Tag Archives: War on Cash

The Criminalization of Financial Independence, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on February 22, 2017 | Leave a comment

You can’t rule an independent person, so independence must be criminalized. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Independent enterprises are a source of political and financial independence–and any independent class is dangerous to the ruling elites.

Just as the “war on drugs” criminalized and destroyed large swaths of African-American and Latino communities, the “war on cash” will further criminalize the few remaining avenues to financial independence and freedom. The introduction of “entitlement” welfare in the 1960s generated a toxic dependency on the state that institutionalized worklessness, a one-two punch that undermined marriage and family in America’s working class of all ethnicities.

The “war on drugs” launched in the 1970s turned millions of American males into felons with severely restricted rights and opportunities in mainstream America.

Now we see the same destructive pattern repeating with “disability” being the new “welfare” and “legal” synthetic heroin (oxycotin etc.) being the new street-smack that lays waste to entire communities. Once you’re dependent on the state for disability and synthetic smack, you are owned by the government, lock, stock and barrel.

When the temptation to sell your $3 Medicaid prescription for synthetic smack for a quick $1000 becomes too much to resist, bang, you’ve got a one-way ticket into the Hell of America’s criminal “justice” system. Do you see the pattern? Offer the blandishments of “free money” and nearly free synthetic smack, and the vulnerable populace is quickly reduced to a dependent state of worklessness and addiction.

Needless to say, an addicted, ill, workless populace that is herded into the grinder of the criminal justice system isn’t going to create any political resistance. They have their hands full just trying to stay alive and avoid being sucked into the voracious maw of the criminalization meat grinder.

This is the context for the upcoming “war on cash” and the criminalization of financial independence. Every conventional means of remaining financially independent of the state-cartel-banking system is being restricted and criminalized, the better to herd everyone into centrally controlled institutions.

To continue reading: The Criminalization of Financial Independence

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Things Just Got Serious in Europe’s War on Cash, by Don Quijones

Posted on January 28, 2017 | Leave a comment

Europe is tightening the screws on all those benighted idiots and criminals who want to use cash. From Don Quijones at wolfstreet.com:

To protect citizens from threats as defined by apparatchiks in Brussels.

The central authorities in Europe just launched their most important offensive to date in their multiyear War on Cash. The new move comes directly from the European Union’s executive branch, the European Commission, which just announced its intention to “explore the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments,” with a view to implementing cross-regional measures in 2018.

Maximum limits on cash transactions already exist in most European countries, and the general trend is downward. Last year, Spain joined France in placing a €1,000 maximum on cash payments. Greece went one better, dropping its cap for cash transactions from €1,500 to €500. In simple terms, any legal purchase of a good or service over €500 will need to be done with plastic or mobile money.

In some countries, the maximum cash limit is significantly higher. For example, in Europe’s biggest economy, Germany, recent attempts by the government to set a threshold of €5,000 triggered a fierce public backlash. The German tabloid Bild published a scathing open letter titled “Hands Off Our Cash,” while a broad spectrum of political parties condemned the proposed measures as an attack on data protection and privacy.

“Cash allows us to remain anonymous during day-to-day transactions. In a constitutional democracy, that is a freedom that has to be defended,” tweeted the Green MP Konstantin von Notz. Even Bunderbank President Jens Weidmann criticized the government’s proposals, telling Bild (emphasis added): “It would be fatal if citizens got the impression that cash is being gradually taken away from them.”

To continue reading: Things Just Got Serious in Europe’s War on Cash

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Globalist war against humanity shifts into high gear: Cars, cash, literature and independent news all targeted for elimination, by Mike Adams

Posted on December 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

Even if the globalists “win” their wars, we know that they will somehow have for themselves everything they’ve banned. From Mike Adams at naturalnews.com:

NaturalNews) As witnessed recently by the Washington Post’s horrifyingly dishonest “journalism” naming 200 independent media websites as pawns of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the dying establishment media is desperately trying to establish a news monopoly by discrediting all competing indy news publishers.

In doing so, the Washington Post (and its writer Timberg) just abandoned any last vestige of journalistic credibility. Now owned by Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, the Washington Post’s willingness to prostitute its own credibility in an effort to destroy the independent media reveals something startling to the world: They’re desperate. Like a cornered, ravenous animal, the mainstream media is now fighting for its very survival and hoping it can eliminate all news alternatives before the public figures out how deeply they’ve been lying all long.

That description also applies to the globalists — nefarious manipulators of finance, technology and culture in order to achieve their selfish aims of world domination and depopulation. Following the BREXIT vote, the election of Donald Trump and the ending of the Renzi regime in Italy, the globalists are in full panic mode to regain control by eliminating every sector of freedom still remaining on our planet.

It’s all happening right now, day by day, played out in the pages of the New York Times. Here are the key areas where globalists have declared war on humanity (each is covered in more detail below):

1) The war on cash (freedom of commerce)

2) The war on automobiles (i.e. freedom of travel)

3) The war on the internet (freedom of expression)

4) The war on dissenting literature and news (freedom of information)

There’s also, of course, the war on your health, but that topic is so enormous it will have to covered in a separate article.

To continue reading: Globalist war against humanity shifts into high gear: Cars, cash, literature and independent news all targeted for elimination

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Cash Is No Longer King: The Phasing Out of Physical Money Has Begun, by Shaun Bradley

Posted on December 10, 2016 | Leave a comment

There are two reasons why governments are phasing out cash: to keep bank customer assets locked in the bank system so they can’t take it out when the financial crisis arrives, and so the government can track everyone’s transactions. From Shaun Bradley at theantimedia.org:

(ANTIMEDIA) – As physical currency around the world is increasingly phased out, the era where “cash is king” seems to be coming to an end. Countries like India and South Korea have chosen to limit access to physical money by law, and others are beginning to test digital blockchains for their central banks.

The war on cash isn’t going to be waged overnight, and showdowns will continue in any country where citizens turn to alternatives like precious metals or decentralized cryptocurrencies. Although this transition may feel like a natural progression into the digital age, the real motivation to go cashless is downright sinister.

The unprecedented collusion between governments and central banks that occurred in 2008 led to bailouts, zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing on a scale never before seen in history. Those decisions, which were made under duress and in closed-door meetings, set the stage for this inevitable demise of paper money.

Sacrificing the stability of national currencies has been used as a way prop up failing private institutions around the globe. By kicking the can down the road yet another time, bureaucrats and bankers sealed the fate of the financial system as we know it.

A currency war has been declared, ensuring that the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen and many other state currencies are linked in a suicide pact. Printing money and endlessly expanding debt are policies that will erode the underlying value of every dollar in people’s wallets, as well as digital funds in their bank accounts.

To continue reading: Cash Is No Longer King: The Phasing Out of Physical Money Has Begun,

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Carrying Cash? Be Ready to Lose It, by Mark Nestmann

Posted on December 6, 2016 | Leave a comment

There are very good reasons for not keeping a lot of cash in banks. From Mark Nestmann on a guest post at theburningplatform.com:

Don’t trust banks to protect the money you’ve deposited? You’re hardly alone.

From a legal standpoint, the money you deposit in a bank no longer belongs to you. Instead, the bank owns it. You are merely just another one of their unsecured creditors. What’s more, in the event of future bank failures, the US government has now signed an international agreement confirming that it will not pay off depositors. Instead, it will force them to submit to a “bail-in” regime, like bank depositors in Cyprus experienced in 2013.

The bail-in scenario, on top of the lowest interest rates in 5,000 years, has led many bank depositors to make the entirely rational decision to withdraw their savings from banks. They’re taking the cash and storing it, often in a home safe. Indeed, sales of home safes are soaring worldwide.

This behavior deeply disturbs the powers that be. In response, they’ve imposed stricter and stricter controls on cash. I wrote about those controls a year and a half ago, and since then, it’s only gotten worse.

In the US, one strategy the government uses to discourage people from holding cash is civil forfeiture. Under this Alice-in-Wonderland legal process, cops can seize your cash – or anything else you own – if they believe that it’s somehow connected to a crime… any crime. You don’t need to be convicted, accused, or even arrested for a crime to lose everything you own.

To continue reading: Carrying Cash? Be Ready to Lose It

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This Is Where I Get Off, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on November 27, 2016 | Leave a comment

The use of cash is not going quietly into that good night, despite proponents of a cashless economy’s fondest hopes. From Jeff Thomas at 321gold.com:

We began writing on the War on Cash some time ago, when it was still just a theoretical ploy that we believed banks and governments were likely to employ as their economic adventurism continued to unravel.

But, in the last year, several countries have, as a part of the War on Cash, begun removing larger bank notes from circulation in order to force people to perform all economic transactions through the banking system, assuring that the banks would gain total control over the movement of money.

Of course, the banks could not admit their true goal to the public. They instead used the governments to claim that the measure was being undertaken to restrict crime (money laundering, drug deals, black marketing, terrorism, etc.)

Recently, without any fanfare, ATM’s in Mexico have ceased issuing the 500 peso note US$24). The largest note is now the 200 peso note (US$10).

At about the same time, Citibank in Australia declared that it will no longer accept coins or banknotes.

India has joined those countries that have done away with larger notes. They did so quite suddenly and the effects are already being felt by the Indian people. The elimination of the 500 rupee and 1000 rupee notes has, of course, not limited the level of spending in India, but it has caused a sudden demand for considerably more smaller notes through which to accomplish the same transactions.

To continue reading: This Is Where I Get Off

 

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Why You Should Be Paying Attention to America’s Quiet War on Cash, by Shaun Bradley

Posted on September 8, 2016 | Leave a comment

The war on cash intensifies. From Shaun Bradley at theantimedia.org:

(ANTIMEDIA) Government campaigns of intimidation — like the wars on drugs, terror, and poverty — have been used to extort the public for decades. Despite the previous failures of institutional “wars,” a new war on cash is being waged that threatens freedom in a more subversive way than ever before.

Banks and governments around the world are cracking down on the use of paper money, and in turn, eliminating any anonymity left in the current system. Through strict rules on cash transactions and civil asset forfeiture laws, for example, the system has already instituted penalties for using cash. But as payments evolve into a purely digital network, the consequences of this new paradigm are being brought into the spotlight.

The ability to track, record, and mediate transactions of all individuals is a power dictators throughout history could have only dreamed of. Those who value privacy are turning to alternatives like cash, cryptocurrencies, and precious metals, but these directly threaten central bank dominance. This ongoing tug-of-war in financial innovation will determine whether we enter an age of individual empowerment or centralized enslavement.

As mundane as it may seem, the main reason for this push to go cashless is directly tied to what world central banks are doing to prop up their economies. The manipulation of interests rates to zero or even negative has left central banks no ammunition to fight off the next recession. Without the ability to cut interest rates even further, stimulating economic growth is nearly impossible.

The decisions made in response to the 2008 crisis have led to a perverted environment in which customers could be charged just for holding money in their accounts. As long as individuals have the ability to move their funds into paper currency and escape the losses, banks are still limited to how far they can push the envelope. Regardless, the federal government continues to pressure banks into issuing “Suspicious Activity Reports” for withdrawals of even as little as $5,000. That amount will undoubtedly decrease if and when more people resort to stuffing cash under their mattresses.

Kenneth Rogoff, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, noted in a recent paper how a cashless world would expand banks’ options:

“In principle, cutting interest rates below zero ought to stimulate consumption and investment in the same way as normal monetary policy, by encouraging borrowing. Unfortunately, the existence of cash gums up the works. If you are a saver, you will simply withdraw your funds, turning them into cash, rather than watch them shrink too rapidly. Enormous sums might be withdrawn to avoid these losses, which could make it difficult for banks to make loans.”

Conditioning the public to believe privacy and mere possession of cash are criminal acts is key to the establishment’s push into this new digital model. The media’s focus on cash and Bitcoin being used to fund cartels, terrorism, and gang activity is just a smokescreen for the real agenda of complete control — especially considering the big banks have already been caught laundering money for cartels and terrorist groups. The disruptive role cryptocurrencies and precious metals will play in this grand scheme is yet to be seen, but for now, they’re the best competition to the fiat dollar hegemony.

To continue reading: Why You Should Be Paying Attention to America’s Quiet War on Cash

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