Jim Rickards: Are You a Target? The Shocking Surveillance on Your Finances | Paradigm Press
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The FBI did exactly what we talked about. Without central bank digital currencies, without warrants, without subpoenas, central bank digital currencies are coming. CBDCs are coming, but they’re not waiting for it. They’re doing it right now. Will the government control our money through CBDCs, central bank digital currencies, or as our guest Jim Rickards calls them, Biden bucks. There’s some news that has come out from a government website about something happening underneath our noses.
It’s the same type of thing we were worried about with CBDCs rolling out across the country. Control from the government, the government looking into your purchases and possibly only looking at purchases that they didn’t like, or possibly using that information against citizens here. So we’re going to dive into it. Jim, this is a bombshell. Get everyone caught up and let us know what we need to know. What’s the latest with CBDCs and what’s happening with our finances here in so going back now, we’re talking a year and a half, but even longer.
In some of my books and other writings, we’ve warned people about central bank digital currencies. So what’s a central bank digital currency? Well, as it relates to the dollar, it’s still a dollar. It’s not a new currency, it’s still a dollar, but it’s completely digital form. You’d have no more cash. You got to get rid of cash. And the most important thing that we were warning about is that you have what’s called a ledger.
A ledger is just an accounting records like who owns what, who’s my depositor, who’s my customer, et cetera. And the banks keep ledgers with the central bank digital currency. The ledger would be maintained by the Federal Reserve or the treasury, not clear which, but maybe the Federal Reserve, but one or the other treasury or Federal Reserve would maintain a ledger of all transactions. Kind of like a blockchain in cryptocurrency world is like a cryptocurrency.
It would basically turn the dollar into a completely digitized form. The significance of that is the following. Right. Now use this example. Before I buy a candy bar at an airport, I use my credit card. I get the candy bar. The merchant has a payable from Mastercard. What do they do with it? Well, they sell it to a bundler called a merchant acquirer. They scoop up all these receivables from all the merchants everywhere of all different kinds.
They then bundle, they deliver them to Mastercard, Mastercard or Visa pays them, then Mastercard sends them to the banks that issue the credit cards. In my case, my credit card sends it to my bank, the bank pays them, and then the bank sends me a bill on my credit card, and I pay the bill. So you’ve got five people. You got the customer, the merchant, the merchant acquirer, Visa or Mastercard, and the bank in a transaction to buy one candy bar.
And you can make that more efficient. But the point is, all of those parties are private. The government is not in that chain I just described. And I have a bank, a big bank. Do they know I bought a candy bar or a book or made a charitable contribution or. Yeah, they know because I use my credit card. But the government doesn’t know. And in order for the government to find out, they’d have to issue a warrant, a search warrant or a subpoena, go through some judicial process to process the law under the fifth and 14th amendments to get that information.
And that would have to be run by a judge. And a judge would probably say no, because absent a crime of some sort, you can’t do it. But if the government has the ledger, which is what a central bank digital currency implies, they don’t have to go to the private sector. They’ve got that information now. They’re like, hey, it’s better, faster, cheaper, eliminate all these middlemen, et cetera.
Okay, that’s true. But there’s a cost, a big cost, which is that they can now use that ledger for government surveillance. So let’s say they want to profile you. They say, okay, did you buy maga hat, red hat, make America great again? Did you make a political contribution to Elise Stefanik, who’s like the number three Republican in the House? Did you buy religious goods? Did you buy a book, why I love Trump or why I love DeSantis or whatever? Did you travel to a rally? Did you make a charitable contribution to a charity that supports some of our constitutional rights? They could take all that information.
They would have it because they have the ledger. They could use artificial intelligence to profile you, and they could decide that you were what Biden calls an enemy of the people. And here, go back to the September 2022 Biden speech in Philadelphia in front of Independence hall, where I call it lighting and art direction by Lainey Rifenstall, who is a good friend of Adolf Hitler. She stayed. She produced the Nuremberg rallies in the 1930s for the nazi party.
They basically took her playbook, blood red, vertical lighting, military guards on either side, Biden at the podium. You put the camera low so you’re looking up at the fearless leader. I mean, I just looked at that and go, okay, they just took Lenny Ripenstell’s movie, trying for the will, and copied it, which they did. But Biden defined half the american people as enemies of the people. He did a MAGA profile and basically said, you’re enemies of the people.
Well, now, take that rationale, take that statement, take all the information I just described, use artificial intelligence, and you can profile people and run them down with FBI goon squads. Okay, so we warn people about that. We started two years ago. We were very intensively sounding this morning in 2022. We got a very good reaction from our readers like, yeah, we’d like to know more about this, et cetera.
Here’s the news, and here’s the headline you’re referring to, Matt, everything I just described has happened already without central bank digital currencies. It was just revealed through leaks or whistleblowers, but with documentation. And now the Republicans and House representatives are demanding more that the FBI did exactly what we talked about. Without central bank digital currencies, without warrants, without subpoenas. They basically wrote a letter to the big banks.
Now, we know bank of America, bank of America has been named. That’s not speculation. I’m not going to speculate on who else got these letters, but it would be reasonable to infer that Wells Fargo, JP Morgan Chase, and a few others. Again, I want to be clear. I don’t know that for a fact, but why would they send it to one bank and not the others? We do know bank of America for a fact.
And the letter said, give us your records on anybody who did the following. So pay on Venmo, pay on Zelle, pay through other payment channels, PayPal, whatever. There are a lot of them out there where either the message traffic, because people send, hey, here’s for. And they put little description or whatever where they use the word maga, they use the word Trump, where other triggers were. Did you shop at Cabela’s? Did you shop at best pro shops? Did you shop at Dick’s sporting goods? Why those three? Well, the answer is they sell weapons, they sell guns.
Okay, there it is. So this is, again, this is the House Gov. I mean, this is the US government. This isn’t a spun article. This is a dot gov website. And that’s what Jim just said. Just so everyone knows, this isn’t Jim’s opinion. This is literally word for word what they are saying they found when they got these documents. Right? Now, think for a minute about what’s going on here.
So this is the US government. Okay? So the Bill of Rights applies. So they’re basically violating First Amendment rights. Because you’re allowed to support Trump. You’re allowed to say, I mean, MAGA stands for make America great again. That’s an opinion. That’s a view. What’s wrong with. And even if you don’t like it, too bad. It’s protected under the First Amendment. So they’re trashing your first amendment rights, number one.
Secondly, and it’s not in this article you’re showing, Matt, but separately, we’ve learned that the FBI has targeted the Catholic Church, particularly Catholics who celebrate latin mass. I’ve been to latin masses. They’re wonderful. I’ve been to mass at St. Peter’s in Rome. Guess what? They do it in. So. But that somehow means you’re a terrorist, right? So then they say, we want to see if you bought a.
There’s, there’s another first amendment violation because the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion and freedom of speech. So they’re trashing the First Amendment. They’re trashing the Second Amendment, which basically says the right of the american people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed, because that’s where Cabela’s and you’ve got it here in your thing. Cabela’s and Dick’s sporting good. And I understand bass pro shops was another because that’s because they sell guns and ammo.
They don’t really care if you bought a kayak or a tent. They do care if you bought guns and ammo. So they’re trashing your second Amendment rights. And then finally, the whole thing is a violation of the Fourth Amendment because the Fourth Amendment protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures. This is a search by the short step to a seizure when they break down your door. But this is a search.
So no warrant, no subpoena. And by the way, to get a warrant and subpoena, you need probable cause. Where’s the crime? I said, I wrote one article. I said, well, if you shoot somebody and you’re wearing a MAGA hat, by the way, the violence is not coming from the right, it’s coming from the left. But if you shoot somebody and wearing a MAGA hat, you get arrested for shooting somebody, you don’t get arrested for the hat.
In other words, buying a hat is not a crime. It doesn’t indicate a crime. It doesn’t give you probable cause for anything. And so if you’re saying that just typing the word maga in a Venmo Roselle, message is enough to demand information from bank of America, or I presume, the other big banks. You’re trashing the Fourth Amendment as well. So what part of the Bill of Rights are you not attacking? Joe Biden and your minions and your goon squads and the FBI? So again, this is shocking.
We warned people about it for almost two years in the context of central bank digital currencies, because it would be very easy to do this with central bank digital currencies. But what we’ve now learned is that they’re not waiting for central bank digital currencies are coming, cbdcs are coming, but they’re not waiting for it. They’re doing it right now. Yeah, and another thing, you didn’t mention it, but just stacks on all this.
You were first to coin the term Biden bucks. People have since used it, politicians, other folks. And I believe your writing and your arm waving in that situation is what got cbdcs on the radar. Trump just announced part of his party he’s going to try and ban CBDC. So again, all of this stuff’s coming together. So I think it is becoming a very big concept in the 2024 election.
That’s probably why they want to hear it on Fox Business. Yeah, we were also the first ones to use the phrase green new scam. It’s our job, Matt. We’re keeping our readers a year and a half ahead of the curve. Thanks for that breakdown, Jim. And folks at home, you heard it here first on Paradigm Press’s channel. We’re breaking down these things as soon as we can get you the information.
That’s why it’s imperative. Make sure you’re subscribed to the channel. Make sure you give us a like, help feed the algorithms that control some of these videos and get this story out to the people. Biden bucks, central bank digital currencies. This is on the mouths of politicians. Trump’s already saying he’s going to ban them. This is big news for the 2024 election and beyond. So make sure you stay tuned.
We’ll be covering it and anything you need to know. Thanks for tuning in. .
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