoting the cashless society, so they can surveil and control us.
The threats to privacy and freedom are multiple if society becomes cashless. All transactions would be trackable, and because individuals could not hold cash and all electronic transactions are monitored all private financial holdings would be vulnerable to seizure or attack by the government next time they need to bail out banks or corporations that are too big to fail. This would be the ultimate form of control, it has already happened in Cyprus and is probably about to happen in Greece.
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Why Europe Will Lead the Charge to Eliminate Cash – The Next Step in Global Meltdown
Martin Armstrong
May 20, 2015
Europe will lead the world into this Economic Totalitarianism because government is now desperate to retain the Euro. If the Euro collapses, so will Brussels. The government exists solely because of the Euro.
The fatal design of the Euro is the key. The failure to have consolidated the debts of all individual member states has been the worst possible mistake perhaps ever made in this post-Great Depression era of New Economics where government lawyers assume they can just write a law and that will be followed as some new modern dictator.
Because of the failure to consolidate the debts, the reserve of the banks had to then be politically correct to conform with Brussels holding a piece of all member state debts. That meant that the defaulting in part or in whole of individual sovereign debts of member states undermined the banking system. This would be as if in the USA bank reserves were made up of state debts. If one state failed, everyone would scramble to sell the banks who had the most.
Since Brussels will not reform, as Einstein put it correctly that you cannot solve a problem with the same line of thinking. This whole idea of negative interest rates is just following the same Keynesian concept that lowering rates will stimulate demand. The missing element is CONFIDENCE. If you do not believe you will make even 1%, you will not pay 0%. While they keep lowering rates to stimulate borrowers, they are wiping out the elderly who now cannot live from their savings reducing their spending destroying the entire idea of pensions and retirement (the social contract). The lack of CONFIDENCE prevents new businesses from forming and therein results in the lost generation of youth who cannot find a job. The elderly are forced to work so there becomes a shortage of jobs resulting in higher unemployment among the youth.
Add to that trend wiping out the elderly and the youth, we then have the rising tensions against foreigners everywhere because they see them as taking precious jobs as they migrate to their country. It becomes a vicious cycle that cannot be broken with the same line of thinking.
This is why governments are still using the same line of thinking of negative interest rates and going to the next step. They cannot meet their budges as tax revenues decline with economic activity, so they go off hunting money causing the global economy to shrink even more. As they hunt money, people hoard and invest even less. They tend to buy assets to get off the grid. To further this effort, governmental thinking then arrives at the solution to eliminate cash forcing the end of the underground economy and 100% tax collection.
However, Brussels knows they have a real crisis in European banking. However, this crisis is monumental and cannot be solved with the same line of thinking that has caused this insane nightmare. Obviously, eliminating cash will prevent people from causing a bank run if a member state defaults. The smart money is trying to get out as fast as it can buying rare art, coins, stamps, antiques, real estate, whatever. This is the only way out for when they eliminate cash, chances are they will impose CAPITAL CONTROLS and prevent the movement of money out of a country. That will be the traditional next step this same line of thinking leads to.
So in the end, governments (not Rothschilds) are in a fight for their very existence. They will incite civil unrest to rise sharply between 2015.75 and 2017. We also have to be concerned about the outcome for November 21st, 2018, which will be the Pi target that on previous waves produced 911 in New York and the very day of the Greek economic crisis in 2010. Geopolitically, Obama has undone everything that has been done to make the world safer. He ruined the European economy with his sanctions against Russia and created the alliance now between Russia and China in military action and drills. The USA might be able to defeat Russia on a conventional battlefield, but they cannot defeat China on the same terms. Meanwhile, the strongest economy in Europe, Germany, constitutionally is not allowed to have a big military force. Brussels is talking about trying to now form a European army to further their power. It is all posturing to insanity.
Brussels will lead the charge to shut down cash as we know it. We are moving into the next stage of massive deflation I have been warning about – not HYPERINFLATION. Government are moving to control everything and you will not be able to buy or sell anything without government approval. This is the Economic Totalitarianism I have warned about is on the horizon.
The next step in the game will be CAPITAL CONTROLS. When the European government realizes that they cannot eliminate cash without the rest of the entire world simultaneously, money will move out even faster from Europe driving the dollar to excessive highs. They will most likely follow the same script as they did in Cyprus and impose currency controls to prevent money from fleeing.
The only way out of this mess will be to change the thinking process. This is the real fight. As I have said many times before that the HYPERINFLATIONISTS are dead wrong and we will PRAY FOR INFLATION before this comes to an end. We are in the meltdown mode of Western Civilization all because of debt and lawyers controlling government who think they can be dictators by just writing laws.
If you understand the nature of the beast we are fighting, then you will NOT be surprised and learn from history even though we are compelled to watch others repeat it.
First published on Prison Planet, reproduced undrer creative Commons licence, attrib, non comm, no derivs
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Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom
Econgularity, a word coined by Scott A. Shay, chairman of Signature Bank as shorthand for economic singularity, is an ugly sound that describes a very ugly trend in globalism. At a time when time when technology makes it possible to conduct all one's transactions electronically and the collaboration between governments and internet technology companies makes it possible for agencies of the state to track and monitor our every move, the econgularity is, according to Shay, the moment when government's desire to control and the corporate obsession with manipulation of the public through big data analysis will converge to push the people's of the developed world into a cashless society in which our privacy and our ability to control our own finances disappears.
This will happen in such a way as to permit governments and corporate cartels to exercise almost complete control over all human behavior.
In an interview with CNBC's "Closing Bell" some time ago, Signature Bank Chairman Scott Shay talked about how close we are to becoming a cashless society and the huge threat it it will pose to individual liberty and personal autonomy.
While this may sound like a paranoid conspiracy theory to those who trust western governments and big authority completely, as a former Information Technology Consultant who spent quite a lot of time working in the banking and finance sector, I have been aware since the late 1980s that such was the long term agenda. The technology is already available, not fully secure or reliable but when were security and reliability ever major issues to corporate entitites like Microsoft or Google, to make total surveillance of all human activity a frightening reality.
Technological advances, mainly in the nature of increased memory capacity and larger processor arrays, have led to the creation of algorithms that can instantaneously review financial transactions, determining the nature, location and even the appropriateness of a purchase decision. This data has been collected by technology companies, sold to and used by banks, credit and debit-card companies.
When cardholders receive fraud alerts after a transaction that looks out of line with the crdholder's normal purchasing the fraud alert they receive is a benign example of this. When I visit the Russia Today website and for the next few days am bombarded with ads offering dates with "gorgeous Russian girls" is a slightly more sininster manifestation. Another example was when researching for an article on the scandalous interest rates charged by payday loans companies I visited a couple of websites for paydal loan providers. Not only did I get adverts for payday loans on my screen as I browsed, but mu inbox was inundated with emails from dodgy money lenders.
As shown above then, the technologies that can serve to protect consumers, but are already being used to manipulate and control control consumer behavior. In 2010, Visa and MasterCard in the USA bowed to government pressure and banned all online-betting payments from their systems. This made it virtually impossible for gambling sites to continue operating regardless of their jurisdiction or legality. Clearly then it is also possible for the health records of an overweight individual could be used to trigger an internet filter which would block their purchase of any sugary drink or snack, takeaway food or anything deemed by government snoopers to be unhealthy. Purchases through a credit or debit card can be declined by the card company, cash purchases cannot. It may seem like a scene from a far-fetched dystopian-future-world television show but it is possible right now.
Now you may be one of those people who believe it is right and proper for government to interfere in the lives of individuals for their own good, personally I value freedom more highly than anything and am also a great believer in evolution. And if we set ourselves up to prevent the natural extinction of those who weaken the race with their self destructive tendencies, we are engineering our own extinction.
Some 'progressive liberals' out there would say this is a good thing, the world would be better off without humans. Such selfish stupidity is obviouly counter productive so people who think that way should be encouraged to remove themselves from the human race and let the rest of us get on with evolving.
We in the developed world are already well on the way to becoming cashless societies. According to a MasterCard study, 80 percent of U.S. consumer transactions are electronic. In Sweden, one observer estimates that only 3 percent of transactions are made with currency. (Swedish friends tell me this is not true, it deliberately ignores a vast trade in contraband liquour and cigaretes and a host of trades in what we might call 'the dark economy'.
Governments and big banks are also supporters of a cashless society as the indeed costs of producing, managing and handling currency and coins are greater than the cost of providing online banking infrastructure. Fiscal policy could also be much more efficiently implemented without currency circulating, since it would then be easy to implement negative interest-rates thus making people pay for the privilege of holding funds in their account.
But there is also a sinister risk to a cashless society. Singularity, a term borrowed from astrophysics, is defined in economic terms as the point at which technological advancement will "radically change human civilization and perhaps even human nature itself." It is impossible to know if this will actually happen, but a cashless society would certainly give governments unprecedented access to information and power over citizens and thus enable those governments to make the entire population debendent on government services / handouts. And once politicians and bureaucrats have the power to do something, we can be sure they will use and abuse it. The U.S. and British governments are already using the snooping and big-data collection abilities of the internet in some frightening ways.
The technological command of GCHQ and the National Security Agency has been widely reported on and does not need repeating here. Suffice it to note, that it would be no challenge for the NSA or certain other government agencies to monitor any company or consumer transaction in real time, if it so desired.
The threat posed by this push towards a cashless society then is no conspiracy theory, but a real and current threat that we must all unite to resist. How? Use cash for as much of your activity as is possible without inconveniencing yourself. Do not respond to the scaremongering about muggers and thieves, these days you are far more likely to be robed or scammed online than mugged in the street. Avoid online banking. Use local stores (Once you take into account delivery charge,Amazon are no cheaper than your local book shop (if you are lucky enough to live in a town that still has one). Support independent local traders when you can, not only does that protect your independence, it helps preserve our communities which are also under threat. And when the time comes, vote for the candidate that opposes globalisation, do you really think a global government will have the est interests of your community at heart.
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Banning Cash Will Stop Terrorism (and end war, poverty, disease and bad smells)says Bill Gates
If Bill Gates, the man who made 'not fit for purpose' acceptable quality for sale is in favour of a cashless society, you know it has to be good for government and big business and very bad for me and you
(Image source)
(Image source)
If bureaucrats understood how easily We The People saw through their schemes they'd ........ well they would not behave any differently because they are too stupid to change.
It was just a matter of time before the ever predictable Western governments used the trumped up "War on Terror” as an excuse to drastically ratchet up the very real war on the use of cash, and on the basic human right of personal privacy currently being waged against the citizens and taxpayers of the so - called democracies.
Quick to exploit public anxiety in the wake of attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, France is on the way to being first to abolish free speech.
And the most overtly socialist government in the EU or Anglosphere is showing that it has much in common with those 'progressive liberal' regimes headed by Joe Stalin, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot and every other socialist leader in its efforts to set up a system resembling the Big Brother regime of George Orwell's novel '1984'. France's socialist government is next planning to ban the use of cash. A series of measures that will be implemented from September 2015 will make french citizens lives more secure by enabling government bean counters to track every bus ride, every glass of wine or cup of coffee, newspaper or they pay for. (OK, I'm exaggerating a bit but that's the direction the control freaks are moving in)
The other leading fascist regime in the free world is not far behind. Washington Propaganda no suggests that only 7 per cent of transactions in the USA involve cash and that the use of cash is now regarded a suspicious activity.
It seems the terrorists involved in the recent Paris attacks and elsewhere partially financed these attacks by paying cash for stuff. (They also used credit and debit cards and paid by cheque but forget that, it's the cash transactions that are dangerous because control freak governments cannot track them.) Ahab the Arab went into a KFC and we don't know what he bought because he paid cash, what a huge threat to democracy.
Yes, now we know the terrorists knew how to use cash, it's clear they may have used CASH to purchase some of the stuff they needed to carry out their attacks.
And because there is no audit trail that the banning of cash and forcing people to use plastic would provide in future incidents, the authorities were not able to use their 'minority report' style software that predicts criminal behaviour to arrest these guys before they committed a crime and thus save lives. Paying cash for stuff you see, is a clear indicator that people are planning to commit crimes.
If you are not planning to do something wrong, you have nothing to fear.
No doubt the murderers who carry out terrorist attacks are also shod and clothed, use cell phones, broadband lines, cars, and public sidewalks during the planning and execution of their mayhem.
Why not ban the use of all? A naked , barefoot terrorist without transport communications is surely less effective than a fully clothed and equipped one.
Defend your personal liberty, pay in cash.
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Cashless Society Equals Cashless People
What is technologically advanced or progressive about a cashless society? Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Maoist China all kept the mass of their populations short of cash, and were only prevented from going totall cashless because the technology was not available. Slave economies operate a kind of cashless system, i.e. "You want what? Wages? You'll get a kick up the arse if you don't get back to work."
Medieval serfdom was almost a cashless society. So it is clearly demonstrated that the cashless society will only benefit the elitists. No wonder they tell us money is bourgeois and capitalist.
The modern cashless society, we are told, will be based on electronic money and the internet. Oh great, security is so tight and so reliable on the internet, our bank accounts will be easy pickings for thieves. And that's even without Microsoft selling the secrets of the back door in Windows to the Mafia.
At this stage some science head will usually skip to the comments column to tell me about the wonders of encryption, the https secure socket and them rant on for ten thousand words about prime numbers. Wonderful - except the http socket is the last place anyone with a brain would try to hack. Haven't these nerds read The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo? No, of course not, it's too entertaining for them.
Anyway, if I wanted to grab random people's bank details I would use a widget on a web page to install a key logger on their computer. This would log every keystroke and things like bank account numbers, passwords, security keys could easily be identified and stolen.
A lot of this kind of thing has been going on in the run up to the Christmas period it seems.
A spokesperson for a computer security consultancy reported:
"Computer systems have been compromised either at stores or in the companies handling the processing of card transactions. In other words, a company involved in the flow of payments has been hacked. It could be more than one company. The computer hacking has exposed everyone whose cards are going through those systems. The thieves are using the ATM card information in a way that does not require the PINs.
The way this kind of crime works is once the thieves have stolen a bunch of numbers from a company they print cards with their name on them and your billing information on the magnetic stripe. He said they rarely bother with printing up credit cards anymore. It is fairly small scale stuff, more of a cottage industry than a Dr. Evil type world domination scam, but organisers of the network reap big bucks by selling the gift cards at something like £2 per £10 face value. They clearly understand the old business question, "Is it better to have a penny a billion times or £1 million once."
There has been a spate of cash machine hacking over the last 6 months focused mostly in the Midlands. According to police reports 3 separate professional gangs have been identified all of which originate from Romania (is there a political agenda behind the allegation? I don't know).
The authorities warn us to be on guard against this kind of fraud but do nothing to prevent it and continue to push people towards electronic transactions and online banking. No more cash, no more below the radar deals and no more privacy. We all know this has been on the agenda for some point in the future.
It is not just the crooks we have to fear though, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, all the big players in online technology are known to have been playing fast and loose with our privacy and selling personal data they collect to anyone who can afford the price. They probably do credit checks but you can bet there are no ethics checks.
There will be plenty of cashless people in the cashless society as they find their electronic cash has been siphoned out of their electronic bank account because electronic technology has more holes than a colander.
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Are We About To Return To The Gold Standard
by Phil T Looker
If you listen to conventional financial news, they’ll all tell you that the ruble is in freefall, and that the dollar is the place to be. But if you look at the real data and I am a very data-driven person (so long at is not the fairy story data of climate science) take a stroll through the numbers and make an objective comparison between the US dollar and the Russian ruble. Better sit down though, if you are an Obama fan.Start from the premise that ALL paper currencies are fundamentally flawed.
The global monetary system based on fractional reserve banking is insane — the idea of letting unelected, virtually unregulated central bankers pull as much new money as they can imagine, that money being underwriten by unsecured debt, out of thin air is simply irrational. But some fiat currencies have a more solid base than others. If you want to understand the health of a currency, you must look at the ISSUER of that currency, i.e. the central bank.
As with any business, one of the most important measures of its financial health is its level of solvency. In particular we look at the capital (i.e. net assets) as a percentage of the total balance sheet.
The US Federal Reserve only has a basic capital ratio of 1.26%, razor thin in real terms. (This is down from 4.5% after six years of Obama's loonytoons economics.) That means if the value of the Federal Reserve's assets declines by only 1.26%, the issuer of the world’s dominant reserve currency becomes insolvent.
Meanwhile back in Moscow, the Russian central bank’s basic capital ratio is 12.5%—literally a much healthier figure than the Fed's.
A comfortably positive capital ration is muck like us ordinary punters having a stash of rainy day money. When the brown smelly stuff hits the fan it's what keeps you afloat. You might be able to keep on living hand to mouth for a considerable time, or even accumulating debt by borrowing against future expectations, but only until your car breaks down, or the domestic boiler blows up and you need a new heating system, for example. Then all of a sudden, your lack of capital can become a serious issue.
As it happens Russia is one of the most financially healthy nations in the world. Thus as they, along with China, have been leading a move to abandon the $US by concluding bilateral currency deals with their main partners, we must assume they have prepared for some response. Being the owner of the reserve currency has kept the American economy afloat for thirty years, they were never going to surrender that position lightly.
So where will this all end? I suggest you look at a central bank’s GOLD reserves as a percentage of the money supply, i.e. how much gold backs the money supply, because all the indicators suggest we will move back to a gold based global currency (why else would China be hoarding gold?).
In Russia, gold reserves are 6.2% on the money supply and rising. Last year it was 5.5%, and the central bank is continuing to heavily stockpile more.
How much gold backs the dollar? Precisely zero point zero percent. All that gold Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson prevented Jeremy Irons stealing from the vault at the Fed did not belong to the Fed, the Fed doesn’t own gold it merely looks after it for other people. It loudly proclaims this on its own website: "The Federal Reserve does not own gold. Eff off Irons, there's nothing here for you."
What the Fed holds is paper. Its capital is‘certificates’ which are redeemable for US dollars. But there’s not a single ounce of gold backing the US dollar.
So… with no gold and pitifully razor thin solvency levels, it really wouldn’t take much of a shock to topple the dollar.
By comparison, the ruble is much better capitalized and actually has something backing it.
Not that this means you should invest in Roubles, far from it. People who do that would be lucky to see their any of savings again. However hard, publicly available (but not online, for free) numbers clearly demonstrate the discrepancy between pro - western fervour and objective data.
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Prepare For The Worst Case Scenario
An article on the cashless society our political and corporate overlords are pushing for proposes that as far as privacy and individual liberty are concerned, what is being planned right now in the political capitals and financial centres of the world is the worst case scenarion. An all digital financial system would mean the end of privacy, nothing you bought or traded would be your own business any more, government agencies, internet search operators and social mediaPrepare For The Worst Case Scenario sites (and anybody prepared to pay for the data they collect) would quickly be able to know a great deal about your lifestyle and your likes and dislikes.
One caveat, the author of the linked article, Susan Duclost, does tend to hyperbole so this site will be trying to verify as much as we can of what is reported before bringing you our own view. here's a taster of the article.
Prepare For The Worst Case Scenario: - 'You Cannot Make Up This Level Of Insanity'
With so much going on nationally and internationally, there has been some major changes occurring in regards to US economic news that has been under-reported and basically ignored by the MSM, with Gregory Mannarino telling traders to "prepare for the worst case scenario," and Martin Armstrong, the former chairman of Princeton Economics International, best known for his economic predictions based on the Economic Confidence Model which he developed, saying "You really cannot make up this level of insanity."
Starting with Armstrong, his site one of the few that reported the "secret meeting" in London to "end currency," also notes that a recent Supreme Court decision just laid the foundation for the "seizure of private pension funds," to the tune of $19.4 trillion dollars, by the US government.
READ MORE at allnewspipeline.com:
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How Mainstream Media And The Major Political Parties Are Making Sure Voters Do not Hear The Voices Of Politics' Most Powerful Critics
As the General Election campaign starts to heat up, we try to shift focus away from the squabbling between Conservative and Labour about who can make the most promises they have no intention of keeping and to the real issues concerning jobs, social breakdown , mass immigration, and loss of national sovereignty.
US Presidents Of The Past warned Against Secret, Shadow Government.
By now it should be obvious that peacemake, joybringer and putative aquatic pedestrian Barack Hussein Obama was never really in charge of the US Government. Whatever Obama said would happen, all the American government's policies ensured the opposite would happen. The embedded article thows some light on how the US government really works
The American Political System Is "Not A Democracy Or Constitutional Republic" - Peter Thiel
The state of democracy in the USA has become a hot topic of conversation in American business circles in recent years. While President Barack Hussein Obama, not so much a man as an ego on long skinny legs, has increasingly been inclined to rule by executive order in the manner of a despot or tyrant, even Obama's fiercest critics have to admit the American electoral system seems increasingly capable of delivering only political paralysis ...
Virtual ID has arrived – why you should resist taking it up
We told you some years ago when our publication appeared under a different name that the then Labour Government's plan for compulsory electronic ID cards was the step that would take us over the line from a seblance of liberal democracy into oligarchic fascism. Labour's plan was derailed by public opposition but now it has been rehashed and is presented with fluffy window dressing. A vote for Labour, Conservative Or Liberal Democrat is a vote for fascism. You have been warned.
Banksters 1.5 Quadrillion Dollar Conspiracy
How the big banks rigged the derivatives markets to steal one and a half quadrillion dollars from private citizens and businesses. It makes shocking reading but at last people are waking up to the fact this kind of shit has been going on for years ...
Happy Interdependence Day. The New World Order Was Announced In 1975
As America celebrates Independence Day, The Daily Stirrer looks back to 1975 when a document titled declaration Of Interdependence signalled the intent of American elitist liberal intellectuals to destroy the American ideals of freedom and independence and lead the nation into a global totalitarian superstate.
New World Order
Living Within The Conspiracy
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Ending The Ownership Of Money
It must be common knowledge by now that some of the world’s most economically powerful nations are insolvent due to the burden of sovereign debt. These economies are held together through by the faith of citizens and businesses in the currency. If that faith evaporates, the leading economies will crash as voters realise the only thing underwriting the economy is debt.
While lefties, tech - heads and science - heads might get upset, people who live in the real world should consider the implications of this for privacy (a human right) and self determination (another human right). Funny how those who screech loudest about human rights are only interested in the rights of minorities and terrorists,
Read more on how the withdrawal of cash will affect you in our Cashless Society omnibus page ...
Ending the Ownership of Money
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The 'War On Cash' Endgame Is Here
Authored by Kit Knightly via Off-Guardian.org,
“Programmable Digital Currency”: The next stage of the new normal?
The war on cash’s endgame is here: money replaced by vouchers subject to complete state control.
Building on the bitcoin model, central banks are planning to produce their own “digital currencies”. Removing any and all remaining privacy, granting total control over every transaction, even limiting what ordinary people are allowed to spend their money on.
From the moment bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies first emerged, sold as an independent and alternative medium of exchange outside the financial status quo, it was only a matter of time before the new alternative would be absorbed, modified and redeployed in service of the state.
Enter “Central Bank Digital Currencies”: the mainstream answer to bitcoin.
For those who have never heard of them, “Central Bank Digital Currencies” (CBDCs) are exactly what they sound like, digitized versions of the pound/dollar/euro etc. issued by central banks.
Like bitcoin (and other crypto), the CBDC would be entirely digital, thus furthering the ongoing war on cash. However, unlike crypto, it would not have any encryption preserving anonymity. In fact, it would be totally the reverse, potentially ending the very idea of financial privacy.
Now, you may not have heard much about the CBDC plans, lost as they are in the tangle of the ongoing “pandemic”, but the campaign is there, chugging along on the back pages for months now. There are stories about it from both Reuters and the Financial Times just today. It’s a long, slow con, but a con nonetheless.
The countries where the idea progressed the furthest are China and the UK. The Chinese Digital Yuan has been in development since 2014, and is subject to ongoing and widespread testing. The UK is nowhere near that stage yet, but Chancellor Rishi Sunak is keenly pushing forward a digital pound that the press are calling “Britcoin”.
Other countries, including New Zealand, Australia, South Africa and Malaysia, are not far behind.
The US is also researching the idea, with Jerome Powell, head of Federal Reserve, announcing the release of a detailed report on the “digital dollar” in the near future.
The proposals for how these CBDCs might work should be enough to raise red flags in even the most trusting of minds.
Most people wouldn’t like the idea of the government monitoring “all spending in real-time”, but that’s not the worst it.
By far the most dangerous idea is that any future digital currency should be “programmable”. Meaning the people issuing the money would have the power to control how it is spent. ... Continue reading >>>
alternative source Zero Hedge
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