CBDCs, Digital IDs, Social Credit Scores
The White House and Congressional Republicans are still locked in crunch talks to try and avert the first debt default in US history, which Treasury officials have warned could come as soon as June 1.
The US borrows more than it brings in through taxes, and so Congress periodically has to authorize an increase to the US debt limit, known as the debt ceiling, which currently sits at more than $31 trillion.
While the probability that policymakers fail to lift or suspend the debt ceiling remains low, the risks of the United States stumbling into a situation where it cannot meet all its financial obligations — known as the “X-date”, rises with every day that passes.
If the US Treasury hits the debt ceiling and — as many analysts predict — it prioritizes debt repayments, it will be forced to pause spending on federal programs that provide crucial financial support to tens of millions of Americans
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Read MoreKEY POINTS
The news about the exchange’s reboot plan pushed the FTT price by 12% to $1.12353 over the last 24 hours
John Ray III spent almost eight hours in April on activities related to the revival of FTX
The new leadership at FTX has not yet officially confirmed that a revival plan is in the works
FTT, the native token of the now-bankrupt crypto empire FTX, saw a double-digit gain amid news of the exchange’s revival plan as suggested in a court filing.
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Read MoreMost of the world’s economies, including the United States, are rapidly ramping up to digitize their currency and ultimately end “paper cash” by creating a Central Bank Digital Currency (or CBDC for short).
Part of the “Great Reset” agenda is to eliminate or reduce untraceable and untaxable cash and crypto transactions and clear the way to establish national government-controlled digital currency.
The agenda is to get a CBDC in every country, get people used to it, and then connect those digital systems into a one-world digitized payment system.
Does this sound too far-fetched? Consider that the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors have already issued a white paper titled “Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation” as a “first step” in exploring the creation of a CBDC.
Make no mistake, a centralized digital currency is coming. President Biden has already sounded what many consider to be the paper dollar’s death knell when he signed Executive Order 14067, which calls for the implementation of a U.S. Central Bank Digital Currency.
While that may sound benign at first, a centralized digital currency has the potential to allow the federal government to:
Legally surveil all U.S. citizens
Control all bank accounts and purchases
Crush free speech and silence opposing voices by cutting off access to their digital money
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Read More‘Stakeholder capitalism is not about politics. . . . It is capitalism.” Or so BlackRock CEO Larry Fink claimed in his annual letter to America’s CEOs last month, in which he called on corporate chiefs to stay true to their own companies’ “purpose.”
“Putting your company’s purpose at the foundation of your relationships with your stakeholders is critical to your long-term success. . . . Your company’s purpose is its north star in this tumultuous environment. . . . It is more important than ever that your company and its management be guided by its purpose.” Mr. Fink’s four-page letter invokes the word “purpose” eight times.
But whose purpose, exactly? In the same letter, Mr. Fink also calls on CEOs to set “short-, medium-, and long-term targets for greenhouse gas reductions.” His demands are explicit: “We ask you to issue reports consistent with the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures.” BlackRock regularly makes demands such as these of its portfolio companies, requiring them to meet the standards of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board.
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Read MoreAn American financial expert says the pandemic advanced a financial reset plan that concentrated wealth and power at the top.
Catherine Austin Fitts made the claim on the first day of National Citizens Inquiry (NCI) hearings in Ottawa. She is a former managing director of Wall Street investment bank Dylan Reed and Co, and president of Hamilton Securities Group. She was United States Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development for Housing in 1989-90.
Fitts, who testified remotely from Switzerland, said in 2019 the G7 central bankers voted on a plan called the Going Direct Reset. She said such things happen every 75 to 100 years, “a currency system gets long in the tooth.”
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Read MoreAs the Bank of Canada seeks consultation from Canadians on its design of a potential central bank digital currency (CBDC), digital privacy experts are warning that the technology could be used by governments to track payments and freeze dissidents’ bank accounts.
“CBDCs could be a nightmare for democracy, for civil liberties, and potentially all sorts of human rights,” Ori Freiman, a post-doctoral fellow at McMaster University’s Digital Society Lab, who is researching the responsible implementation of emerging technologies, said in an interview.
“At the end of the day, all those policy-makers need to understand that this technology can be weaponized to identify people, and because of that, they need to come up with a clear red line.”
On May 8, the Bank of Canada announced it was exploring the possibility of issuing a digital currency, and was thus seeking consultation from Canadians on its design.
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Read MoreThe Bank of Canada is more worried than it was last year about household debt loads, and is concerned about the abilities for households to stay on top of them in the coming years once mortgages renew at higher rates.
That’s one of the main takeaways of the bank’s Financial System Review, an annual assessment of various risks the bank deems to be of concern to the stability of Canada’s financial system.
While the bank highlighted the risks of cybersecurity attacks, the ongoing global banking crisis and climate change, the risk presented by growing mortgage debt was a recurring theme throughout the document.
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Read MoreAfter emergency talks at the White House, US President Joe Biden and Republican congressional leaders are sounding hopeful that a deal to raise the US debt ceiling is within reach.
But House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters the two sides are still far apart.
The fiscal impasse has forced President Biden to cut short a foreign trip to Asia.
Without a deal, the US could default on its $31.4tr (£25tr) debt by 1 June.
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Read MoreThe creator of advanced chatbot ChatGPT has called on US lawmakers to regulate artificial intelligence (AI).
Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, testified before a US Senate committee on Tuesday about the possibilities – and pitfalls – of the new technology.
In a matter of months, several AI models have entered the market.
Mr Altman said a new agency should be formed to license AI companies.
ChatGPT and other similar programmes can create incredibly human-like answers to questions – but can also be wildly inaccurate.
Mr Altman, 38, has become a spokesman of sorts for the burgeoning industry. He has not shied away from addressing the ethical questions that AI raises, and has pushed for more regulation.
He said that AI could be as a big as “the printing press” but acknowledged its potential dangers.
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Read MoreFacebook parent company Meta has begun rolling out a paid verification service in the UK.
Similar to Elon Musk’s Twitter Blue, the service gives Facebook and Instagram users a blue tick from £9.99 per month.
Subscribers must be at least 18 years old and submit a government ID to qualify.
The feature is already available in the US, Australia and New Zealand.
People who registered interest in Meta Verified will receive a notification when it becomes available to them. It is rolling out to others in the UK in the coming weeks.
Those approved by Meta will get a verified badge, which the tech firm says will give them more protection from impersonation, in part because it will monitor their accounts to check for fakers.
It says verified users will also get “access to a real person” if they have any issue with their account.
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