The conspiracy to ban cash

You post a controversial tweet. Next thing you know, your bank account has been frozen, and you can’t buy food or access essential services. This is the nightmarish future being planned by powerful elements within the political and corporate elite.

My recent report explains how there are plans for a Great Monetary Reset. High or even hyper-inflation is part of this, but another element is the war on physical cash and the forced shift to a cashless society.

They not only want to destroy the value of our savings; they also want to track our movements, spy on every transaction, and control how we spend our own money.

Most people are completely unprepared for this. In the worst-case scenario, their life savings will be stolen, and their pensions made worthless. They’ll be forced to rely on government handouts and forced to do as they’re told.

They should be taking simple steps to protect themselves, but instead complacency rules – even though parts of this agenda are now being implemented in plain sight.

Governments are at the forefront of this. In many countries, they’re making it harder and harder to use physical cash. They prefer their citizens to use digital payments – cards or smartphones that in the near future will be linked to a totalitarian system of digital IDs.

To give a couple of examples, in many locations it’s now impossible to pay for parking without a smartphone and payment card. And public transport is increasingly off limits to people who want to pay with physical cash.

It’s obvious why governments are doing this. The power elite are feeling threatened. The internet, while increasingly censored, has alerted a significant minority to their agenda. Myths that we live in a free society, or a democracy with a free press, or enjoy freedom of speech, have been thoroughly busted.

Their geopolitical power is also waning, as the West enters a period of economic decline. This increases the likelihood of protests and resistance. A shrinking pie makes it harder for those in power to pay off various interest groups. The rise of the East also creates alternative narratives, as emerging world powers create new propaganda outlets that challenge the incumbent ones.

Crony capitalism is of course the main cause of the West’s problems. But tackling this would mean undermining the various scams on which powerful special interests rely, including the rigged banking system. So, instead, it seems the preferred strategy is to crack down on free speech and persecute dissidents – in other words using violence and coercion to shore up the power elite’s position.

A cashless society with payments linked to digital IDs will make it far easier to impose control. Traditional enforcement methods are costly to implement on a large scale and expose the violent underpinnings of supposedly free societies. By contrast, encouraging compliance could soon be as simple as a government official clicking a name on a list of dissenters.

If they refuse to obey, people who challenge or upset the establishment might have their bank accounts frozen, payment cards disabled, or be denied access to basic services. The authorities have already started to test this out.

Vaccine passports were clearly a trial run. Many observers thought it made little sense for healthy young people to take experimental treatments given the risks from Covid were so small (the shots don’t stop transmission either). Yet huge numbers were “nudged” into compliance because they were forced to get proof of injection to keep their jobs – or even to go to a restaurant or travel.

The digital IDs/war on cash agenda isn’t just a government initiative, however. The role of big business in driving this forward is perhaps more difficult to comprehend.

I recently took a trip to the North of England. On the way back we stopped at some services. At the pizza place near the entrance, a large sign declared the restaurant “card only.” Further in, a fast-food outlet was refusing to let customers pay with cash. Hungry travellers had to wait in line before struggling to use the self-service touchscreens – which only accept cards.

Then a trip to a local supermarket. All the self-service tills are now card only. To pay with cash you have to queue up to use a staffed till. Only one was open at the time of my visit.

It’s obvious what they’re up to. They’re trying to “nudge” people to abandon physical cash. If you don’t use a card, you’ll have to queue for ages or face the inconvenience of going elsewhere.

Perhaps the retailers in question would argue that banning cash is good for business, allowing them to cut costs and pass on those savings to their customers. Yet cash-handling costs are a tiny, trivial percentage of turnover, and often compare favourably to the transaction charges associated with card payments.

Moreover, it’s hardly good business to annoy a significant percentage of customers with long delays and poor service.

In this context, it speaks volumes that the very same big retailers relentlessly promote certain agendas in their advertising, whether cultural transformation or radical environmentalism. Undoubtedly, this also alienates many of their potential customers. So, why do they do it?

The ugly truth is that Western economies are a million miles from a free market. We actually have a predominantly crony-capitalist system. For supermarket executives and other business bosses, it’s more important to gain favour with the powerful than offer a good service to their customers.

In the current system of rigged markets, company profits – and career success – depend more on special favours from government, the manipulation of state regulation, and support from financial institutions, than competing successfully by satisfying consumers’ wants. Indeed, this economic model actually functions by restricting competition, especially from small, independent firms.

As well as the carrot, there’s also a stick. A business that seriously resisted establishment agendas would face persecution from state bureaucracies. The regulations and tax rules would suddenly be applied very strictly. It might also be smeared by the controlled media and “state assets” posing as journalists, its reputation left in tatters. Banks and investment funds would threaten to pull out their money.  

The next time you see a company behaving bizarrely, angering its customers, and promoting some weird or disturbing agenda, remember who’s really pulling the puppet strings.

Richard Wellings

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