CBDCs, Digital IDs, Social Credit Scores
At the beginning of 2023, the EU implemented new reporting rules in EU Directive DAC 7 for digital platform operators everywhere, including, potentially, Israel. The EU has around 450 million affluent consumers in 27 countries. Here is an overview of DAC 7:
Which platforms?
A platform is broadly defined and includes any software, such as a website and applications, and mobile applications accessible by users, allowing sellers to be connected to other users for carrying out, collecting or paying for certain “relevant activities.”
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Read MoreUK’s Home Office has signed a £7 million (US $9.2 million) contract with IBM to work with law enforcement in developing a biometric ‘mega-database’ to “prevent crime and better safeguard the public,” despite a watchdog’s privacy concerns, NS Tech reports.
In June, IBM said it would no longer sell its biometric facial recognition and analysis software to law enforcement. IBM will supply the National Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS) with an interface and platform to access law enforcement databases and search for matches with the Police National Database’s biometric algorithm. NS Tech suggests it could eventually be combined with Automatic Facial Recognition (AFR) technologies.
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Read MoreZambia’s President Hakainde Hichilema can finally breathe a sigh of relief as the outlines of a deal aimed at lifting his country out of its debt crisis have been unveiled.
In 2020, the copper-rich country became the first African nation to default on its debt payments during the Covid pandemic. It was burdened by loans and high interest rates that severely restricted the government’s ability to invest in critical social programmes and infrastructure development, both crucial for economic growth.
Following months of talks, Zambia has now successfully agreed new repayment terms with its state creditors on up to $6.3bn (£5bn) debt, including over $4bn owed to China.
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Read MoreA May 2023 policy brief explained that the UN aims to guide governments and private corporations across the world in working together to achieve the global body’s vision for the world’s “digital future,” which includes “digital IDs linked with bank or mobile money accounts,” according to the document.
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Read MoreWorld leaders meeting in Paris on Thursday could give poorer countries access to hundreds of billions of dollars to tackle climate change.
Mia Mottley, Barbados’ first female PM, is leading the global fight for this money and tells BBC News that her tiny country urgently needs help.
Poorer nations want more money because they did little to cause climate change but face its worst effects.
They also struggle to afford expensive projects like renewable energy.
Insiders at the summit are expecting an announcement that a target for $100bn worth of a kind of international currency called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) has been met.
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Read MoreAn American push to establish “green shipping corridors” is key to reducing carbon emissions from the shipping industry, U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday while touring the port of Yokohama near Tokyo.
Buttigieg was in Japan to attend a meeting over the weekend of transport ministers of the Group of Seven advanced economies, who reaffirmed a commitment to reducing emissions from the transport industry and to keeping navigation free and open in the Asia-Pacific region.
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Read MoreThe U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Binance have reached an agreement in court that lets the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange continue to operate in the United States as it battles SEC fraud charges.
Under a consent order filed Saturday, the defendants in the June 5 lawsuit agreed to repatriate all assets held for the benefit of Binance’s U.S. trading customers.
The SEC alleges Binance broke U.S. law by operating as an unregistered securities exchange. It filed similar charges against the world’s other top cryptocurrency exchange, Coinbase, nearly simultaneously.
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Read MorePeople have “limited levels of macroeconomic literacy,” the Bank of Canada said yesterday. The Bank complained people often failed to “understand and correctly interpret information” about deficits, inflation and central banking.
“Whether in media or the political space, the public has been repeatedly confronted with contradictory messages regarding the feasibility and desirability of monetary finance,” said a Bank report What People Believe About Monetary Finance And What We Can(‘t) Do About It. “Conveying the message to the public is particularly challenging for central banks given the perceived complexity of the topic and the possibly limited levels of macroeconomic literacy in the population,” it added.
“What do people know about macroeconomic policies and trade-offs in public finance in general?” asked researchers. They defined macroeconomic literacy as “the ability to understand and correctly interpret information pertaining to macroeconomic policies.”
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Read MoreA new World Economic Forum report has acknowledged the risks associated with implementation of digital IDs combined with Central Bank Digital Currencies.he World Economic Forum (WEF) has admitted in a new report that digital IDs are exclusionary by nature and can facilitate “the identification, surveillance and persecution of individuals or groups.”
In its June 2023 Insight Report titled “Reimagining Digital ID,” the WEF described the potential risks of the widespread implementation of a digital ID.
“Perhaps the greatest risks arising from digital ID are exclusion, marginalization and oppression,” the report warns.
“Several reports have identified a link between a lack of official ID and exclusion from full participation in society,” the report states. “Yet by reifying conditional access, ID is, by its very nature, exclusionary.”
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Read MoreFor four decades during the latter half of the 20th century, Poland and its people were the subjects of a grand socio-economic experiment. Under the watchful eye of its Soviet masters, the Polish United Workers’ Party transformed the mixed economy of this nation of 35 million into a centrally planned, socialist state (albeit one with an irrepressible black market). Then, in the closing decade of the 20th century, under the leadership of Polish minister of finance Leszek Balcerowicz, the nation was transformed back into a mixed economy.
In this book, we document the results of this experiment. We show that there was a wide chasm between the lofty goals of socialist ideology and the realities of socialism as the Polish people experienced them. We also show that while the transition back from a socialist to a mixed economy was not without its own pain, it did unleash the extraordinary productive power of the Polish people, allowing their standard of living to rise at more than twice the rate of growth that prevailed during the socialist era. The experiences of the Poles, like those of so many behind the Iron Curtain, demonstrate the value of economic freedom, the immiserating consequences of its denial, and the often painful process of regaining lost freedoms.
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