Economist Richard Werner: The central planners want to increase their power over our lives | SettingBrushFires
Summary
Transcript
We have these central planners creating crises intentionally, which initially, I mean, you, you just, you know, don’t want to believe it. It’s hard to believe. But of course, once you, you’re over that. But by, you know, looking at the evidence and, and again and again in almost every country, you get examples for that. That’s now the sort of background. Now with this background, that’s when we should discuss CBDC.
So the central planners are now coming out and they dare to say, hey, give us more power. We want even more powers. Now. In my book, new paradigm in Macroeconomics 2005, I warned of the recurring banking crises and also the fact that after each banking crisis and economic crisis, we’re giving the central planners more power. Because they will argue, oh, it’s because things got wrong. Obviously, we were trying to do the opposite.
We’re trying to have stable growth, stable prices, stable currency, stable everything. It just didn’t quite work out. We didn’t have enough powers. Central bank digital currencies, I mean, it’s a misnomer, really. They’re trying to confuse people with a CBDC acronym already suggesting and then saying, it’s the digital aspect that’s new. We’ve been using BDC for decades, bank digital currency. And the digital aspect is nothing new. Been using that and works okay.
It’s not usually the biggest problem we have in finance and banking is the transactions. So we’ve been using BDCs. So what is new? The c, the centralization aspect. It’s the umpire, the referee, saying, I want to join the game because CBDCs is having an account at the central bank. It’s ripping up the 300 plus years implicit agreement that’s existed between banks and the central bank. That central banks are the banks of the banks and the public deals with the banks, but not the central bank.
It’s a two sort of layer financial system. But now the central banks are saying, the central planners, well, we want to have direct access to the public, which means they’re going to compete against the banks. Now, what do you think when the umpire decides to join the game? I mean, is that a fair game? The Federal Reserve has killed almost 10,000 banks in the last 35 years. That’s what they’re doing.
They’re consolidating the system. So let’s look at the extreme case we’re going to get when we introduce cbdcs ultimately will drive banks out of business because you then just need the next banking cris, which is very easy to arrange for the central planners. They’ve been very good at that. And then of course, oh well, there is CBDC. Now the banks will a bit in crisis. What are you going to do? Everyone shifts their money to the central banks banking system.
Switch off the lights, pull the plug, it’s gone. Now cbdcs are programmable. So let’s talk about that. Yes. What are your objections to cbdcs and what could be object to this? How could you do a CBDC that would be less dangerous to the freedom of the public? Well, by not doing a CBDC, that’s how you do it. You see the attraction for the central planners of central bank digital currency is the programmability.
And of course they’re all looking into the programmability. Several have made statements like, oh, we won’t use that. Okay, maybe in the first generation they won’t use it, but there’s a new central bank governor and whatever, and suddenly they are using mean. The fact is they are working very hard on this. In Brazil they had this pilot CBDC and there is a blockchain programmer who checked out the code and could prove that it already has all the tools in it to freeze your money and to confiscate it, transfer it away without your permission.
It’s already in the code. In fact, they’re now even moving beyond CBDC. In June this year. The BIS, which is very advanced in its plans for CBDC, is also to be used for inter central bank transactions and so on. They made the announcement that, well, we need to accelerate tokenization of everything. Now in principle, if you like blockchain and the tools, that sounds good. But think about it, it’s the wrong guys doing it, isn’t it? The central bank of the central bankers and why do they want to tokenize everything? And in the same announcement they talk about the programmability and general assets, all assets, bank deposits should also be tokenized because, well then at the press of the button the programmability feature can be used and oh well, you’ve obviously just ignored all their rules on carbon footprints and you’ve been eating too much beef or whatever it may be.
Whatever it may be. So your assets have to be transferred, not just your CBDC. They’re already starting to talk about going beyond CBDC and linking it. But can’t you do a CBDC that’s not programmable? Well, even if you can’t, then you don’t need a CBDC. The whole point is the programmable and it’s very official. The bank of England has formally, officially, publicly asked the UK government for the legal permission to make it programmable.
Now, in many countries, central banks are still privately know, and historically, it’s been created by the big banking dynasties. It’s a banking cartel that doesn’t like small banks. But that’s exactly what we need to do. We need to work in the opposite direction. So while the central planners want to increase their power over our lives, and it’s literally not just about total surveillance and monitoring where you are and what you’re spending your money on, it is about this programmability intervention.
And if you don’t follow the rules or you’ve stepped outside the 15 minutes walking distance area, well, your money is not going to work. So if they manage to introduce cbdcs, if it is inevitable, as some say, how will it end in 1020, 50 or 100 years? It is a completely dystopian scenario and certainly in much shorter time than a century. Absolutely. I mean, just within a decade, I would say.
And so we should stop it in the tracks. That’s a very important point. It’s so dire that we should not even allow pilot projects. We should have demonstrations outside central banks against this. They don’t expect this, by the way. And central bankers, unlike politicians, they don’t have any thick skin. And so I really want to encourage you to think about what can we do to safeguard our financial and economic, and therefore essentially general freedom to stop this.
Because I noticed, and I was told by one central banker who’d seen the CBDC, been shown it by one of the major old central banks, they were ready to roll it out in 2016, but they didn’t. But he was shown it, and it was very small. It was a little sort of like a grain of rice to be implanted subcutaneously under your skin. And they never talk about that.
What is it going to look like? Right? And I was quite shocked by the fact that the realization, wow, it’s ready, they can roll it out anytime. So I started to speak up in 2016 in my conference presentations and some written articles and so on. And it seems that they then delayed because they realized there is a bit of a hurdle, particularly with the implant thing, because it is a violation of human dignity, no doubt.
So they’ve delayed. Now, next, they introduced this Covid Psyop. Now, I know this is another controversial topic. I’m from a medical family. To me, it’s a fairly clear cut, but we don’t need to go into details. The fact is we had this Covid rollout, and then in March 2020, they introduced this timed of course with the lockdowns. So there is a direct link to Covid measures. And central banks came out, including the bank of England in March 2020 talking about, oh, we must accelerate the introduction of cbdcs, public event, public discussion paper and all that.
And of course, the idea then was very clearly, with hindsight that’s visible. They wanted to launch the digital id, which is a precondition for a properly working CBDC the way they want to introduce it. What we’ve seen is they delayed, they sort of ran this different operation thinking, okay, that will accelerate it ultimately, but it’s done the opposite. What I’ve experienced is when I spoke about cbdcs and the dangers of cbdcs in 2016, 1718, very few people were even interested.
Very few people cared. Some saw the point and realized, okay, but that’s in some distant future now. At conferences, everyone is really interested and they really literally woke up. I mean, I know so many doctors and people in the medical field now who understand that it’s actually about financial control and everyone is now interested in cbcs. They made a strategic mistake, and that makes me optimistic. We have already succeeded in delaying it.
They made mistakes. And I think if we are now active enough, we can prevent it. It’s possible. .
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