OPINION:
The Bank of England is currently soliciting applications for creators to develop a “proof of concept” for a wallet capable of carrying a central bank digital currency, or CBDC.
Make way for the brave new world of digital currency, where governments can track citizens’ expenditures, movements and activities, as well as control individuals’ access to their own money.
For example of where this could lead, look no further than this Business Insider headline from February: “Canada says it will freeze bank accounts of ‘Freedom Convoy’ truckers who continue their anti-vaccine mandate blockades.” The chilling narrative is this: Run counter to government will, and watch as the government freezes assets and locks out asset owners. Control the money; control the people.
Oh, but that’s Canada, this is America. That could never happen here?
“Credit card industry representatives have cleared the way for a new means of tracing firearm and ammunition purchases, a move that supporters say will help flag suspicious sales and reduce gun crime,” CBS News wrote in September.
That’s when the International Standards Organization, responding in part to pressures from congressional Democrats, created a new merchant category code for gun and ammo retailers. Previously, gun and ammo sellers were grouped in categories that were labeled as “miscellaneous retail,” or as generic “sporting goods stores.” The new coding specifies guns and ammo purchases from these retail and sporting goods stores, setting the stage for law enforcement to intervene in deemed suspicious purchases. And intervening is one step shy from stopping — or controlling — or tracking — or surveilling.
The more we move from paper and coin and toward electronic currency, the wider the door opens for government and banks to exert controls.
Operation Choke Point, after all, was a real thing.
During Barack Obama days, the Justice Department, under the watchful eyes of self-described BHO “wingman” Eric H. Holder Jr., intimidated the banking industry to stop processing payments from so-called “high-risk” industries — that is, gun and ammo dealers. As Fox News reported it, the program intimidated “banks with the threat of heightened scrutiny and increased audits if accounts are maintained in those industries.”
The government hates paper money because it’s hard to track.
The government loves, loves, loves electronic currency because it’s easy to track — easy to stop payments — easy to lock out account holders from accessing their funds.
So fast-forward to today.
The central bank in the United Kingdom has budgeted almost $255,000 to develop a CBDC prototype wallet that can actually conduct transactions and process payments.
The goalpost toward a one-world currency moves a little more.
About a year ago, in November of 2021, the Bank of England announced a time frame of 2030 for a workable, usable CBDC in the market. That was about seven months after the same central bank, in collaboration with key finance partners, established a task force to explore the move to a CBDC system.
And just last month, this — from China Daily: “China is making big strides in testing its digital currency on the world stage. … [T]he Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is poised to become a global crypto hub with further policies and infrastructures rolled out. The digital yuan might be the most active currency in the SAR to settle international trade.”
America never should have stopped using the gold standard. It was honest, pure, tough to manipulate. The dawn of fiat and the steady acceptance of legal tender — more magic than real — has led us to this path of the coming currency storm. And it will be the albatross about America’s neck.
If “paper is poverty” and if paper “is only the ghost of money, and not money itself,” as Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1788, then imagine financial worlds on 100% computerized currency, controlled by banking elites, controlled by communists in China. It won’t just be a nightmare for personal privacies. It will be a tool of control for elite globalists to exercise complete dominance on the peoples of the world. It will be the end of individual liberties, the end of free market choices, the end of American Exceptionalism — the idea that rights come from God and government is subservient to those God-given rights — and the final tool of the Great Reset crowd to usher in the Great Reset collectivism and communism.
It’s 2022. Eight more years until 2030.
Eight more years until the mark of the beast makes its mass, and massive, debut.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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