by James Corbett
corbettreport.com
August 28, 2021

Happy Birthday, fiat currency!

What, you didn't know that the fiat dollar is 50 years old this month? At least, according to the bankster class and their media lapdogs, it is. Observe:

On 15 August, the United States marked the 50th anniversary of the birth of fiat currency, or a currency that depends on faith in the Federal Reserve and not in the gold standard. Like most 50th anniversaries, this one shows the celebrant worse for wear.

That little gem comes from an article entitled (get this), "The US Fed Can Actually Boost Equality With a Digital Currency."

Right off the bat, if the idea that the fiat dollar is indeed only 50 years old sets off your BS meter, then congratulations! Your BS meter is working. The actual story of the fiat dollar is a much longer and more complex one. The short version goes like this: the fiat dollar was not born in 1971. That was the year of the so-called "Nixon shock," when President Nixon officially severed the gold/dollar link by closing the gold window and thus preventing foreign governments from knocking on the US Treasury's door and asking it to convert their piles of dollars into stacks of gold. Even that story is a much longer and complex one (if you're interested, enjoy some light bedtime reading on De Gaulle vs. the Dollar and The London Gold Pool), but the gist is that the Nixon shock was just the final nail in the gold-backed dollar's coffin, not a magical moment in which the dollar suddenly became fiat.

Now, if only the worst piece of propaganda being flaunted by the propagandists right now were a misleading headline about the birth date of the fiat dollar, then I could just invite you to explore the links above and we could call it a day. But it's not going to be that easy, is it? No, sadly, this article contains some much more dangerous propaganda: propaganda that touts not simply the "benefits" but the inevitability of the coming central bank digital currency (CBDC). And as you should all know by now, the central bank digital currency is the birth of the cashless society control grid that the independent media have been warning about for decades now.

So, let's roll up our sleeves and deconstruct this propaganda, shall we?

Once you read the article in question, you'll see that it leans heavily on the problem-reaction-solution formula that will be very familiar to the old hands in the conspiracy realist space. Namely, it posits a problem, tells us what our reaction to that problem should be, and then provides the solution (that our wise and benevolent overlords coincidentally happen to be working on) to "fix" that problem for us! In this case, it functions like this:

Problem: "The ‘almighty dollar’ is facing a raft of challenges from other supra-national currency powerhouses such as China and from giant technology companies that understand they would exercise even more market clout if they controlled not just what we buy and sell, but also how we pay for it."

Reaction: "If the Fed doesn’t quickly redefine the dollar to reflect its rapid digitalization by other hands, central banks will join shopping malls on the long list of complacent category leaders felled by agile competitors."

Solution: "When the Fed designs the US central bank digital currency (CBDC), it must focus not only on its own concerns, including how it would impact the transmission of monetary policy, but also on ensuring that CBDC is money that materially improves economic opportunity."

That's right, we go from "We're falling behind the ChiComs in the digital currency race!" to what will happen when (not if) the Fed designs the US central bank digital currency. The propaganda is all the more effective for simply assuming the most important part, as if there's no question at all about whether the Fed will implement a CBDC (let alone if they should).

"CBDCs are already baked into their cake. They're inevitable! You can't fight it, pleb! (Don't even try!)"

Now, to be fair, there is an air of inevitability to the worldwide changeover in the global monetary system that's taking place right now, and that's precisely because it is already happening. The public is just being conditioned to accept this new reality. One just has to browse the handy-dandy CBDCInsider website to see the list of countries that are lining up to throw themselves off of this digital currency cliff: Brazil, Canada, Iceland, India, Jamaica, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, Ukraine, Venezuela and literally dozens of other countries (including, of course, the US) are either "exploring" the implementation of a central bank-issued digital currency or are actively engaged in retail pilot programs testing the technology.

So what is a "central bank digital currency," exactly? Good question! . . . and one that I've already answered. For the long answer, please check out my podcast on Bretton Woods 2.0. For the short answer, let's turn to Investopedia:

A central bank digital currency (CBDC) uses an electronic record or digital token to represent the virtual form of a fiat currency of a particular nation (or region). A CBDC is centralized; it is issued and regulated by the competent monetary authority of the country.

It's not difficult to see why the banksters are so excited by the idea of issuing digital expressions of central bank fiat directly; it gives them unprecedented control over every transaction that takes place in this new "digital dollar" economy. Don't take my word for it. Take Agustin Carstens, the unhealthily rotund General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements—the Tower of Basel that represents the apex of the central bank pyramid. Carstens spelled it out in black and white for the hard-of-thinking in an IMF roundtable on the subject of CBDCs last October:

"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."

Read that again. Or better yet, watch him say it for yourself.

https://twitter.com/awayslice/status/1413250347120930816

Yes, the CBDC economy is one in which users of these digital "expression[s] of central bank liability" will be completely at the mercy of the central bank, which will have "absolute control on the rules and regulations" over the use of that currency. If the central bank deems you to be a dangerous anti-vaxx domestic terrorist, they will simply turn off your account. No more purchases for you! Want to buy a membership to a naughty crimethink site like The Corbett Report? "I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that." No wonder Carstens and his central bank cronies are wetting their pants in anticipation of this development.

If you want to understand the technical details of this monetary "innovation," I highly recommend you watch John Titus' recent videos on this subject, including his latest, "Larry & Carstens' Excellent Pandemic," in which he explains the difference between the wholesale and retail monetary circuits and how the CBDC seeks to bridge the gap between the two by allowing central banks to pump money directly into the public's pocket. He also explains how the push for this move was laid out by BlackRock—yes, that BlackRock—at the 2019 edition of the central banksters' annual Jackson Hole retreat, and how the scamdemic is nothing more than the perfect cover for the execution of this monetary coup.

Indeed, it is important to understand that—stripped of all the buzzword-laden rhetoric and whizzbang technical details—this idea is nothing new. As I've explained in the past, Operation Choke Point has already been accomplishing the financial exclusion of government-deemed "undesirables"—including gun dealers, pawn shops, coin dealers and tobacconists and even porn stars—for years. But previous attempts to squeeze individuals out of the economy have been ham-fisted. In Choke Point, the US federal government could target businesses only indirectly, by using its regulatory authority to lean on banks to drop the targeted customer. This was always a legally dubious move, and, as I showed in Solutions: Survival Currency, was supposedly halted after legal pushback.

But with CBDCs, there will be no legal recourse. There will be no need to lean on banks to close the accounts of targeted customers; instead, those "customers" will have their account directly with the central bank. As such, the central bank will be able to suspend an account of anyone they want at any time, or to stop any particular transaction that they don't approve of between any two people at any moment.

It is only by understanding the true gravity of what is being proposed that we can begin to evaluate propaganda like "The US Fed Can Actually Boost Equality With a Digital Currency." Reading it in this context, we can see the bizarre nature of this article, which is ostensibly attempting to make the case for CBDCs—touting the features of a digital central bank token "that materially improves economic opportunity"—but in fact warning about the many ways that such a system could go wrong if not implemented properly:

If the Fed instead becomes the nation’s deposit-taker, then it will also need to be the nation’s loan-maker. It would need to make decisions not only about each individual’s creditworthiness, but also about who deserves a loan to advance what type of economic activity.

Not even those who are spruiking the benefits of CBDCs can deny that they have the potential to place extraordinary power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable central bankers. And only the most willfully naive could deny that the central banksters would gladly take (and abuse) such power if given half a chance.

The battle for the future of the monetary system is underway, and few have any idea that it's even happening. The root of the problem, of course, is that central bank-issued fiat money has become the backbone of the economy—not 50 years ago this month, as the propagandists would have you believe, but in a centuries-long process that has culminated in the advent of CBDCs.

Luckily for us, the opportunities for stepping outside of this fiat paradigm are numerous and relatively easy to access. There are many survival currencies already available to those who are willing to explore them, and with the advent of BlackMarketFridays and other ideas for transacting outside the purview of the banks, there are more ways than ever to connect with businesses and individuals who are willing to transact outside of the fiat system.

The alternative economy is like a muscle, and—as those who are increasingly facing "health pass" restrictions and vaccine mandates are beginning to find out—if we don't flex that muscle by finding ways of transacting with like-minded people in agorist markets, we will quickly find ourselves trapped in the banksters' cashless-society nightmare.

The choice is ours . . . for now. Let's make it wisely.

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Banksters Celebrate Fiat's 50th! . . . By Introducing CBDC Nightmare