Tag: banks

Mastercard’s Controversial Digital ID Rollout in Africa

One wouldn’t have pegged Mastercard for that corporation that is “driving sustainable social impact” and caring about remote communities around the world struggling to meet basic needs.

Nevertheless, here we are – or at least that’s how the global payment services behemoth advertises its push to proliferate the use of a scheme called Community Pass.

The purpose of Community Pass is to enable a  digital ID and wallet that’s contained in a “smart card.” Launched four years ago, the program – which Mastercard says, in addition to being based on digital ID, is interoperable, and works offline – targets “underserved communities” and currently has 3.5 million users, with plans of growing that number to 30 million by 2027.

According to a map on Mastercard’s site, this program is now being either piloted or has been rolled out in India, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Mauritania, while the latest announcement is the partnership with the African Development Bank Group in an initiative dubbed, Mobilizing Access to the Digital Economy (MADE).

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World War I Incited the Vampires

Commentaries about World War I frequently talk about causes and consequences but almost never mention the enablers.  At best, they might mention them approvingly, as if we were fortunate to have had the Fed and the income tax, along with the ingenuity of the Liberty Bond programs, to finance our glorious role in that bloodbath.

Economist Benjamin Anderson, whose Economics and the Public Welfare has contributed greatly to our understanding of the period 1914-1946, and is a book I highly recommend, nevertheless takes as a given that the Fed and income tax had a job to do, and that job was supporting U.S. entry into World War I.  After citing figures purporting to show how relatively restrained bank credit expansion was during the war, he writes:

We had to finance the Government with its four great Liberty Loans and its short-term borrowing as well. We had to transform our industries from a peace basis to a war basis. We had to raise an army of four million men and send half of them to France. We had to help finance our allies in the war, and above all, to finance the shipment of goods to them from the United States and from a good many neutral countries. [p. 35]

We had to do none of these things.

Only the government made them necessary, and the government was not acting on behalf of its constituents when it formally entered the war in April, 1917.  The U.S. was not under serious threat of attack.  The population at large, Ralph Raico tells us, “acquiesced, as one historian has remarked, out of general boredom with peace, the habit of obedience to its rulers, and a highly unrealistic notion of the consequences of America’s taking up arms.”  Later on he reports that

In the first ten days after the war declaration, only 4,355 men enlisted; in the next weeks, the War Department procured only one-sixth of the men required.

Bored with peace they may have been, but it was hardly reflected in the number of volunteers.  For more details about US response to the war see this.

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TYRANNY: Bank of America Terminates Account of Conservative Independent Journalist Without Explanation

Independent journalist Christina Urso, known professionally as Radix Verum, has reported that Bank of America abruptly terminated her bank account. Urso, who has been critical in her reporting on various issues including the FBI’s involvement in the Governor Whitmer kidnapping case, took to social media platform X to voice her concerns and frustrations.

According to Urso’s posts on X, the termination came without warning or clear explanation from the bank’s risk department. She claims that despite her long-standing relationship with Bank of America, access to her funds was denied and she was informed that a check for the account balance would be mailed to her without specifying when.

“So Bank of America has decided to ‘terminate’ their business relationship with me. Their ‘risk department’ made this determination for literally no reason. I have been with them for years. This is clearly because of my documentary and my critical reporting.

“They won’t tell me why. They won’t allow me access to my bank account or to the funds. They are telling me I will get a ‘check in the mail’ but they won’t say when I can expect it. I am traveling at the end of this month for my documentary. Now I have no funds.

“They wouldn’t say when the check will come. I have a documentary film shoot in less than two weeks and I have crew members I need to pay, etc.”

Urso recounted a recent interaction at a local branch where she attempted to resolve this issue. During this visit, she engaged in what seemed to be routine conversation with a bank employee about her profession, which she now suspects may have led to the risk department’s decision to close her account.

“Here is a video of the bank employee – who was very kind btw and just doing her job – informing us about the decision by the “risk department” to terminate the account for no reason,” she wrote.

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World’s Oldest Central Bank Keeps Sounding Alarm On Fragility Of Cashless Economies

At a time when the dominant narrative around cash is that its demise is all but inevitable, as well as broadly desirable, the 2024 payment report by Sweden’s Riksbank may offer a cautionary tale. 

In October last year, in More Good News for Cash in Europe, More Bad News for Digital Dollar in US, we reported that recent developments suggest that the trend away from cash and toward purely digital-only payment systems may not be quite as smooth or as seamless as some may have wished or expected. One of the developments we highlighted in that report was growing concern among central bankers and politicians in Sweden, one of Europe’s most cashless economies, about the unintended consequences of driving cash out of the economy:

Even by late 2020, Sweden had less cash in circulation than just about anywhere else in the world, at around 1% of gross domestic product, according to the latest available data. That compares with 8% in the U.S. and more than 10% in the euro area. As a recent piece in Interesting Engineering notes, Sweden is already “officially cashless”:

Cash is never needed, not even for small purchases like hot chocolate at a Christmas market in Stockholm. All vendors have a mobile payment chip-and-PIN card reader like the one offered by Stockholm-based mobile payments company iZettle, or they accept payments through the mobile application Swish. Swishing is perhaps the easiest way of payment for everyone.

The Risks of Going Fully Cashless

But now the country is beginning to realise that an almost exclusively digital payments system comes with significant risks, especially at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions. In time-honoured fashion, the article in the UK Telegraph began with a spot of fearmongering about Vladimir Putin.

“People started to realise that it is very easy for Vladimir Putin to switch everything off,” Björn Eriksson, a retired police chief, former head of Interpol and leading cash advocate, told the Telegraph.  “At first we were arguing for vulnerable people, the elderly, women in abusive relationships who rely on cash… Now we are talking about national security. And it’s not only Putin, it could also be organised crime.”

In 2021, the Riksbank, Sweden’s central bank (and the world’s oldest), introduced a new directive obliging the country’s six largest credit institutions to continue providing their customers with certain basic cash services.

But while that may have meant that people in Sweden can continue to access cash from their local branch, it is becoming increasingly difficult to use it as fewer and fewer retail businesses accept notes and coins.

This is partly due to the greater convenience of handling digital payments while the card processing fees are substantially lower than the US. But it is also because most Swedes, including many pensioners, prefer to use cards or mobile payments. As a baker in Stockholm told the Telegraph, “the only people who bring cash to the shop are tourists. I feel bad for them because they just take the krona home, where it is useless.”

But even that trend may be reversing. According to Eriksson, a growing number of young people are joining the pro-cash movement — and mainly over privacy concerns.

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Unification Of CBDCs? Global Banks Are Telling Us The End Of The Dollar System Is Near

World reserve status allows for amazing latitude in terms of monetary policy. The Federal Reserve understands that there is constant demand for dollars overseas as a means to more easily import and export goods. The dollar’s petro-status also makes it essential for trading oil globally. This means that the central bank of the US has been able to create fiat currency from thin air to a far higher degree than any other central bank on the planet while avoiding the immediate effects of hyperinflation.

Much of that cash as well as dollar denominated debt (physical and digital) ends up in the coffers of foreign central banks, international banks and investment firms where it is held as a hedge or used to adjust the exchange rates of other currencies for trade advantage. As much as one-half of the value of all U.S. currency is estimated to be circulating abroad.

World reserve status along with various debt instruments allowed the US government and the Fed to create tens of trillions of dollars in new currency after the 2008 credit crash, all while keeping inflation under control (sort of). The problem is that this system of stowing dollars overseas only lasts so long and eventually the consequences of overprinting come home to roost.

The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944 established the framework for the rise of the US dollar and while the benefits are obvious, especially for the banks, there are numerous costs involved. Think of world reserve status as a “deal with the devil” – You get the fame, you get the fortune, you get the hot girlfriend and the sweet car, but one day the devil is coming to collect and when he does he’s going to take EVERYTHING, including your soul.

Unfortunately, I suspect the time is coming soon for the US and it may be in the form of a brand new Bretton Woods-like system that removes the dollar as world reserve and replaces it with a new digital basket structure. Global banks are essentially admitting to the plan for a complete overhaul of the dollar-based financial world and the creation of a CBDC-centric system built on “unified ledgers.”

There have been three recent developments all announced in succession that suggest the dollar’s replacement is imminent (before this decade is over).

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15 State Officials Warn Bank of America About ‘De-Banking’ of Christians

A group of 15 financial officials from 13 states sent a notice to Bank of America, raising concerns about the institution’s “de-banking” of Christians.

“We write to express our concerns over Bank of America’s troubling track record of politicized de-banking. Bank of America’s de-banking policies and practices threaten the company’s financial health, its reputation with customers, our nation’s economy, and the civil liberties of everyday Americans,” the officials wrote in an April 18 letter to Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan.

“We are especially troubled by Bank of America’s track record of discriminating against religious ministries. Notable examples include Memphis-based charity Indigenous Advance Ministries, the Timothy Two Project, and Christian author and speaker Lance Wallnau.”

The letter was written by officials from Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah.

In April 2023, Bank of America shut down the account of Indigenous Advance Ministries, which partners with groups in the African nation of Uganda to provide care and education for orphaned and at-risk children. The bank closed accounts of a Memphis church that donated to the organization.

Bank of America provided “vague reasons” for the closure of these accounts, claiming that the organization’s activities exceeded the institution’s “risk tolerance” and that it no longer wanted to serve its “business type.”

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TYRANNY: Bank of America, USAA ‘Debank’ Conservative Election Fraud Attorney Dr. John Eastman

Two major banks have closed the accounts of conservative attorney John Eastman in retaliation for his advocacy against Democratic election fraud.

The Daily Caller reports that Eastman, who was recently disbarred by a left-wing judge in California over his efforts to expose massive fraud that marred the 2020 presidential election, had bank accounts with Bank of America and USAA closed without warning.

Eastman confirmed that he had already moved most of his money from Bank of America to USAA over concerns that the former was involved in leftist advocacy. Both of these accounts are federally insured and received massive taxpayer bailouts during the 2008 financial crisis.

Yet despite their links to the federal government, Eastman revealed that both of his accounts were closed within the space of two months.

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Nigeria’s digital prison has been built and the gates are closing

The digital ID, whose launch is supported by the Central Bank of Nigeria (“CBN”) and the Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (“NIBSS”), will have payments and social service delivery functions and will facilitate access to other services including travel, health insurance information, microloans, agriculture, food stamps, transport and energy subsidies, just to mention a few, with payment and financial services being powered by a central bank pre-paid/debit/credit card scheme dubbed AfriGo.

Among other features, the digital ID card will have a machine-readable zone in line with the United Nations International Civil Aviation Organisation’s (“ICAO’s”) standards for biometric passports, a QR code that will contain the holder’s National Identification Number (“NIN”), and the possibility for face and fingerprints biometric authentication as the primary medium for identity verification through the data on the card chip, Biometric Update said.

Effectively, Nigeria’s new digital ID is linked to a person’s central bank account.  Nigeria already has a CBDC, the eNaira, which was launched in October 2021.  One of the reasons the eNaira was needed, it is claimed, was to increase financial inclusion by allowing those with a mobile phone but without a bank account to have access to the CBDC through their smartphones.

Smartphones are also linked to people’s digital IDs; the process has been far from voluntary.  In December 2023, companies offering telecommunications services in Nigeria were given a fresh order from the federal government to entirely block all phone Subscriber Identity Module (“SIM”) cards not linked to the biometrics-backed NIN by 28 February 2024.

Since April 2022, an order for the partial block of over 70 million SIM cards not linked to the owner’s digital ID has been in place. However, it is a one-way barring as only outgoing calls are not supported on such SIM cards. From 28 February 2024 therefore, all categories of SIM cards whose owners have not done the NIN linkage will be fully deprived of access to all call and data services, Biometric Update said.

For Nigeria, the totalitarian system of control – the perimeters of the electronic prison which will be used to restrict and control every aspect of people’s lives and the entire population – is now in place.

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Delaware Treasurer Promotes New Marijuana Banking Bill To Provide State-Level Protections

Delaware’s treasurer is promoting new legislation that would provide state-level protections to banks that provide services to licensed marijuana businesses.

The bill was filed by Rep. Ed Osienski (D) and Sen. Trey Paradee (D) in partnership with state Treasurer Colleen Davis (D). It comes amid mounting pressure on Congress to enact federal cannabis banking reform.

The Delaware measure is designed to clarify that banks, credit unions, armored car services and accounting services providers are not subject to state-level prosecution simply for working with cannabis businesses.

“This Act aims to facilitate the operation of cannabis-related businesses by helping to ensure that such businesses have access to necessary financial and accounting services,” the bill synopsis says.

Davis, the treasurer, said in a press release last week that “H.B. 355 will provide state-level legal protection, and a clear legal framework for banks, payment processors, and other financial service providers to follow.”

“It can also ease concerns about federal enforcement and regulatory compliance among these businesses—since it allows them to demonstrate to federal agencies that they’re following a clear legal framework, ultimately leading to a safer and more transparent marijuana industry,” she said.

A press release from Davis’s office also says that, in addition to providing the basic protections, the bill would effectively boost the economy, enhance safety and promote competition.

“Across the country, we’ve witnessed dispensaries and banks alike struggling with legal uncertainty surrounding financial and accounting services for cannabis businesses,” Osienski, the House sponsor, said. “This uncertainty not only undermines the operations of state-compliant dispensaries but also hinders their access to basic business functions such as access to banking, acquiring loans, or paying taxes.”

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House GOP Committee Urges Opposition To Marijuana Banking Bill, Saying ‘Gateway Drug’ Causes ‘Violence, Depression And Suicide’

A Republican House advisory committee is formally opposing marijuana banking legislation and a separate bill to remove past cannabis use as a disqualifying factor for federal employment and security clearances, while broadly criticizing the substance as a “gateway drug” that causes “violence, depression and suicide.”

The House Republican Policy Committee’s new marijuana report also says that Vice President Kamala Harris was “mistaken” when she said cannabis brings people “joy” as a 2020 presidential candidate, instead arguing that it is a “hazardous drug with short and long-term impacts.”

The guidance, which is meant to inform how the GOP caucus should approach marijuana policy issues, briefly describes the history of prohibition and the state legalization movement. It then makes the case that cannabis is a dangerous substance linked to mental health disorders such as schizophrenia, attributing that in part to “the high concentration of THC.”

The committee also cited questionable statistics to argue that state-level legalization is associated with increased violence. And it claimed that marijuana use causes workplace issues such as “decreased productivity, high unemployment claims, and lawsuits.”

“Instead of turning a blind eye to the dangers associated with marijuana and allowing states to have dispensaries on every corner, Congress should work to ensure that laws in relation to marijuana are enforced,” the guidance says.

It included two specific policy recommendations, stating that members should oppose the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking and the Cannabis Users’ Restoration of Eligibility (CURE) Act.

That’s despite the fact that both measures enjoy bipartisan support, and certain members of the policy committee such as Reps. Tom McClintock (R-CA) and Nancy Mace (R-SC) have been vocal champions of marijuana reform. McClintock is signed onto the banking bill and Mace is the lead GOP cosponsor of the federal employment and security clearance measure.

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