Financial expert warns all-digital monetary system would enable ‘complete control’ of citizens

(LifeSiteNews) — Financial expert Catherine Austin Fitts warned in a recent guest appearance at Hillsdale College that any “all-digital monetary system” – not only one issued directly by central banks – poses the threat of enabling “complete control” of citizens.

Fitts, a former public official who now publishes The Solari Report, warned that a potential all-digital monetary system involving commercial banks is just as dangerous as a system of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) issued by central banks. Many have been sounding the alarm about the potential of CBDCs to allow totalitarian state control, whereas liberty advocates do not as often frame private digital money in the same terms.

Fitts pointed out that CBDCs can be directly issued by central banks “on a wholesale basis,” as well as issued through commercial bank “retailers,” which can relay digital currency back to a central bank.

“The challenge with CBDC is it gives the central bankers complete control and the ability to program your money,” said Fitts, noting that such currencies allow for “complete surveillance and control of where and how people use their money.”

She stressed, however, that while “CBDCs are quite dangerous,” such “complete control” does not require CBDCs, but merely “an all-digital monetary system.”

“What we want to stop is an all-digital monetary system, because it is possible to do the equivalent of CBDCs on a private basis,” said Fitts. For example, merchant codes can be used to bar someone from an online payment system because a government or corporation disapproves of their speech, said Fitts.

In fact, such punitive de-banking has already occurred in recent years across the globe. Most famously, Canadian supporters of the Freedom Convoy, which aimed to reverse coercive government COVID mandates, had their bank accounts frozen and flagged for life in an effort to crush the convoy.

In another high-profile instance of financial punishment, Brexit leader Nigel Farage and his family members had their bank accounts closed without explanation. The reason for the debanking was later revealed to have been that Farage was supposedly “politically exposed” — that is, he held beliefs contrary to the banks’ values. At the time, Farage lambasted the debanking as “serious political persecution.”

Fitts pointed out that now, with many “digitized” aspects of our lives, governments and corporations can leverage more than our money to punish or control us. “Our homes are full of digitized equipment that can be identified and surveilled,” she said, also noting that “our cars are more and more electric” and can be stopped or shut down remotely.

A key to enabling totalitarian control through an all-digital monetary system is digital ID, which allows “great precision” in personal identification, noted Fitts.

“Then suddenly all those different digitized items and equipments and systems snap into one complete control grid,” she warned. 

This becomes a governance problem more than a financial problem, said Fitts, whereby a non-transparent or abusive system has “the power to basically turn on and shut off your transactions,” in what is essentially a world “coup d’etat.”

Fitts shared an example of how digital ID and money could be weaponized against citizens, citing a recent real-life worldwide event: The COVID pandemic and its accompanying lockdowns, during which many activities were restricted.

If a repeat of the pandemic were to occur in which citizens were instructed, say, to travel no more than a mile from their home, and to do so only on Tuesdays or Thursdays, “in an all-digitized economy with satellites flying overhead, they can literally track you and if you don’t do what they say, they can turn off your money,” said Fitts.

This would mean financial coercion by bankers and their cohorts would effectively “usur[p]” not only our federal representative government in the U.S., but states’ powers, since “under the Constitution the powers [n]ot delegated to the federal government are reserved to the states,” she continued.

Fitts envisions a potential system of “total control” whereby even what we eat is controlled, and “if you don’t eat cricket flour and synthetic meat made in a lab,” your money will be cut off. 

Fitts advised listeners to “use cash,” as well as encourage local businesses and banks to support and use cash and checks.

She has previously recommended opting out of the big banks and finding a good local bank or credit union instead. Her website, The Solari Report, has a template letter that citizens can use to inform their bankers about the dangers of CBDCs. It reads, in part:

It strikes me that creating a different, yet centrally controlled fiat currency that can be created from thin air and manipulated by unelected central bankers does not promote U.S. financial stability or provide citizens with consumer and investor protections – except in the sense that totalitarian governments can be financially stable through the power of taxation without representation and the ability to micromanage and regulate the spending of families and small enterprise.