Editor’s Note: Longtime readers may be familiar with Nick Giambruno.
Nick has worked closely with Doug Casey for many years and was previously Editor in Chief here at International Man.
He’s known for spotting Big Picture geopolitical and economic trends ahead of the crowd and seeing crises before they come.
Nick has been to countless countries that have experienced hyperinflation and financial crises… including Zimbabwe, Lebanon, Haiti, Turkey, Argentina, Syria, Nicaragua, Bosnia, Colombia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Iran, and many other volatile places most people wouldn’t dare go to.
He knows what really happens during a monetary “reset”… and what you should do.
Nick’s insights are particularly urgent today…
That’s because The US is on the cusp of its worst crisis in nearly a century.
You’ll find all the details in the discussion with Nick below.
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International Man: The calls to implement a digital dollar are growing louder.
The European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde openly admits to pursuing a digital euro.
The Chinese government is perhaps furthest along. They are already testing a digital yuan.
What is going on here with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)?
Nick Giambruno: It’s clear there is an effort by some of the most powerful people in the world to bring about a cashless society. CBDCs are a big part of that.
If they are successful, the government would have complete knowledge of—and control over—every transaction you make.
If you’re disobedient, they would be able to turn off your ability to transact at the push of a button, or they could charge you a fee whenever you did something they didn’t like.
With CBDCs, central banks could impose deeply negative interest rates—a tax on savings—with ease.
They could also put an expiration date on your money, much like how some frequent flyer miles expire worthless after a certain amount of months.
Governments could also program CBDCs to control what they allow you to spend your money on. For example, perhaps they will ration meat, airline travel, gasoline, and other products in the name of fighting Climate Change.
In short, CBDCs would enable governments to harness and redistribute the country’s wealth any way they saw fit.
CBDCs are a totalitarian’s dream. They would give governments an almost unbreakable control over the individual—precisely the opposite of how a free society should work.
Imagine what Stalin and other tyrants throughout history could have done with the power of CBDCs?
If King George had that kind of power, would the colonists have prevailed and established the USA? The British may have been able to identify, disrupt, and quash the American Revolution.
Here’s the bottom line.
CBDCs are a terrible thing with no redeeming qualities. Nonetheless, they are coming soon—probably this year. There will be immense consequences to your personal freedom and financial wellbeing.
International Man: How do you think it will play out in the US?
Nick Giambruno: Last year, the US Congress made it official when the digital dollar first appeared in a bill that Nancy Pelosi introduced.
The idea was for the Federal Reserve—the central bank of the US—to create and manage a centralized digital currency to facilitate COVID-19 stimulus payments. Every US resident would get a digital dollar bank account with the Fed.
While the digital dollar provision didn’t make it in the bill’s final version, it has reappeared in other legislation and recent Senate Banking Committee meetings.
The digital dollar is clearly not going away. I expect we’ll see a big push to implement it this year.
It’s not hard to see how they intend to sell it to the public.
They’ll claim that they want to give you “free” stimulus money, and they need a digital dollar to help them do it.
But don’t be fooled by the supposed free money. It’s like the cheese in a mousetrap. It’s there to entice you into accepting the digital dollar and cashless society and all the horrible things that go with it.
It all reminds me of the banking system in the Soviet Union. The Gosbank was the central bank and only bank in the Soviet Union. Every citizen would then get an account at the central bank—much like how every US citizen will get a digital dollar account with the Fed.
It’s astounding that Western countries are rushing to implement the same communist banking system, albeit a digital one.
International Man: Why is this so urgent?
Nick Giambruno: Because the current monetary system is self-destructing at an alarming rate and reaching the end of its shelf-life.
Today, the federal government couldn’t even dream of financing its multi-trillion-dollar budget deficits without the Fed’s printing presses. Historically when countries do that, it’s near the end game.
Even the central bankers themselves can see that… and they are preparing for what comes next.
We will soon have a Great Monetary “Reset,” as central bankers try to bridge the gap to a new system.
They would prefer to double down on the fiat system. CBDCs are a big part of the new system they’d like to implement after the reset.
It will all start to go down this year. That is why it is so urgent.
International Man: Will governments and central banks be successful?
Nick Giambruno: Despite all the hype, CBDCs are nothing but the same fiat currency scam with a new label on it—and zero privacy. They will make it even easier for the government to inflate the currency, and that’s precisely what I would expect them to do if they impose CBDCs on us.
Here’s the bottom line. The digital dollar makes an inferior form of money even worse.
If paper fiat currency is not viable as money, CBDCs are even less viable as they enable the government to engage in even more currency debasement.
CBDCs aren’t going to save the failing fiat system as the central bankers hope.
Would a CBDC have saved the Zimbabwe dollar, the Venezuelan bolivar, the Argentine peso, or the Lebanese lira?
I don’t think so. And a CBDC won’t save the US dollar or the euro either.
But that doesn’t mean governments won’t try to implement CBDCs out of desperation… with immensely destructive consequences for many people.
International Man: What can our readers do right now to prepare?
Nick Giambruno: It remains to be seen whether central bankers will breathe additional life into the fiat system with CBDCs. I hope they won’t.
Nevertheless, it will be one of the most important financial stories of the decade. And it will have immense consequences for your personal freedom and financial wellbeing.
No matter what happens, I think one thing is sure.
As the Great Monetary Reset unfolds, we are looking at the biggest wealth transfer in history… and those holding US dollars and other fiat currencies will be on the losing end.
All of the value stored in US dollars, euros, and other fiat currencies will be siphoned out and transferred somewhere else…
The key is to position yourself on the receiving end of this wealth transfer. That way, you can not only avoid disaster but set yourself up for enormous gains.