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If some Congress members get their way, the Federal Reserve may soon be able to track many of your purchases in real time and share that information with government agencies. This is just one of the problems with the proposed “digital dollar” or “fedcoin.”
Fedcoin was initially included in the first coronavirus spending bill. While the proposal was dropped from the final version of the bill, there is still great interest in fedcoin on Capitol Hill. Some progressives have embraced fedcoin as a way to provide Americans with a “universal basic income.”
Both the Senate Banking Committee and the House Financial Services Committee held hearings on fedcoin in June. This is the first step toward making fedcoin a reality.
Fedcoin would not be an actual coin. Instead, it would be a special account created and maintained for each American by the Federal Reserve. Each month, Fed employees could tap a few keys on a computer and — voila — each American would have dollars added to his Federal Reserve account. This is the 21st century equivalent of throwing money from helicopters.
Fedcoin could “crowd out” private cryptocurrencies. Also, it would limit the ability of private citizens to protect themselves from the Federal Reserve-caused decline in the dollar’s value.
Fedcoin would not magically increase the number of available goods and services. What it would do is drive up prices. The damage this would do to middle- and lower-income Americans would dwarf any benefit they receive from their monthly “gift” from the Fed. The rise in prices could lead to Congress regularly increasing fedcoin payments to Americans. These increases would cause prices to keep rising even more until we face hyperinflation and a dollar crisis. Of course, we are already on the path to an economic crisis thanks to the Fed. Fedcoin will hasten and worsen the crisis.
Fedcoin poses a great threat to privacy. The Federal Reserve could know when fedcoin is used, who is using it, and what they use it for. This information could be shared with government agencies, such as the FBI or IRS.
The government could use the ability to know how Americans are spending fedcoin to limit our ability to purchase goods and services disfavored by politicians and bureaucrats. Anyone who doubts this should recall the Obama administration’s Operation Choke Point. Operation Choke Point involved financial regulators “alerting” banks that dealing with certain businesses, such as gun stores, would put the banks at “reputational risk” and could subject them to greater regulation.
Is it so hard to believe that the ability to track purchases would be used in the future to “discourage” individuals from buying guns, fatty foods, or tobacco, or from being customers of corporations whose CEOs are not considered “woke” by the thought police? Fedcoin could also be used to “encourage” individuals to patronize “green” business, thus fulfilling Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s goal of involving the Fed in the fight against climate change.
Fedcoin will threaten private cryptocurrencies, increase inflation, and give government new powers over our financial transactions. Fedcoin will also speed up destruction of the fiat money system. Whatever gain fedcoin may bring to average Americans will come at terrible cost to liberty and prosperity.
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They also want to move away from cash in order to enable implementing negative interest rates, another way of taking your money
This is more perverted than “helicopter man” porn.
Thank you again, Ron Paul. I was not aware about this sick plan. You bring up many good points, but as bad a hyperinflation would (will?) be, the Mark of the Beast business is what people should be the most fearful of. I thought China had a big start on this page straight outta’ Revelation, but I guess the American elites want to catch up. You don’t want to be Left Behind during the End Times. (Perhaps these elites would be better off if they were …)
Ron, an article by Michael Tellinger is making the rounds on the Internet, where he claims that Trump just dealt a death blow to the Fed by “absorbing the Fed into the Treasury Dept.” It would be great if true, but too good to be true. Isn’t it?
So much for the Austrian economic argument against the possibility that a central authority can find, centralize and coordinate dispersed information across an entire economy without the mediation of markets and prices.
Paul seems to have convinced himself that anything that goes against his laissez-fair free-market Oz has got to be a plot of some kind. And, always, every time, no exceptions, a fiendishly sinister and byzantinely complex one, meant for no other purpose than to eventually enslave him, no less. You’d think his angry abusive dad got great big and turned into a government.
Wikipedia says that of the 620 bills that Paul sponsored over his twenty-two years in Congress, only one became law – allowing a federal customhouse to be sold to a local historic preservation society. This almost exactly parallels Hillary’s illustrious Senate career of naming post offices after dead veterans, ironically enough. Do we hear the phrase “out of touch with reality,” at all, here?
I blame this libertarian war on reality for the mess we are in. For the past forty years, there has been an ongoing campaign to delegitimize the very idea of state institutions designed to improve the well being of the population. The government, obeying its constitutional mandate “to provide for the common welfare”, is relentlessly attacked as an enemy of progress by those who profit most from evading its legitimate oversight. So who’s going to take its place? Capitalists, whose only motive is to generate and keep for themselves the “surplus profit” they create by overcharging for goods made by people they underpay for their labor?
Dr. Paul’s own career shows that government-provided health care can work. He gained valuable training and experience when he served as a flight surgeon in the U.S. Air Force back in the 1960’s. He didn’t just mysteriously transform from a bad physician on the government payroll into a competent one when he entered private practice and had to earn his own money as a civilian.
Thank you Ron Paul as always for revealing the truth and your fight against the tyranny of our federal government.
So, you’re a communist?
Are these people morons? Literally.
Okay, they print money, fine. Invest it in something useful then. Like infrastructure, manufacturing, etc.
What they do? Give it to the banks, because apparently there’s some invisible barrier that makes it impossible for the state to invest the money they print directly where it’s needed.
God Bless!
Thanks for everything. I visited your son’s office in DC – some years ago (family live nearby).
Have you heard of arrest of French Philosopher Alain Soral?
A word from you would be highly appreciated.
Durruti