Imperial Party forum

thomas davison

The final phase of the greatest monetary experiment in history is upon us. And things are not looking good for you and me.
But, to understand the nature of the threat, and what to do about it, we need to go back in time. Not literally – I mean review the history of money. It’ll expose what’s about to happen to your money.
When real assets were money, whether it was tobacco or gold, it was clear who owned the money.
Even once emperors started smashing their faces onto round bits of metal, that metal still belonged to the person holding it.
Even once coinage was licensed and limited by the government, it belonged to the bearer.
But once banking began and people used paper promises as money, things got a little more ambiguous. If you deposit a gold coin in exchange for a piece of paper that says “promises to pay the bearer a gold coin”, is that gold coin still yours?
The answer is only exposed when the person making the promise (now known as a bank) goes bust.
If you deposit garden furniture at a storage company and the storage company goes bust, is that furniture still yours? Or does the administrator which manages the winding up of the company take possession of it, sell it and pay off the creditors?
The answer is that what you store at a storage company, and in a safety deposit box at a bank, is legally yours. Even if the company goes bust.
But money deposited in a bank account is not yours anymore. It becomes a promise to be paid. You become a bank creditor when you deposit money.
That’s why governments have to provide deposit insurance in the first place. If banks go bust, the depositors’ true position as a creditor is exposed. Calling it a deposit in the meantime is a sleight of hand.
But do you see the transition? We went from money being the bearer’s to money being a promise. The money being used day to day doesn’t belong to us anymore. It is a paper promise of someone else. A promise we’re all willing to accept and use as money, but which does not express the users’ ownership of an asset anymore.
The next step was to nationalise money, putting it within the power of the government to control instead of the banks. This mattered for the subsequent step.
Governments then decreed the removal of the item which money promised. Countries went off gold and silver standards in a series of steps which hid what was really going on.
Today, many governments’ banknotes (no longer banks’ notes) still bear resemblance to this promise. They still say “promises to pay the bearer”, or words to that effect, but it’s a meaningless promise.
At this point, the money we use is basically whatever the government says it is. Hence the name fiat money, with “fiat” meaning “decree”.
But we still use the banking infrastructure today. The money is defined by the government, but it is still the banks to control. They still own it, in a sense.
Now the next and final step is upon us. The government is exploring a technology that would allow them take control of the ownership of money itself. In theory, that could give it complete control of the monetary system. Which, in turn, would mean complete control over you and me.
I wonder how they might use those powers…