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After several years publishing The Daily Stirrer we decided that the journal was a difficult medium to access archive material in, so we introduced these omnibus pages, on which we gather posts on a particular topic. Each omnibus page has an actibe contents list to enable you to jump to any article that takes your fancy, with a button after the article to return you to the menu. Our aim as always is to promote freethinking and diversity of opinion.

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The Cashless Society - An Attack On Liberty And Privacy

Smartphones share our data every four and a half minutes

New research shows that Android and iPhones share data with their respective companies on average every 4½ minutes, with data being sent back even when idle.

The study claimed iPhones offered no greater privacy than Google devices.

However, the study noted that Google handsets collected “a notably larger volume of handset data than Apple” with 1MB of data being sent from idle Google Pixel handsets every 12 hours, compared with 52KB sent from the iPhone.

Devices not only collected information about handset activity, but also about handsets nearby, when a user connects to a wi-fi network MAC addresses and details of allother devices on that network.

The Trinity College Dublin research has raised fresh privacy concerns about smartphones, with the research claiming there was little difference between Apple and Google when it came to collecting certain data.

The study, which was published by Prof Doug Leith at Trinity’s Connect Centre, claimed iPhones offered no greater privacy than Google devices.

However, the study noted that Google handsets collected “a notably larger volume of handset data than Apple” with 1MB of data being sent from idle Google Pixel handsets every 12 hours, compared with 52KB sent from the iPhone.

Among the data potentially sent back by the handsets were the insertion of a SIM and handset details such as the hardware serial number, IMEI, Wifi MAC address and the phone number.

“I think most people accept that Apple and Google need to collect data from our phones to provide services such as iCloud or Google Drive. But when we simply use our phones as phones – to make and receive calls and nothing more – it is much harder to see why Apple and Google need to collect data,” said Prof Leith.

“Yet in this study we find that Apple and Google collect a wealth of information in precisely that situation. It seems excessive, and it is hard to see why it is necessary.”

Prof Leith said it was disappointing to see so much data being collected by Apple in particular as the company had talked much about user privacy in the past.

The research highlighted some major concerns over the collection of such data, noting that device data could be linked to other data sources, including web browsing and shopping purchases.

“This research outlines how smartphones work,” a spokesperson for Google said. “Modern cars regularly send basic data about vehicle components, their safety status and service schedules to car manufacturers, and mobile phones work in very similar ways. This report details those communications, which help ensure that iOS or Android software is up to date, services are working as intended, and that the phone is secure and running efficiently.”

Watch Corbett reports , theres a whole world wide tax /surveillance grid being put in place , once you

are all hooked in via your "health passports " then they get rid of cash , you cant take money out and they can tax you directly from your wallet on your phone , when the banks need to bail in (take your money ) they will just lower that interest rate to negative, they're looking forward to this and talk about it quite openly , picking and choosing who can save and who is made to spend , it's a bit like dynamic pricing , dynamic taxing , coming soon

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CBDC: The Overarching Goal Behind The Digitisation Of Money?

Authored by Steven Guinness,

It is no revelation that central banks are actively engaged in both the research and piloting of central bank digital currencies. But the mechanics of how they are conducting their programmes is not as widely recognised. This is largely because the information is buried within the pages of mundane reports, speeches and discussion papers. A few headlines might be glossed over in the financial press, but the technical aspects are usually not considered.

In January 2019 the Bank for International Settlements published a paper called, ‘Proceeding with caution – a survey on central bank digital currency‘. I briefly covered the survey in an article published back in September last year. Back then the BIS reported that a majority of banks were engaged in active research on CBDC’s, but none were yet in a position to launch a digital variant of physical money.

The BIS followed this survey up in January 2020 with some new research – ‘Impending arrival – a sequel to the survey on central bank digital currency‘.

We learn that the 70% of central banks that were researching CBDC’s has now risen to 80%, with many of them reliant on ‘research conducted by international organisations (in particular the BIS and the IMF) or regional networks‘. The BIS’s Innovation Hub initiative, established in the summer of 2019, has been key in coordinating the advancement of CBDC’s projects worldwide. This is one of the reasons why banks are operating in step with one another ... Continue reading >>>


Contents

CBDC: The Overarching Goal Behind The Digitisation Of Money?
Coronavirus: Something To Make Us Smile
Will World Be Cashless After COVID-19 Pandemic
The War On Cash Begins">
How A Cashless Society Might Work
Banks want us all to have 'tap and pay' cards... even though they're a criminals wet dream
JPMorgan Chase BANS Storage of Cash in its Safety Deposit Boxes
Cashless Society: The Spy In Your Wallet
Sweden's Rebels Against Cashless Society Push: "We Have No Weapon Fight Back...If Putin Invades"
The "Better Than Cash Alliance" Has An Orwellian Plan
Why Europe Will Lead the Charge to Eliminate Cash – The Next Step in Global Meltdown
Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom
Banning Cash Will Stop Terrorism (and end war, poverty, disease and bad smells)
Cashless Society Equals Cashless People
Are We About To Return To The Gold Standard
Prepare For The Worst Case Scenario
Divrsity Is A Lie -So Who Are The real Racist Bigots?

India's Cashless Society set to fail but slide to fascism goes on


‘We don’t take cash’: is this the future of money?
America Takes A Step Closer To Becoming A Cashless Society
The Cashless Society Is A Con - Don't Trade Your Privacy For Convenience Elites Losing The War On Cash? Sweden U-Turns On 'Cashless Society' Agenda
The Elite's Scheme to Eliminate Cash And Impose Negative Interest
If The Banker’s Cartel And Silicon Valley Are Pushing Cashless Stores We Should Avoid Them

The Never-Ending War On Cash
In the last few decades the global elites have been pushing to shift financial activity from cash and paper cheques towards a cashless world. Physical currency is under constant attack and the majority of the world’s money supply exists in intangible electronic form. Governments and financial institutions are actively promoting a cashless society, raising concerns about individual financial freedom

War On Cash To Escalate In 2024
Early last week Boggart Blog learned Globalists within the US Government and the banking and finance industry have announced a plan to launch a Digital Fiat Currency that would enable seamless transfers of funds between banks and tax jurisdictions as a major step towards banning cash. Bankers and politicians claim this is essential to protect business and private funds against the actions of hostile nations and to eliminate money laundering by organised crime networks ... Continue reading >>>

Will World Be Cashless After COVID-19 Pandemic

When the World Health Organization released a recommendation back in March this year, advising that people turn to cashless, contactless transactions to fight the spread of Covid-19, a number of governments and retailers across the world took action. The advice, like their advice about lockdowns and wearing masks, was completely pointless of course because the pandemic marched on. Or maybe the advice was not completely pointless, what if the point was not to stop or slow the spread of the SARS-COV2 virus, which causes COVID (Corona Virus Disease),but to increase the control the Banks, Governments and Cartels have over our lives.

I have said from the outset this crisis was a hoax, manufactured when, after Trump and Brexit in 2016 and the rise of anti - globalist movements in democratic societies around the world, members of that exclusive club, The World Economic Forum (WEF), which meets in January each year to plan the future economic and social development of the world. (Perhaps I'm being unfair in calling them exclusive, in fact anybody can attend, proving you have $250,000 to spare for a ticket, can affor £3000 per night for a hotel room and don't mind paying $25 for a cup of coffee - well they have to keep the riff raff out somehow. Oh, and it's more or less de rigeur to arrive in a private jet. In 2019 WEF attendees were delivered to Switzerland in 1500 private jets - ironically one of the main items on the agenda was a speech by Greta Thunberg followed by a debate on how to persuade people in the liberal democracies to reduce their carbon footprint.

What has his to do with abandoning cash? you might well ask. Actually the WEF have been pushing the idea of moving to a cashles society for around ten years now; it would suit the banks very well if every transaction, no matter how small, was electronic, and think how it would help the corporate pirates of Silicon Valley to build more detailed pictures of our behaviour for sale to organisations that want to target us with advertising material "tailored to our interests."

The Davos gang member and corporate pirates thought the introduction of contactless cards >

Enter the pandemic.

In China, where the pandemic started and where, incredibly, the virus is alleged to have jumped from a bat to a dead fish to a human (or something like that,) thousands of banknotes were destroyed or disinfected to eliminate the spread of the virus. South Korea followed suit, and in the US, the Federal Reserve has started storing banknotes that have come in from Asia before recirculating them back into the economy.

Canadians, it seems, have taken taken a new approach to money laundering with rumours circulating that some people have stashing their banknotes in the washing machines to rid them of the virus – a course of action possible to their ‘paper’ money, like the latest generation of British banknotes, being made of plastic.

Some retailers have even gone full on paranoid and banned the use of cash in their stores to keep employees and customers safe, opting for contactless payments instead. Meanwhile, for those confined to their homes due to lockdowns, quarantine, self - isolation, online shopping has become the only.

The coronavirus pandemic is having a far greater impact on society than any hoax pandemic dreamed up by the global government control freaks has a right to. More significantly in the long term perhaps is that whole industries, worldwide, are being wiped out and millions of livelihoods sacrified to an illness which, much of the unreported science maintains, does not exist – and the payments industry is no exception. According to management consultants McKinsey, the ongoing pandemic is likely to have a profound effect for global economies. The consultancy predicts that global payments could drop by as much as 8-10 percent of total revenue due to the pandemic, a reduction of between $165 billion- $210 billion. That’s compared to the 10-11 percent revenue reduction seen following the 2008 global financial crash.

The pandemic has not only affected our immediate lives and the economies in which billions of people earn their living, but is causing shifts in attitudes as social activbities are halted. As a result, shopping habits and purchasing patterns, including the way people manage their finances and make payments are likely to differ widely post-pandemic to what they were previously. One result The Powers That Be are hoping for is reduced use of cash and an uptick in contactless payments enabling electronic tracking of our small purchases, movements and preferences.

Coronavirus is certainly accelerating a shift towards a cashless economy, a shift that the World Economic Forum, which meets in Davos each year to plan future economic developments, has been trying to engineer for some years. Back in February, before the pandemic was declared, UK Finance predicted that the UK will become virtually cashless within the next decade - which is only likely to accelerate in the current climate. The Daily Stirrer and Boggart Blog predicted almost ten years ago that supporters of global authoritarian government would try to move the liberal democracies in this direction

In March, the World Health Organization advised the public to use contactless technology where possible, to prevent the spread of the disease. Since then, retailers have begun refusing cash payments and a concern around sharing potentially ‘contaminated’ cash has grown. Meanwhile, in the midst of the pandemic China has launched a sovereign digital currency, the eRMB, anticipating cash will diminish even further. China, independently of the World Economic Forum, has been working towards replacing the US dollar with the Renminbi for a decade

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[ War on Cash to escalate in 2024 ] ...[Daily Stirrer] ... [Boggart Aboad] ... [ Greenteeth Home ] ... [ Medium.com ]


Coronavirus: Something To Make Us Smile

We'll be posting the usual off - mainstream news updates later but the priority today is our need for something to make us smile.

Most of us are confused about the rules we're supposed to follow during lockdown, and no one more so that the thick, blundering plod who seem to think they should be arresting people for buying non essential stuff like food, roughing up people who are sitting in their gardens, or kicking fron doors down and busting up illicit social gatherings of one person sitting alone in his house.

So here, courtesy of my Texan friend Vic Damico, is a concise summary of the rules, which makes what you can and can't do clear as mud (slightly edited for UK readers.)

The Lockdown Rules:

1. Basically, you can't leave the house for any reason, but if you have to leave for some reasons, then you can.

2. Masks are useless, but maybe you have to wear one, it can save your life but it is useless, but maybe it is mandatory as well.

3. Shops are closed, except for those that are open. which cannot accept cash. Also you cannot use your debit / credit card with your pin because PIN numbers spread the vaccine so if you are one of those smart arses who disabled their contactless feature to stop government agencies and Silicon Valley tech billionaires tracking you, you're fucked.

4. You should not go to hospitals unless you have to go there. Same applies to doctors, you should only go there in case of emergency, provided you are not too sick.

5. This virus is deadly but still not too scary, except that if we don't follow the rules it will actually lead to a global disaster.

6. Gloves won't help, but they can still help.

7. Everyone needs to stay HOME, but it's important to GO OUT but if you go out you might be arrested but you might be arrested at home for hosting a social gathering while alone.

8. There is no shortage of groceries in the supermarket, but there are many things missing when you go there in the evening, but not in the morning. Sometimes.

9. The virus has no effect on children except for those it affects.

10. Animals are not affected, but there is still a cat that tested positive in Belgium in February when no one had been tested, plus a few tigers here and there…

11. You will have many symptoms when you are sick, but you can also get sick without symptoms, have symptoms without being sick, or be contagious without having symptoms.

12. In order not to get sick, you have to eat well and exercise, but eat whatever you have on hand and it's better not to go out, well, but no…

13. It's better to get some fresh air, but you get looked at very wrong when you get some fresh air, and most importantly, you don't go to parks or walk. But don’t sit down, except that you can do that now if you are old, but not for too long or if you are pregnant but also old or male).

14. You can't go to retirement homes, but you have to take care of the elderly and bring food and medication.

15. If you are sick, you can't go out, but you can go to the pharmacy.

16. You can get restaurant food delivered to the house, which may have been prepared by people who didn't wear masks or gloves. But you have to have your groceries decontaminated outside for 3 hours. Pizza too.

17. Every disturbing article or scaremongering interview must start with " I don't want to trigger panic, but…"

18. You can't see your older mother or grandmother, but you can take a taxi and meet an older taxi driver.

19. You can walk around with a friend but not with your family if they don't live under the same roof.

20. You are safe if you maintain the appropriate social distance, but you can’t go out with friends or strangers at the safe social distance.

21. The virus remains active on different surfaces for two hours, no, four, no, six, no, we didn't say hours, maybe days? But it takes a damp environment. Oh no, not necessarily.

22. The virus stays in the air - well no, or yes, maybe, especially in a closed room, in one hour a sick person can infect ten, so if it falls, all our children were already infected at school before it was closed. But remember, if you stay at the recommended social distance, however in certain circumstances you should maintain a greater distance, which, studies show, the virus can sometimes travel, maybe.

23. We count the number of deaths but we don't know how many people are infected as we have only tested so far those who were "almost dead" to find out if that's what they will die of but for everyone who dies, death will be recorded as coronavirus related because nobody wants to trigger panoc but you have to be scared enough to follow the rules.

24. We have no treatment, except that there may be one that apparently is not dangerous unless you take too much (which is the case with ALL medications).

25. We should stay locked up until the virus disappears or until Bill Gates has implanted a microchip in your body developed a vaccine, but it will only disappear if we achieve collective immunity, so when it circulates again we will have to stay locked up in out homes forever and Bill Gates' microchip will report us to the authorities if we don't

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MORE HUMOUR

War on Cash to escalate in 2024 ] ...[Daily Stirrer] ... [Boggart Aboad] ... [ Greenteeth Home ] ... [ Medium.com ]



The War On Cash Begins"> cash

The war on cash has moved up a gear with news this week that the French Government has made it illegal to send cash in the form of paper money or coin, and precious metals by mail. The ban covers not just the regular mail service but insured and registered packages.

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You may have noticed a push by governments in collaboration with banks and big business to force us to do all out business electronically in some way. We're not just talking online shopping here, every electronic transaction leaves a data trail that organizations with the resources of Google, the big banks or the NSA / GCHQ data centres can easily track. It is still possible to use cash for most transactions but getting more difficult.

When news of the US Government's vast electronic surveillance of citizens activities both internally and cross border broke this week it was disappointing to see civil liberties charities shrug and say, "so what, it is no threat to liberty?" (not surprising however when you consider these organizations are charities in name only, what we in the UK call QUANGOS, Quasi Autonomous Non Governmental Organizations - they rely for income on government controlled funds.

Did you ever play join the dots games as a child? Or play with your kids maybe? Put lines between the dots and a big picture emerges. That's what we have to do.

Yes it's true that the government cannot listen to all our phone calls or read our emails, but it is very easy to build a picture of our activities from what they can collect - provided they can collect that data on everything we do. Now people who think they are Information technology experts have been falling over themselves to assure everyone cellphone metadata (collected by US and European governments) is harmless. Erm, it's not quite the same as metadata you might have seen in the 'head' section of an html page.

The metadata for a telephone call contains calling line information like caller's name and number, billing information and account details, enough in fact to get a smart hacker into your account on the service providers system. From there they can access bank details and much more.

Ever had a conversation with a call center clerk who you've never met or spoken to but who knows a lot of personal details about you? That stuff is all called up from the database along with your entire transaction record the moment your calling line information hits the receive port on the call handling system. It's fifteen years since I was setting up these things on MITEL and Eriksson systems linked to Unix data servers, technology has become more not less sophisticated since then. People who can gather call metadata can learn a lot more about you than you want them to.

So armed with that knowledge, see what you make of the French ban on cash by mail. Here's a snippet from the story:

'It was not announced by the government and not covered in the media. There were no communications and nobody in the government justified or explained this decision.

The legislation says that “the insertion of banknotes, coins and precious metals is prohibited in mailings, including the insured items, registered items and items subject to formalities certifying deposition and distribution. "

Some have suggested that the decree is to limit what is known in France as “the anonymous market”, the market in which no taxes are paid and people are free to trade without the supervision of banks and government.'

Read more on that story: (the original source Gold Core is a very technical page for precious metal traders, there's a lot of trade info to be ploughed through to find the France cash report.)

It is truly war on cash. The French government is ahead here but things Barack Obama and David Cameron have spoken of in recent weeks suggest the USA and Britain are not far behind. Think it through, with the technology that exists, they only thing that can prevent governments and their corporate partners tracking every transaction you make is cash passing from hand to hand, no electronic data transfer, no paper trail, no questions asked.

Protect you liberty, use cash where you can, while you can. And then barter.

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Posh Peoples Banker Humbled By Public Backlash To Authoritarian Debanking Policy
Much discussion in UK media and as far away as The USA and Australia this week has focued on the decision by Coutts (the posh people's bank,) to ‘de-bank’ former UKIP leader Nigel Farage, the political outsider who successfully steered the campaign to take Britain out of the EU to victory in a national referendum. According to Coutts initial responses to media attention the decision was taken because of reputational concerns.

Is Switzerland About To Become First Country To Outlaw A Cashless Society?
As in neighboring Germany and Austria, cash is still king in Switzerland albeit a much diminished one. But the Swiss will soon have the chance to vote on whether to preserve notes and coins indefinitely.

Negative Interest Rates & The War On Cash, Part 3: "Beware The Promoters"
Bitcoin and other electronic platforms have paved the way psychologically for a shift away from cash, although they have done so by emphasising decentralisation and anonymity rather than the much greater central control which would be inherent in a mainstream electronic currency. Despite the loss of privacy, electronic currency is much favoured by techno-optimists, but not so much by those concerned about the risks of absolute structural dependency on technological complexity.

Beware the dangers of a cashless society
As the country celebrates tradition and prepares for change, one major shift is closer than ever – our move towards becoming a cashless society. It is hard to imagine money without the Queen’s profile proudly embossed, defining our Elizabethan generation in a centuries-old British tradition, but the monarch’s face is fast disappearing from our pockets.

War On Cash Gathers Momentum - Germany Unveils Cash Controls
On Monday (1 February, 2016) just two days ago, Bloomberg called on the central banks of the world to “bring on a cashless future” in an Op-Ed that calls notes and coins "dirty, dangerous, unwieldy, and expensive." We can imagine it would be quite easy to harm someone by firing large coins at them from a gun and terrorists could probably stuff an improvised explosive device with small coins rather than nails or nuts and bolts. And if ...

Norway's Biggest Bank Joins Push To Abolish Cash
The move by governments to eliminate cash as a means of trading goods and services is moving faster than we imagined. With another global financial crisis looming according to financial journalists and investment experts this is as understandable as it is undesirable for us ordinary punters.

The Financial Times Calls for Ending Cash, Calls it a “Barbarous Relic”
Earlier this week, as the financial world was in turmoil following a rapid crash and recovery in financial markets. While we the punters shook our heads and wondered how the banksters get away with this kind of shit, The Financial Times published a dastardly little piece of fascist New World Order propaganda.

New Global Crisis Imminent, New Geneva Report Warns The Geneva Report refers to a “poisonous combination of high and rising global debt and slowing nominal GDP [gross domestic product], driven by both slowing real growth and falling inflation”. The total burden of world debt, private and public, has risen from 160 per cent of national income in 2001 to almost 200 per cent after the crisis struck in 2009 and 215 per cent in 2013. “Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to delever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs,” the report said.

Cashless Society - The Resistance Begins Here
A seaside market town in Norfolk may be less than 100 miles from the world's financial capital, London, , it may be the commercial centre of West Norfolk’ as the town website boasts, it may be home to 45,000 people — but there, unlike in London, cash is king.

Establishment Pushing ‘Cashless Society’ to Control Humanity
The global establishment is increasingly pushing the notion of what it calls a “cashless society” — a world in which all payments and transactions would be conducted electronically, creating a permanent record for governments to inspect and track at will.Multiple governments from Africa and Asia to Europe and ...

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JPMorgan Chase BANS Storage of Cash in its Safety Deposit Boxes

Some JPMorgan Chase customers are receiving letters informing them that the bank will no longer allow cash to be stored in safety deposit boxes.

The content of a post over on the Collectors Universe message board suggests that we may be about to see a resurgence of the old fashioned method of stuffing bank notes under the mattress.

My mother has a SDB at a Chase branch with one of my siblings as co-signers. Last week they got a letter outlining a number of changes to the lease agreement, including this:

“Contents of the box: You agree not to store any cash or coins other than those found to have a collectible value.”

Another change is that signatures will no longer be accepted to access the box. The next time they go in they have to bring two forms of ID and they will be issued a four-digit pin number that will be used to access the box then and in the future.

The letter, entitled “Updated Safe Deposit Box Lease Agreement,” was sent out to customers at the beginning of the month.

“Hide your wallets, the banksters are on the move,” warns the Economic Policy Journal.

As of last month, Chase has also instituted a new policy which, “restricts borrowers from using cash to make payments on credit cards, mortgages, equity lines, and auto loans,” writes Professor Joseph Salerno of the Mises Institute.

The news arrives on the back of comments by Citi’s Willem Buiter, who recently advocated abolishing cash altogether in order to “solve the world’s central banks’ problem with negative interest rates”.

Read full report at The Daily Sheeple

RELATED POSTS:
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Negative Interest Rates - Final Nail In The Coffin Of Neoliberalism? Negative interest rates, in plain terms a situation in which we pay bankers for holding our money, are the latest ruse of politicians and economists to make uis start spending our investments and savings, thus kickstarting the global economy thy have screwed up.

Cashless Society: The Spy In Your Wallet

Back In 1971 Libertarians Were Predicting Debit Cards Would Become A Spy Tool For Authoritarian Governments. In 2013 The Wall Street Journal reported that the Naional Security Agency (NSA) was monitoring the card transactions of American citizens. Following that, two Senators, Wyden and Udall – who both sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and thus have access to classified information about the government’s digital snooping intelligenece gathering programs wrote ...,/p> Latest Posts

Elsewhere: [Boggart Blog]...[Little Nicky Machiavelli]...[Scribd]...[Wikinut] ... [ Boggart Abroad] ... [ Grenteeth Bites ] ... Ian Thorpe at Flickr ] ... [ Tumblr ]

How A Cashless Society Might Work

by Phil T Looker

cashless society
Cashless Society - (
image source)

Calls by various mainstream economists to ban cash transactions seem to be getting ever louder.

Cash, paper money and coins make up about 10% of what economists call 'M2' monetary aggregates (currency plus accessible bank deposits) in the Europe, USA and the developed world. Recently we have heard the voices of several leading economists, officials of the US Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, Germany's Bundesbank and the European Central Bank (ECB), the financial arm of those European Union states that are members of the single currency system (Euro) and businessmen such as Bill Gates call for the abolition of cash and the switching of all transactions, even the most trivial, to electronic systems. Presumably the goal of such a policy is to bring the percentage of economic activity conducted in cash down to zero. In other words, eliminate your right to keep your purchasing power in paper currency, and your shopping habits private.

By forcing people and companies to convert their cash into bank deposits (held in government controlled bank accounts, several economists have insisted, the hope is that the public can be nudged into spending their money rather than save it. Towards this goal it is being suggested credit balances in those accounts will carry considerable costs through the imposition of fees or charging negative interest rates. In other words you will have to pay in order to be allowed to save a little.

In theory penalties on saving could boost consumption, GDP and tax revenues to help pay off the massive debts we have accumulated. The highly controversial notion that citizens might in the future have to pay the government for the privilege of holding their hard earned money in liquid form after it has already been taxed rather than tying it up in government approved financial services products seems to offer a way out of the current perpetual economic depression, but at what cost to the fabric of society.

The US adopted a similar approach to controlling personal finance in the 1930s, prohibiting its citizens’ right to own gold so they could no longer “hoard” it. At that time the US dollar was based on the gold standard so the goal was to restrict gold. Now that we are all in a “paper” standard the goal is to restrict paper.

However, while some economic benefits may arguably accrue in the short-run, this needs to be balanced in relation to some serious distortions that could rapidly develop beyond that.

Pros and Cons

To be most in any way effective, banning cash would have to be coordinated between the US and the EU. Otherwise if only one of the two Western economic blocks were to do it, the citizens of that block might start using the paper currency of the other, thereby circumventing the restrictions of this policy. Can’t settle your purchase in paper Euros? No problem, we’ll take US dollar bills. This is what used to happen in the USSR when currency controls prevented Russians from holding cash. Cood that could not be bought in Russian shops for Roubles were traded in the dark economy for US dollars, British pounds and German Deutschmarks.

This is just one aspect that can give us a glimpse of the wide ranging consequences the intrduction by governments of a chashless economy. Here are a few more: Pros:
Enhance the tax base, as most / all transactions in the economy could now be traced by the government;
Substantially constrain the parallel economy, particularly in illicit activities;
Force people to convert their savings into consumption and/or investment, thereby providing a boost to GDP and employment;
Foster the adoption of new wireless / cashless technologies.

Cons:
The government loses an important alternative to pay for its debts, namely by printing true-to-the-letter paper money. This is why Greece may have to leave the euro, since its inability or unwillingness to adopt more austerity measures, a precondition to secure more euro loans, will force it to print drachma bills to pay for its debts;
Paper money costs you nothing to hold and carries no incremental risk (other than physical theft); converting it into bank deposits will cost you fees (and likely earn a negative interest) and expose you to a substantial loss if the bank goes under. After all, you are giving up currency directly backed by the central bank for currency backed by your local bank;
This could have grave consequences for retirees, many of whom are incapable of transacting using plastic. Not to mention that they will disproportionately bear the costs of having to hold their liquid savings entirely in a (costly) bank account;
Ditto for very poor people, many of whom don’t have access to the banking system; this will only make them more dependent, in fact exclusively dependent, on government handouts;
We wonder if the banks would actually like to deal with the administrative hassle of handling millions of very small cash transactions and related customer queries;
Illegal immigrants would be out of a job very quickly – a figure that can reach millions in the US, creating the risk for substantial social unrest;
If there is an event that disrupts electronic transactions (e.g. extensive power outage, cyberattack, cascading bank failures) people in that economy will not be able to transact and everything will grind to a halt;
Of course enforcing a government mandate to ban cash transactions must carry penalties. This in turns means more regulations, disclosure requirements and compliance costs, potentially exorbitant fees and even jail time;
Banning cash transactions might even propel the demise of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The share of US dollar bills held abroad has been estimated to be as high as 70% (according to a 1996 report by the US Federal Reserve). One thing is to limit the choices of your own citizens; another is trying to force this policy onto others, which is much harder. Foreigners would probably dump US dollar bills in a hurry and flock to whichever paper currency that can offer comparable liquidity.

In light of the foregoing does banning cash transactions make sense to you? Aren’t the risks at all levels of society just too large to be disregarded?


Then there are the Unintended Consequences. The authors of 'great ideas for social progress' always forget about the inevitable unintended consequences.

Paper money can be thought of as a form of interest-free government borrowing and therefore as a saving to the taxpayer. Given the dire situation of Western government finances, probably the very last thing we should do right now is to ban cash transactions and discourage the holding of cash. If the government prints bills and coins to settle its debts, rather than issuing bonds, it does not add to its snowballing debt obligations. Of course the counterargument is that this might result in significant inflation once politicians put their hands directly on the printing press. But isn’t this what the mainstream economists are so desperately trying to do to avoid deflation?

And it’s not like people in the West still stuff their mattress with money. It is estimated 30% of US paper money is held by residents, about 2% of GDP. It is doubtful therefore that any boost to economic activity will be significant. In fact there is no empirical evidence that demonstrates this policy will work as intended (not that this has ever stopped a mainstream economist) Moreover, an economy’s ability to create money would be even more impaired if its banking system were to crash – exactly at the time when it would need it the most. In reality it could be hugely deflationary because there would be no other currency alternatives. Talk about unintended consequences.

As to who could replace the US and EU in providing paper liquidity to the world, we don’t need to look far. China will surely not ban cash transactions given that almost a billion of its citizens are still quite poor and most have no access to banking services. Replacing the US in offshore cash transactions would create substantial demand for the Chinese yuan, at that stage without any real competition from other major economies as presumably none would be using paper.

It is unlikely therefore that US political leaders would ever endorse such a policy; they would be effectively giving up on an incredible advantage to the benefit of their main geopolitical competitors. However, given the considerable influence of mainstream economists and academics, people who live in an akternative reality, in financial and political circles such a foolish move cannot be ruled out. Ideoogically driven theories about equality and wealth redistribution whould surely trump any practical considerations, especially if the name of the God Progress is invoked.

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NatWest Imposes New Cash Limits In Latest Push Towards A Cashless Society
NatWest RBS banking group, which owns Coutts, the bank involved in the debanking of Nogel Farage story, and itself largely owned by the government on behalf of We The Taxpayerssince 2009, has granted itself “sweeping new powers” to limit the amount of cash customers can deposit and withdrawal, triggering warnings that banks are operating as a cartel to force customers towards abandoning cash completely and accepting a “cashless society” which would pave the way to electronic surveillance of our financial activity.

Trump catches attention of CFR, Bilderberg, Trilateral

Donald Trump is portrayed as a clown by mainstream media and his combover is the silliest I have ever seen. Still, he's a billionaie so I don't suppose he gives a flying fuck what The Daily Stirrer thinks of him. Not that we think he is all bad, anyone who attacks Obama's global naziism trade deals, TTIP and TPP mush have some good points.

Greece draws up drachma plans, prepares to miss IMF payment
Greece is preparing plans to nationalise the country’s banking system and introduce a parallel coupon currency so that citizens can carry on their day to day activities in the event of the Eurozone taking steps to defuse the simmering debt crisis. Sources in the governing Syriza party said the government may be forced to take the unprecedented and high risk step of missing a payment to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) as early as next week.

New Global Crisis Imminent, New Geneva Report Warns The Geneva Report refers to a “poisonous combination of high and rising global debt and slowing nominal GDP [gross domestic product], driven by both slowing real growth and falling inflation”. The total burden of world debt, private and public, has risen from 160 per cent of national income in 2001 to almost 200 per cent after the crisis struck in 2009 and 215 per cent in 2013. “Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to delever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs,” the report said.

Cashless Society - The Resistance Begins Here
A seaside market town in Norfolk may be less than 100 miles from the world's financial capital, London, , it may be the commercial centre of West Norfolk’ as the town website boasts, it may be home to 45,000 people — but there, unlike in London, cash is king.

Establishment Pushing ‘Cashless Society’ to Control Humanity
The global establishment is increasingly pushing the notion of what it calls a “cashless society” — a world in which all payments and transactions would be conducted electronically, creating a permanent record for governments to inspect and track at will.Multiple governments from Africa and Asia to Europe and ...

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Sweden's Rebels Against Cashless Society Push: "We Have No Weapon Fight Back...If Putin Invades"

cashless
This omnibus page is about documenting the global elite's "War On Cash" (yes that is a bit over dramatic and click - baity, but we have to compete for attention,) which is not about making life better for the masses as we are told it is, but about enabling government agencies to increase their ability to extend surveillance of all our activities. One of the topic we have previously looked at several times is the rapid rise of Sweden's cashless society, where a natuarally conformist mindset among the people has made them all too ready to accept that cashless was the progressive, liberal way forward and cooperate with the authoritarian left wing government's demands for ever greater control over people's money and private lives. The myth that digital is safer. combined with the 'ease-of-use' narrative has left many stores no longer accepting cash at all and even sparked anxiety among Swedish authorities that:
"If this development with cash disappearing happens too fast, it can be difficult to maintain the infrastructure” for handling cash."
Last year, the amount of cash in circulation in Sweden dropped to the lowest level since 1990 and is more than 40 percent below its 2007 peak. The declines in 2016 and 2017 were the biggest on record. But the pace at which cash is vanishing has authorities worried.
“One may get into a negative spiral which can threaten the cash infrastructure,” Mats Dillen, the head of the parliamentary review, said. “It’s those types of issues we are looking more closely at.”
Riksbank Governor Stefan Ingves has said Sweden should consider forcing banks to provide cash to customers. It seems that a few people at least are waking up to how easy it is for tech - savvy crooks to steal or scam money form inexpert users of online systems. Surprisingly it is the left that are showing most convern, The Guardian reports, a small but growing number of Swedes anxious about their country’s rush to embrace a cash-free society. While many large western nations have that nagging doubt in the back of their mind that government may not be all-virtuous, naive, gullible, brainwashed Swedes - until now - have not...
The Swedish government is a rather nice one, we have been lucky enough to have mostly nice ones for the past 100 years,” says Christian Engström, a former MEP for the Pirate Party and an early opponent of the cashless economy. “In other countries there is much more awareness that you cannot trust the government all the time. In Sweden it is hard to get people mobilised.
...but there are signs this might be changing. Following discussions by the country's central bank, concerns about a cash-free society have emerged into the mainstream, says Björn Eriksson, 72, a former national police commissioner and the leader of a group called the Cash Rebellion, or Kontantupproret. The Guardian report continues, "until now, Kontantupproret has been dismissed as the voice of the elderly and the technologically backward, Eriksson says."
“When you have a fully digital system you have no weapon to defend yourself if someone turns it off,” he says. “If Putin invades Gotland [Sweden’s largest island] it will be enough for him to turn off the payments system. No other country would even think about taking these sorts of risks, they would demand some sort of analogue system.” In this sense, Sweden is far from its famous concept of lagom – “just the right amount” – but instead is “100% extreme”, Eriksson says, by investing so much faith in the banks. “This is a political question. We are leaving these decisions to four major banks who form a monopoly in Sweden.”
The best case scenario is that we are not as secure as we think, Mattias Skarec, 29, a digital security consultant, says – the worst is that IT infrastructure is systemically vulnerable.
“We are lucky that the people who know how to hack into them are on the good side, for now,” he says. “But we don’t know how things will progress. It’s not that easy to attack devices today, but maybe it will become easier to do so in the future.”
The Pirate Party – which made its name in Sweden for its opposition to state and private sector surveillance – welcomes a higher political profile for these issues, according to The Guardian. Look at Ireland, Christian Engström says, where abortion is illegal. It is much easier for authorities to identify Irish women who have had an abortion if the state can track all digital financial transactions, he says. And while Sweden’s government might be relatively benign, a quick look at Europe suggests there is no guarantee how things might develop in the future.
“If you have control of the servers belonging to Visa or MasterCard, you have control of Sweden,” Engström says. “In the meantime, we will have to keep giving our money to the banks, and hope they don’t go bankrupt – or bananas.”
Bananas indeed. And there you have our reasons for having always opposed the idea that cashless is the way forward. Like most 'progressive' ideas the policy is politically motivated and has the aim of curtailing individual freedom and extending government control. Consider this: a few years ago, with Quantitative Easing (QE) having failed to lift the western economies out of the doldrums following the 2008 crisis, bankers, politicians and economists seriously discussed the idea of levying a charge on savings and deposits held by banks for individuals. The result, in those nations most at risk, was a rush to withdraw savings. It was after that exercise the push to go cashless intensified. Why? Simples: if the banks hold all your wealth in digital form, you can't withdraw it and stash it under the floorboards, in the mattress or buy jewellery and valuables to protect your wealth.



/banks want us all to have 'tap and pay' cards... even though they're a criminals wet dream

by Xavier Connolly

Are any words in the English language more abused than ‘for your convenience’? As soon as you read them you know that it’s not your convenience an organisation has in mind, but its own.

Last week, my bank sent me a contactless debit card. If you don’t have one yet, the chances are you soon will have.

It looks like any other credit or debit card, but contains a tiny radio receiver which - when it is waved within a couple of inches of a ticket machine or terminal at a shop checkout - can be used to make a payment.

Unfortunately while the banks and tachology giants have been ironing out problems with contactless payment technology (like its habit of doing your good deed for the day by paying for other people's stuff), the crooks have been forging ahead with non-accidental ways to rip off your card. Thieves can easily steal key data from contactless credit and debit cards using equipment bought "easily and cheaply" online, consumers magazine Which? has warned UK consumers.

The technology, available "easily and cheaply" from a online retailer and catalogues such as CPC Farnell (and has many legitimate uses it must be said) can clone enough information from the contactless payment cards to make fraudulent orders.

Researchers tested six debit cards and four credit cards and were able to purchase a £3,000 television set with the stolen payment details, Which? has claimed.

All ten credit and debit cards tested revealed some data using the hack.

But while none gave up the three-digit CVV security code on the back of the card, one online store allowed the team to order a £3,000 TV with the incomplete data gathered.

Contactless cards are supposed to mask personal data during a purchase – however, the technology clearly has flaws, a Which? spokesperson added.

There are plenty of ways I wish my day-to-day life could be made more efficient: I wish the council would remove the bus lanes that jam the traffic into my nearest town; I would love it if it didn’t take five minutes to boot-up my computer; or if I could find an electrician who could come at the drop of hat, rather than leaving me waiting in the dark for several hours.

But it has never crossed my mind that I have been wasting valuable seconds by having to press four buttons each time I buy something with my debit card. The very idea that we can save a useful amount of time by being able to wave a card at a machine instead of entering a PIN is absurd.

The reality is that it isn’t my life that will be made easier thanks to my new contactless card, it is the lives of criminal gangs wanting to steal from my account.

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The Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom

Econgularity, a word coined by Scott A. Shay, chairman of Signature Bank as shorthand for economic singularity, is an ugly sound that describes a very ugly trend in globalism. At a time when time when technology makes it possible to conduct all one's transactions electronically and the collaboration between governments and internet technology companies makes it possible for agencies of the state to track and monitor our every move, the econgularity is, according to Shay, the moment when government's desire to control and the corporate obsession with manipulation of the public through big data analysis will converge to push the people's of the developed world into a cashless society in which our privacy and our ability to control our own finances disappears.

READ ALL "Cashless Threat To Freedom" in our page at MINDS.com




The "Better Than Cash Alliance" Has An Orwellian Plan

by Tyler Durden

Way back on the autumn of 1910, under the pretense of a duck hunting trip, a group of powerful bankers, political figures, and businessmen (a kind of proto Bilderberg group) met at Jekyll Island, GA to plan the creation of a central bank for the United States. The "game" that this elite group of "hunters" brought back to their ivory towers of Lower Manhattan and Capitol Hill was the blueprint for one of the most destructive financial institutions in modern history, the Federal Reserve.

One-hundred years later, another group of powerful bankers, political figures, and businessmen have converged to promote a cashless society, an economic system that would compel every man, woman, and child to utilize proprietary, government-monitored electronic systems to make purchases of any kind. This group, which calls itself the Better Than Cash Alliance, is as dangerous as the group of “outdoor enthusiasts” that met at Jekyll Island that fateful early-20th Century November.

And, just like the Jekyll Island group sold their grand plans based on a lie (they claimed that the Fed would guarantee liquidity in times of financial panics), the Better Than Cash Alliance is selling the idea of a cashless society based on the farce that eliminating cash would stimulate entrepreneurship among the poor.

In reality, the elimination of cash would reduce a great many opportunities for entrepreneurship for people of few means. Gone would be the informal businesses the working poor often operate: roadside produce stands, street performances, handicraft tables, and day labor. Contrary to the assertions of the BTCA, a cash-free society would limit entrepreneurship to those with the means to incorporate a business, afford the proprietary system required to accept payments, and understand the local, state, and federal tax burden the payment system would create.

Although they won’t admit it, the 12 central governments that currently support the BTCA (the U.S. is one of them) do so because a cashless society would enable them to track and tax every purchase made with sovereign currency within their borders. In addition to producing new government revenue streams, the payment systems would increase governments’ social engineering capabilities: They would compel consumers to purchase goods and services from tax-paying, licensed organizations.

Freelance service providers such as barbers, music teachers, and tutors would be forced to either jump through the hoops of incorporation or seek work with licensed businesses (which would inevitably take a cut of their earnings and subject the remainder to payroll taxes). The black market would also be squeezed, escalating the War on Drugs, and subjecting every “sin” and self-defense purchase to government scrutiny. Under the guise of “national security”, of course. READ MORE ...

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The Social cost Of Capitalism
Despite massive evidence to the contrary, libertarians hold tight to their romantic concept of capitalism which, freed from government interference, serves the consumer with the best products at the lowest prices.

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Secret Meeting in London to "End Cash"

from Red Ice Creations / Infowars

Central banks aim to institute "governmental approval" for all purchases and sales

Economist Martin Armstrong claims there is a "secret meeting to end cash" set to take place in London before the end of the month involving representatives from the ECB and the Federal Reserve.

Armstrong, who is known for successfully predicting the 1987 Black Monday crash as well as the 1998 Russian financial collapse, expressed his shock that no news outlet has reported on this upcoming conference.

“I find it extremely perplexing that I have been the only one to report of the secret meeting in London. Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, will address the central banks to advocate the elimination of all cash to bring to fruition the day when you cannot buy or sell anything without government approval,” writes Armstrong.

“When I googled the issue to see who else has picked it up, to my surprise, Armstrong Economics comes up first. Others are quoting me, and I even find it spreading as far as the Central Bank of Nigeria, but I have yet to find any reports on the meeting taking place in London, when my sources are direct.”

Armstrong first brought attention to the alleged meeting earlier this month when he revealed that representatives from the Federal Reserve, the ECB as well as participants from the Swiss and Danish central banks would all be attending a “major conference in London” at which Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University, and Willem Buiter, the Chief Economist at Citigroup, would give presentations.

“We better keep one eye open at night for this birth of a cashless society that is coming in much faster than expected. Why the secret meeting? Something does not smell right here,” concludes Armstrong.

Discussions and moves towards banning cash have repeatedly cropped up in recent weeks.

Willem Buiter, who Armstrong claims is speaking at the secret meeting, recently advocated abolishing cash altogether in order to “solve the world’s central banks’ problem with negative interest rates.”

Last year, Kenneth Rogoff also called for “abolishing physical currency” in order to stop “tax evasion and illegal activity” as well as preventing people from withdrawing money when interest rates are close to zero.

Striking a similar tone, former Bank of England economist Jim Leaviss penned an article for the London Telegraph earlier this month in which he said a cashless society would only be achieved by “forcing everyone to spend only by electronic means from an account held at a government-run bank,” which would be, “monitored, or even directly controlled by the government.”

Big banks in both the United Kingdom and the U.S. are already treating the withdrawal or depositing of moderately large amounts of cash as a suspicious activity. Reports emerged in March of how the Justice Department is ordering bank employees to consider calling the cops on customers who withdraw $5,000 dollars or more.

Meanwhile in France, new measures are set to come into force in September which will restrict French citizens from making cash payments over €1,000 euros. Armstrong suggests that “financial police” could enforce this new law by, “searching people on trains just passing through France to see if they are transporting cash, which they will now seize.”

As Armstrong notes, banning cash in order to eviscerate what little economic freedoms people have left to avoid disastrous Keynesian central bank policy is nothing short of economic totalitarianism.

“In the mind of an economic tyrant, banning cash represents the holy grail,” writes Michael Krieger. “Forcing the plebs onto a system of digital fiat currency transactions offers total control via a seamless tracking of all transactions in the economy, and the ability to block payments if an uppity citizen dares get out of line.”

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Another Blow To The US Dollar Reserve Currency Status As Russia Sings Up Turkey, India
Luxembourg defends massive corporate tax dodging
economic-growth-hoax.shtml">You’re not feeling the economic boom are you? Here’s why
If Free Market Capitalism Is The Global Economic System, WTF Is This All About?
Global Corporatocracy Set To Take Over The World
European Commission puts business profits before the needs of the world’s poorest.
Cashless Society - The Resistance Begins Here
Foreign Exchange Market Rigging: Another Conspiracy Theory Exposed As Truth
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Cashless Society: The Spy In Your Wallet

Back In 1971 Libertarians Were Predicting Debit Cards Would Become A Spy Tool For Authoritarian Governments

In 2013 The Wall Street Journal reported that the Naional Security Agency (NSA) was monitoring the card transactions of American citizens. Following that, two Senators, Wyden and Udall – who both sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and thus have access to classified information about the government’s digital snooping intelligenece gathering programs wrote:

Section 215 of the Patriot Act can be used to collect any type of records whatsoever … including information on credit card purchases, medical records, library records, firearm sales records, financial information and a range of other sensitive subjects.

Many other government agencies track your credit and debit card purchases and other elctronic transactions. In fact, all U.S. intelligence agencies including the CIA are spying on citizens finances. And you can bet if the US government are doing it, other governments are too.

This is not a new thing, I worked in computers and was aware from the 1970s that governments, banks and corporate businesses foresaw a world in which all business was conducted digitally and it would be possible to create an electronic Panopticon, a total surveillance society. Stories about how the world wide web was 'invented' by a mild mannered, self effacing British scientist are bollocks. A global netweork was being planned from the time computers exchanged information over telephone lines at a maximum of 1200 bits per second.

In late October 1971, Matt Novak of Gizmodo reports, a group of academics and technologists were invited to attend a conference in Georgetown, a suburb of Washington D.C.. They were tasked with devising a comprehensive but invisible surveillance system. Their solution looked a lot like our current debit / credit card system.

This was the problem statement given to that conference in 1971:

Suppose you were an advisor to the head of the KGB, the Soviet Secret Police. Suppose you are given the assignment of designing a system for the surveillance of all citizens and visitors within the boundaries of the USSR. The system is not to be too obtrusive or obvious. What would be your decision?

What amazing, unobtrusive surveillance system did they come up with? It wasn’t a network of intercepting every phone call or placing cameras on every street corner. They imagined an EFTS (electronic funds transfer system), that looks strikingly similar to the transaction processing software in use today.

"Not only would it handle all the financial accounting and provide the statistics crucial to a centrally planned economy, it was the best surveillance system we could imagine within the constraint that it not be obtrusive." Paul Armer wrote in a 1975 edition of Computers and

People recounting the KGB-infused thought experiment.

The full article gave readers a preview of the system that would evolve:
"Let’s look at one way it might work. Say you are about to buy a book. You present your card (sometimes called a “debit card”, although National Americard calls theirs an “asset card”) to a clerk who puts it into a terminal which reads it and then calls up your bank. If you have enough money in your account, or if your bank is willing to grant you that much credit, the transaction is okayed; your account is debited; and a credit is dispatched form you bank to the book store’s bank account.

Armer, a computer scientist at US Defence contractor RAND was an advocate of digital privacy long before most people had credit or debit cards and the internet was a pipedream usually referred to as 'The Information Superhighway'. Computers in Armer’s era were much larger and their networking tools were much more primitive. But Armer could see what was coming and was one of the few to predict this envisaged cashless society actually posed a threat to the liberty of individuals in democratic societies.

Think about all the data banks collect every time you swipe your card. There is nobody watching you as an individual of course, but while Artificial Intelligence will never be a reality unless we radically redefine what we mean by intelligence, the great advantages computers have over humans are first, they can parse huge amounts of information exteremely quickly, and collate results from masses of search results and secondly that they don't get bored. After a few weeks of digital transactions, anyone with access to that information can start to paint a pretty detailed picture of how you live your life.

Most importantly perhaps, that picture is being painted without you giving it much thought at all. Thus the bank official who will approve your loan application or decide to foreclose on your mortgage will know in a matter of seconds precisely where, when, and how you’re spending your money and whether you are a financially responsible person. Woe betide you if you like a bet on the horses, consult psychics or fortune tellers, visit massage parlours or indulge in dangerous sports.

This looks even more sinister when we observe that governments, academics, the finance industry and creepy individuals like Bill Gates of Microsoft and Eric Schmidt of Google are promoting the cashless society, so they can surveil and control us.

The threats to privacy and freedom are multiple if society becomes cashless. All transactions would be trackable, and because individuals could not hold cash and all electronic transactions are monitored all private financial holdings would be vulnerable to seizure or attack by the government next time they need to bail out banks or corporations that are too big to fail. This would be the ultimate form of control, it has already happened in Cyprus and is probably about to happen in Greece.

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Washington Signals Fears Over Dollar
Globalist Bankers Make Plans To Rob Your Bank Account
Banning Cash Will Stop Terrorism (and end war, poverty, disease and bad smells)
The Global Economy Is so Healthy Its OK For Bankers To Steal Our Money
Corporate Capitalism has replaced democracy in western nations
Slaves To The Machine
Holy City (slam poem)
Living Within The Conspiracy
New World Order
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Why Europe Will Lead the Charge to Eliminate Cash – The Next Step in Global Meltdown

Martin Armstrong May 20, 2015

Europe will lead the world into this Economic Totalitarianism because government is now desperate to retain the Euro. If the Euro collapses, so will Brussels. The government exists solely because of the Euro.

The fatal design of the Euro is the key. The failure to have consolidated the debts of all individual member states has been the worst possible mistake perhaps ever made in this post-Great Depression era of New Economics where government lawyers assume they can just write a law and that will be followed as some new modern dictator.

Because of the failure to consolidate the debts, the reserve of the banks had to then be politically correct to conform with Brussels holding a piece of all member state debts. That meant that the defaulting in part or in whole of individual sovereign debts of member states undermined the banking system. This would be as if in the USA bank reserves were made up of state debts. If one state failed, everyone would scramble to sell the banks who had the most.

Since Brussels will not reform, as Einstein put it correctly that you cannot solve a problem with the same line of thinking. This whole idea of negative interest rates is just following the same Keynesian concept that lowering rates will stimulate demand. The missing element is CONFIDENCE. If you do not believe you will make even 1%, you will not pay 0%. While they keep lowering rates to stimulate borrowers, they are wiping out the elderly who now cannot live from their savings reducing their spending destroying the entire idea of pensions and retirement (the social contract). The lack of CONFIDENCE prevents new businesses from forming and therein results in the lost generation of youth who cannot find a job. The elderly are forced to work so there becomes a shortage of jobs resulting in higher unemployment among the youth.

Add to that trend wiping out the elderly and the youth, we then have the rising tensions against foreigners everywhere because they see them as taking precious jobs as they migrate to their country. It becomes a vicious cycle that cannot be broken with the same line of thinking.

This is why governments are still using the same line of thinking of negative interest rates and going to the next step. They cannot meet their budges as tax revenues decline with economic activity, so they go off hunting money causing the global economy to shrink even more. As they hunt money, people hoard and invest even less. They tend to buy assets to get off the grid. To further this effort, governmental thinking then arrives at the solution to eliminate cash forcing the end of the underground economy and 100% tax collection.

However, Brussels knows they have a real crisis in European banking. However, this crisis is monumental and cannot be solved with the same line of thinking that has caused this insane nightmare. Obviously, eliminating cash will prevent people from causing a bank run if a member state defaults. The smart money is trying to get out as fast as it can buying rare art, coins, stamps, antiques, real estate, whatever. This is the only way out for when they eliminate cash, chances are they will impose CAPITAL CONTROLS and prevent the movement of money out of a country. That will be the traditional next step this same line of thinking leads to.

So in the end, governments (not Rothschilds) are in a fight for their very existence. They will incite civil unrest to rise sharply between 2015.75 and 2017. We also have to be concerned about the outcome for November 21st, 2018, which will be the Pi target that on previous waves produced 911 in New York and the very day of the Greek economic crisis in 2010. Geopolitically, Obama has undone everything that has been done to make the world safer. He ruined the European economy with his sanctions against Russia and created the alliance now between Russia and China in military action and drills. The USA might be able to defeat Russia on a conventional battlefield, but they cannot defeat China on the same terms. Meanwhile, the strongest economy in Europe, Germany, constitutionally is not allowed to have a big military force. Brussels is talking about trying to now form a European army to further their power. It is all posturing to insanity.

Brussels will lead the charge to shut down cash as we know it. We are moving into the next stage of massive deflation I have been warning about – not HYPERINFLATION. Government are moving to control everything and you will not be able to buy or sell anything without government approval. This is the Economic Totalitarianism I have warned about is on the horizon.

The next step in the game will be CAPITAL CONTROLS. When the European government realizes that they cannot eliminate cash without the rest of the entire world simultaneously, money will move out even faster from Europe driving the dollar to excessive highs. They will most likely follow the same script as they did in Cyprus and impose currency controls to prevent money from fleeing.

The only way out of this mess will be to change the thinking process. This is the real fight. As I have said many times before that the HYPERINFLATIONISTS are dead wrong and we will PRAY FOR INFLATION before this comes to an end. We are in the meltdown mode of Western Civilization all because of debt and lawyers controlling government who think they can be dictators by just writing laws.

If you understand the nature of the beast we are fighting, then you will NOT be surprised and learn from history even though we are compelled to watch others repeat it.

First published on Prison Planet, reproduced undrer creative Commons licence, attrib, non comm, no derivs

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Cashless society: A huge threat to our freedom

Econgularity, a word coined by Scott A. Shay, chairman of Signature Bank as shorthand for economic singularity, is an ugly sound that describes a very ugly trend in globalism. At a time when time when technology makes it possible to conduct all one's transactions electronically and the collaboration between governments and internet technology companies makes it possible for agencies of the state to track and monitor our every move, the econgularity is, according to Shay, the moment when government's desire to control and the corporate obsession with manipulation of the public through big data analysis will converge to push the people's of the developed world into a cashless society in which our privacy and our ability to control our own finances disappears.

This, combined with the surveillance powers digital technology has already given governments to monitor our mundane, everyday activities will happen in such a way as to permit governments and corporate cartels to exercise almost complete control over all human behavior.

In an interview with CNBC's "Closing Bell" some time ago, Signature Bank Chairman Scott Shay talked about how close we are to becoming a cashless society and the huge threat it it will pose to individual liberty and personal autonomy.

While this may sound like a paranoid conspiracy theory to those who trust western governments and big authority completely, as a former Information Technology Consultant who spent quite a lot of time working in the banking and finance sector, I have been aware since the late 1980s that such was the long term agenda. The technology is already available, not fully secure or reliable but when were security and reliability ever major issues to corporate entitites like Microsoft or Google, to make total surveillance of all human activity a frightening reality.

Technological advances, mainly in the nature of increased memory capacity and larger processor arrays, have led to the creation of algorithms that can instantaneously review financial transactions, determining the nature, location and even the appropriateness of a purchase decision. This data has been collected by technology companies, sold to and used by banks, credit and debit-card companies.

When cardholders receive fraud alerts after a transaction that looks out of line with the crdholder's normal purchasing the fraud alert they receive is a benign example of this. When I visit the Russia Today website and for the next few days am bombarded with ads offering dates with "gorgeous Russian girls" is a slightly more sininster manifestation. Another example was when researching for an article on the scandalous interest rates charged by payday loans companies I visited a couple of websites for paydal loan providers. Not only did I get adverts for payday loans on my screen as I browsed, but mu inbox was inundated with emails from dodgy money lenders.

As shown above then, the technologies that can serve to protect consumers, but are already being used to manipulate and control control consumer behavior. In 2010, Visa and MasterCard in the USA bowed to government pressure and banned all online-betting payments from their systems. This made it virtually impossible for gambling sites to continue operating regardless of their jurisdiction or legality. Clearly then it is also possible for the health records of an overweight individual could be used to trigger an internet filter which would block their purchase of any sugary drink or snack, takeaway food or anything deemed by government snoopers to be unhealthy. Purchases through a credit or debit card can be declined by the card company, cash purchases cannot. It may seem like a scene from a far-fetched dystopian-future-world television show but it is possible right now.

Now you may be one of those people who believe it is right and proper for government to interfere in the lives of individuals for their own good, personally I value freedom more highly than anything and am also a great believer in evolution. And if we set ourselves up to prevent the natural extinction of those who weaken the race with their self destructive tendencies, we are engineering our own extinction.

Some 'progressive liberals' out there would say this is a good thing, the world would be better off without humans. Such selfish stupidity is obviouly counter productive so people who think that way should be encouraged to remove themselves from the human race and let the rest of us get on with evolving.

We in the developed world are already well on the way to becoming cashless societies. According to a MasterCard study, 80 percent of U.S. consumer transactions are electronic. In Sweden, one observer estimates that only 3 percent of transactions are made with currency. (Swedish friends tell me this is not true, it deliberately ignores a vast trade in contraband liquour and cigaretes and a host of trades in what we might call 'the dark economy'.

Governments and big banks are also supporters of a cashless society as the indeed costs of producing, managing and handling currency and coins are greater than the cost of providing online banking infrastructure. Fiscal policy could also be much more efficiently implemented without currency circulating, since it would then be easy to implement negative interest-rates thus making people pay for the privilege of holding funds in their account.

But there is also a sinister risk to a cashless society. Singularity, a term borrowed from astrophysics, is defined in economic terms as the point at which technological advancement will "radically change human civilization and perhaps even human nature itself." It is impossible to know if this will actually happen, but a cashless society would certainly give governments unprecedented access to information and power over citizens and thus enable those governments to make the entire population debendent on government services / handouts. And once politicians and bureaucrats have the power to do something, we can be sure they will use and abuse it. The U.S. and British governments are already using the snooping and big-data collection abilities of the internet in some frightening ways.

The technological command of GCHQ and the National Security Agency has been widely reported on and does not need repeating here. Suffice it to note, that it would be no challenge for the NSA or certain other government agencies to monitor any company or consumer transaction in real time, if it so desired.

The threat posed by this push towards a cashless society then is no conspiracy theory, but a real and current threat that we must all unite to resist. How? Use cash for as much of your activity as is possible without inconveniencing yourself. Do not respond to the scvaremongring about muggers and theives, these days you are far more likely to be robed or scammed online than mugged in the street. Avoid online banking. Use local stores (Once you take into account delivery charge,Amazon are no cheaper than your local book shop (if you are lucky enough to live in a town that still has one). Support independent local traders when you can, not only does that protect your independence, it helps preserve our communities which are also under threat. And when the time comes, vote for the candidate that opposes globalisation, do you really think a global government will have the est interests of your community at heart.

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Banning Cash Will Stop Terrorism (and end war, poverty, disease and bad smells)says Bill Gates

gates pushing cashless society
If Bill Gates, the man who made 'not fit for purpose' acceptable quality for sale is in favour of a cashless society, you know it has to be good for government and big business and very bad for me and you
(Image source)


If bureaucrats understood how easily We The People saw through their schemes they'd ........ well they would not behave any differently because they are too stupid to change.

It was just a matter of time before the ever predictable Western governments used the trumped up "War on Terror” as an excuse to drastically ratchet up the very real war on the use of cash, and on the basic human right of personal privacy currently being waged against the citizens and taxpayers of the so - called democracies.

Quick to exploit public anxiety in the wake of attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket, France is on the way to being first to abolish free speech.

And the most overtly socialist government in the EU or Anglosphere is showing that it has much in common with those 'progressive liberal' regimes headed by Joe Stalin, Chairman Mao, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot and every other socialist leader in its efforts to set up a system resembling the Big Brother regime of George Orwell's novel '1984'. France's socialist government is next planning to ban the use of cash. A series of measures that will be implemented from September 2015 will make french citizens lives more secure by enabling government bean counters to track every bus ride, every glass of wine or cup of coffee, newspaper or they pay for. (OK, I'm exaggerating a bit but that's the direction the control freaks are moving in)

The other leading fascist regime in the free world is not far behind. Washington Propaganda no suggests that only 7 per cent of transactions in the USA involve cash and that the use of cash is now regarded a suspicious activity.

It seems the terrorists involved in the recent Paris attacks and elsewhere partially financed these attacks by paying cash for stuff. (They also used credit and debit cards and paid by cheque but forget that, it's the cash transactions that are dangerous because control freak governments cannot track them.) Ahab the Arab went into a KFC and we don't know what he bought because he paid cash, what a huge threat to democracy.

Yes, now we know the terrorists knew how to use cash, it's clear they may have used CASH to purchase some of the stuff they needed to carry out their attacks.

And because there is no audit trail that the banning of cash and forcing people to use plastic would provide in future incidents, the authorities were not able to use their 'minority report' style software that predicts criminal behaviour to arrest these guys before they committed a crime and thus save lives. Paying cash for stuff you see, is a clear indicator that people are planning to commit crimes.

If you are not planning to do something wrong, you have nothing to fear.

No doubt the murderers who carry out terrorist attacks are also shod and clothed, use cell phones, broadband lines, cars, and public sidewalks during the planning and execution of their mayhem.

Why not ban the use of all? A naked , barefoot terrorist without transport communications is surely less effective than a fully clothed and equipped one.

Defend your personal liberty, pay in cash.


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Cashless Society Equals Cashless People

cashless society

The push towards a totally cashless society gathered pace in 2013. A cashless society in which there is a digital audit trail of every transaction is of course a fascist government's wet dream (spot the fascists amongst us by making a not of those who brand anyone opposed to snooper - friendly technology as "technophobic and opposed to progress."

What is technologically advanced or progressive about a cashless society? Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Maoist China all kept the mass of their populations short of cash, and were only prevented from going totall cashless because the technology was not available. Slave economies operate a kind of cashless system, i.e. "You want what? Wages? You'll get a kick up the arse if you don't get back to work."

Medieval serfdom was almost a cashless society. So it is clearly demonstrated that the cashless society will only benefit the elitists. No wonder they tell us money is bourgeois and capitalist.

The modern cashless society, we are told, will be based on electronic money and the internet. Oh great, security is so tight and so reliable on the internet, our bank accounts will be easy pickings for thieves. And that's even without Microsoft selling the secrets of the back door in Windows to the Mafia.

At this stage some science head will usually skip to the comments column to tell me about the wonders of encryption, the https secure socket and them rant on for ten thousand words about prime numbers. Wonderful - except the http socket is the last place anyone with a brain would try to hack. Haven't these nerds read The Girl With A Dragon Tattoo? No, of course not, it's too entertaining for them.

Anyway, if I wanted to grab random people's bank details I would use a widget on a web page to install a key logger on their computer. This would log every keystroke and things like bank account numbers, passwords, security keys could easily be identified and stolen.

A lot of this kind of thing has been going on in the run up to the Christmas period it seems.

A spokesperson for a computer security consultancy reported:

"Computer systems have been compromised either at stores or in the companies handling the processing of card transactions. In other words, a company involved in the flow of payments has been hacked. It could be more than one company. The computer hacking has exposed everyone whose cards are going through those systems. The thieves are using the ATM card information in a way that does not require the PINs.

The way this kind of crime works is once the thieves have stolen a bunch of numbers from a company they print cards with their name on them and your billing information on the magnetic stripe. He said they rarely bother with printing up credit cards anymore. It is fairly small scale stuff, more of a cottage industry than a Dr. Evil type world domination scam, but organisers of the network reap big bucks by selling the gift cards at something like £2 per £10 face value. They clearly understand the old business question, "Is it better to have a penny a billion times or £1 million once."

There has been a spate of cash machine hacking over the last 6 months focused mostly in the Midlands. According to police reports 3 separate professional gangs have been identified all of which originate from Romania (is there a political agenda behind the allegation? I don't know).

The authorities warn us to be on guard against this kind of fraud but do nothing to prevent it and continue to push people towards electronic transactions and online banking. No more cash, no more below the radar deals and no more privacy. We all know this has been on the agenda for some point in the future.

It is not just the crooks we have to fear though, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, all the big players in online technology are known to have been playing fast and loose with our privacy and selling personal data they collect to anyone who can afford the price. They probably do credit checks but you can bet there are no ethics checks.

There will be plenty of cashless people in the cashless society as they find their electronic cash has been siphoned out of their electronic bank account because electronic technology has more holes than a colander.

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Are We About To Return To The Gold Standard

by Phil T Looker

If you listen to conventional financial news, they’ll all tell you that the ruble is in freefall, and that the dollar is the place to be. But if you look at the real data and I am a very data-driven person (so long at is not the fairy story data of climate science) take a stroll through the numbers and make an objective comparison between the US dollar and the Russian ruble. Better sit down though, if you are an Obama fan.

Start from the premise that ALL paper currencies are fundamentally flawed.

The global monetary system based on fractional reserve banking is insane — the idea of letting unelected, virtually unregulated central bankers pull as much new money as they can imagine, that money being underwriten by unsecured debt, out of thin air is simply irrational. But some fiat currencies have a more solid base than others. If you want to understand the health of a currency, you must look at the ISSUER of that currency, i.e. the central bank.

As with any business, one of the most important measures of its financial health is its level of solvency. In particular we look at the capital (i.e. net assets) as a percentage of the total balance sheet.

The US Federal Reserve only has a basic capital ratio of 1.26%, razor thin in real terms. (This is down from 4.5% after six years of Obama's loonytoons economics.) That means if the value of the Federal Reserve's assets declines by only 1.26%, the issuer of the world’s dominant reserve currency becomes insolvent.

Meanwhile back in Moscow, the Russian central bank’s basic capital ratio is 12.5%—literally a much healthier figure than the Fed's.

A comfortably positive capital ration is muck like us ordinary punters having a stash of rainy day money. When the brown smelly stuff hits the fan it's what keeps you afloat. You might be able to keep on living hand to mouth for a considerable time, or even accumulating debt by borrowing against future expectations, but only until your car breaks down, or the domestic boiler blows up and you need a new heating system, for example. Then all of a sudden, your lack of capital can become a serious issue.

As it happens Russia is one of the most financially healthy nations in the world. Thus as they, along with China, have been leading a move to abandon the $US by concluding bilateral currency deals with their main partners, we must assume they have prepared for some response. Being the owner of the reserve currency has kept the American economy afloat for thirty years, they were never going to surrender that position lightly.

So where will this all end? I suggest you look at a central bank’s GOLD reserves as a percentage of the money supply, i.e. how much gold backs the money supply, because all the indicators suggest we will move back to a gold based global currency (why else would China be hoarding gold?).

In Russia, gold reserves are 6.2% on the money supply and rising. Last year it was 5.5%, and the central bank is continuing to heavily stockpile more.

How much gold backs the dollar? Precisely zero point zero percent. All that gold Bruce Willis and Samuel L Jackson prevented Jeremy Irons stealing from the vault at the Fed did not belong to the Fed, the Fed doesn’t own gold it merely looks after it for other people. It loudly proclaims this on its own website: "The Federal Reserve does not own gold. Eff off Irons, there's nothing here for you."

What the Fed holds is paper. Its capital is‘certificates’ which are redeemable for US dollars. But there’s not a single ounce of gold backing the US dollar.

So… with no gold and pitifully razor thin solvency levels, it really wouldn’t take much of a shock to topple the dollar.

By comparison, the ruble is much better capitalized and actually has something backing it.

Not that this means you should invest in Roubles, far from it. People who do that would be lucky to see their any of savings again. However hard, publicly available (but not online, for free) numbers clearly demonstrate the discrepancy between pro - western fervour and objective data.

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Prepare For The Worst Case Scenario

An article on the cashless society our political and corporate overlords are pushing for proposes that as far as privacy and individual liberty are concerned, what is being planned right now in the political capitals and financial centres of the world is the worst case scenarion. An all digital financial system would mean the end of privacy, nothing you bought or traded would be your own business any more, government agencies, internet search operators and social mediaPrepare For The Worst Case Scenario sites (and anybody prepared to pay for the data they collect) would quickly be able to know a great deal about your lifestyle and your likes and dislikes.

One caveat, the author of the linked article, Susan Duclost, does tend to hyperbole so this site will be trying to verify as much as we can of what is reported before bringing you our own view. here's a taster of the article.

Prepare For The Worst Case Scenario: - 'You Cannot Make Up This Level Of Insanity'

With so much going on nationally and internationally, there has been some major changes occurring in regards to US economic news that has been under-reported and basically ignored by the MSM, with Gregory Mannarino telling traders to "prepare for the worst case scenario," and Martin Armstrong, the former chairman of Princeton Economics International, best known for his economic predictions based on the Economic Confidence Model which he developed, saying "You really cannot make up this level of insanity."

Starting with Armstrong, his site one of the few that reported the "secret meeting" in London to "end currency," also notes that a recent Supreme Court decision just laid the foundation for the "seizure of private pension funds," to the tune of $19.4 trillion dollars, by the US government.

READ MORE at allnewspipeline.com:

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How Mainstream Media And The Major Political Parties Are Making Sure Voters Do not Hear The Voices Of Politics' Most Powerful Critics
As the General Election campaign starts to heat up, we try to shift focus away from the squabbling between Conservative and Labour about who can make the most promises they have no intention of keeping and to the real issues concerning jobs, social breakdown , mass immigration, and loss of national sovereignty.

US Presidents Of The Past warned Against Secret, Shadow Government. By now it should be obvious that peacemake, joybringer and putative aquatic pedestrian Barack Hussein Obama was never really in charge of the US Government. Whatever Obama said would happen, all the American government's policies ensured the opposit would happen. The embedded article thows some light on how the US government really works

The American Political System Is "Not A Democracy Or Constitutional Republic" - Thiel
The state of democracy in the USA has become a hot topic of conversation in American business circles in recent years. While President Barack Hussein Obama, not so much a man as an ego on long skinny legs, has increasingly been inclined to rule by executive order in the manner of a despot or tyrant, even Obama's fiercest critics have to admit the American electoral system seems increasingly capable of delivering only political paralysis ...

Virtual ID has arrived – why you should resist taking it up
We told you some years ago when our publication appeared under a different name that the then Labour Government's plan for compulsory electronic ID cards was the step that would take us over the line from a seblance of liberal democracy into oligarchic fascism. Labour's plan was derailed by public opposition but now it has been rehashed and is presented with fluffy window dressing. A vote for Labour, Conservative Or Liberal Democrat is a vote for fascism. You have been warned.

Banksters 1.5 Quadrillion Dollar Conspiracy
How the big banks rigged the derivatives markets to steal one and a half quadrillion dollars from private citizens and businesses. It makes shocking reading but at last people are waking up to the fact this kind of shit has been going on for years ...

Happy Interdependence Day. The New World Order Was Announced In 1975
As America celebrates Independence Day, The Daily Stirrer looks back to 1975 when a document titled declaration Of Interdependence signalled the intent of American elitist liberal intellectuals to destroy the American ideals of freedom and independence and lead the nation into a global totalitarian superstate.

New World Order
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More On The War Against Western Values

Divrsity Is A Lie -So Who Are The real Racist Bigots?

Since we began publishing in 2009 we have warned that the real enemies of freedom, the ones who would turn certain sectors of the community are not the conservatives and libertarians, but those who try to mask their fascistic politics by calling themselves left, liberal or socialist. If you want to know what socialism is really all about read up on Stalinist Russia or Maoist China and if you want a comparison for the 'liberal values of Labour and Social democrat voters in Europe or American democrats, look no further than the medieval Inquistion and their brutal purges of 'heresy'.

Divrsity Is A Lie -So Who Are The real Racist Bigots?


European Union ConsidersRestricting The Use Of Cash"

Don't say we didn't warn you. A quick perusal of other posts on this page will show we have been warning of the comin ban on cash and its consequences for privacy and individual liberty for years. via
Blacklisted News

Europe Proposes "Restrictions On Payments In Cash"

Having discontinued its production of EUR500 banknotes, it appears Europe is charging towards the utopian dream of a cashless society. Just days after Davos' elites discussed why the world needs to "get rid of currency," the European Commission has introduced a proposal enforcing "restrictions on payments in cash." With Rogoff, Stiglitz, Summers et al. all calling for the end of cash - because only terrorists and drug-dealers need cash (nothing at all to do with totalitarian control over a nation's wealth) - we are not surprised that this proposal from the European Commission (sanctuary of statism) would appear... The Commission published on 2 February 2016 a Communication to the Council and the Parliament on an Action Plan to further step up the fight against the financing of terrorism (COM (2016) 50). The Action Plan builds on existing EU rules to adapt to new threats and aims at updating EU policies in line with international standards. In the context of the Commission's action to extent the scope of the Regulation on the controls of cash entering or leaving the Community, reference is made to the appropriateness to explore the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments. The Action Plan states that "Payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities… In this context, the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments could also be explored. Several Member States have in place prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold." Read more >>>

India's Cashless Society set to fail but slide to fascism goes on

On 17th July 2017, India will elect a new President through a vote of the elected representatives. The contenders are Ram Nath Kovind and Meira Kumar. Few people outside his own family know who Kovind is and voters are only vaguely aware of Ms. Kumar.

India will get a complete nobody as its next President. Both candidates are from the Indian province of Bihar. If it were a country, Bihar with its 119 million inhabitants would be the 12th most populated in the world. With a GDP of USD 420 per capita, it would also be among the world’s ten poorest countries.

While the world has been focused on events in Syria, Yemen, the USA, Europe and its immigration crisis, the USA and the Democratic Party's idiotic attempts to overturn the 2016 election result, and in the South China Sea, there has been little coverage of some serious political trends in the world's second largest nation by population. Adults and juveniles have been arrested all over India for celebrating Pakistan’s victory over in a recently held cricket match between the two countries. They are being prosecuted for sedition, a charge that has serious legal ramifications and could lead to life improsonment. With the British gone for 70 years, India’s laws and institutions seem to have lost their rational anchors and is becoming as fragmented, tribalistic and chaotic as it was before british rule.

Scene from a slum in Patna, capital of Bihar province

In the presidential race Kovind is from the "lower caste" and is supported by the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, who would like to make up for recent atrocities against the lower classes. While he is a nobody with hardly any public credentials and a machine politician, Kovind is sympathetic to resurgent Hindu fanaticism and has the support of Hindue extremists.

The position of the Indian president is similar to that of The Queen in the British constitution. If the prime minister decides to impose martial law, he needs the president’s signature. With Kovind’s appointment, Modi will have installed the yes-man he needed at the top of India’s institutions.

Many Indian commentators living outside the coumntry hve said Modi India is very rapidly moving India towards becoming a police state, that will have a strong Hindu extremist faction as its core.

To a populace not anchored to reason, if one votes for Hinduism, one will go for Kovind; and if one is pseudo-secular and wants to look pro-women, one will vote for Kumar. Kovind will very likely win for no other reason than the fact that Modi and his party BJP have higher support than Kumar.

Korvind is the favourite to win, despite the fact that he is seen as the candidate linked to the Modi government, which last year caused great hardship for poor Indian people by putting severe restrictions on the use of cash in financial transactions. Many wealthy and allegedly educated people have never used a bank card. Many simply won’t trust a machine. Most are incapable of learning how to use the cards. With people tired of corrupt, untrustworthy and unpredictable banks and payment portals incapable of providing reliable services, cash is coming back with a vengeance.

The economy, however, continues to be stagnant. Businesses continue to fail. If not for economic reasons, businessmen have grown tired of corrupt and rapacious bureaucrats and an extremely uncertain regulatory regime. Look at an Indian businessman and you will see an unhealthy, tired, soulless person.

Even today, vegetables sell for half as much as they normally do. Are poor people going hungry? Do not expect news on this in the media, which must toe the line of the Indian government.

If food is so cheap, does it not indicate that poor people are unable to buy? Are they going hungry? Moreover, if farmers continue to suffer and cannot profit from their produce, what effect will that have on the future food supplies? [Ed. note: the collapse in food prices was originally triggered by the government’s overnight cash ban]

Money — even in fiat currency form — is the blood of the system. Once the blood flow was stopped, even if it is fully revived later, clots will have appeared and organs will have failed. That is happening in India today. Job growth was already stagnant, but the situation is much worse now, making India’s so-called demographic asset, which never was an asset, a massive liability.

Domino effects continue to work their way up the food chain. Formal and big businesses are beginning to show signs of stagnation. Members of the salaried middle class are losing their jobs, but they have so far failed to connect the dots and continue to support Modi.

On 8th November 2016, Modi declared 86% of the monetary value of India’s outstanding currency illegal. Even today, ATMs remain cashless. The banks are clogged with throngs of people. Small businesses — the backbone of India’s economy — keep failing, because people continue to avoid discretionary spending.

People have suffered economically as the smooth flow of the economy was disrupted, and transaction costs for businesses have increased. Food prices have recovered a bit recently, but are still at about half their previous levels. Unfortunately, this is not because production has increased, but because demand has collapsed, with many of the poorest people likely unable to buy food.

Over a billion people in India have no access to internet. When it is available, it is often very slow. Electricity is unreliable. Bank websites are extremely unwieldy. To make an online transaction, the login process is usually very complicated, often requiring several steps and verification codes sent as text messages.

More than a month ago, I paid online for a flight ticket from Delhi to London. The money left my account, but I never got the ticket. It was virtually impossible to get in touch with the Indian company I had bought the ticket from. When I did finally manage to contact them, they told me that they had refunded the money. The bank says it never got the refund. Of course, I have had to personally visit the bank every time and spend a long time waiting to talk to someone. In this electronic day and age, more than a month after the event, no-one knows where my money is.

It is hard to pinpoint who deserves the blame. Indians are extremely unskilled, uneducated (despite paper certificates aiming to prove otherwise), and lack work ethics. They almost never have passion for their jobs or an interest in providing good services to their clients. This is the main feature characterizing many Indian companies. Management and owners lack professionalism and are singularly focused on the bottom-line, by hook or by crook, eschewing true value-addition.

India’s attempt to go digital will fail. Digital cash will fail. E-commerce companies will fail. In India, the national ID-card system, Aadhaar, will fail. The GST system will likely fail, or it will at least create massive problems in implementation. All these programs will impose huge costs on the economy and the well-being of entrepreneurs, including the wretched poor in the large informal economy.

India is looking for totalitarian solutions to deal with problems created by totalitarianism and tribalism. India is trying to use the the facade of the technologically advanced West hoping that the packaging will automatically deal with the lack of inner substance. Fail even with respect to superficial issues seems preordained.

India’s government cannot provide basic services to its people. Ambulances are conspicuous by their absence. But Modi wants to move on to doing bigger things. In the last 70 years of independence, Indians have systemically destroyed the institutions of the rule of law that the British had bestowed on the country.

There is a lot of pain and no gain facing India. If they had any sense they should be begging the British to return and rule the country. That is the only option apart from chaos, disintegration, and eventual never-ending tribal infighting among the fragments.

Sources: India: Why its Attempt to Go Digital Will Fail
India: Cash Is Back

‘We don’t take cash’: is this the future of money?

Even after two recent and catastrophic system failures in UK banks, which left customers of TSB and HSBC unable to access their money, make payments, check balances being or receive money, the fans of full automation of our lives are still touting the supposed advantages of a cashless society. Can these people not open their minds and understand that if we shify society totally to electronic money, not only will it make life unbearable for the poorest in society, but we will also be completely vulnerable to system failures and cyber attacks.

This article from London's Financial Times takes a look at the pros and cons and wondrs why, with all the hype there has been about cashless living, the amount of cash in circulation is increasing. After numerous failures, hacker attacks and recent privacy abuse scandals involving Google, Facebook and the governments of major powers, might it possibly be lack of trust that is slowing the move to digital money?


America Takes A Step Closer To Becoming A Cashless Society

cashless
Piture: The Guardian

If you order a beer at a Flatstick pub in Seattle, washington, don’t try to pay with $10 bill — you’ll walk away thirsty. It's not that the US state of Washington has started charging Scandinavian prices for booze, but that Flatstick, a hot new mini-chain in the Pacific Northwest, does not accept cash. Neither does Bluestone Lane, an east coast coffee chain with locations in New York, Philly and D.C. Patrons there have to pay with plastic or an app called LevelUp.

Cashless commerce is popping up around the country, particularly in restaurants catering to a younger crowd, the kind of university brainwashed millenials who think its cool to make life easy for rip off merchants by relying on contactless cards or smart phone apps to pay. It seems millenials are more likely to leave home without any greenbacks, or even a wallet, and instead choose to live life with a smartphone and a few credit or debit cards attached. Or perhaps due to the abject failure of the education system these dorks haven't mastered the basic arithmetic needed to use csh transactions.

Businesses who’ve gone cashless rave about the results. Flatstick owner Sam Largent told me plastic-only reduces error rates during times of complex accounting, such as calculating tips when shifts change. I'm not sure why customers should care about that but then in Europe your waiter is not likely to shoot you for tipping too little.

The value of cash transactions sank 7% from 2010 to 2015, according to The Nilson Report, while credit and debit card payments increased by nearly 50%. Meanwhile, ATMs, which had their 50th birthday last year, are disappearing around around the world, signaling the decline of the “cash run.”

Cash-free environments aren’t brand new. Political establishments have been pushing the idea of cashless lives for decades, the better to keeep tabs on the spending habits of individuals. Airlines went cashless a long time ago (for meals and other onboard purchases), and many other businesses are only taking automated payments (it gives them an excuse to fire another human being.) And with the meteoric rise of friend-to-friend payment apps like Venmo, Zelle and Splitwise, we’re no longer throwing $20 bills on the table after a meal (or handing over cash or checks to roommates for the gas bill).

But cash is a long away from dead, and as usual we find governments and mainstream media are deploying fake news to advance their agenda. The US Federal Reserve said in 2016 that 35% of U.S. transactions were still made in cash although 42% of UK transactions are still in cash. Numbers for other European countries, with the Scandinavian countries leading the race to dystopia while the nations of southern and eastern Europe cling to their banknotes.. And the amount of cash being used around the world continues to rise. Plus, there are still many of obstacles to going cashless.

For starters, the estimates suggest that around 7% of the populations of developed nations still do not use banking facilities. In other words, they live an all-cash life, so would be entirely shut out in a cashless society. Some also like the anonymity that comes with paying cash. Others use cash for budgeting reasons (when you’re out of cash, you stop spending - simples).

Still, on a global scale, eliminating cash offers some intriguing possibilities. Merely the elimination of large denomination banknotes, which the EU has done, makes life much harder for large-enterprise criminals, like drug dealers according to technocrats. OK, it’s far more conspicuous to carry around large piles of small bills, but wire transfers between banks in Switzerland and The Cayman Islands present no problems. And if you connect through a VPN the transaction is untraceable. People who claim that if all financial transactions were electronic, hiding crime would become much more difficult are takling bollocks. They either have little understanding of how the internet works (or how much of it is invisible to the World Wide Web,) or they are on the side of the big league criminals and corporate pirates.

Negative Interest Rates & The War On Cash, Part 3: "Beware The Promoters"
Bitcoin and other electronic platforms have paved the way psychologically for a shift away from cash, although they have done so by emphasising decentralisation and anonymity rather than the much greater central control which would be inherent in a mainstream electronic currency. Despite the loss of privacy, electronic currency is much favoured by techno-optimists, but not so much by those concerned about the risks of absolute structural dependency on technological complexity.

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A cashless society would hurt the poor
We have reported on the push, led by globalist politicians and supranational bureaucracies such as the United Nations and the European Union to abolish cash throughout the world and move all business activity to digital media. The issues for personal privacy and liberty are well documented, but the real losers will be the poor.

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New Global Crisis Imminent, New Geneva Report Warns The Geneva Report refers to a “poisonous combination of high and rising global debt and slowing nominal GDP [gross domestic product], driven by both slowing real growth and falling inflation”. The total burden of world debt, private and public, has risen from 160 per cent of national income in 2001 to almost 200 per cent after the crisis struck in 2009 and 215 per cent in 2013. “Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to delever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs,” the report said.

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The War On Cash gathers more momentum as political, business and academic elite attempt to advance and agenda that will destroy individual freedom and privacy and give them total control of our lives and finances via technology.

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Elites Losing The War On Cash? Sweden U-Turns On 'Cashless Society' Agenda


image: https://gsiexchange.com/

Sweden was until now proudly leading the advance in the War On Cash, the neo - Maoist ruling elite had pushed the idea that a cashless society, with all financial activity moved to electronic media would protect citizens from crime and be more convenient. There was no mention when the idea was pitched by politicians and bankers that in a cashless society we would completely surrender control of our money to banks, and our privacy in financial matters to government security agencies. Yes, every electronic financial transaction is recorded, your spending habits are tracked, and while disreputable organisations like Google, Facebook and Twitter will sell that information to anybody who can afford to pay, governments can use it against you in many other ways. In a surprise turnaround Sweden's Riksbank this weekend has become the first central bank in the 21st century to take concrete measures to ensure that cash does not disappear as a means of payment from the financial system, in opposition to corporate efforts to force retail customers away from cash. To achieve that the Riksbank proposes, in a document published on its website, to mandate that all banks and financial institutions continue to offer cash services. The policy initiative comes in response to a recent proposal suggestion by the Riksbank Committee that only the country’s six major banks should be obligated to continue offering cash services. That prompted a reaction from Sweden’s competition watchdog, which argued that the plan would distort competition as it would affect only a few of the nation’s banks. In response, the Riksbank has opted to apply the rule to “all banks and other credit institutions that offer payment accounts.” There was also a disagreement between the RiksbankCommittee (a political overseer,) and the central bank’s senior management over what deposit facilities should be offered. While the Committee recommended that banks should only be obliged to provide deposit facilities to businesses, the Riksbank believes it is important for banks to also offer deposit services to private citizens:
“This is a service that consumers can reasonably expect of credit institutions. There must also be symmetry between withdrawal and deposit facilities. In the Riksbank’s view, there is otherwise a risk that the possibilities for individuals to make deposits will decrease even further in the future. For most consumers, it would also be difficult to understand why they can withdraw cash from an account but not make deposits.”
For yearsnow, both the ultra progressive Swedish the government and the Riksbank management have been pushing for a “cashless society.” The Riksbank has over 1,000 articles posted on its website on the “cashless society“. The emphasis worked: between 2013 and 2017, the amount of cash in circulation dropped by 35%, earning Sweden a reputation as the world’s “most cashless nation”. Many of Sweden’s bank branches had stopped handling cash altogether, but now will have to begin doing so again. Many of them are not happy about it arguing that access to cash should be the sole responsibility of the state and not private banks. “To secure access to cash is a collective good that the state should reasonably be responsible for,” the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority said. It’s an opinion that’s shared by ATM provider Bankomat, which argued that it should be the state’s responsibility to ensure that citizens have access to cash since the handing of notes and coins is such an important — and expensive — part of a country’s infrastructure. Shops and restaurants, could also be affected by a suggestion that retail operations which provide public services, such as pharmacies, transport services, food shops and petrol stations, should also “be included in an obligation to accept cash.” One likely result of this is that many people who struggle to navigate the digital system, or who don’t have credit cards, in particular the elderly, no longer have to fear finding themselves locked out of the country’s payment system.' There is also that section of society known as 'the underclass - and yes Sweden does have them despite government efforts to present the nation as a socialist utopia in which things like poverty, crime, prostitution and begging are unknown. Sweden’s parliament has also launched a review on the impact of going cashless too quickly as it excludes the financial needs of the elderly, children and tourists who rely on cash. It is a dramatic u-turn for a country that not so long ago was further along the path toward eliminating cash than just about any other advanced economy. Sweden enlisted its citizens as largely willing guinea pigs in an economic experiment that was doomed from the start — negative interest rates. People quick on the uptake will have worked out in such a system we, the punters pay the bank to gamble with our hard earned. But a negative interest rate policy (NIRP) has its limits with consumers as long as cash remains an alternative because while you have to pay for the privilege of having money in the bank, stuffing it in a matress or under the floorboards is free. And that is the true explanation of the eagerness to eliminate cash. It was not for our protection or our convenience, but to make stealing from us easier for banks, financial services companies and governments. RELATED POSTS:

New Global Crisis Imminent, New Geneva Report Warns The Geneva Report refers to a “poisonous combination of high and rising global debt and slowing nominal GDP [gross domestic product], driven by both slowing real growth and falling inflation”. The total burden of world debt, private and public, has risen from 160 per cent of national income in 2001 to almost 200 per cent after the crisis struck in 2009 and 215 per cent in 2013. “Contrary to widely held beliefs, the world has not yet begun to delever and the global debt to GDP ratio is still growing, breaking new highs,” the report said.

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The Elite's Scheme to Eliminate Cash And Impose Negative Interest


Politicians love inflation, it provides an easy way out of the mess they make of managing national finances, bankers too love inflation because while they lend fiat money conjured out of thin air, the loans they issue are secured against real assets such as people's homes and valuables. However both need “the punters they fleece to have faith in the value of the fiat currency paper they hold or the numbers stored in computers that increasingly represent our wealth.

So what they have to do in order to maintain public faith in the illusion is avoid suddenly destroying the ephemeral confidence in currencies by printing too much too fast.

Central bankers and government finance chiefs also from time to time need to limit the options inflation wary citizens have for avoiding the trap of watching inflation erode the value of their income, savings and pensions. Both bankers and political players shifty are highly creative in ensuring the ill effects of perpetually devaluing currency are borne by the populace rather than the elite.

Concealing the debasement of the currency is a long established tradition with politicians that needed to deflect attention from their reckless overspending, since Roman times when Emperor Nero began quietly reducing the silver content of the Denarius around 60 A.D. it has been common practice to increase the amount of coinage or paper in circulation, while the value of the asserts it is secured against remains constant. Nero, King Henry VIII of England and many others did it bt reducing the amount of gold or silver in coins and substituting base metals such as lead, copper or zinc.

Now the task is easier, the paper money is printed on may be almost worthless and the bits and bytes stonred in the computers of whichever banks we use are ethereal, having no substance in the real world whatsoever. Thus central bankers and governments no longer have to contend with people finding evidence of their pysically altering coinage. Any currency may be stealthily devalued electronically, simply by creating more credit, while statistics such as the highly deceptive GDP (Gross Domestic Product) figure are cited as proof of the strength of an economy even though it ir only a measure of the 'church' the movement of money within that system.

When the nineteenth century politician George Canning said, "I can make statistics tell me anything except the truth, he might have been referring to modern financial statistics statistics which are designed to show the money losing purchasing power far more slowly than it actually is. Terms like “hedonic adjustments,” “geometric weighting,” and many other convoluted phrases describe the ploys used to show politically acceptable rathe of inflation to the public. What they are really doing is deceiving punters into believing the way to evaluate the strength of a fiat currency is to compare it with other fiat currencies.

In recent years the U.S. dollar has earned its reputation for “strength” simply because in the global currency exchanges of London, New York, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and others, the U S dollar, being seen as a 'safe haven' is more in demand. The only real way to evaluate the strength of a currency is to look at what it will buy in real terms. UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously used a basket of shopping to illustrate the value of British currency. She was ridiculed by people who said that running a country is not like running a family home. I was not a fan of Mrs. Thatcher, but her message, that whether you are managing a house hold or a national budget, if expenditure exceeds income, then as Mr. Micawber warned David Copperfield on Dickens' novel, the result is catatstrophe.

Headlines in the financial press broadcast the Dollar versus Yen index is rising. The dollar buys more euros and yen than it did a year ago, which matters is good for tourists. In the domestic economy however, your dollar buys far less of stuff that does matter — food, housing, and most everything people need to live.

Another trick is for the political and financial establishment to simply create money, claiming economic necessity. This is usually refered to as printing money although it is not a case of simply firing up the printing presses; Quantitative Easing to give its technical name, involves governments selling bonds to bankers and investors. The bonds, sold in £$€1000 units have a 'coupon value' and nominal fixed interest rate besed on that. However when a central bank sells bonds on behalf of a government is usually below the coupon value, meaning the real interest rate is higher than the nominal interest rate, (3% of 1000 is 30 but if you can buy that unit for 925 but get interest on 1000 your return is around three and a quarter per cent. It sounds trivial, but if you work out a quarter of one per cent of twenty million, it's not a bad day's wages.

In the financial crisis of 2008 / 9 things took a turn for the worse as the dark forces of globalisation invented a new way to rob us, they reduced 'the base rate' (the rate at which governments lend to banks, to zero or slightly above zero, ostensibly to encourage banks to lend cheaply and trigger a consumption led recovery. but governments still needed to borrow money to fund the current account deficits they habitually run, and to do this they had to continue selling bonds. And bankers, whatever else they may be, are not stupid. They were happy to borrow from governments at zero or one quarter of one per cent interest and lend it straight back at three per cent. Who wouldn't be?

But having conditioned savers to accept near zero interest rates on their savings, while inflation ate away at the value, was it possible to go a step further and persuade us to pay the banks for gambling with our money? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently released a document on how to implement a “negative interest rate program,” (NIRP). Governments and supra - national bureaucracies are planning a world in which banks will charge depositors for holding funds in current or savings accounts.

The problem, obviously, is that most depositors with substantial funds are not stupid, why pay bankers and watch inflation erode your savings when you can withdraw deposits and put it into jewellery, collectibles, things that will at least hold their value, or even hide it under the floorboards instead. But that option depends on casdh being available. IMF officials complain:

"When cash is available, however, cutting rates significantly into negative territory becomes impossible. Cash has the same purchasing power as bank deposits, but at zero nominal interest. Moreover, it can be obtained in unlimited quantities in exchange for bank money. Therefore, instead of paying negative interest, one can simply hold cash at zero interest. Cash is a free option on zero interest, and acts as an interest rate floor."

The solution to this, according to the IMF, central bankers, academics and economics pundits is to move to a cashless society. And there is a deliberate scheme to do so. Remember, politicians are owned by bankers so they can be coerced into passing anti - cash laws on the pretext of preventin money - laundrering, which would remove the ability for people to make cash withdrawals.

Now think for a moment what that would mean; all money and all financial transfers would be electronic and thus trackable. Do you think the busybody politicians have not realised a cashless society would give them via their lackeys, complete control over the minutiae of our lives. Do you think it would be long before litttle people with tablet computers were knocking on our doors, saying things like, "It has been noted you ate junk food three times last week so we are blocking your accountr from buyimg food at any but vegetarian and vegan shops and restaurants"; or "Our records show you exceeded your government mandated maximum alcohol intake on the 4th 7th and 15th of this month, so your acccount has been sanctioned and you will not be able to purchase any alcohol.

Internet technology in the hands of control freak corporations like Google, Apple, Facebook and Microsoft makes these things possible, and if politicians and bureaucrats can control something they will

.

The IMF officials who drafted the plan are seriously suggesting the freedom for untold millions of people around the globe to manage their own financial affairs as they think fit be eliminated. We live in a time when the global economy is driven by growth (as john Steinbeck wrote, "If the moster does not grow it dies,) and for the economy to grow people must spends. If savers don’t spend what they have, officials will make them pay fines or suffer other penalties.

The bureaucrats who authored that IMF proposal aren’t the first to propose abolishing physical cash. Bankers and politicians have been waging the War on Cash for years now. This wish to implement negative interest rates is just one more on a list of reasons these central planners hate cash.

To them, ordinary people are sheep to be herded. Anyone who wishes to avoid being shorn should hold real assets outside of the banking system.

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Negative Interest Rates — Final Nail In The Coffin Of Neoliberalism?
Negative Interest Rates, or in plain English a situation in which custoers pay the bank interest on our saving in return for their gambling with our money, have been an idea that has bounced round central banks, supranational bureaucracies and political assemblies as it has become clear to even the most blinkered neoliberals and Cultural Marxists that globalism has failed.

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If The Banker’s Cartel And Silicon Valley Are Pushing Cashless Stores We Should Avoid Them

This story is part of CNET's ongoing Follow the Money series, which looks at how digital cash is changing the way we save, shop and work.

When Philadelphia City Councilman Bill Greenlee heard that a coffee shop and a salad restaurant right near City Hall didn't accept cash, he thought it sounded unfair.

"I can get my coffee and muffin, but the person behind me who has the monetary unit of the United States of America, that's been accepted here in Philadelphia since Ben Franklin, can't?" he said in an interview. "It just seemed wrong."

So last October, Greenlee (who uses both card and cash) co-sponsored a bill requiring businesses to accept cash. In March, Mayor Jim Kenney signed it into law.

Cashless stores and events are just starting to crop up in the retail landscape with much hoopla -- consider the splashy launches of Amazon Go stores -- but they're already running into hurdles from legislators in cities and states around the country. These governments are concerned that what some see as technological innovation could actually widen societal gaps between those who have access to financial services and those who don't.

This work could ensure we don't end up with a future in which there are stores that lower-income people just can't use. But this legislation may also prevent new cashless experiments from ever taking hold and help cash stay king for a long time.

Cash's demise at the hands of cards, e-commerce and mobile payments has been heralded for decades as a faster and more secure way to pay for stuff. After all, you can't lose a digital wallet the same way you can lose a real one. Yet cash is still the most frequently used form of payments (representing 30% of all transactions), particularly for smaller transactions (where it's 55%), according to the US Federal Reserve. .

While you might opt to pay for a bottle of water with card instead of cash, there's still a swath of the population that doesn't have that choice. Roughly 8.4 million households in the US were considered "unbanked" in 2017, according to the FDIC. That means no one in those households had access to a checking or savings account. Check out Boggart Blog and The Daily Stirrer's Latest Posts and News pages

The Cashless Society Is A Con - Don't Trade Your Privacy For Convenience

Banks are closing branches at an accelerating and ATM network operators are charging us to withdraw our cash as the fees the bankers pay them are cut. It is all part of a concerted attempt to ‘nudge’ the citizenry towards using exclusively digital fanancial services – and guess what, it’s not being done for the benefit of you and I.

It is not just your country, wherever you live, banks are shutting off easy access to cash throughout the democratic(?) world. They are trying to push us into using digital payments and digital banking infrastructure, and even prepaid or contactless cards for even the smallest tranactions. There have even been suggestions that a special wireless card reader might be introduced to enable beggards to accept digital donations, yes insane as it sounds that idea has been seriously considered.

Just like Google wants everyone to access and navigate the broader internet via its privately controlled search portal, so the big finance cartel want everyone to access and navigate the broader economy through their systems.

Another aim is to cut costs in order to boost profits. Branches require staff. Replacing them with standardised self-service apps allows the senior managers of financial institutions to directly control and monitor interactions with customers.

Banks, of course, tell us a different story about why they do this. I recently got a letter from my bank telling me that they are shutting down local branches because “customers are turning to digital”, and they are thus “responding to changing customer preferences”. I am one of the customers they are referring to, but I never asked them to shut down the branches.

There is a feedback loop going on here. In closing down their branches, or withdrawing their cash machines, they make it harder for me to use those services. I am much more likely to “choose” a digital option if the banks deliberately make it harder for me to choose a non-digital option.

In behavioural economics this is referred to as “nudging”. If a powerful institution wants to make people choose a certain thing, the best strategy is to make it difficult to choose the alternative.

We can illustrate this with the example of self-checkout tills at supermarkets. The underlying agenda is to replace checkout staff with self-service machines to cut costs. But supermarkets have to convince their customers. They thus initially present self-checkout as a convenient alternative. When some people then use that alternative, the supermarket can cite that as evidence of a change in customer behaviour, which they then use to justify a reduction in checkout employees. This in turn makes it more inconvenient to use the checkout staff, which in turn makes customers more likely to use the machines. They slowly wean you off staff, and “nudge” you towards self-service.

Financial institutions, likewise, are trying to nudge us towards a cashless society and digital banking. The true motive is corporate profit. Payments companies such as Visa and Mastercard want to increase the volume of digital payments services they sell, while banks want to cut costs. The nudge requires two parts. First, they must increase the inconvenience of cash, ATMs and branches. Second, they must vigorously promote the alternative. They seek to make people “learn” that they want digital, and then “choose” it.

We can learn from the Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci in this regard. His concept of hegemony referred to the way in which powerful parties condition the cultural and economic environment in such a way that their interests begin to be perceived as natural and inevitable by the general public. Nobody was on the streets shouting for digital payment 20 years ago, but increasingly it seems obvious and “natural” that it should take over. That belief does not come from nowhere. It is the direct result of a hegemonic project on the part of financial institutions.

We can also learn from Louis Althusser’s concept of interpellation. The basic idea is that you can get people to internalise beliefs by addressing them as if they already had those beliefs. Twenty years ago nobody believed that cash was “inconvenient”, but every time I walk into London Underground I see adverts that address me as if I was a person who finds cash inconvenient. The objective is to reverse-engineer a belief within me that it is inconvenient, and that cashlessness is in my interests. But a cashless society is not in your interest. It is in the interest of banks and payments companies. Their job is to make you believe that it is in your interest too, and they are succeeding in doing that.

The Visa outage which caused chaos in E$urope for several days, during which millions of people who have become dependent on digital payment suddenly found themselves stranded when the monopolistic payment network crashed, was a temporary setback. Likewise the Lloyds Bank computer failure and the HSBC newtork crash, both of which left customers of major banks without access to their funds either via online banking services or by being able to withdraw cash from ATMs for days.

Digital systems may be “convenient”, the future as many tech promoters like to tell us, but convenience comes at a price, and among the ways that price manifests itself is in the existence of a central point of failure. When failures occure in this way they are more visible than the other problems, the customers' vulnerability to cybercrime and the banks vulnerability to external hackers and internal fraudsterss. Cash, on the other hand, is not disabled by electronic failure. It does not rely on fully functioning computers centres or a communications network that is about as secure as a house with no doors, because it was designed that way, and is not fitted with back doors to enable covert surveillance of our activity. The cash system allows for an unmonitored “off the grid” space. This is also the reason why financial institutions and technology companies want to get rid of it and why governments are supporting them. Cash transactions are outside the net that financial institutions cast to harvest fees and data and that the government uses to increase control of information and people.

A cashless society would necessarily create all sorts of problems. People without bank accounts (mainly the poor and vulnerable, will find themselves further marginalised, disenfranchised from the cash infrastructure that previously supported them. There are also psychological implications about cash encouraging self-control while paying by card or a mobile phone can encourage financial irresponsibility. And switching to a cashless society would have enormous surveillance implications.

Despite this, as mentioned above, we see an collaboration between financial institutions, corporate business and government (The Davosocracy) to move to a system nobody voted for and only nerds and the elites think is desirable. In 2017 the US Treasury held a public consultation on cash and digital payments in the new economy. It presented itself as attempting to strike a balance, noting that cash was still important. But years of subtle lobbying by the financial industry have clearly paid off. The call for evidence repeatedly notes the negative elements of cash – associating it with crime and tax evasion – but barely mentions the negative implications of digital payments.

The UK and US governments have chosen to champion the digital financial services industry. This is irresponsible and disingenuous. We need to stop accepting stories about the cashless society and hyper-digital banking being “natural progress”. We must recognise every cash machine that is shut down as another step in financial institutions’ campaign to herd you into their digital enclosures.

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Covid accelerates transition to cashless society – but is going casless for our safety or stealing another freedom from us?

Never let a good crisis go to waste, the old saying goes, and we can see that clearly with ‘Covid-19 health concerns’ being used as an excuse to stop people exercising their right to pay in cash.

The drive towards a cashless society was well under way even before we’d ever heard the words ‘Covid-19’ but it’s been greatly accelerated in Britain these last few weeks. Either businesses have stopped people paying in cash, or they’ve said that if anyone still wants to use cash and coins, no change will be given if it’s not the right amount.

In April, it was announced that passengers on Go North East buses would have to have the exact amount to pay for their fare, or else they would have to pay by card. The managing director of the company said: “This is the latest change we’ve made to improve safety for both our workforce and our customers.”

Other bus operators, including Stagecoach South East (see the tweet above), have followed suit, which begs the question: Just how dangerous to the safety of the workforce and customers is handling cash?

It’s been reported that 29 bus drivers have died with Covid-19 in London, but the capital’s buses have been cash-free since 2014.

“The amount of virus that is potentially on an inanimate object is usually very small,” Dr Christine Tait-Burkard, an expert on infection and immunity, told the Guardian in March. She continued: “Coins are actually very bad environments for viruses to survive.” Banknotes theoretically COULD carry the virus, but the risk of getting it from one is very small. “Unless someone is using a bank note to sneeze in,” was Tait-Burkard’s assessment.

Yet despite the risks of infection being extremely low, Covid-19 scare tactics are being used to try and get us to change our payment habits.

Ross Clark, the author of ‘The War Against Cash,’ has revealed that back in January his email inbox began to fill up with press releases claiming the new contagion was being spread by banknotes and coins and that these emails came – surprise, surprise – from companies with a vested interest in cashless payments. He noted that in 2015 alone, $19 billion had been invested in the FinTech industry, and that by 2023, the industry is expecting to double the $1 trillion it currently takes in fees for handling electronic payments.

On April 1, the UK government duly increased the limit on payments by contactless cards from £30 ($36.56) to £45 ($54.84).

The authorities see a ‘cashless society’ as a key component of the ‘new normal’ they want to impose on us when lockdown is finally ended. Look at the plans that have been revealed on how pubs will operate when they are allowed to re-open. They involve customers paying for drinks via a smartphone app at their ‘socially-distanced’ tables.

When will the days of waving a £10 note to pay at the bar come back? Well, they won’t unless we take a stand. There are a number of important reasons why we must fight tooth-and-claw to keep the cash option.

For a start, the move to eliminate cash from everyday transactions is inherently ageist and discriminates against those who don’t use smartphones or have a bank account. Senior citizens are much less likely to have, or know how to use, smartphones, or indeed possess credit cards. How will someone who doesn’t have a phone buy a drink in the ‘new normal’ – but actually very abnormal – post-lockdown ‘socially-distanced’ dystopia that the likes of Priti Patel have in store for us?

Then there’s the fact that in a cashless society all our transactions would be recorded. Do we really want this, given the way the executive is already using the cover of Covid to remove long-standing civil liberties?

Suppose a cashless society is achieved. Everyone is on Universal Basic Income (UBI), everyone makes payments by card or via an app, or through a skin-implanted microchip. We have the perfect conditions for a totalitarian system, which would potentially be far more controlling than any in human history.

Step out of line and you’d run the risk of being frozen out of the financial system totally. You’d receive the message: “We regret to inform you that your card payment has been refused. You expressed ‘hate crime’ views and ‘dangerous’ opinions on social media last month which means your UBI is suspended for two months and you cannot use your card until further notice.” Imagine how freezing people out of receiving and making payments could be used to enforce conformity and compliance. The Chinese social credit systems, where people can earn points or lose them for ‘good’ or ‘bad’ behavior, provides a template.

While a cashless society is Big Brother’s ultimate wet dream, cash is the tyrant’s worst enemy.

It provides the citizen with the ability to maintain their independence from overweening authority. No one can ‘cut you off.’ A wad of bank notes gives you the freedom to buy what you want without any Big Tech company or government snoop knowing. The fight for the right to pay in cash is going to be a crucial one in the battle against the new hi-tech behavioral-control model which is being rolled out in front of our very eyes. It’s a war that must be won, otherwise we need to get used to a terrible new servitude. In the end we need cash, because the price we’ll pay in a society without it will be far too high.

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