IMF Prepares Financial Revolution – Say GOODBYE to the Dollar

From Brandon Smith

Global reserve currency status allows for amazing latitude in terms of monetary policy.

The Treasury Department understands that there is constant demand for dollars overseas as a means to more easily import and export goods. The petrodollar monopoly made the U.S. dollar essential for trading oil globally for decades.

This means that the central bank of the U.S. has been able to create fiat currency from thin air to a far higher degree than any other central bank on the planet while avoiding the immediate effects of hyperinflation.

Much of that cash as well as dollar-denominated debt  ends up in the coffers of foreign central banks, international banks and investment firms. Sometimes it is held as a hedge, or bought and sold to adjust the exchange rates of local currencies. As much as 60% of all U.S. currency (and 25% of U.S. government debt) is owned outside the U.S.

Global reserve currency status is what allowed the U.S. government and the Fed to create tens of trillions of dollars in new currency after the 2008 credit crash, all while keeping inflation more or less under control.

The problem is that this system of stowing dollars overseas only lasts so long and eventually the effects of overprinting come home to roost.

The Bretton-Woods Agreement of 1944 established the framework for the rise of the U.S. dollar. While the benefits are obvious, especially for the U.S., there are numerous costs involved. Think of world reserve status as a “deal with the devil.” You get the fame, you get the fortune, you get trophy dates and a sweet car – for a while. Then one day the devil comes to collect, and when he does he’s going to take everything, including your soul.

Unfortunately, I suspect collection time is coming soon for the U.S.

It may take the form of a brand-new Bretton Woods-like system that removes the dollar as global reserve currency and replaces it with a new digital basket system. (Something like the International Monetary Fund (IMF)’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) currency.)

Global banks are essentially admitting they plan for a complete overhaul of the dollar-based financial world, and the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC)-focused system built on “unified ledgers.”

There have been three recent developments all announced in succession that suggest the dollar’s replacement is imminent.

And by “imminent,” I mean before this decade is over.

The IMF’s XC framework: A centralized policy For CBDCs

The IMF’s XC platform was released as a theoretical model in November of 2022 and matches closely with their long discussed concept of a global SDR, only in this case it would tie together all CBDCs under one umbrella along with “legacy currencies” (dollars and euros and so on).

XC is marketed as a policy structure to make cross-border payments in CBDCs “easier” for governments and central banks. Of course, it places the IMF as the middleman controlling the flow of digital transactions. The IMF suggests that the XC platform would make the transition from legacy currencies to CBDCs easier for the various nations involved.

As the IMF noted in a discussion on centralized ledgers in 2023:

We could end up in a world where we have connected entities to some degree, but some entities and some countries that are excluded. And as a global and multilateral institution, we’re sort of aiming to, you know, provide a basic connectivity, a basic set of rules and governance that is truly multilateral and inclusive. So, I think that is – the ambition is to aim for innovation that is compatible with policy goals and that is inclusive relative to the broad membership of, say, the IMF.

To translate, decentralized systems are bad.

“Inclusivity” (collectivism) is good.

And the IMF wants to work in tandem with other globalist institutions to be the “facilitators” (controllers) of that economic collectivism.

Bank For International Settlements (BIS)’s Universal Ledger

Not more than a day after the IMF announced their XC platform goals, the BIS announced their plans for a single record for all CBDCs called the BIS Universal Ledger. The BIS specifically notes that the project is meant to inspire trust in central bank digital currencies while overcoming the fragmentation of current tokenization efforts.

While the IMF is focused on controlling international policy, the BIS is pursuing the technical aspects for the globalization of CBDCs. Both make it clear in their white papers that a cashless society is in fact the end game and that digital transactions must to be monitored by a centralized entity in order to keep money “secure.”

As the BIS argues in their extensive overview of Unified Ledgers:

Today, the monetary system stands at the cusp of another major leap. Following dematerialisation and digitalisation, the key development is tokenisation – the process of representing claims digitally on a programmable platform. This can be seen as the next logical step in digital recordkeeping and asset transfer…

The blueprint envisages these elements being brought together in a new type of financial market infrastructure (FMI) – a “unified ledger”. The full benefits of tokenisation could be harnessed in a unified ledger due to the settlement finality that comes from central bank money residing in the same venue as other claims. Leveraging trust in the central bank, a shared venue of this kind has great potential to enhance the monetary and financial system.

There are three major assertions made by the BIS in their program:

• First, the digitization of money is unavoidable. Cash is going to disappear primarily because it makes moving money easier, and existing cryptocurrencies are “a flawed system that cannot take on the mantle of the future of money.”
• Second, our existing decentralized payment methods are unacceptable because they are “risky.” Only central banks are qualified and “trustworthy” enough to mediate the exchange of money.
• Third, the use of Unified Ledgers is largely designed to track and trace and even investigate all transactions (for the public good, of course).

The BIS system deals far more in the realm of private transactions than the IMF example. It is the technical foundation for the centralization of all CBDCs, governed in part by the BIS and the IMF, and it is scheduled to go into wider use in the next two years.

There are already multiple nations testing the BIS ledger today.

Now, it’s important to understand that whoever acts as the middleman in global money exchange is going to have all the power, over both governments and their citizens.

In other words, whoever controls the unified ledger also controls all the world’s money.

If every movement of wealth is monitored, from the shift of billions between governments down to your payment for groceries and gas, then every single transaction can be rejected.

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