The Agora project—40 of the world’s largest banks, cozying up with the New York Fed and some G7 central banks—claim they’re speeding up cross-border payments with a new digital currency platform. How considerate of them!
But let’s be real: this isn’t about making life easier for us. It’s about giving banks even more power, centralized power.
And for all of you, can we look past the façade of ‘digital currency’ please? Its crypto currency issued by a central bank to replace the analog / digital currency we already have, that are dollar driven; Zelle, Venmo, Visa and MasterCard networks already offer us digital currency. This is, in my opinion, a change as if the sky is no longer blue it’s yellow, grass is no longer green it’s red. It is an alarming change. Radical really - up is now down.
Agora is all about “wholesale” central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). These digital currencies aren’t for you and me; they’re just for the banks. Apparently, regular money transfers and SWIFT aren't fast enough for these finance titans. Agora’s aim? To speed up their transactions, so while we wait days for a payment to clear, they’re zipping trillions around the globe like it's nothing.
The idea that this improves the system? Laughable.
The system already works just fine—for them. Agora’s about ironing out time zone differences and regulatory frameworks banks love to whine about. It’s consolidating their control over global finance, laying the groundwork to dominate the infrastructure behind money.
To distract us from their power grab, they’ve thrown in a shiny tech buzzword—tokenization. Agora will test if these tokenized deposits can play nice with CBDCs. Tokenization sounds cutting-edge, but it’s really just banks putting assets on a digital ledger, cutting their own costs while our transactions stay stuck in the Stone Age.
I find it important to state, I am not against much so far as it never negatively impacts individual Americans while solely benefitting anything else. If the financial componentry of the world wants faster transactions, great! I put people first. Every single thing in existence in this country must be excluded or deprived of existence if it impedes individuals' pursuit of happiness, their lives and livelihoods, and justice, the type that restores from an injustice.
Here is a good question: Is your local credit union involved, the town bank, did they get invited to be involved? No.
It is a who’s who of global financial giants - JPMorgan, HSBC, UBS, Japan’s MUFG and many other mega banks. These institutions already control global finance; Agora just cements their power. It’s a “collaboration” between banks and central banks, led by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) and the Institute of International Finance (IIF), creating a club for the financial elite.
Cements their power you ask? Yes, and here’s the perceived dynamic, right? Now your transactions are essentially private from the government, from Big Brother and not any brother you would treasure being related to. In crypto, ALL transactions are transparent and viewable as the swiping process runs your swipe for approval - to the government / bank institution for approval. Yes, to curb us renegade individuals trying to pursue happiness, they can curb your purchases if say it causes too much demand on carbon for example.
Next, if you don’t like your choice in financial institutions, you can leave. Like the example of Silicon Valley Bank- customers leave and the bank fails. Oh, so unfair- to the bank! In the upcoming financial world, you may experience that you don’t get to leave.
There will be no cash to be withdrawn, all finances in crypto live in the tech world. And come-on, if the government thinks all of us are just overreacting, causing an institution to struggle needlessly, inconvenient other account holders, then you don’t get to leave. That’s what I mean by cements their power. Like the boots mobsters fit undesirables with and then toss off the back of a boat – we will be ‘stucked’.
Oh, and this is wholesale CBDC. Translation: it’s not meant to trickle down to us commoners. This project isn’t about you. It’s about serving the financial world’s needs - making them impervious to your harmful choices and ‘protecting the environment.’ And we’re not alone, in Asia, another digital currency project, mBridge, is brewing.
When I look down the path for where else this leads past the immediate changes… Perhaps the UN finally gets its one-world government. Zuckerberg gets to wake up one morning pleased that there is a minimum wage for all Earth’s inhabitants. Because Asia, Europe, and the U.S. are all working toward implementing the ultimate control over people, when they can and when they can’t spend their money and on what.
Think this new system is bulletproof? As more assets go digital, cyberattack risks soar.
Hackers will have a field day. You cannot hack physical gold or silver. And when there’s a security breach, guess who suffers? Your data and savings. Meanwhile, the banks and governments will have front-row seats to all your transactions. Forget cash or the current system’s anonymity—every move you make could be monitored and analyzed.
Who knows, maybe even used against you in some dystopian future. Gonna be tough sledding for those ‘massage parlors’, escorts, and strip clubs… a silver lining for some, I imagine. And if you love heart-attack burgers…ehhhh probably out of business, too much carbon for red meat.
They’ll say it's for our protection—to prevent money laundering and terrorism. But we know the truth: it’s more power for them, less freedom for us. Ever wondered how a transistor feels on a motherboard, well soon you may know.
Agora’s success depends on harmonizing regulations across borders—yeah, good luck with that. Name one, and if you truly have one, I don’t know about, can you name three times that government engineered mechanisms forced, forced is the key word, into humanity was awesome for humanity.
The chances of governments and banks (2008-2011) smoothly aligning regulations and actions are about as high as them offering us a fair portion of the $780 billion (est) worth of gold in Fort Knox, which to me is the peoples gold, as it serves no purpose to the government at all, that I know of. Remember how the reports of a failed software update recently crashed transportation systems for days? Imagine you trying to use your funds and that bs happens. Delays, increased costs, and regulatory messes are inevitable because they are part of the track record of government financial engineered systems.
This digital currency revolution? AGAIN, its cyrpto, well beyond digital. It’s not democratizing finance—it’s securing the keys for the old gatekeepers. So, while we’re dazzled by “innovation” and “efficiency,” let’s remember who’s really winning in this brave new world of banking: spoiler alert—it’s not us.
Meanwhile, economist Peter Schiff warned on X that the U.S. Dollar Index, which just hit a new low for 2024, is “on the brink of a major collapse.” Schiff predicts it could drop below 90 before the year ends, sparking a U.S. dollar crisis, with consumer prices and interest rates skyrocketing.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell hinted at a more dovish stance in his recent speech, fueling the dollar’s decline. Now it’s hitting 2024 lows against the euro, pound, and yen. With the Fed leaning dovish and other central banks easing rates, the potential for currency volatility looms. Not a prediction just that jacked up track record of theirs I’m recalling.
Other experts warn, despite market recoveries, the underlying fundamentals are weakening, and weakening further, you know eventually there is a zero across the board. Every dip gets steeper, and recoveries are less robust. Stocklytics’ Neil Roarty predicts September could reveal weakening demand.
According to Marketbeat, since the Fed’s rate cuts began, bond yields have climbed. Investors are losing faith in lending to the government, hinting the Fed may have acted too soon, with inflation likely to bounce back. This could force the Fed into an ugly overcorrection, shaking markets.
But for now, stock markets will probably keep rallying. LOL, because of:
When trillions of dollars pour into the financial world every year from thin air, where do you think the excess ends up? Why do you figure they use the term bubble?
If the dark cloud on the horizon grows, though, brace yourself for the storm.
Of course, the mainstream mania for endless market gains ignores where all that printed money is ending up. Currently, stocks are a hedge against inflation—until the money printing stops. Then the force needed to lift markets well, well past their realities disappears, one might think then so do the heights attained by that fake force. Then, that stock market rise will become a Titanic-style dive, while gold surges. Rome says, just wait.
Jeremy Siegel of the Wharton School recently doubled down on stocks, claiming they’re the best hedge against inflation. But playing “chicken” with the federal debt ceiling? And a dollar reserve that was once worth 100 cents is now worth less than 3? Sometimes both cars crash. Siegel also suggested it might be a good time to buy as the government nears default, but does that sound like a plan to you?
***If you want to argue with me - go ahead. Comment. Let me know what you think. I read all the comments and I’m always hoping to learn something new.
The neo-malthusians, tirelessly scheming in the shadows to establish a global government under a technocratic elite, kneel daily in prayer...
Our Technocrat, who art in Cyberspace,
Hallowed be thy Blockchain,
Thy CBDC come,
Thy will be done,
In digital wallets and ATMS.
Give us this day our daily UBI tokens,
And ‘forgive‘ us our cash transactions,
As we 'forgive‘ those who use them.
Lead us not into financial freedom,
But deliver us from privacy.
For thine is the algorithm, the power, and the control,
Forever and ever,
AWEF
Nice to "meet" you Paul.
Just caught your interview on The Jimmy Dore Show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOZcln2MwbU. Though I come from a different background (philosophy of science and education, applied linguistics, former token foreigner in Japanese institutions), I immediately picked up on some observations and conclusions we both share. To avoid a TLDR , off the top of my head ...
— the increasingly granular quantification of everything and everyone by a small ruling class exempt from their own provisional constructs,
— the nature of those in the ruling class is that their only unifying philosophy is the imposition of their will upon others; and their psychology dominated by "dark-triad" personality traits ... the pathological narcissists, machiavellian opportunists, and morphologically defined psychopaths among us (see the Ponerology substack).
— The instinct to "quantify" (as opposed to "qualify") is largely left hemisphere neural processes ... and a necessary part of what makes us human. T.S. Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" uses the history of physics to show "progress" as provisionally defined quantification, and even in the hard sciences, any current paradigm is largely the result of social dynamics.
But without quantification, we would not have personal boundaries ("us" vs. "them"), the distinction between future and past, and we would have neither language nor logic. Jill Bolte Taylor's TED talk is a good intro, and Ian McGilchrest's "The Emissary and His Master" appears to be pursuing the values championed by Dr. Taylor. My first "pop culture" dig into this was back in undergrad (early to mid 70's), through Robert Pirsig's "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance".
— Yet, the two mentioned above are ironically (and necessarily) using left brain processes to call for a personal and society-wide re-calibration back towards right-brain processes ("spirituality" as self awareness of one with nature, a greater appreciation for creative processes, and so on).
My minor hedges with your post are semantic, but core values are similar (hence the follow and message). I might be predisposed to think in terms of small groups because of my personal circumstances — born in Germany, raised and educated in the U.S. (citizen), now 42 consecutive years in Japan, and never having married or had children of my own ... one implication of the aforementioned is that despite my citizenship or passport status, I do not have the opportunity to define my identity according to any particular culture or corporate nation-state.
Margaret Thatcher once famously said that there is no such thing as "society" ... only individuals and families. By my personal circumstances as stated above, I have to sail a slightly different tact in first grounding my identity as a social primate — "the individual" being closer to a provisional construct, and our immediate group more fundamental — either a family or a small community, small enough to be under Dunbar's number.
For example, the Japanese language did not even have the word for individual (koujin) until a translator of the works of Jean Jacques Rousseau needed to coin the word. Until then, Japanese language had only defined the 'unique individual' in terms of social relationships. Even now, while there is a word for 'sibling' (kyoudai), there are no words for "sister" or "brother", only words for younger or older sisters or brothers. Similarly, the Japanese language did not have a word for "citizen" (shakaijin) until the consolidation of the modern corporate nation-state (the Meiji era, roughly from about 1868).
I see you have the eye of a linguist in picking up the catch-word of "tokenization". I also see the trendy "Public Private Partnerships" as a euphemism for "Totalitarian - Fascist".
Will break for now, anticipating some good reads of your substack.
Cheers from Japan
Steve