Federal Reserve Chief Kashkari Trashes Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC)
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Another state has taken action hoping to hinder the implementation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) in the United States.
Last week, Alabama Governor Kay Ivey signed a bill into law that pushes back against CBDC in a small way that could place some roadblocks in the path toward implementing a digital dollar.
Sen. Dan Roberts sponsored SB330. The new law prohibits government agencies in Alabama from accepting a CBDC as payment and bars the state from participating in any testing of a CBDC by the Federal Reserve.
The bill defines a CBDC as, “A digital currency, a digital medium of exchange, or a digital monetary unit of account issued by the United States Federal Reserve System or a federal agency which is made directly available to a consumer by such entities.”
The Senate passed SB330 by a 32-0 vote. The House approved the measure by a 103-0 vote. With Gov Ivey’s signature on July 16, the law will go into effect Sept. 1.
IN PRACTICE
In the spirit of James Madison’s blueprint in Federalist #46, the enactment of SB330 creates “impediments” to the implementation of a CBDC in Alabama. Madison said “a refusal to cooperate with officers of the union” along with “the embarrassments created by legislative devices,” would “oppose, in any State, difficulties not to be despised.”
Other states have also taken steps to block the use of CBDCs. Florida and Indiana recently enacted laws that ban the use of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as money in those states.
How such legislation will play out in practice against a CBDC, should the federal government attempt to implement one, is unknown.
Opponents of the legislation generally take the position that states can’t do anything to stop a CBDC, since – according to their view – under the supremacy clause “any federal law on this point will automatically override state law.”
We’ve heard this song and dance on other issues before.
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A poll from the Cato Institute indicates that, while about half of Americans do not have an opinion regarding whether the Federal Reserve should “begin offering a government-issued digital currency, called a ‘central bank digital currency’ (CBDC),” among those with an opinion on the matter over twice as many — 34 percent of poll participants — oppose the prospect as support it — 16 percent.
This result of the poll conducted from February 27 through March 8 in collaboration with YouGov is promising for Americans concerned about the threat a CBDC, which the Federal Reserve and big financial companies have been testing in preparation for its potential introduction, poses to freedom and privacy in America.
The poll results further indicate that, if Americans can be educated about the abusive government powers a CBDC can advance, many Americans currently undecided regarding the introduction of a CBDC will see good reason to oppose it. Emily Ekins and Jordan Gygi wrote in their May 31 in-depth Cato Institute article concerning the poll results:
Overwhelming majorities would oppose the adoption of a CBDC if it meant that the government could control what people spend their money on (74%), that the government could monitor their spending (68%), that a CBDC would abolish all U.S. cash (68%), that a CBDC would attract cyberattacks (65%), that the government could charge a tax on those who don’t spend money during recessions (64%), or that the government could freeze the digital bank accounts of political protesters (59%). Americans were marginally opposed (52%) if a CBDC could cause some people to stop using private banks, resulting in some banks going out of business.
The candidates now in second place in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries — Ron DeSantis and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — appear to be in the anti-CBDC camp. Hopefully, we will see more and more politicians joining them over the coming months in standing up against this threat posed by the Federal Reserve and US government.
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Link for video: https://www.bitchute.com/video/XhqFXRWt9Qtj/
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President Joe Biden issued an executive order last year calling for “the highest urgency on research and development efforts” of a U.S. central bank digital currency, but in a hearing on Wednesday Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said it still could take years.
Speaking before the House Financial Services Committee, Powell said that the Fed and the recently formed Treasury Department interagency working group have not made a decision on whether a CBDC, or digital dollar, is something that the financial system and U.S. citizens want or need.
“We’re not at the stage of making any real decisions,” he said. “What we’re doing is experimenting in kind of early stage experimentation. How would this work? Does it work? What’s the best technology? What’s the most efficient?”
Worldwide, 11 countries, including China, have implemented their own CBDCs, and 114 countries are considering their own, according to data from The Atlantic Council, a U.S.-based think tank.
Although the creation of any CBDC meant for the broader public would require the authorization of Congress, Powell said a “wholesale” digital currency meant exclusively for use between banks and the Fed would not require approval.
The Fed chairman contrasted the timeline of creating a CBDC with the launch of FedNow, a central bank-developed service that would facilitate instant payments between banks and their customers, and is set to be released by the end of the year.
“We’ll have real-time payments in this country very, very soon,” Powell said.
But stablecoins and a digital dollar would serve a different purpose than the FedNow service—and a different purpose still than other cryptocurrencies not backed by liquid reserves, which Powell said he “never understood the valuation of.”
Decrypt: https://decrypt.co/122997/fed-chair-digital-dollar-send-bitcoin-to-zero
These bills are important steps toward nullifying the unconstitutional Federal Reserve, which has a monopoly on money, and will help Texas avoid the federal government’s plans to impose Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC).
Other states that recognize silver and gold as legal tender: https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/586344543/silver-world-trends-highlights-3-u-s-states-where-gold-and-silver-is-legal-tender
Financial commentator Gregory Mannerino said that US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen is about to tell Congress that the banking system is sound, yet the Federal Reserve is propping it up with $2 trillion. As a result of bailouts, inflation will surge.
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Mannerino said that liquidity is drying up and is the excuse for new bailouts. People have lost confidence and are pulling their money out of regional banks and depositing it with the large “too big to fail” Wall Street banks. He predicted that small regional banks that got “loans” from the Federal Reserve are failing in order to go up for sale and to be absorbed into the bigger banks at fire sale prices.He said that the Wall Street banks will stocks will rise.
He says that this has been planned in order to consolidate power. He blamed the Federal Reserve for raising rates to crush the economy and kill the consumer. The old system must be destroyed in order to introduce the new system. He said that the Federal Reserve has a stranglehold on the world and is the enemy.
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Jordan Schachtel: https://currentthing.substack.com/p/where-is-the-2-trillion-dollars-in
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) officials recently discussed how to deal with the next approaching market collapse and hide alarming data from depositors to prevent bank runs, video of a meeting shows.
The FDIC’s Systemic Resolution Advisory Committee (SRAC) held a meeting in November to discuss how the next market crash would occur and what steps would need to be taken to ensure not everybody tries pulling their money out of the financial system at the same time.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1608294141812785152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1608294141812785152%7Ctwgr%5Ede71bb346c3d5f859c04a0044215d9b4c37d8c95%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newswars.com%2Fmust-watch-fdic-bankers-discuss-bail-ins-to-deal-with-impending-market-collapse%2F
“You’ve got to think of the unintended consequences of taking a public that has more full faith and confidence in the banking system than maybe the people in this room do,” one FDIC member noted.
“We want them to have the full faith and confidence in the banking system. They know FDIC insurance is there. They know what works. They put their money in, they’re going to get their money out.”
He claimed that although institutions will soon be able to figure out the dire implications of what’s being discussed at the meeting, the general public should not, because that would lead to “unintended consequences.”
“I would be careful about the unintended consequences of starting to blast too much of this out in the general public,” he said.
In a fitting description of fractional reserve banking, another SRAC member lamented that although institutions don’t want to see a “huge run” on their deposits, they likely will soon, which will bring about the need to impose bail-ins.
“People need to understand they can get bailed in, but you don’t want a huge run on the institutions. But there are going to be. And it could be an early warning signal to the FDIC and primary regulators when these things happen,” he said.
https://twitter.com/WallStreetSilv/status/1608510850700017667?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1608510850700017667%7Ctwgr%5Ede71bb346c3d5f859c04a0044215d9b4c37d8c95%7Ctwcon%5Es1_c10&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newswars.com%2Fmust-watch-fdic-bankers-discuss-bail-ins-to-deal-with-impending-market-collapse%2F
Sam Bankman-Fried admitted that he used his virtuous stances as a front to win the game. He said: “Ya, hehe. I had to be, it’s what reputations are made of, to some extent. I feel bad for those who get f***ed by it. By this dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths [sic] so everyone likes us.” When asked if his “ethics stuff” was “mostly a front,” SBF replied, “Yeah. I mean that’s not all of it but it’s a lot.”
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York and major banks will launch a three-month test of a digital dollar in hopes of studying its feasibility.
The initiative was announced by the regional Federal Reserve bank and nearly a dozen financial institutions on Tuesday. A news release referred to the experiment as a “proof-of-concept project” in which the banks will work with the Fed’s New York Innovation Center to simulate digital money representing the deposits of their own customers and settle them through simulated Fed reserves on a distributed ledger.
“The [project] will also test the feasibility of a programmable digital money design that is potentially extensible to other digital assets, as well as the viability of the proposed system within existing laws and regulations,” according to the news release.
The news comes as cryptocurrency and blockchain technology have exploded to prominence in the mainstream financial world. While the flagship cryptocurrency bitcoin peaked a year ago and has since been in precipitous decline, the technology behind such tokens has attracted interest from not only private financial institutions but also central banks across the globe.
In January, the Fed took a first step toward weighing the use of a central bank digital currency when it released its much-anticipated discussion paper and opened a four-month public comment period to receive input.
The paper said that a CBDC could streamline cross-border payments and could further enshrine and preserve the dominance of the dollar’s international role, including as the world’s reserve currency.
The Blaze: https://www.theblaze.com/news/ftx-sam-bankman-fried-woke-esg
The Federal Reserve has taken a major step in the direction of facilitating an ESG compliant monetary network that effectively acts as a parallel system to that of the Chinese Communist Party’s infamous social credit scoring system.
The Fed said in a statement Thursday:
“Six of the nation’s largest banks will participate in a pilot climate scenario analysis exercise designed to enhance the ability of supervisors and firms to measure and manage climate-related financial risks. Scenario analysis—in which the resilience of financial institutions is assessed under different hypothetical climate scenarios—is an emerging tool to assess climate-related financial risks, and there will be no capital or supervisory implications from the pilot.”
In other words, The Fed is working with the big banks to monitor their ability to comply with the ruling class’s preferred enviro statist technocratic tyranny.
The unaccountable people behind the American money printer claim that this exercise is “exploratory in nature and does not have capital consequences.”
The statement adds that the “scenario analysis can assist firms and supervisors in understanding how climate-related financial risks may manifest and differ from historical experience.”
What exactly does this mean?
The Fed is clearly leaning in to the climate hoax narrative, or the pseudoscientific idea that humans are catastrophically impacting the climate, but not because they somehow care about the environment. The climate narrative is the chief rhetorical facilitator for the ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) movement.
ESG acts as a trojan horse for the continuing centralization of the American financial system. ESG finance, popularized by hyper political asset management behemoths like BlackRock and Vanguard, acts to prevent outsiders from challenging the regime-connected insiders on Wall Street and in Washington, under the guise of acting to manifest a healthier planet. In other words, pro-ESG institutions are committed to attacking free market principles by means of deception, preferring the CCP-style “stakeholder capitalism” that allows for a small group of technocratic elites to make broad determinations about society.
Washington Examiner: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/economy/six-banks-fed-climate-risk-pilot
Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve turned to its most potent weapon — raising interest rates — to combat soaring inflation. But with consumer prices having only accelerated since then, the central bank boosted rates by 0.75 percentage point on Wednesday — its largest hike since 1994 — to try to tame the nation’s fiercest bout with inflation in 40 years.
The rate hike follows the announcements of a 0.25 percentage point hike in March and a 0.5 percentage point move in May — with the latter marking the sharpest increase since 2000.
The Fed had earlier been expected to boost rates by a more modest 0.5 percentage point, but the bank opted for a larger hike after the Consumer Price Index, a broad basket of goods and services used to track inflation, surged 8.6% in May, from an 8.3% annual rate in April. Gasoline prices have continued to hit new highs almost daily amid depleted domestic production and Russia’s war in Ukraine, while food and housing costs are also surging.
The idea behind the Fed’s rate hike is to make it costlier to borrow money, which in theory should tamp demand for purchases that require borrowing, like home buying or buying items with credit cards. With the latest rate increase, consumers and businesses should brace themselves for a hit to their wallet, experts say.
“The cost of borrowing is becoming more expensive, particularly for those with variable rate products,” said Mark Hamrick, senior economic analyst at Bankrate. “Fortunately, on the other side of the rate equation, returns on savings will likely be improving, particularly for those who investigate more generous high-yield savings options.”
By year-end, the federal funds rate — the rate that determines borrowing between banks — could be almost twice as high as its pre-pandemic level of about 2%, according to forecasts.
“It was just a few weeks ago that investors were forecasting the funds rate to be ~2.58% at the end of this year, but that number is now more than 100 [basis points] higher at 3.7%,” analyst Adam Crisafulli of Vital Knowledge told clients in a research note. “And the ‘terminal’ funds rate (the level at which the Fed will stop hiking this cycle) is now seen north of 4%.”
Here’s what the Fed jacking up interest rates could mean for your wallet.
Every 0.25 percentage point increase in the Fed’s benchmark interest rate translates to an extra $25 a year in interest on $10,000 in debt. So Wednesday’s 0.75 percentage point increase means an extra $75 of interest for every $10,000 in debt.
Economists expect the Fed will continue to raise rates throughout the year as it battles inflation. Some analysts now forecast the central bank will announce another 0.75 percentage point increase in July, followed by two 0.5 percentage point hikes in September and November.
By early 2023, the federal funds rate could be 3.75% to 4%, according to TD Macro. That implies a rate increase of at least 2.75 percentage points higher than the current federal funds rate of 1%. For consumers, that means they could pay an additional $275 in interest for every $10,000 in debt.
The stock market has slumped this year amid various headwinds, including the impact of high inflation and the Fed’s monetary tightening. But a bigger-than-expected interest rate increase on Wednesday “could be welcomed by stocks,” Crisafulli said before the rate hike was announced.
“It would represent a powerful signal by [Fed Chair Jerome Powell], help the Fed recapture control of the policy narrative and clamp down on the massive change in tightening forecasts,” he noted.
The S&P 500 rose 15 points, or 0.4%, to 3,750 on Wednesday.
Credit card debt will become more expensive, with higher APRs hitting borrowers within one or two billing cycles after the Fed’s announcement, according to LendingTree credit expert Matt Schulz. For instance, after the Fed’s March hike, interest rates for credit cards increased for three-quarters of the 200 cards that Schulz reviews every month.
Consumers with balances may want to consider a 0% balance transfer credit card or a low-interest personal loan, Schulz said. Consumers can also ask their credit card companies for a lower rate, which research has shown is frequently successful.
Credit with adjustable rates may also see an impact, including home equity lines of credit and adjustable-rate mortgages, which are based on the prime rate.
Mortgage rates have already surged in response to the Fed’s rate increases this year. The average 30-year mortgage stood at 5.23% on June 9, according to Freddie Mac. That’s up from 2.96% a year earlier.
That is adding thousands to the annual cost of buying a property. For instance, a purchaser buying a $250,000 home with a 30-year fixed loan would pay about $3,600 more per year compared with what they would have paid a year earlier.
The Fed’s newest rate hike might already be baked into current mortgage rates, said Jacob Channel, senior economic analyst for LendingTree, in an email.
“The Fed’s rate hike may not mean that mortgage rates are going to significantly increase,” he noted.
The housing market reflects one part of the economy where the Fed’s rate increases are slowing demand. Channel added: “These high rates have significantly dampened borrower desire to refinance current loans, and they’re also showing signs of reducing demand for purchase mortgages as well.”
The rise of nationalism and immigration restrictions are to blame for inflation, not the Federal Reserve printing trillions of dollars, according to BlackRock CEO Larry Fink.
Fink, who manages some $10 trillion in assets, told Bloomberg earlier this month that he believes inflation is “not Fed related.”
driving up home prices though buying up single family homes and turning them into rentals.
Fink has also been at the forefront of the “Woke Capital” movement by using the trillions he manages as a cudgel to force public companies to advance globo-homo policies.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin partnered with Fink during the covid economic meltdown to “rescue” key businesses with political clout.
As markets were falling, “America’s top economic officials were in near-constant contact with a Wall Street executive whose firm stood to benefit financially from the rescue,” the New York Times reported last year.