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by James Hickman
February 14, 2024
from
SchiffSovereign Website
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James Hickman (aka Simon
Black)
is an international
investor, entrepreneur, and founder of Sovereign Man.
His free daily e-letter Notes from the Field is about
using the experiences from his life and travels to help
you achieve more freedom, make more money, keep more of
it, and protect it all from bankrupt governments.
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I imagine life can often feel pretty difficult for today's high
school students.
On top of dealing with classic teenage drama like homework,
hormones, pimples, parents, driving, dating, university selection,
and more, students these days have to contend with a host of new
challenges.
They suffered long periods of
brutal Covid lockdowns.
Active shooter drills are a normal part of
student life.
Of course, there's the nonstop anxiety and
peer pressure of social media.
Plus, on top of everything else, students today
have also been force-fed some pretty bizarre ideas.
Classical literature, advanced mathematics,
and hard sciences have taken a back seat to social justice,
climate justice, economic justice, etc. (as defined by the
woke, fanatical left...).
But there are early signs that this
indoctrination is starting to break new ground.
Yesterday a close friend of mine who lives in Spain told me that his
son, a high school senior, has been getting lessons in school about,
Central Bank Digital Currencies, or
CBDCs...
If you're not familiar with the concept,
a CBDC is essentially a cryptocurrency that
is controlled by the government and central
bank.
And so far, at least half a dozen CBDCs have been
rolled out around the world, including in,
Now, governments already have the means to
track you and monitor your finances.
They can force financial institutions and credit card issuers to
turn over your entire financial history. They can order banks and
brokerage firms to freeze your assets.
And if you remember what happened in Canada during the 'Freedom
Convoy' protests,
Justin Trudeau
'Castro' used his 'emergency
powers' cut the protestors off from the financial system:
They had no access to their bank accounts,
ATMs, or even crowd-funding platforms.
Governments already have the power to do all of
these things.
But CBDCs take this power to a much higher level... because there's
no more middleman.
Government authorities wouldn't have to bother
going to banks, brokerages, and credit card companies:
they could simply deactivate your funds with
a mouse click.
Have fun trying to buy groceries...
Now, even though only a handful of CBDCs have been rolled out around
the world, there are over 100 central banks that are developing
their own CBDCs, and that includes both
the United States and
the European Union.
My friend's son (again, a high school senior in Spain) explained
that his teachers are absolutely gushing over the idea of CBDCs.
In a class which covers banking, mortgages, and the financial
system, they're telling the kids that, probably within a year, the
new 'digital euro' will be rolled out. And eventually it will become
mandatory...!
Cash
will cease to exist, and all money will be
registered with the European Central Bank...
Europe's army of bureaucrats will know what's
happening, in real time, to every single euro in existence, and
there will be no way of getting around it.
Financial privacy will be a thing of the
past...!
The teachers expressed utter joy about this, and
the curriculum seems designed to get the kids excited about it too.
They say,
the digital euro represents incredible
"progress", and that it will make life easier and
simpler...
Businesses will be able to collect payments
more easily.
You'll be able to spend everywhere directly
from your phone, and maybe cut out the need for credit cards or
even traditional bank accounts.
They also say that CBDCs will be an effective way
to control money laundering, criminal activity, and terrorist
financing.
That's why, they explain to the students, the EU
has already begun to crack-down on cash and crypto transactions over
€1,000.
According to my friend's son, most students in his class appear
pretty excited about CBDCs. Hardly anyone seems fazed by the loss of
privacy or increased government authority over their lives.
But intelligent people - including my friend and his son - clearly
see where this is going...
We've already seen people lose their jobs and
be canceled off the Internet for wrongthink.
We've seen people frozen out of their bank
accounts for standing up for their rights.
Frankly, the brutal use of the Prime Minister's
emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy protestors in Canada
should have served as a giant wake-up call:
if you hold your life's savings in the
financial system of your home country, you're already taking an
unnecessary risk.
And that's regardless of what happens with CBDCs.
This means that,
having some savings outside of the financial
system is a completely sensible idea.
And fortunately, there are plenty of easy
ways to do this, including liquid assets like physical gold and
silver, cryptocurrency, and cash.
It's hard to imagine there's any downside for
having direct access to some emergency savings, and this is one of
the core principles of any Plan B:
it makes sense, regardless of what happens
(or doesn't happen) next.
The CBDC trend is obviously nascent... so it's
not like the
Federal Reserve or ECB
is going to roll out their CBDCs 'tomorrow morning' and make them
mandatory.
The sky is not falling, and there's no reason to
panic over this development.
But independent, thinking people ought to understand
where this trend may lead... and more importantly, to take rational
steps to minimize the consequences.
Additional
information
If you can see what is happening, and where this
is all going, you understand why it is so important to have a
Plan B.
That's why we published our 31-page, fully
updated
Perfect Plan B Guide.
Inside you'll discover how to:
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Inside you'll discover too,
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