How A $7611 Monthly Social Security Check Became $1473 And Why Digital Money Won’t Stop This Theft
By Bill Sardi
October 25, 2021
Just When Social Security Was About To Collapse A Half Million American Retirees Died Prematurely Of COVID-19. That Saves ~$48.5 Billion. Was This All Pre-Planned?
Elitist Bank Of International Settlements Issues Digital Currencies Guide But Doesn’t Instruct How To Correct Ongoing Central Bank Public Robbery.
The game is as old as the Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor was to be worshiped. He ruled by executive orders. Conquer other lands, then issue a new currency, in this case a silver denarius, said to be worth a day’s wages at the time, and force the conquered to pay homage (taxes) and you control and subjugate the people. Then shave silver off the edges of the silver coins, something called debasement, akin to inflation with modern paper dollars. Eventually the silver content of a denarius fell to zero.
Shrewd Roman soldiers reportedly refused to accept debased silver coins as payment for their services.So readers can roughly assess the rate of inflation over the centuries, the Bible says Jesus fed bread to 5000 which would have cost ~200 denarii or a half-year’s pay at the time. A denarius would be worth ~$2.60 today. A $1 slider (small hamburger) would cost $5000 or 1,923 denarii to feed those five-thousand today.
Back in the day, a Roman denarius could buy a male slave (500 denarii), a female slave (2,000-6,000 denarii) or an apartment (48-288 denarii/year).
Today, overspending world economies based upon fiat currency (unsecured paper money) have printed themselves out of insolvency at the expense of their tax payers by using inflation (printing more paper and electronic money which dilutes the value of existing money and results in less purchasing power) to keep the ship of state from sinking financially.
As Matthew Piepenburg says: “there’s no better way to get themselves (the central bank) out of a $30T public debt hole of their own digging than by sucker-punching the masses with deliberate inflation to pay off their own debt binge with increasingly inflation-debased dollars.”
A $1437 Social Security check should be $7611!
If you had to increase Social Security checks pegged to the real rate of inflation (not the published rate of inflation), the average $321 Social Security check in 1980 would be $7611 today (ShadowStats.com inflation calculator), when in fact the average SS check today is only $1437.
According to ShadowStats.com the real current rate of inflation is 13%, not the central bank’s target rate of 2%. You get the picture. Today’s money is not worth yesterday’s money.
Meanwhile, the price of a 1-ounce gold coin is ~$1800 today when adjusted for inflation from $850 in 1980 to the present, it would be $21,900. Somebody is manipulating precious metals prices downward so there is no competition for the increasingly worthless paper money.
Hidden erosion of wealth
Naïve Americans check their savings account and it has about the same amount of money in it from year to year, interest rates being less than 1%. Most Americans don’t realize the value of their money is being eroded and doesn’t have the same purchasing power it once did.
The people will never notice that the good money they put into the system was paid back in weak money when taken out decades later. This is public robbery of the highest order.
Velocity of money at an all-time low
$5.4 trillion has been added to the money supply as financial stimulus during the Covid crisis. Because of inflation, new money put into the system has to be spent before it becomes worthless over time. The only thing keeping a lid on inflation is that US consumers are saving or paying down credit card bills, not spending. The velocity of money (how fast money is spent) is at an all-time low. Over two trillion dollars of stimulus money ended up in the hands of bankers because recipients parked it.
If consumers don’t spend, inflation is stalled
Shortages of goods due to supply chain problems may have a back-side blessing. Consumers can’t spend as much money on Christmas gifts this year due to a backup of foreign-made goods at ports of entry. If money isn’t spent, retailers will have to hold down prices. Predicted inflation will stall out. At this moment, the public is dropping a monkey wrench into the government’s planned inflation to coerce adoption of digital currency. Wouldn’t you know– the damn peons aren’t cooperating according to plan J.
There are no life boats: everyone will go down with a sinking ship
There is no account at Social Security with your name on it that has money in it. Everyone will go down with the ship when the river of new money dries up and can’t prop up the stock market bubble any longer. Then the stock market tumbles, people panic and hoard stuff, inflation runs wild and the dollar is toast. That moment is now upon us. Ironically, the only thing holding up the predicted inflation is that the stimulus money must be spent for run-away inflation to occur.
This inevitable financial and monetary crisis appears to be created to force Americans to accept a new digital currency, which is a social control mechanism, not a remedy to what ails the economy or halts erosion in the value of the dollar.
Adoption of digital currency is like buying a new car that can go faster (rapid transactions) and is bought at a bargain price (reduced handling fees), but you can’t drive the car when and where you want to drive the car (forbidden to make certain purchases).
How a nation gets away with inflation
A nation can run with this inflationary scheme as long as it has a generation of new young workers paying into the Social Security system that won’t collect till years later. But when the Baby Boomers, born 1946-1964, hit their retirement years beginning in 2011, the scheme began to fall apart.
Today the US has 2.9 worker paychecks with FICA deductions for future Medicare and Social Security for every retiree receiving a Social Security check. In 1945 when early Baby Boomers were being born, there were 41.9 workers contributing to Social Security per retiree.
The Social Security Trust Fund, save for FICA payroll deductions every two weeks, cannot supply sufficient funds to pay retirees. Part of the money now comes out of the general fund.
To reiterate, today’s inflated (less valuable) dollars are being used to pay Social Security checks today as FICA deductions are taken out of paychecks, but part of this financial burden must now come out of the general fund which only remains solvent because of borrowing. But that well has dried up too.
No longer does Japan or China buy US Treasury Notes (IOUs) because of the remote chance they will ever be paid back, our national debt (what we owe others) being $28 trillion. The US cannot pay down its own credit card bill. So now the US Treasury Department must print money out of thin air instead of borrow it from overseas sources.
Robots and unemployment
Just imagine the problem should robots begin to take the place of wage earners for menial repetitive jobs. A 24-hour robot works three human shifts, with no vacations, sick days, or weekends. Each robot replaces ~6.6 jobs. Robots don’t receive paychecks to make FICA payroll deductions for Medicare and Social Security.
By 2025 robots could take the place of 2 million jobs lost during the Covid pandemic. Already an estimated 42% of 40 million jobs lost at the peak of the pandemic are gone forever. The point being, even fewer contributions are being made to the Social Security Trust Fund.
While robotization presents challenges, the US could finally stop exporting all its jobs overseas. Robots are cheaper than overseas labor. The $500 billion imbalance in international trade between the US and China could be reduced via robotization without imposing trade tariffs.
What a coincidence
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere (we know better), a man-made gain-of-function “virus” kills off senior Americans on Social Security in a targeted fashion. Adults over the age of 65 represent 16% of the population but 80% of the Covid-19 deaths. As of October 20, 2021 an estimated 549,716 Americans over age 65 have prematurely died due to Covid-19.
A half million Americans on Social Security who die five years early due to Covid-19 saves Social Security $48.5 billion. The timing is uncanny. Was this all pre-planned? Has the federal government figured out a murderous way to balance the Social Security budget? Nobody is going to raise their hands up in the air and confess to this.
Inexplicably, the first SARS virus (2002) disappeared. That is something viruses don’t normally do. Were heinous laboratory scientists perfecting SARS-2 CoV (Covid-19) then? Why did the director of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases deny his agency funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China?
A half million Americans on Social Security who die five years early due to Covid-19 saves Social Security $48.5 billion. Was this all pre-planned?
Then came unexpected longevity
To make matters worse, retirees began living longer. In 1935 when Social Security began, people who reached 65 years of age could expect to live an additional 12.5 years. Currently, women aged 65 can expect to live another 21.5 years; men another 19 or more years.
Today fewer people smoke tobacco, which takes ten years off of a typical smoker’s lifespan. I always wondered why the FDA allowed tobacco companies to sell their cigarettes unchallenged. Then it struck me, government doesn’t want people living longer. Not having to pay another ten years of Social Security checks was incentive enough for government to do little to halt smoking.
Americans must die on time so America can avoid insolvency
In recent times US Presidents hired ethicists to urge we die on time rather than prolong the miseries of old age. The nation cannot afford longevity.
Now for digital currency
There are plans underway to ditch paper dollar bills and bring in digital dollars (Dig$$). Digital currency isn’t just electronic money that people access via a plastic card. It replaces paper money and therefore there are no private transactions between parties. Categorically digital money is an intrusion of privacy.
Digital dollars will be issued by the federal government
Digital $$ (Dig$$) would be distributed directly from the US Treasury Department to the masses, much like the unemployment checks have been distributed during the Covid-19 lockdown. These federal government-issued electronic dollars are believed to be a forerunner of the guaranteed minimum income, or universal basic income, now under consideration.
With robots anticipated to replace workers and jobs vanishing, it appears a large portion of the working age population may be on the government dole. That is, unless they die off early from an infectious disease (?). Is the Covid-19 pandemic going to continue until a certain number of retirees have been culled from the population?
Social control
Giving government a view of everything a person buys could be used to control the population. For example, contributions to church may be classified as a donation to a racist organization and denied; or the purchase of a gasoline-powered car over an electric-powered vehicle might be rejected for reasons of air pollution and climate change.
Ford Motor Co. must know something, it is converting over to production of electric-powered vehicles. This change won’t be because of consumer demand for these electric-motored vehicles, it will be because Americans will be coerced to buy them. Government could socially control purchasing decisions, supposedly for the common good. Digital money = social control.
Why digital currency?
Governments would benefit from digital currency because more taxable transactions are recorded. The current Secretary of the Treasury says she wants to collect $7 trillion more in tax revenues by leaning on banks to report any transaction over $600. That is a giant wealth extraction, from private to public control. A switch from paper to digital currency could accomplish the same thing. No unreportable income.
Who benefits from digital currency?
Banks would primarily benefit from digital currency and are more competitive if they don’t have to deal with coins and cash, and therefore there would be no ATM machines, nor even branch banks. An estimated 300,000 bank tellers would be out of work.
The current banking marketplace now includes financial entities like Pay Pal that essentially are banks without brick-and-mortar branches and ATM machines. Facebook wants to issue its own money (Libras), and be its own central bank within a country.
These electronic banks don’t have the overhead of the traditional banks (Citibank, B of A, Chase, US Bank, Wells Fargo, Capital One, Citizens Bank, etc.), and can out-compete them. Dig$$ would eliminate the need for paper money and all banks could compete on an equal playing field. Digital money and banking reform benefits bankers and government, not the public.
But wait. Can everyone participate in digital currency?
There are impediments to universal Dig$$ participation. There are 1.2 billion people in a world of 7.9 billion population who are unbanked. Then there are another 773 million illiterate adults in the world. God only knows if these people can convert from paper money to digital. How would these people survive without a linkage to money? Paper money is simple to use and doesn’t require electronic devices, nor a high IQ.
It is presumed incentives will be given to convert from paper money to the Dig$$. But would financial incentives to adopt Dig$$ be able to sway the illiterate and the unbanked?
Banking as usual (not!)
When one reads the Bank of International Settlements guide on how central and commercial banks can convert to Dig$$, you would think nothing is amiss in the world of banking today, that everything is rosy, and digital dollars are a logical evolution in a world that demands ultra-fast payments.
But banking is not as usual. Furthermore, no mention is made in the BIS report of a globalist takeover of the world with control of digital money as its core coercive machinery.
The Dig$$ guidebook
The Bank of International Settlements (BIS), headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, has issued its report how to integrate digital currencies into Central Banks and then to 2nd tier commercial and community banks.
The BIS is owned by 63 central banks doing business in countries around the world, and is therefore the bank for central banks that guides policies and promotes central bank stability.
Enter the Bank of International Settlements
The Bank of International Settlements (BIS), has long been an advocate for adequate reserves held by banks (traditionally 10%) to stabilize banking throughout the world.
However, the BIS has ended up being feckless as too-big-to-fail banks were able to push those reserve requirements into the future to the point where now, due to the COVID-19 crisis, there are no traditional 10% reserves held by banks in the US today!
Should a bank run begin, there are no reserves. The public is set up to lose most of its money as the Federal Deposit Insurance Co. (FDIC) can only insure 1.7-cents of every dollar in the bank.
Exclusion
The BIS report does express concern that digitalization could create financial exclusion issues which could result in what it calls a digital divide. People who aren’t digitally savvy may be pushed out of the financial equation altogether (the aforementioned illiterates and unbanked).
What about privacy?
The BIS report gives lip service to issues of banking privacy, but more so in terms of preventing electronic terrorism or cyber theft, never alluding to the fact that the biggest fraudster, invader of privacy and eroder of personal wealth is the federal government and the central bank itself via inflation. The BIS report concedes Dig$$ is primarily “a means of payment rather than a store of value.”
The BIS report states: “Privacy is an acknowledged fundamental human right in most international instruments, such as the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.”
Privacy is one thing, but security is another. What good would it be to appeal to a World Court after everybody lost their money?
The BIS report does indicate issues of privacy are the most important aspect of digital banking. The BIS report demands security features for Dig$$ to prevent illicit activities on one hand, and bank runs on the other hand. But what about consumer protection from the fiat-based banking system itself? It is a system of faith, a religion you might say.
Bankers want to destroy paper dollars that are backed by “full faith and credit of the United States” so as to coerce Americans to accept digital currency, and then restore that “full faith and credit” in digital dollars. Will they pull it off?
Imposed limits on withdrawals
In the US, there are already daily limits on how much can be withdrawn from ATM machines. The central Federal Reserve bank says you cannot make more than six withdrawals or transfers from your savings account per month. Banks use their depositors’ money as reserves (but as mentioned earlier, that requirement that has now been cancelled).
How to get the public to buy into Dig$$
The BIS report nonsensically states: “merchants would only accept DIG$$ if there were sufficient consumers who want to use it.” I’ve not bumped into anyone who wants to use Dig$$. It appears it Dig$$ is going to be forced on the public. Banking will be on bankers’ terms, not the public’s terms.
Banks and government have much to gain and all to lose in their current efforts to meld with the Central Bank’s digital money scheme.
The BIS report goes on to say how Americans are going to be softened up to accept the new digital currency:
“Consumers who receive payments in Dig$$ may be more likely to use Dig$$. Public authorities might therefore be able to incentivize consumer use of Dig$$ by disbursing social benefits and transfers to individuals in Dig$$ and allowing employees to receive their salaries in Dig$$. Allowing consumers to pay their taxes in Dig$$ may also provide a stable, concrete example for consumers to use Dig$$.”
What about Bitcoin?
Regarding Bitcoin which the BIS report refers to as Stablecoins, the BIS report states: “…Central bankers will need to satisfy regulators that they are safe.”
What a joke. Bitcoin users by definition don’t want to be part of the collapsing currency system that allows banks to make money off of other people’s money while offering next-to-zero interest. In a worldwide bank run, Stablecoins remain valuable.
Converting paper money to digital money
The BIS report makes no mention how paper money would be returned to the US Treasury Department in exchange for the Dig$$. Would that conversion accept paper dollars on a dollar-per-dollar basis, or would the conversion be 70% of its face value, another way central banks and governments can short-change citizens and balance the US budget on the backs of cash hoarders. Expect issuance of an expiration date on US paper dollars with the introduction of Dig$$. Those paper dollars you have hidden under the mattress will become worthless after that expiration date.
Bank runs
The BIS report mentions the prospect of dealing with massive simultaneous banks runs, which could be nationwide or even worldwide. But in the current economic climate, a stock market collapse and a massive bank run looms.
In a digital banking system there is no way for consumers to get their money out of the system other than converting it to something tangible, like buying cans of coffee or bags of rice.
Discussion of bank runs in the BIS report is of useless value. Even though savers who use remote devices don’t have to drive down to a local bank ATM machine in an attempt to take their money out of the bank, should a bank run occur, there is no paper money to withdraw. Digital dollars keep all money in the system and eliminates bank runs. Who are they fooling?
About the claim digital money would give the poor greater access to borrowed money
An attempt is made to convince the public that Dig$$ would provide more people on the planet with access to capital (borrowed money). But the real problem is not access, it is onerous and predatory interest rates imposed upon the people who need it the most, the poor. Dig$$ doesn’t fix this.
The issue of usury, onerous interest rates on credit cards, is a topic the banking industry won’t discuss. The median interest rate on credit cards is reportedly 21% and as high as 35%. Banks can access money at ~1%. News caster Tucker Carlson brought this subject up on television. A proposed 14% cap on credit card interest was rejected.
Stop playing around with the people’s money
What can be done to save the American economy and retain the accumulated wealth of Americans. Here are some ideas:
- Halt the effort to eliminate paper money and thus preserve the freedoms inherent in a free society
- Back the currency with something tangible in order to slow or eliminate inflation; increase the value not the volume of money.
- Stop the usury (onerous interest rates) on borrowed money
- Cease the practice of banks issuing dividends to stockholders when bank depositors receive next to nothing.
- Cease borrowing from our future and spending more money than the nation takes in in taxes.
- Replace lottery ticket machines with convenient locally-placed silver coin dispensers. The purchase of silver coins over time would allow the poor to amass wealth, if for no other reason than increased demand for silver resulting in a rise in the price of silver. The practice of buying a silver coin every week for 40 years would amass 1,920 silver coins X an estimated $100-200 value per coin = $192,000-384,000, which would retain its purchasing power. I can assure you very, very few lottery players make out that well buying lottery tickets. Currently the federal government is funneling all the money to the top 1%. A silver money revolution would funnel wealth to the bottom. The bottom-income earners could do this on their own, but it has to be as convenient and available as lottery tickets.
- Stop creating stock market and real estate bubbles with cheap money. Increase the base interest rate for money from the nation’s central bank which then raises interest rates at the consumer level to buy homes and automobiles. Americans would go back to saving money to make a 20% down payment before buying a home. This would increase the interest paid on saved money. Americans once earned 5% interest on their banked money. However, the downside is that this would raise the interest rate paid on the nation’s $28 trillion National Debt. To deal with this, implement the next suggestion.
- Pay down the federal debt of $28 trillion by selling off a portion of the $200 trillion of US assets, and save $300-billion of interest.
Finale
A problem this author has with this topic is that nobody else appears to provide critical analysis. Trillions of dollars wealth are covertly being stolen from Americans’ pocketbooks via inflation, and talk about digital money is narrowly confined to technical or trivial aspects of this major change in currency and banking. Is the federal government going to pull the wool over the eyes of the entire population?
Where are you Neil Cavuto, Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, Jim Cramer, and a host of other financial commentators who have turned financial reporting into entertainment rather than serious public discussion?
The globalists talk about the Great Reset, that everyone will rent rather than own homes, automobiles, even lawn mowers and vacuum cleaners, and be happier for it. But then there will be no individual wealth. The greater question is, are we renting money from the government, or is it our money?
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