Dear Friends,
It seems to me, when Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are rolled out as everyday currency, the demand for silver and gold to transact will go nuclear. CBDCs will enable central planners the granularity they need to run the economy from the top… down. Prior to the invention of Bitcoin, (leading to CBDCs) the experts had failed in every attempt at the centrally planned economy, with disastrous consequences. They all collapsed, despite the power, will and inhumanity of the rulers. With CBDCs, the experts will be able to reach into your life and force you to buy or sell, when it is convenient to the central planners, not you. Not only when you spend your money but what you buy is in their view and control. Today’s would be despots see CBDCs as the answer to the socialist dilemma.
A digital currency is similar to your credit card. Instead of carrying cash, you will pay for everything, and be paid, in a digital dollar. The log of every transaction kept for eternity as is done with Bitcoin. The powers in charge will have the ability to see what you are spending your money on, what you have spent your money on and by association, predict what you will spend your money on. With algorithms running on super computers, they think they will be able to manipulate your spending to fit into their central economic plans, like a cog in a sprocket. The elite are counting on the convenience to bring us all onboard. Because, with a chip in our wrist that can be read as we walk out of a store, the contents of our packages read as well and our account debited accordingly, is pretty convenient.
Convenience is good and all, but the elite are not going to count on it. First they will suggest CBDCs, then they will push us, finally, those who refuse to go along will be shoved into it. People like the Amish will be forced by law, to violate their deeply held religious tenets, or go to jail. Criminals, privacy zealots and traditionalists will also resist CBDCs. Initially, they will be voluntary, until the bugs are worked out, then mandatory, to make the economy more efficient. I suspect, as in Nazi Germany, efficiency will be the watchword. The transition might go smooth but it will probably experience hiccups. Power outages that make transacting impossible, so some people may go hungry, cold, or die, which would create resistance, that the elite will have to solve with brute force.
The central planners see CBDCs as the panacea to petty crime and political wrongthink. How can you buy crack with a CBDC? If the transaction is logged, and you know it will be, the police then have probable cause (as if they need that anymore) to search your home. How hard would it be to get a judge to issue a blanket warrant, to search your premises, if there was a transaction for anything illegal in your CBDC record? Even something that was legal in the past? We would be naked before an all powerful government, while that government would be clad in the purple velvet robes of unlimited, omnipotent and unaccountable power. Dissidents can be shut out of the system at the push of a button. Wrongthinkers can be banned from buying or selling… by the arbitrary whim of the central planners.
Such a totalitarian economic system will be resisted. No sane person submits themselves, in mind, body and spirit, to people who despise them. That would be stupid writ large. Yet here we are. The US Federal Reserve has already implemented CBDCs to clear international settlements, as a test bed. Soon CBDCs will replace Federal Reserve Notes. When that happens something else will have to take the place of physical currency. I believe that will be silver and gold. Until the central planners send the red guard, house to house, to round it all up, trade in silver and gold as currency, again, will become the default way around the Beast system. So I suggest picking up a hundred bucks worth of silver bullion and keeping it stashed. Because soon, we may not be able to buy or sell without a CBDC… or bullion.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
