Rep. Mark Green: Fed’s move centralize financial transactions are a threat to individual liberty

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By REP. MARK GREEN

The Federal Reserve ’s launch of FedNow, a system to centralize financial transactions, is a significant threat to individual liberty and a major leap toward a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. While the Fed denies FedNow will precede a CBDC, the public has no reason to believe them.

FedNow allows people to “send instant payments through their depository institution accounts,” giving a direct line from the central bank to individual people. This means the federal government could potentially track every transaction and even prevent transactions with which it disagrees. The Fed promises this program will increase “expedience and availability.” Yet sacrificing our financial autonomy for expediency is nowhere near an equal trade.

The same can be said of a CBDC. CBDCs are antithetical to personal privacy and limited government. Such a massive break from traditional currency would require a centralized system to keep all transactions within a closed-loop environment. Government control over such a system would be extremely dangerous to the freedom of people. From start to finish, a CBDC is controlled by a central bank like the Fed. Allowing them this much control over our everyday lives is a slippery slope we cannot afford to slide down.

The administrative state’s surveillance powers are already too great, and CBDCs are a tool that the federal government could easily turn into a weapon against political opponents. The Fed doesn’t need more power; it needs less.

There’s no question that this is about the far Left’s ambition for more power. CBDCs are about containment, surveillance, and control. The creation of a CBDC would give the government unprecedented access to our personal financial information, including information about what we buy or what causes we support. I don’t want the government monitoring what I pick up at the grocery store, much less which organizations I give my charitable contributions to. Mark my words: A programmable and trackable currency would be the death knell of personal freedom.

Imagine giving the same federal government that weaponized the FBI and Department of Justice against the Trump administration, turned the IRS on conservative organizations, used social media companies to violate free speech, and treated concerned parents like domestic terrorists the power to monitor your every cent.

To see the effects of a CBDC, we need only look toward Communist China. The Chinese Communist Party is working to integrate the digital yuan into its tyrannical social credit system. The regime will settle for nothing less than total omnipotence, and the Chinese people are left to suffer. This should be proof enough that the United States should run in the opposite direction, but once again, President Joe Biden is playing “follow the leader” with one of the world’s worst dictators.

The World Economic Forum, too, is actively promoting the use of CBDCs, even saying the quiet part out loud: This system will give the government control over all transactions.

We’re already seeing this in action. The government can track your credit score, and the Biden administration is trying to use this power to force homebuyers with good credit to subsidize those with bad credit. Additionally, some credit card companies track gun control purchases and log them in their ledgers. Under a CBDC, this type of targeting will only worsen.

We are about to cross the Rubicon. A CBDC would create a dystopian future for conservative and religious people. We should not have to worry about big brother, or in this case, Uncle Joe, looking over our shoulders every time we make a purchase. Giving the federal government this much power over our transactions will decimate our liberties.

This is freedom’s red line. If we allow the Fed to cross it, all bets are off.

Mark Green is a U.S. representative for Tennessee, a physician, and combat veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq, where he served three tours. He serves as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs Committees. This column first appeared in the Washington Examiner.

18 COMMENTS

  1. I cannot agree more.
    There is zero justification for this move aside from consolidating power within an all powerful State. Remember when Tredeau locked down the personal bank accounts of the truckers protesting the vaccine mandates? Think something like that cannot possibly happen here?
    .
    And, any leftists who think this is fantastic need to be reminded of the time Harry Reid used the “nuclear option.” It is all good when the party you favor is in power, but just wait until the other party gets control. (And they will. It always happens.)

    • It wasn’t only the protesters; some individuals (with Canadian accounts) who merely donated to the trucker protest movement and didn’t actually protest also had their bank accounts frozen and locked.

      Stay frosty people.

      • Thanks for the reminder. Forgot about that.
        .
        And, if you do not think this current Administration is not above doing the same thing, think again…

  2. Y’all are going to fold on this like a bad poker hand. We’ve been screaming this for 10 years while being told we were crazy. Now look at you… you are already in a full spectrum attack and unless you make me your king real soon you are going to be completely destroyed. You can’t see that the people that are running everything either hate you or they are Satanist criminals? How is that ” we’re going to take the high road” working for you? I’m sure it was fun laughing at us but you ain’t laughing now

    • No one is above me, no one is below me, only beside me. No one is King of squat. It’s a fantasy.

  3. I imagine the plan will be to let the dollar drop in value while prices continue to rise. Hyperinflation comes to mind with massive bank failures. Then what? The Government will save you, but you’ll have to convert to a digital currency. This may also entail the surrendering of assets such as real estate. There is a plan here.

  4. Joe Biden and his lefty Democrats want to control your private purse strings. That’s all. If they control your money, ….. They got you!
    You’re finished!

  5. A kid won’t even be able to do a lemonade stand on the street without some sort of transaction devise and those transactions will be reported to the IRS etc. Might even be illegal child labor or minimum wage violation since it’s all reported to the Government. And cash exceptions won’t be permitted because the thing really won’t work as long as currency is permitted anywhere.

  7. Yep, and Microsoft will be contracted to supply and manage the software. As always, it will be easy to hack and there will be no transparency on the part of Microsoft or the government. That this whole idea is a big mistake is the understatement of the year.

  11. Next, the banishment of simple cash as a lawful exchange of goods or services unto payment for such.

    Don’t believe me?

    Wait.

    • Remember earlier this year the national park service announced that they will no longer accept cash for entry fees into parks?

  13. I suppose we will have to dust off the old barter system.
    Suzanne writes and we drop off clams, salmon, rhubarb, cabbage, bread and pies, while picking up the flyers she prints. It will also have a classified section for the underground trade in goods. “Have old pick-up need snow blower”, ” Seeking George Orwell 1984 and Atlas shrugged, will mow lawns and shovel driveways”. That way we can keep our “banking history” clean…….because if you don’t have one they WILL come checking.

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