Tag Archives: War on Cash

Another Step Toward Cashless, Because Corona, by Eric Peters

Posted on December 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

When governments abolish cash we won’t have even the illusion of freedom we have now. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

It’s a wonder the Gesundheitsfuhrers didn’t shut down gas stations given that people touch the pump handles and the cases! the cases!

Well, that’s coming – even though people will still be touching the pumps. But they won’t be touching money – especially cash money. Instead, the “money” will be automatically extracted from their electronic wallet via something called PayByCar.

The idea is for “contactless” transactions – to “stop the spread” of WuFlu.

How that works when people will still handle the pumps is difficult to understand. What’s easy to understand is that “contactless” means cash-less, which also means – if this system ever became default – that it may become very hard to buy gas with cash or even a credit card. Instead, you’d pay via an “app” on your phone – and a bug buried in your car, as PayByCar envisions.

This company – which is a “provider of in-vehicle payment solutions” – has “partnered” with big-time OEM supplier Gentex Corp to introduce something called the Integrated Toll Module, which works like it sounds. A device is integrated with the vehicle that knows (via RFID chipping) where the car is in relation to gas stations (as well as other things). It then sends a text to the driver, whose identity is paired to the car – who texts back the station pump number and the system obligingly turns on the pump and debits the cost of the fill-up from the person’s account.

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No Change on the Way to No Cash, by Eric Peters

Posted on July 17, 2020 | 1 comment

Phasing out change may be the first step towards phasing out cash…and what remains of our financial freedom. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

When people are terrified, it is hard for them to think – which probably explains why they seem unable to now. Can it possibly be a coincidence that as the number of “cases” endlessly reported is increasing, the amount of changeavailable at stores is all of a sudden decreasing?

Could the two be  . . . connected somehow?

Is it credible that – all of a sudden and right now – there’s no change in the till, just by chance? When such shortages have never happened before?

Do you suppose it is possible this purported “shortage” of coins is contrived – to push people toward not using cash?

It’s a thought you’d think more people would have. One that might raise some questions in their minds.

But then, they don’t seem to think very much about the “cases,” either.

Instead, they are scared – terrified. And – not surprisingly – passive. Terror, psychologists will tell you, induces torpor. It frazzles the cognitive apparatus. There is a reason why rabbits freeze when confronted with a predator.

Americans, lots of them, have become lagomorphic. They freeze – paralyzed by the fear instilled by the predator. They are shocked into submission (the Soviets styled their front-line troops shock troops for a reason; it is not a coincidence that the applicators of state terrorism under the Great Decider also used the term, shock and awe – as a paralytic agent).

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Cash is Trash, Especially for the Post-COVID World, by Tom Luongo

Posted on May 7, 2020 | Leave a comment

The powers that be dearly want to get rid of cash. From Tom Luongo at strategic-culture.org:

There’s been a concerted effort recently among the oligarchs I like to call The Davos Crowd to demonize cash. From hedge fund manager Ray Dalio pronouncing ‘Cash is trash’ earlier this year to the fear-mongering surrounding COVID-19 making people fearful of dealing in cash because it might be tainted the anti-cash rhetoric has been amped up to eleven.

And it’s been no secret that the elite of the world want us to stop transacting in cash because it is something they can’t track. Sweden has flirted with the cashless society while the European Union did away with large denomination bills the same way the U.S. has been phasing them out.

A few years ago, India created a huge stir removing the 500 and 1000 rupee note from circulation. All of these moves have been, nominally, in service of stamping out corruption. They are sold to the public as a way to punish criminals and money launderers.

But the reality is that the push for removing cash from society is to put all of our financial dealings in databases which gives authorities a record of everything you do. As governments around the world become increasingly bankrupt they naturally look for ways to improve tax compliance as well as create profiles of anyone they deem a threat to their continued existence.

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COVID-19 and the War on Cash: What Is Behind the Push for a Cashless Society? by John W. Whitehead

Posted on April 14, 2020 | 2 comments

The coronavirus outbreak is giving governments the perfect excuse for outlawing cash. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“The fact is that the government, like a highwayman, says to a man: Your money, or your life. And many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of that threat. The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.”—Lysander Spooner, American abolitionist and legal theorist

Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic.

As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king.

Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners).

To this end, the government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been waging a subtle war on cash for some time now.

What is this war on cash?

It’s a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient.

According to economist Steve Forbes, “The real reason for this war on cash—start with the big bills and then work your way down—is an ugly power grab by Big Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.”

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The Real Reason for the Shocking New Developments in the War on Cash, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on February 28, 2020 | 1 comment

When cash vanishes so too will any vestige of financial privacy other than transactions in real money, i.e. gold and silver. From Jeff Thomas at internationalman.com:

war on cash

International Man: Australia has proposed a law that provides a $25,000 fine and two years in jail for those who make cash transactions of $10,000 or more. If passed, the Currency (Restrictions on the Use of Cash) Bill could be implemented in 2020.

Do you see this legislation as Orwellian?

Jeff Thomas: Oh, yes, very much so. The claim by the Australian government’s Black Economy Taskforce is that the law will help stamp out tax evasion, money laundering and other crimes.

What we’ll be seeing is a plethora of laws popping up in all the countries that were a part of the post-war prosperity boom – the US, Canada, Japan, Australia, Europe and others. All those jurisdictions dove headlong into the debt pit that the US created after 1971. All of them are now facing an economic crisis as a result.

Consequently, all of them will be creating capital controls. My belief is that each will host several of these laws, and the others will all adopt them. Each law will be justified as protection against money laundering, terrorism, tax evasion, a rising black market or a combination of those scare tactic focal points. As such, the populace of each country will welcome them, not understanding that the real purpose is to have the banks determine how much you’re allowed to spend.

By having each country put forth a portion of the laws, then having all the others copy them, they’ll hope to make the laws appear to be less draconian. After all, how bad could they be, if all these countries support them?

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Globalist-Endorsed War on Cash May Be China’s Next Terrifying Weapon, by Tho Bishop

Posted on November 19, 2019 | Leave a comment

The Chinese government will resort to every measure available in the repressive bag of tricks, including the war on cash. From Tho Bishop at mises.org:

Recent protests in Hong Kong, along with the resulting fall out from international corporations questioned for their relationships with mainland China, has placed a renewed focus on the authoritarianism of the Chinese Communist Party. This has led to several articles identifying ways in which Western countries have learned from the CCP, including Europe’s growing embrace of web censorship and growing interest in the social credit system rolled out in 2018. Given that it wasn’t that long ago that it was common to see Western leaders and neoliberal commentators openly envy aspects of the Chinese political system, these concerns are certainly worth exploring. What should be of equal interest, however, is the ways China may be learning from the West.

The next arm weapon the CCP may plan to wield against its citizens is a War on Cash.

As Joseph Salerno, among others, has noted for years now, a successful War on Cash would represent a new escalation in government’s long history of weaponizing currency against the population. Moving far beyond the clipping of coins as a means of stealth tax collection, the purpose of a War on Cash is not simply to strengthen a government’s grasp on the wealth of its citizens — but the move becomes a highly effective means of tracking any who find themselves in the crosshairs of the state.

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The EU Backs Off its War on Cash. Here’s Why, by Don Quijones

Posted on July 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

It’s proving harder than its proponents thought to get rid of cash and herd people into the banking system. From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:

People view paying in cash “as a fundamental freedom, which should not be disproportionately restricted.”

The European Commission, in its official war on cash, admitted that physical cash is perhaps not quite the source of all evil that many EU institutions, including the Commission itself, had made it out to be. And it has abandoned its war on cash.

In a report to the European Parliament and Council on the viability of EU-wide cash payment restrictions, the Commission made three crucial observations.

1. Cash restrictions would have little effect on terrorist financing

Cash plays a major role in many terrorist activities, “offering anonymity and facilitating the ability to conceal not only illegal activities, but also ancillary legal transactions that could otherwise be tracked by law enforcement agencies,” the report points out. But according to the findings of a detailed analysis of recent terrorist attacks, restrictions on payments in cash would have had little impact on the capacity to prepare these attacks, especially given the “observed trend of the decreasing costs of terrorist attacks.”

The amounts of individual transactions are often even lower, and would therefore not have been impacted by restrictions. What’s more, many common transactions made in the preparation of recent terrorist attacks were done using traceable means (credit and debit cards, bank transfers, etc.) without raising any red flags.

2. Cash restrictions could be useful in combating money laundering but are of limited help against tax fraud.

The report notes that cash limits could be a useful tool in the fight against money laundering, of which cash transactions are normally the starting point. Despite the steady growth in non-cash payment methods and the changing face of criminality (i.e., the rise in cybercrime, online fraud and illicit online market places), criminal activities continue to generate profits in the form of large amounts of cash.

The fact that EU Member States have vastly different rules on cash limitations makes it easier for criminals to launder the proceeds of their operations as it allows them “to circumvent controls in their country of origin by investing in cash intensive businesses in another EU Member State with no or a lower control of cash expenditures.”

To continue reading: The EU Backs Off its War on Cash. Here’s Why

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The Final Assault in the War on Cash, by Dan Denning

Posted on June 24, 2018 | Leave a comment

Cash is anonymous, allowing those who use it to transact without leaving a record. That’s why government’s hate it. From Dan Denning at bonnerandpartners.com:

Before I show you what I’ve learned about a plan to seize control of America’s money, let me make one point clear…

If you value sound money and political freedom… if you value limited government and taxation with representation… and if you value enterprise and privacy… then you’re going to hate the future I’m about to describe.

There is no philosophical or monetary middle ground on the issue.

You’re either with it or against it.

The Chicago Plan

In March 1933, Henry Morgenthau Jr., chairman of the Federal Farm Board, was sent a short memo titled, “Memorandum on Banking Reform.”

It was signed by Frank Knight (the acknowledged author of the memo), Garfield Cox, Aaron Director, Paul Douglas, Lloyd Mints, Henry Schultz, and Henry Simons. All of them were professors at the University of Chicago.

The memorandum advocated for full-reserve banking (FRB) in the U.S. monetary system. U.S. currency would be backed only by government debt, not bank debt (loans issued by commercial banks to private citizens and companies).

It wouldn’t nationalize the U.S. banking system. But it would nationalize the nation’s money supply.

Under this kind of system, banks could no longer “create” money by lending it into existence. Money creation would be the exclusive territory of the government of the United States.

In this system, the key government agencies could not create money through new lending. They would do so through new spending (on priorities determined by elected politicians).

They called it “The Chicago Plan.”

The most radical elements of the plan – which we’ll discuss shortly – were left on the shelf nearly a century ago.

But I believe it’s about to find a resurgence in modern America…

The End of Fractional Reserve

Before I show you what the implications of a modern Chicago Plan would be, it’s important you understand how money creation works today.

Despite what you may think, the central bank (the Federal Reserve) doesn’t print that much money. The vast majority of the money supply in the U.S. economy is grown by banks lending money into existence.

To continue reading: The Final Assault in the War on Cash

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Visa Goes Down in the UK, Chaos Ensues, Cash is Suddenly King, by Don Quijones

Posted on June 3, 2018 | Leave a comment

Cash is almost universally disparaged among the high and the mighty, but what happens when the credit cards’ systems crash? From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:

War on Cash Suffers Setback.

For over 12 hours on Friday, shopping centers in the UK and other parts of Europe were plunged into chaos as millions of consumers were unable to use their Visa debit or credit cards at points of sale. The credit card company, which was finally able to restore normal service early Saturday morning, said it had no reason to believe the hardware failure was due to “any unauthorized access or malicious event”.

While the mayhem caused by the outage may have been short lived, it served as a stark reminder of the risks, both for consumers and retailers, of depending purely on cashless payments. In the UK, the chaos unleashed was particularly acute since it is one of the world’s most cashless economies, pipped to the post only by Canada and Sweden, as a recent study by industry analysts reported.

In 2017, cards overtook cash for retail payments in UK for the first time ever, according to figures from the British Retail Consortium. According to Visa, payment processing through its systems accounts for a staggering £1 in every £3 of all retail spending in the UK. Which is why, when those systems stopped working yesterday, the chaos was greater in the UK than almost anywhere else as cashless customers missed trains, were unable to fill up their cars, pay for their groceries, or even clear their bar tab — this was Friday, after all!

“There is never a good time for the payments system to go down but a Friday afternoon, when there is a flood of people leaving work, must be among the worst,” one banking industry source said. The only way for people to pay for stuff was with co-branded Mastercard cards, or hard cold cash. Luckily, Visa cards were still working at ATMs, although the queues were considerably longer than normal.

To continue reading: Visa Goes Down in the UK, Chaos Ensues, Cash is Suddenly King

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Silicon Valley Joins War On Cash: Tim Cook Seeks “Elimination Of Money”, by Tyler Durden

Posted on February 28, 2018 | Leave a comment

Eliminating cash is an idea whose time will never come. It’s anonymous, which is why governments hate it and people who want to maintain a semblance of their privacy like it. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Apple CEO Tim Cook has one big hope for the future – that he lives to see the end of money.

“…I’m hoping that I’m still going to be alive to see the elimination of money.”

Speaking at a meeting for Apple shareholders in Cupertino, California earlier this month, Cook made it clear that he is firmly on the side of the war-on-cash establishment.

“Because why would you have this stuff! Why go through all the expense of printing this stuff and then some people steal it, and you’ve got to worry about counterfeits and all these things,” he continued.

As Apple’s CEO talked about the downsides of cash, BI reported that he became more animated, revealing his real passion about the topic…

“We can provide a solution for the customer that’s simpler, more convenient, you don’t carry around a wallet with a bunch of cards in it, or a purse with a bunch of cards in it,”Cook said.

“And it’s more secure, if you’ve ever had your credit card ripped off, I’m sure a lot of you have, I have, it’s not a good experience.”

Until now, it has tended to be politicians and central bankers leading the call for a cashless society… for your own good.

The enemies of cash claim that only crooks and cranks need large-denomination bills.They want large transactions to be made electronically so government can follow them. Yet these are some of the same European politicians who blew a gasket when they learned that U.S. counterterrorist officials were monitoring money through the Swift global system. Criminals will find a way, large bills or not.

The real reason the war on cash is gearing up now is political: Politicians and central bankers fear that holders of currency could undermine their brave new monetary world of negative interest rates. Japan and Europe are already deep into negative territory, and U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen said last week the U.S. should be prepared for the possibility. Translation: That’s where the Fed is going in the next recession.

To continue reading: Silicon Valley Joins War On Cash: Tim Cook Seeks “Elimination Of Money”

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