Below is a short interview of Catherine Austin Fitts on Tucker’s late show, in which they discuss the threat to freedom posed by a central bank digital currency. As I argued at some length here, a CBDC is one of the things the Hive is pushing.
A CBDC is a very plausible way of enforcing the system of economic control described in Revelation 13, and it is not just Seventh-day Adventists who recognize that. Rod Dreher wrote, in the context of a discussion about CBDCs:
“This is happening, right now. I remember when I was a kid, reading a Christian End Times book, and wondering how they could ever come up with a system in which you could not buy or sell unless you had the ‘mark of the Beast’ — meaning, symbolically, that you were a slave to a global system (in the Roman Empire, slaves had tattoos on their foreheads or hands, to mark them as property). Well, now I know. And so do you.”
Interestingly, Tucker does not understand the issue; based upon his rushed introduction, he thinks the CBDCs will be implemented because of a shortage of ATM machines, rather than as a deliberate policy of the ruling elites. I think one of his many young staffers/producers/researchers understood the full implications of CBDCs and prevailed upon Tucker to do this segment, overcoming Tucker’s reservations.
Transcript:
Tucker: Take away cash and make everything digital and digital currency, a central bank digital currency, and obviously you have no power whatsoever. If they don’t like what you’re doing, they just shut you down, and you’re impoverished.
It just happened in Canada last winter, so we know what the consequences are, and we know why they want it. That couldn’t happen, right? Well, we may live to see the day that it does happen, and here’s the latest sign that it may be happening. The number banks and ATM machines in this country are in steep decline, far fewer than there were just a few years ago, and in some countries, like Australia, they are going away at high speed.
This is not something that anyone voted on, this is something that they’re just doing, whether you like it or not. You can say we have cash, but if you can’t get cash then do you really have cash? So where is this going? That’s the question we want to assess tonight.
And we’re going to with Catherine Austin Fitts, who has been monitoring this. She founded the Solari Report, and she was also assistant secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and we’re happy to have her.
Catherine, thanks for coming on. So, I think if you put this up to a vote nationally, most people would say, “No. I may not use cash, but I’d like to have [the option to have] cash, because if there is no cash, I have no control over my life.” But it seems like this might be a way to effect the same outcome without a vote.
Fitts: So, Tucker, one of the bedrocks of freedom is freedom to do financial transactions, including privately, or freedom to do [financial transactions] whenever or wherever you want to do them. And unfortunately, as the financial system has become more and more digital, you see more and more not only invasive surveillance but more and more controls.
You referred to Canada, perfect example! And the reality, as the financial system gets more controlling and more invasive, it's a little bit like bringing up a corral around us, and CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies) and vaccine passports or digital IDs are sort of the last shutting of the gate.
It is hard for many people to imagine the risks here because we're so used to living with financial transaction freedom. And we don’t understand that when this gate closes on us, we will be sitting in a system where the central banks believe that our assets belong to them, and they can dictate where we can spend money, and what we can spend money on.
The important thing to understand is that central bank digital currencies [CBDCs] are not currencies. It is a financial transaction control grid, and it gives the ability for the central bankers—and they’ve said this publicly—the ability to not only se the rules centrally, but enforce the rules centrally. If you don’t behave, you can have your money turned off.
Tucker: You know, you keep hearing people on television say, “cash is for criminals. Why would you need cash if you’re not doing something bad?” Why are so few financial journalists pointing out that if cash goes away, so does any power you might have had over your own life.”
Fitts: Well, I find a lot more journalists are beginning to understand, and are beginning to not only write about this and talk about this, but do documentaries. We just had a new documentary done here out of the Netherlands called “State of Control,” which does a great job of explaining the invasive nature of this control grid.
I think it is very hard for people who've grown up and enjoyed Western liberty, and human liberty, to imagine literally that we're going into a system where literally our homes, our cars, our communities become digital concentration camps. So if you’ve enjoyed liberty, it is very hard to perceive this iceberg before you hit it.
That’s why it is so important—and I commend you for talking about CBDCs, because we need to not let the propaganda persuade us that, 1) this is convenient, or 2) that we need this, and 3) we need to understand not only the dangers of CBDCs but the opportunities if we start to reverse financial tyranny.
We’ve seen the financial system engineered using the federal credit to increase inequality and centralize political and economic control. And its shrinking our wealth and its shrinking our economy. You know we have debt growing and central control growing much faster than the GDP. That can be reversed. So the opportunity of rejecting financial tyranny and rejecting financial transaction control is so important.
And all over the United States there are state legislatures working on legislation and passing legislation to protect our right to use cash, increasingly talking about state bullion depositories, state sovereign banks. There are many people doing this, and if you look at what they’re doing, when it succeeds, it can really reinvigorate our economy. So don’t forget . . .
Tucker: Well people need to know . . . I think when people understand [the issue], that’s the first step.
Monica Crowley is also very much on top of this issue; below is a very good segment where she explains just how dangerous CBDCs are:
Sean Duffy: Alright for more on this let’s bring in Monica Crowley . . . host of the amazing podcast, the Monica Crowley podcast. Monica, good to see you, so I think we share the same vibe on the digital currency. What’s your take?
Monica Crowley: It’s hard to overstate how dangerous a path this is.
When President Biden came into office, he ordered the Treasury, then under Secretary Yellen, to begin a pilot program to study how this would affect the U.S. economy, and the average American. We’re not alone. Most Western governments also have these pilot programs, so there is a massive move toward a central bank digital currency in all these countries.
The bottom line here is not ease or convenience, that’s how they’re going to sell it, right? But the ultimate objective is to move us to a cashless society. So you will no longer have that hard asset of a twenty dollar bill or ten dollar bill. Your money will essentially be software. It will be a number in a program that the Fed, the Treasury, your political opponents will all have access to.
They eventually want to get rid of most banks. Now, the big ones are too big to fail. But in the end, the ultimate objective is to essentially wipe all the banks out, so that your bank will be the Federal Reserve. Everything will be centralized.
And again, this is not really about the money, although of course it is. This is about power and control, because the government, such as it is, will have access to all the information related to every single transaction you make. You buy a stick of gum, the government will know. You buy a new car, the government will know. Oh, you bought the wrong car, you didn’t buy an EV? Now, you’re going to get penalized.
So in the end, Sean, this is really a move toward a CCP-style social credit system, and they’re using this move to a central bank digital currency as the biggest lever to try to get us there.
Duffy: It’s important to note that other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are decentralized; this would be centralized by the government. Bitcoin is a technology for freedom; this is a technology for control.
I mentioned that I brought my prop, I’ve got a twenty-dollar bill. I can use this twenty-dollar bill for whatever I choose, for meat, for guns, even for illicit purposes. But when the government controls the dollar, they can control . . . whether you can buy a firearm, how much gas you can buy, how much electricity you can buy, can you buy meat, or do you have to buy bug-based “meat.” They can control anything that you purchase with a digital dollar, and whether you can purchase anything.
Crowley: Well, that’s also the point, too, because if you overstep your monthly carbon footprint, or if you say something that the government doesn’t like—you engage in “wrongthink”—they’ll be able to turn off your access to your own money. So you will not be able to buy or sell anything.
Duffy: You’re shut out of the economy.
Crowley: You are shut out of the economy, and of course its all subjective, and it will all be in the hands of these Marxists, right? And so you and I won’t be able to buy anything. This is why this is so dangerous, because this spells the end of your economic freedom.
And I’m not sure the American people are really paying close attention to it. I’m glad senator Cruz and some others, Governor DeSantis, they’re paying attention to it. But this is moving very fast down the track, and we need more leaders on the Republican side to stand up, and even responsible Democrats to say, “look, this is not the path for the United States of America, because if we continue to go down the path, you’re going to lose all of your economic freedom, and economic power will be centralized in the hands of the very, very few.”
Duffy: And I think there’s a lot of talk about attacks on freedom, attacks on democracy, and you look at all those things. Do you think that is one of the greatest threats we face is the country, is the digitization of the dollar by the Fed?
Crowley: Yes. 100%. And it is moving along a parallel track with the de-dollarization movement, where you have countries now that are dumping the dollar. It’s moving pretty fast. All Saudi Arabia has to do is [dump the petro-dollar] say, “You know what? We’re going to start trading oil in different currencies, rather than the dollar” to have a complete global, and certainly American, economic collapse. In a way, they want to instigate that, Sean, because if we have a true economic implosion, they’ll ride in as the rescuers, with a central bank digital currency.
Duffy: And you were talking about that in the last segment. Listen, I’m frightened that we could lose the reserve status of the dollar--what that does to our economy. A thirty-two trillion dollar debt, on the way to 50 trillion dollars in the next ten years, and the Fed has a nine trillion dollar balance sheet. This is disastrous policy to think that the dollar is going to remain the reserve currency for much longer.
Crowley: Yeah, and if that goes away, we’re going to have the kind of economic implosion we have not seen since the Great Depression. What does that mean for you and me? It means astronomical inflation that makes today’s inflation look like child’s play. This will be Weimar Republic-kind of hyperinflation. And really the only solution to it is going back to the gold standard. Which would be difficult to do, but you’ve got to have a currency backed with a hard asset like gold, otherwise you’ve got this free-floating dollar and system that is not backed by anything real.
Duffy: What’s the price of gold? About $2,000 [per ounce].