ATLANTIC COUNCIL SAYS U.S. MUST COMMIT TO CBDC TO SUSTAIN THE ABILITY TO WEAPONIZE THE MONETARY SYSTEM

The Atlantic Council is closely tracking and advocating for the development of Central Bank Digital currencies.

Their website has a section devoted to tracking CBDC projects around the world currently in process, many of them being conducted by governments in association with the Bank of International Settlements (BIS).

A political think tank formed in 1961 to promote close strategic integration between the U.S. and Europe, the Atlantic Council is funded by, and carries requisite ideological and realpolitik water for the corporations and entities that fund it.

According to Influencewach.org, as of reporting year 2019:

“In 2019, the Atlantic Council received $21,772,164 in grants and donations. Its largest donors included Adrienne Arsht, Facebook, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller Foundation, the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.

“Other notable donors in 2019 included Chevron Corporation, Crescent Petroleum, Google, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Raytheon Technologies, and the U.S. Department of State”

It’s easy to understand why The Atlantic Council is so invested in advocating for the U.S. to create a CBDC. The organization sees CBDCs as a way to further desired geopolitical objectives, and to control and surveil citizen populations.

Their website currently warns that the U.S. has fallen behind China in what it terms the “Race for the future of money,” and outlines consequences:

“New payments systems create externalities that impact the daily lives of citizens, and can possibly jeopardize the national security objectives of the country. They can, for example, limit the United States’ ability to track cross-border flows and enforce sanctions. In the long term, the absence of US leadership and standards setting can have geopolitical consequences, especially if China and other countries maintain their first-mover advantage in the development of CBDCs. Our work on digital currencies at the GeoEconomics Center is at this nexus of the future of money and national security.” 

In enumerating the advantages of CBDC creation, The Atlantic Council neglects to mention the enormous advantages and opportunities for abuse and manipulation that controlling the creation, distribution and regulation of money confers on governments and their proxy central bank systems.

They mention nothing, for example regarding the destruction of citizen fruits of labor put into savings that occurs when a government prints money to pay its debts.

Under a section titled “Why would a government get into digital currencies, the Atlantic Council says:

“There are many reasons to explore digital currencies, and the motivation of different countries for issuing CBDCs depends on their economic situation. Some common motivations are: promoting financial inclusion by providing easy and safer access to money for unbanked and underbanked populations; introducing competition and resilience in the domestic payments market, which might need incentives to provide cheaper and better access to money; increasing efficiency in payments and lowering transaction costs; creating programmable money and improving transparency in money flows; and providing for the seamless and easy flow of monetary and fiscal policy.”

Among all the information on CBDC projects in development, the Atlantic Council does mention cryptocurrencies. But instead of acknowledging any potential benefits of, say, bitcoin, compared to abused and inflated fiat currencies and irresponsible monetary creation decisions and machinations of central banks, the Council argues CBDCs are superior since they are “backed by the full faith and credit of the government.” 

BIS HEAD WHISTLING PAST THE GRAVEYARD OF WESTERN FIAT

As western nations led by the U.S. remain stuck between a recession rock and an inflation hard place, they’re pegging hopes on crypto technology…without the crypto.

Agustín Carsten, general manager of the Bank of International Settlements, explained a vision for worldwide Central Bank assumption of co-option of crypto innovations.

At the same time, he tried to portray Bitcoin as having “lost the battle” with fiat, citing bogus statistics that were quickly ridiculed by many.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV, Carson argued for Central Banks to oversee the implementation of a “unified ledger” together with Central Bank Digital Currencies:

“Facilitating the existence of CBDC and tokenized deposits would provide the technological representation of money that further innovation needs. Bringing them onto a unified ledger would have a catalytic effect on further innovation conducted by the private sector…”

“…[the goal] is to build a future monetary system that is adaptable and enables innovation by the private sector in a safe and sound way – in whichever form it may come.”

Carson rejected any notion that such a ledger would be transparent, or not subject to manipulation and monetary inflation.

He basically stated the aim of the Central Banks was to preserve their privileged mediation of monetary creation and transactions:

“So, a guiding principle for the unified ledger is to preserve this partnership between the central bank and the private sector. The aim is to tap into private sector creativity and ingenuity to develop new products and services.”

Carson pointed to 2022, which saw the crypto sector lose upwards of 60 percent of its peak 3 trillion valuation, as sufficient to prove that cryptos, and especially bitcoin, had failed as a competitor to fiat currencies.

Saying “A technology doesn’t make for trusted money,” Carson contended without irony that “Only the legal, historical infrastructure behind central banks can give great credibility” to money.

The U.S. is currently embroiled in a wave of untamed inflation brought on by many years of profligate money inflation and debt accumulation, only made possible by its fiat system. 

Many other countries who don’t enjoy the U.S.’s dollar reserve status, are suffering even worse.

Carson’s most controversial claim was that a BIS analysis showed that from Aug 2015 through December of 2022, a “majority…in nearly all economies made losses on their #Bitcoin holdings.”

On Twitter, Peter McCormack of the podcast What Bitcoin Did posted a graph that visualized just how monumentally bitcoin had outperformed the dollar in value over that time period, with commentary:

“Facts:

“-Majority of global fiat lost value to USD since 2015

“-USD has lost over 26% of its own value due to inflation

#Bitcoin has gone up nearly 8000%

“Facts be sticky”

Cointelegraph, reporting on the Carson interview, gauged wider reaction, including the view of bitcoin advocate and author Willem Middelkoop, who said he believed the war between central banks and their backing governments, and permissionless crypto networks ike bitcoin was far from over, in in fact, just beginning.