Business
Global elites insisting on digital currency to phase out cash
From LifeSiteNews
By David James
The aim is to have the digital euro fully in place by 2030 in order to move Europe fully into the United Nations’ post-capitalist system described in Agenda 2030.
It always pays to scrutinize closely the comments of financial elites because they are rarely honest about their intentions. An instance is the comments of Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank (ECB) who said there will be a vote next month in the European Union parliament on the next step toward creating a digital euro, which would be a central bank digital currency (CBDC).
A central bank digital currency is money issued by the central bank in digital form as opposed to digital credit issued by banks, which is the dominant form of money in Western societies. She claims that it will mean more freedom for Europeans and that there is nothing to fear.
Lagarde anticipates launching the digital euro in about 18 months. The aim is to have it fully in place by 2030 in order to move Europe fully into the United Nations’ post-capitalist system that is described in Agenda 2030.
Lagarde’s blandishments about what the digital euro represents do not survive close examination. She acknowledged that the main concern of the population is the privacy implications, claiming the ECB is looking at a technology that will offer protections. The private banks, she said, will apply the “rules of scrutiny” that already have access to the transactions. “We are not interested in the data. The private banks are interested in the data.”
Lagarde also said that the “people have dictated” the transition to a digital euro. This looks dubious. Neither the EU Commission nor the ECB is democratically elected. And if the main concern people have with a CBDC is privacy, then why would people prefer it over cash, which is immune to scrutiny? It is not as if a digital euro would satisfy an unmet need. Digital money – credit and online transactions – is already freely available in the banking system.
The ECB is also speaking out of both sides of its mouth, saying on one hand that the digital euro will only complement cash and on the other that cash will be eliminated.
Lagarde made it clear that the aim is to phase out cash completely. Agenda 2030, she claims, “can only be enforced in a cashless economy.” Why? What is it about cash that makes environmental policies impossible to implement? The answer is surely that a digital euro is needed to control people’s behavior, forcing them to comply with environmental rules.
Previous comments by central bankers suggest there is good reason for Europeans to be extremely suspicious. In 2021, the general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, Agustín Carstens, said: “We don’t know who’s using a $100 bill today and we don’t know who’s using a 1,000-peso bill today. The key difference with the CBDC is the central bank will have absolute control on the rules and regulations that will determine the use of that expression of central bank liability, and also we will have the technology to enforce that.”
The pretext for the financial power play is climate change and the push toward net zero. A European CBDC is not, as implied by Lagarde, the creation of a new digital monetary mechanism. As economist Richard Werner points out, that already exists – credit and debit cards, for example. The significance of a digital euro is that it threatens the banking system.
A CBDC, like cash, has no interest rate on it. So why would people continue to use credit produced by private entities such as banks or credit card companies – currently over 95 percent of the money supply – on which they have to pay interest? As the Reserve Bank of New Zealand noted, CBDCs have the potential to destroy private banks.
That problem does not seem to concern the ECB, however. Indeed, fundamentally altering the banking system may be what they are aiming for. Lagarde said “climate compliance” will become a core element of bank supervision, not a separate initiative, “because climate change presents significant, material financial risks to banks and the entire financial system.”
The ECB’s supervision will mandate that banks integrate the management of climate-related and environmental risks into their existing risk management processes, particularly through new prudential transition planning requirements under what is called CRD VI. European banking, it seems, will no longer be defined by profitability and fiscal soundness but also by the politics of climate change.
The slipperiness of the ECB‘s arguments point to a much darker ambition. Werner says when CBDCs are connected to digital IDs “we are talking about the most totalitarian control system in human history … it gives you as a controller complete visibility on what everyone is doing, every transaction.
“The monitoring is only one aspect. These CBDCs are programmable and you can use big data algorithms, which they sell to us as artificial intelligence, in order to have rules about who can buy what and for what purpose, at what time and at what place – and therefore control all your movement. In the history of dictatorships, there never has been such a powerful control tool.”
There is a flaw, though, in the ECB’s push to change Europe’s financial architecture that may prove fatal to its ambitions. The EU and ECB do not have genuine central control. When the euro was established in 1998, the only way Germany was able to join was on the condition there was no consolidation of the government debt. So, although the ECB notionally sets interest rates for the zone, government debt is held at the national level and each country’s interest rate differs.
The ECB is thus a central bank in name only, unlike the U.S. Federal Reserve, or for that matter most country’s central banks, that oversee their national government debt. A European nation can choose to exit the EU, and each has to have its own monetary policy in spite of the ECB setting a uniform rate.
The push to create a digital euro is most likely an attempt to deal with these contradictions, but at best it will be a makeshift solution and it will take very little for it to fall apart. Disintegration of the European Union, and the common currency, is not out of the question.
Meanwhile, the U.S. is going in the opposite direction. In July, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Anti-CBDC Surveillance State Act, which prevents the Federal Reserve from issuing a retail CBDC directly to individuals.
European debt is becoming increasingly parlous, especially in France where there have even been suggestions that there might need to be assistance from the International Monetary Fund. Italy’s debt, which is 138 percent of GDP, is also problematic. Lagarde is hoping for a rollout of the digital euro in 2027 and completion in 2030. But the Euro zone, and the ECB that oversees it, may not last that long.
From the Fraser Institute
By Ben Eisen and Milagros Palacios
If you use the more appropriate measure for measuring economic wellbeing and living standards—growth in per-person GDP—the happy narrative about Canada’s performance simply falls apart.
Tuesday, Nov. 4, the Carney government will table its long-awaited first budget. Don’t be surprised if it mentions Canada’s economic performance relative to peer countries in the G7.
In the past, this talking point was frequently used by prime ministers Stephen Harper and Justin Trudeau and their senior cabinet officials. And it’s apparently survived the transition to the Carney government, as the finance minister earlier this year triumphantly tweeted that Canada’s economic growth was “among the strongest in the G7.”
But here’s the problem. Canada’s rate of economic growth relative to the rest of the G7 is almost completely irrelevant as an indicator of economic strength because it’s heavily influenced by Canada’s much faster rate of population growth. In other words, Canada’s faster pace of overall economic growth (measured by GDP) compared to most other developed countries has not been due to Canadians becoming more productive and generating more income for their families, but rather primarily because there are more people in Canada working and producing things.
In reality, if you use the more appropriate measure for measuring economic wellbeing and living standards—growth in per-person GDP—the happy narrative about Canada’s performance simply falls apart.
According to a recent study published by the Fraser Institute, if you simply look at total economic growth in the G7 in recent years (2020-24) without reference to population, Canada does indeed look good. Canada’s economy has had the second-most total economic growth in the G7 behind only the United States.
However, if you make a simple adjustment for differences in population change over this same time, a completely different picture emerges. Canada’s per-person GDP actually declined by 2 per cent from 2020 to 2024. This is the worst five-year decline since the Great Depression nearly a century ago. And on this much more important measure of wellbeing, Canada goes from second in the G7 to dead last.
Due to Canada’s rapid population growth in recent years, fuelled by record-high levels of immigration, aggregate GDP growth is quite simply a misleading economic indicator for comparing our performance to other countries that aren’t experiencing similar increases in the size of their labour markets. As such, it’s long past time for politicians to retire misleading talking points about Canada’s “strong” growth performance in the G7.
After making a simple adjustment to account for Canada’s rapidly growing population, it becomes clear that the government has nothing to brag about. In fact, Canada is a growth laggard and has been for a long time, with living standards that have actually declined appreciably over the last half-decade.
Ben Eisen
Senior Fellow, Fraser Institute
Milagros Palacios
Director, Addington Centre for Measurement, Fraser Institute
Plus! Some tough lessons learned by journalists at all levels – not everyone is telling the truth and there are many people with the same name. Verify.
By now it’s established that Ontario Premier Doug Ford is either an ever so dreamy “elbows up” super hero kinda guy who’s shown US President Donald Trump who his daddy is or …. a ham fisted, narcissistic blowhard with all the finesse of a drunken linebacker crashing through the Royal Doulton.
If you follow social media, those appear to be the options. You choose.
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His $75 million ad buy attempting to show Americans how Trump is offside on tariffs with the late Republican icon President Ronald Reagan (1981-89) was either, as Ford insists, a triumph, or a disaster of epic proportions. Either way, the result is the Americans broke off trade talks until, well, whenever a very aggrieved Trump next wakes up on the right side of the bed. And the progressive bromance between Ford and Prime Minister Mark Carney looks to be on the rocks, with the latter admitting he apologized to Trump and had advised against the ads. Me? I thought Matt Gurney summarized the situation very well in the Toronto Star.
“The Americans are more than savvy enough to have figured out what we’re up to. They’ve responded to our good cop/bad cop strategy by shooting both cops and then torching the police station.”
The Rewrite, though, is about media, not tugging forelocks and authoring political thumb suckers. So what really made me curious about Ford’s ad spend was whether the premier’s media friends in Ontario were going to get their – what’s that phrase again? – oh, right: fair share.
People may have forgotten but it was only last year when Ford, succumbing to News Media Canada’s lobbying, decided that too much government advertising money was going to American tech companies like Meta and Google and not enough to people who report about him and his opponents. Consistent with the progressive belief that government subsidies can cure any problem, Ford ordered that 25 per cent of the $100 million spent on advertising annually by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario (LCBO), the Ontario Cannabis Store, Metrolinx and the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation (OLG) be directed to Ontario newspapers. And he didn’t stop there. The directive news release made it clear that “the government is also making similar commitments with its own advertising spending, helping to provide even more support for Ontario jobs and promote Ontario culture.”
Word on the street is that this cashapalooza – announced mere months before an election- has been warmly received by Ontario media, so I was already trying to find out who was getting how much when the US ads launched.
Turns out what should have been a simple task is not so easy. The specifics are not to be found within Ontario’s public accounts. So I wrote to Grace Lee, the director of communications in the Premier’s office and then Hannah Jensen, who also works there. No response. Then I tried again. Still nothing. When I asked if the directive “also applies to the Government of Ontario’s recent advertising buy in the United States so that additional government advertising – as is indicated in the directive – worth 25 per cent of the US spend will benefit qualified Ontario media” I got the same cold shoulder.
So, while there was a bit of publicity regarding Ford’s initial decision to subsidize Ontario publishers to the tune of $25 million-plus, no one is providing the details. The publishers must know and the government must know, but they seem to be keeping it a secret. It doesn’t seem likely, but if Ford is faithful to the words and spirit of his 2024 directive, there should be some additional cash flowing to approved Ontario publishers as a result of his Trump tantrum-inducing investment.
Alas, it appears unlikely the public will ever know if that’s the case or which media outlets are benefiting from the premier’s benefaction. That makes these arrangements look all too grubby. Keeping them in the dark, where they’ll stay because that’s the way the politicians and the publishers like it, is only going to further diminish public trust in media. But it’s unclear most of them care anymore.
A phrase in a Juno News report caught my eye last week and it should serve as a cautionary tale. In its report on a large Alberta Independence rally in Edmonton, separatism-friendly lawyer Jeffrey Rath was, understandably, a key source. But he was loosely quoted when referring to a competing Pro-Canada petition on the question of separation. Juno reported that “Rath said Saturday that he heard (organizer Thomas) Lukaszuk was 50,000 signatures short, with a Tuesday deadline.”
The issue isn’t whether Rath said that or not – it’s whether what “he heard” was based on anything other than wishful thinking and rumour-planting. Reporters should not pass along that form of information without verifying because, as it turned out, Rath wasn’t even close. Needing 294,000 signatures, the Pro-Canada petition collected 456,000 or at least 200,000 more than what Juno’s source, Rath, “heard.”
Fine if Rath wants to make a fool of himself. Reporters should be careful not to share the distinction.
A more established title than Juno was in a shambles last week when the venerable Times of London had to quickly pull a story in which former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was quoted criticizing Democrat mayoralty candidate Zohran Mamdani.
What went wrong? The Times reporter believed he had reached out to de Blasio via email and got a response that questioned Mamdani’s economic plan. The New York Post, also owned by Rupert Murdoch, jumped all over it but when the real former mayor de Blasio responded on X that the report was bogus, The Times stepped back quickly, issuing a statement that it had “apologised to Bill de Blasio and removed the article immediately after discovering that our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former New York mayor.”
In an interesting twist, the international publication Semafor reported that it had “reached out to a Gmail address our sources believed to be the one used by The Times.”
And:
“You are correct. It was me. The real Bill DeBlasio,” the person who controls the email address responded.
As it turns out, just as there’s more than one Peter Menzies in this world, there’s not just one Bill de Blasio and The Times’ assertion that someone was impersonating the former mayor quickly proved contentious.
The guy who responded to the email turned out to be a 59-year-old Long Island wine importer named Bill DeBlasio.
“I’m Bill DeBlasio. I’ve always been Bill DeBlasio,” DeBlasio (not de Blasio) told Semafor after it knocked on his door. “I never once said I was the mayor. He never addressed me as the mayor.
“So I just gave him my opinion.”
The moral of this story for journos? As the old Chicago City desk saying goes, always “check it out – if your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
In the meantime, we await The Times’ apology to DeBlasio – the one with the wine.
(Peter Menzies is a commentator and consultant on media, Macdonald-Laurier Institute Senior Fellow, a past publisher of the Calgary Herald, a former vice chair of the CRTC and a National Newspaper Award winner.)
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