In a recent speech by Governor Lael Brainard called The Future of Retail Payments in the United States, she was able to combine the covid narrative with the payment system the Fed launched a year ago, noting:
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the urgency and importance of delivering a resilient instant payment system that is accessible to all Americans.
It’s called the FedNow Service, the “instant payment” service which promises to deliver money from the powers that be to whomever they choose instantaneously. She praised the success thus far, explaining:
The Federal Reserve, acting as Fiscal Agent for the U.S. Department of the Treasury, processed most of the CARES Act payments to households using direct deposit, prepaid debit cards, and checks, which can take several days between the time the funds are sent and the time recipients get access to their funds.
In addition to FedNow, there exists an ongoing dedication to developing central bank digital currencies (CBDC). As explained by Governor Lael Brainard in the speech An Update on Digital Currencies, saying:
Given the dollar’s important role, it is essential that the Federal Reserve remain on the frontier of research and policy development regarding CBDCs. As part of this research, central banks are exploring the potential of innovative technologies to offer a digital equivalent of cash.
The speech is vague and offers no details as to what these “cash equivalents” refer to. She doesn’t mention what exactly they are working on, but does mention various stakeholders such as financial institutions and fintech firms. At this time, we are unsure whether they are simply using the latest technology to streamline the payment process or if they will eventually create an actual digital currency that will, in effect, increase the money supply.
Whatever it is, we can bet it will not be good, considering they are:
exploring the use of innovative technologies to enhance payments efficiency, expand financial inclusion, speed up settlement flows, and reduce end-user costs.
Given that we’ve seen a war on cash under covid, including cash being vilified due to health concerns or a shortage of coins, coupled with the nebulous ideas of the Fed, which promises to explore technology solutions for our benefit, it’s important that we say something not previously said: this will end in a cashless society. Naturally no one in the Fed will outright say that this is the end goal, but we can be confident that it is their intent. In a cashless society, the government and central planners get more control and surveillance over those they have sworn to protect, with the added bonus of never being able to reverse course once implemented.
The planners see little downside to going cashless, because they get the control they want. But the people have everything to lose, namely our liberty and freedom, which is something the Fed doesn’t seem to care to research. Besides negative interest rates, bank depositor bail-ins, the ability to track payments, taxes, fines, penalties, and other levies imposed by the state, capital controls, power outages, or the ability to be hacked, what could possibly go wrong in a cashless society?
