I’ve seen a lot of crazy conspiracy theories reveal themselves to be true in the past five years.
Apply some critical thinking on this. Governments and corporate elites worldwide are salivating over the level of surveillance and control that a CBDC will enable.
Possibly so, but an instant payment system is not a CBDC, and I don't see how keeping bank account transfers slow/impossible to initiate for individuals (as seems to be the case for ACH credit transfers) would help against pervasive government surveillance.
ACH and even check clearing are already largely performed by the Fed today!
The NSA monitoring any and all electronic communications (foreign and domestic) that they can get their hands on, without a warrant.
The federal government cutting off financial services for legal but disliked industries such as the gun industry (see the Obama admin's Operation Chokepoint).
The Canadian government freezing the bank accounts of those who supported the trucker protest.
Not directly related to finances or electronic surveillance, but some government fuckery greatest hits that actually happened:
- Kidnapping hobos and force feeding them LSD
- Intentionally infecting people (mostly black) with syphilis
- Feeding irradiated oatmeal to mentally handicapped children
- Obama personally ordering the execution of an American citizen without trial and having the military carry it out (and killing the target's 16-year old American citizen son as well)
C'mon. The OP makes a claim, which is unsubstantiated. Another user lists a whole list of issues, which might be objectionable, sure, but not what OP claimed.
Next thing you know somebody comes up with the moonlandings and JFK.
I cannot abide. What is your point? That the last 5 years have seen _fewer_ true conspiracies and clownish gaslightings? Are you quibbling over the number 5 or something?
I'm writing this post for whoever is interested, so please don't take it as specifically directed towards you.
People who doubt the government and especially the fiat monetary system usually end up as "gold bugs", they start preparing for financial collapse by purchasing physical gold. Before the 2008 financial crisis, I was involved in gold circles online and everybody there knew a huge crisis was coming and they were buying as much gold as they could. Now, the price of physical gold (and many other commodities) are determined by the prices on the Comex futures exchange, which are under the control of an oligarchy of big banks.
During the financial crisis and the years after, most gold traders and gold bugs noticed that the gold price would drop every day about 09:00 on the New York Spot market, and everybody was talking about how the big banks were illicitly manipulating the gold price to try to keep it down. Of course this talk was dismissed by uninvolved as loony conspiracy theories, together with every other insulting and dismissing adjective that commenters here are so fond of.
But it turned out that the conspiracy was true, and in 2022 a couple of the bankers' fall guys were sentenced, and JP Morgan agreed to pay $920 million in fines[1]:
"The evidence at trial showed that between approximately May 2008 and August 2016, the defendants, along with other traders on the JPMorgan precious metals desk, engaged in a widespread spoofing, market manipulation, and fraud scheme. The defendants placed orders that they intended to cancel before execution in order to drive prices on orders they intended to execute on the opposite side of the market. The defendants engaged in thousands of deceptive trading sequences for gold, silver, platinum, and palladium futures contracts traded through the New York Mercantile Exchange Inc. (NYMEX) and Commodity Exchange Inc. (COMEX), which are commodities exchanges operated by CME Group Inc."
The same things are going on all the time, sometimes the perpetrators are banking giants, sometimes the government or parts of government, sometimes tech giants, sometimes it's all of them together, sometimes other perpetrators.
#2 The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
These are widely known and I make no claims of originality. However, your story about gold market manipulation brings up a corollary to my #2 rule that I do take credit for: Never underestimate the extent to which governments and other vested interests will go to in order to keep markets irrational for as long as possible.
To the down-voters: Feel free to comment on why my post shouldn't be seen. It seems so petty and Reddit-like to just down-vote without saying anything.
> I’ve seen a lot of crazy conspiracy theories reveal themselves to be true in the past five years.
Such as what?
>Apply some critical thinking on this. Governments and corporate elites worldwide are salivating over the level of surveillance and control that a CBDC will enable.
How is this any different from the current system? Your cash is 99% digital anyway with basically every transaction completely monitor-able to the Feds under the right circumstances. Don't see how this situation would change much.
The principle difference is that CBDC is programmable rather than just digital. We aren't expressing concerns over a digital currency, but rather the degree to which a nefarious govt will have control over it.
Apply some critical thinking on this. Governments and corporate elites worldwide are salivating over the level of surveillance and control that a CBDC will enable.