MCViewPoint

Opinion from a Libertarian ViewPoint

Posts Tagged ‘Central Bank Digital Currency’

Lawmakers Clash Over Regulation Of Stablecoins

Posted by M. C. on May 22, 2023

“Uncle Sam is going to use a central bank digital currency to surveil where they’re spending their money and how much, and ultimately block them from using the banking and payments system,” Hill said.

Recently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that bans any U.S. central bank digital currency (CBDCs) from being considered legal tender in the state,

https://www.zerohedge.com/crypto/lawmakers-clash-over-regulation-stablecoins

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

Authored by Liam Cosgrove via The Epoch Times,

House lawmakers took part in a contentious debate over how stablecoins should be regulated at a hearing held by the Financial Services Committee’s digital assets panel – where there were also some hopeful signs from both sides.

At the heart of the debate on May 16 was the level of involvement of state regulators and the Federal Reserve.

Rep. French Hill (R-Ark.), who chairs the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, supports legislation that gives more power to state regulators, while Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the overall committee, advocates for a leading role for the Federal Reserve in the Democratic proposal. 

Hill challenged a previous notion put forth by Waters that yielding oversight to the states would be a step backwards in establishing a clear legal framework.

“We’re not starting from scratch,” Hill said.

“The similarities between the two proposals are strong, and that’s why we’re not that far apart.”

Still, Waters argued that “several critical positions” are missing from the Republican proposal, leading to a further divide between the parties.

Amid the volatile cryptocurrency markets, stablecoins are meant to be a safe haven. They also hold bipartisan appeal as an accessible and less expensive way to conduct monetary transactions outside of the traditional financial system and internationally.

Tether – the largest U.S. stablecoin – and Circle, are digital assets tied to the value of the U.S. dollar and play a significant role in the cryptocurrency market. Both Republicans and Democrats share common goals of protecting consumers and preserving the global role of the U.S. dollar. Regulating dollar-denominated stablecoins within the United States could contribute to achieving these objectives.

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Americans face a rapidly encroaching ’emergency’ CBDC power grab

Posted by M. C. on March 30, 2023

The ruling class may pursue a Hail Mary pass to restore their control over the system.

Now, for the people in charge, a Chinese Communist Party-like CBDC is becoming the “emergency” solution to restore their positions in the societal and monetary hierarchy.So it appears we are entering a consensus period that involves moving full steam ahead with the CBDC project. The “emergency” CBDC will inevitably becoming their “solution” to the crisis that our idiocracy fomented with their destructive monetary Ponzi scheme.

https://open.substack.com/pub/dossier/p/americans-face-a-rapidly-encroaching?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android

Jordan Schachtel

Mar 22

The American financial system is threatening to come apart at the seams, and for the people who control the levers of power, the only way to patch things up may involve the installation of a monetary Social Credit Score system. In recent years, America’s fiat fractional reserve system has transformed into a faith-based credit system, and the people who use the dollar are losing confidence in a system that relies entirely upon their complete and total trust. Should our collective faith in the system continue to decline, the American ruling class will decide that their path forward involves regrasping full control of their confidence scheme through the implementation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

A U.S. CBDC would do much more than simply implement a fully digital version of the U.S. dollar. This system could provide authorities with an almost unlimited digital toolkit to both surveil and censor citizens. A CBDC is advertised as making the system more “efficient” and helping to deliver monetary power to the unbanked. However, it would also give shadowy bureaucrats the power to swipe a “criminal’s” life savings, instantly distribute funds to allies of the system, among an almost infinite series of additional authoritarian instruments.

Over previous decades, when the United States stood tall as the world’s lone financial hegemon, there was never much of a reason to implement a dollar-based CBDC. After all, our political and financial elites had no reason to do so. There were no competing peers and zero superior monetary systems in sight (prior to the discovery of Bitcoin). These forces had full control over a system that empowered them with incredible prestige and power, and there was no reason to antagonize the billions of people who were somewhat contently operating within the confines of the system.

Watch the launch trailer for “FedNow” (US Federal Reserve’s official CBDC) 🤮👇

This is why I respectfully disagree with a lot of conservative and libertarian pundits, who have advanced the idea that the systemic issues in the financial system were the result of a purposeful, controlled demolition.

The government’s slippery slope to a CBDC is called FedNow. But I bet it’s a TOTAL coincidence that we’re having a massive banking crisis right before its release.

Why risk it when they already had the biscuit?

Additionally, top officials from current and previous administrations, along with Federal Reserve Board members, had previously described a CBDC as a largely unnecessary project.

For the forces that control our money, a CBDC had once been understood as too risky an endeavor, as it could act as too much of a stick and not enough of a carrot.

After all, the system was working as intended, as a means to reward the individuals and organizations closest to the money making machine and protect their immense, growing financial privilege.

In the past, when the going got tough, the people in charge could always create more money and use it bolster their control and devalue the power of everyone else. Unlike the more ambitious CBDC projects in continental Europe and Asia, the American power brokers never seemed to be super enthusiastic about the idea of the government (and government-sanctioned oligarch partners) having such a strong grip over the Dollar on/off switch. 

In recent weeks, however, times have changed. Wall St and Washington is backed into a corner, America is now faced with the prospect of a burgeoning financial contagion, and financial markets are showcasing global ramifications.

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CBDCs Rising: Russia To Use Digital Ruble In Settlements With China

Posted by M. C. on September 30, 2022

This is how such vast changes to society are implemented without public input:  It’s all done to save us from “disaster.”

The fast progression of so many governments towards a cashless society is disconcerting because it could remove the last vestiges of free trade and anonymity from common markets.  Paper money might be fiat, but at least its private.  This is not the case with digital products of any kind.  

Tyler Durden's Photo

BY TYLER DURDEN

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/cbdcs-rising-russia-use-digital-ruble-settlements-china

It has become a regular occurrence within the mainstream media these days to suggest that ties between Russia and China have been “strained” over the conflict in Ukraine and that Russia may lose the support of its ally soon.  In most cases these reports are highly exaggerated and based on official comments that are taken completely out of context.  

After the recent meeting between Xi and Putin in Uzbekistan, very little was said by China in regard to Ukraine, other than some short and prefabricated appeals for peace and diplomacy.  Such comments are generally made for the sake of international appearances and have no bearing on China’s actual agreements with Russia.  There is no break in the alliance – The CCP doesn’t care about Ukraine, it cares about its own interests, and those interests include vast supplies of energy resources and other commodities purchased from Russia at a discount.

By extension, Russia/China trade relations have expanded greatly in the past several months alone with bilateral deals that completely remove the US dollar as the world reserve.  However, the frenzy of new trade arrangements and financial exchanges may be obscuring a much more important and far reaching event, which is the digitization of national currencies.

According to Russian lawmaker Anatoly Aksakov. Russia is currently pursuing such programs.

“The topic of digital financial assets, the digital rouble and cryptocurrencies is currently intensifying in society, as Western countries are imposing sanctions and creating problems for bank transfers, including in international settlements,” Aksakov said in an interview with Russia’s parliamentary newspaper.

“If we launch this, then other countries will begin to actively use it going forward, and America’s control over the global financial system will effectively end…”  

If we treat the Atlantic Council CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) tracker as a reliable reference, at least 100 countries around the world are now developing government backed digital currencies, with 11 countries already using them.  Often, CBDC programs are associated more with western central banks and it is assumed that digital currency mechanisms are purely a goal for western elites.  This is simply not the case. 

Russia and China are both intimately tied to the International Monetary Fund (with China a large part of the SDR global currency program), and Russia’s central bank appears to be operating directly in line with other banks in its development of CBDCs.  While their digital efforts could be chalked up to necessity after the nation’s removal from the SWIFT network, there are many central banks that are arguing in favor of digital mechanism as a solution to economic crisis.  This is how such vast changes to society are implemented without public input:  It’s all done to save us from “disaster.”

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Beware “Biden Bucks”

Posted by M. C. on September 30, 2022

This is an ad for a wealth preservation plan. I cannot comment on the veracity of the plan as I couldn’t make it that far through the ad. That said I believe the description of the horror that is Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) is likely accurate.

You need only listen until the repetition starts.

https://pro.paradigmnewsletters.org/p/awn_bidenbucks_newlife_0722/PAWNY808/?h=true&s1=fc4f1d03-63e3-4cdd-a7ba-e6f8ddc68fa2&s2=wmph7lkukihbekdji3eckfl8

Beware “Biden Bucks”

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Digital Tyranny: Beware of the Government’s Push for a Digital Currency

Posted by M. C. on March 16, 2022

For instance, three weeks before the Biden Administration made headlines with its support for a government-issued digital currency, the FBI and the Justice Department quietly moved ahead with plans for a cryptocurrency enforcement team (translation: digital money cops),

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

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

https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/digital_tyranny_beware_of_the_governments_push_for_a_digital_currency

By John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead

“The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes.”—Thomas Paine

The government wants your money.

It will beg, steal or borrow if necessary, but it wants your money any way it can get it.

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

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

This is what comes of those $1.5 trillion spending bills: someone’s got to foot the bill.

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

No matter how much money the government pulls in, it’s never enough, so the government has come up with a new plan to make it even easier for its agents to seize Americans’ bank accounts.

Make way for the digital dollar.

In an Executive Order issued on March 9, 2022, President Biden called for the federal government to consider establishing a “U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).”

Similar to cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, CBDCs would also be a form of digital money, but there the resemblance ends. If adopted, CBDCs would be issued by the Federal Reserve, the central banking system for the U.S. government. One CBDC digital dollar would equal the value of a physical dollar. And like the physical dollar, which ceased to be backed by gold more than 50 years ago, the CBDC would be considered a government-issued fiat currency that is backed by the strength and credit of the U.S. government. (Of course, that’s not saying much considering that much of the time, the U.S. government operates in the red.)

Although government agencies have six months to weigh in on the advantages and disadvantages of a centralized digital currency, it’s as good as a done deal.

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

No surprises here, of course.

This is how the government operates: by giving us tools to make our lives “easier” while, in the process, making it easier for the government to track, control and punish the citizenry.

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Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Chief Talks ‘Absolute Control’ of Money

Posted by M. C. on July 16, 2021

Central banks and governments do have some powerful levers to pull.

It is easy to imagine government transfer payments being converted to digital currency. Social Security, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, and other benefits could be paid using the new CBDC.

https://humansarefree.com/2021/07/bis-chief-talks-absolute-control-of-money.html

by Clint Siegner

The General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements – the central bank of central bankers – is planning for “absolute control” of the money we all spend.

bank for international settlements (bis) chief talks 'absolute control'

Augustin Carstens recently gave a talk entitled “Cross Border Payment: A Vision for the Future” in which he outlined the problem as central planners see it, as well as their solution.

“We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000 peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”

Carstens views CBDC, Central Bank Digital Currency, as a tool for eliminating privacy and for central bankers to force citizens to use currency exactly when, where, and how they are told.

Dozens of central banks around the world are working on CBDCs, including the Federal Reserve. The effort represents a major escalation in the War on Cash.

It is one thing to discourage people from using cash.

It is something else entirely to introduce digital money which gives bureaucrats the power to monitor and control the spending of everyone who adopts it.

Novel ideas are already being floated. For example, the Federal Reserve could issue stimulus funds with an expiration date, forcing people to spend rather than save.

Officials could limit spending to certain geographic boundaries, and thereby impose a restriction on travel. They could pick winners and losers, favoring some merchants or industries or crushing others.

The only fly in the ointment is that mistrust in government is rising quickly in the US. Getting people who fear giving officials that much control and who care about privacy to adopt the new digital money could be a challenge. Many will actively seek alternatives, such as Bitcoin or gold.

Central banks and governments do have some powerful levers to pull.

It is easy to imagine government transfer payments being converted to digital currency. Social Security, Medicare, welfare, food stamps, and other benefits could be paid using the new CBDC.

Government could also insist vendors and contractors take payment exclusively in the new token.

We can also expect plenty of assurances from people like Carstens. They will promise to be fair and protect people’s liberty.

They will say the goal is to make central bank policy work better for everyone. They will also insist they are trying to protect society from criminals, tax cheats, money launderers, and terrorists.

The only question is whether the public will buy what central bankers are selling.

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