Tag: banks

The Vampire Fiat Money System: How It Works and What It Means for Your Wealth

Who doesn’t know them: the blood-sucking vampires, the eerie undead, immortalized in countless films, and inspired primarily by Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula (1897). Just think of iconic movies like the silent film Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror (1922), Dracula (1958) with Christopher Lee, Roman Polanski’s parody The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967), or Nosferatu – Phantom of the Night (1979), starring Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula. 

Vampires are demons who rise from their graves at night, seeking to drain the blood of innocent victims. Not only do they steal the life force that sustains them, but they also spread their curse. Many victims, bitten by vampires, are “turned,” becoming undead themselves, thus joining the vampire’s dark domain.

The enemies and hunters of vampires face a formidable challenge: vampires can disguise themselves, transforming into creatures like wolves or bats, and often display immense, superhuman strength. They can only be repelled by traditional defenses—garlic cloves, rosaries, holy water, or the Christian cross. But truly destroying a vampire requires decapitation, driving a wooden stake through its heart, or bright sunlight that turns them to dust.

The vampire is an ancient and widespread myth. The image of a blood-sucking undead creature, or similar concepts, has existed across many cultures. This demon embodies superstition—acting as a projection of primal fears, the inexplicable, and evil as the counterpart to good. The notion of a creature that emerges at night, drains its victims’ blood, and draws them from light into darkness is undoubtedly a profoundly threatening one. 

When you reflect a little longer on the horror story of the vampire demon, you will inevitably begin to see parallels (or at least points of contact) with the fiat money system that exists worldwide today.

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Fifty Shades of Central Bank Tyranny

The United States has had a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) since the late 1990s—or possibly even as far back as the 1970s, depending on how you define it. Definitions matter. Just as the bestselling novel 50 Shades of Gray explores the complex dynamics of control and submission in a relationship, our financial system has evolved into what could be called “50 Shades of Central Bank Tyranny.”  

Each layer of our digital currency system peels back the seductive mask of freedom, revealing progressively darker shades of control. As we delve deeper, what seems like autonomy at first glance is only an illusion where more intricate and pervasive forms of dominance lay hidden, its grip tightening with every layer.

Our politicians work their sleight of hand by manipulating language itself to give a false impression, masking either a different intent or simply trying to gain the appearance of a victory with little or no actual underlying achievement. After all, the Patriot Act was anything but “patriotic.” The CARES Act, while sounding warmly empathetic, cared more about large multinational corporations than small businesses, about Big Pharma over American health, and above all, about the expansion of the surveillance state and protection of the censorship industrial complex over the liberty and free speech of the American people.

Just as 50 Shades of Gray reveals the intricate power plays in a seemingly consensual relationship, so too does our current financial system reveal its true nature as a digital dominatrix—one that has been steadily adding links to the chain of financial enslavement, tightening its grip on our autonomy for decades.

In this article, I will define what a Central Bank Digital Currency is by exploring its major categories. I’ll demonstrate that the US already operates with a form of CBDC, albeit without the flashy labels. I will also show that the Federal Reserve (the Fed) can introduce more dystopian elements into this system—such as programming restrictions on when, how, and where you can spend your money without requiring Congressional approval.

However, the fear of central bank control over your transactions is, in fact, a red herring. The real threat lies with our government, which has already perfected the art of surveillance. Adding programmability is just the next logical step. Ultimately, both Republicans and Democrats are steering us toward the same destination: total digital control. They may use different words and different propaganda, but their goals converge. While we can’t simply vote out of this predicament, we can opt out entirely.

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GOP Congressman Will Attempt To Remove Marijuana Banking Protections From Spending Bill Due To ‘Overwhelming’ Concerns

A GOP congressman says he’s “overwhelmingly concerned” with a provision of a spending bill that would provide limited protections for banks that work with state-legal marijuana businesses, and he’s threatening to file an amendment to strip the language as the underlying measure advances.

During a markup of the Fiscal Year 2025 Financial Services and General Government (FSGG) appropriations measure on Wednesday, Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC) spoke out against the cannabis banking section, which subcommittee chairman Rep. Dave Joyce (R-OH) secured in the base bill.

“I understand it’s not in order to propose amendments at this level, but I certainly intend to raise that issue at the appropriate time,” Edwards said, signaling that he will propose an amendment to remove the section in the full committee or on the floor.

He said that the proposal is not germane to an appropriations bill because, he argues, it is “an affirmative authorization disguised as a limitation” on the spending of funds. But his primary contention is with the policy substance of the measure, which would prevent federal regulators covered under the FSGG bill from using their funding to penalize financial institutions that service state cannabis businesses.

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BIDENOMICS: $517 Billion in Unrealized Losses Cripple US Banking System, 63 Lenders Teeter on the Brink of Insolvency, FDIC Reports

A ticking time bomb.

In another stark example of the economic mismanagement under the Biden regime, a new report from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) reveals a staggering $517 billion in unrealized losses within the US banking system, The Daily Hodl first reported.

This alarming figure, largely due to exposure to the residential real estate market, is a clear indication of the damaging effects of Biden’s failed policies.

The FDIC’s Quarterly Banking Profile report paints a grim picture of the current state of our nation’s financial institutions. Banks are now burdened with more than half a trillion dollars in paper losses on their balance sheets.

Although banks can hold securities until they mature without marking them to market on their balance sheets, these unrealized losses can become an extreme liability when banks need liquidity, per the Daily Hodl.

According to Investopedia, an unrealized loss is a “paper” loss that results from holding an asset that has decreased in price, but not yet selling it and realizing the loss. These losses become “realized” only when the asset is sold at a price lower than its original purchase price.

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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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