According to Politico, “Former President Donald Trump said that if elected he would not allow the Federal Reserve to create a digital dollar, in a potential blow to proponents who say such a move would make the payment system more efficient. ‘Tonight, I am also making another promise to protect Americans from government tyranny,’ Trump said Wednesday in New Hampshire before the state’s primary election next week. ‘As your president, I will never allow the creation of a central bank digital currency.’… It’s also possible that a digital dollar would be created only for payments between banks to, for example, reduce the costs of transactions across borders.”
What a joke of a promise this is. It’s meaningless because he has no f***ing idea what he’s talking about, let alone how the banking system actually works. He expects idiot Americans to be just as obtuse and naive as he is, which is why he can get away with saying such nonsense — over and over again. No doubt, this “promise” was intended to feed his QAnon kook conspiracy base of f***tards who believe that the government is tracking every transaction of its citizenry. These same f***tard Americans eschew the idea of digital currency (and any engagement with bureaucracy) as another attempt by the government to track everyone’s spending and, hence, their movements. It’s the latest version of one’s SSN being the “mark of the beast” that I’ve been hearing about all my life because I live in stupid f***ing hell.
Sadly, this Politico article missed the point of digital currency until the very last sentence, which I quoted above. Even though this is the first time I’ve heard of the Federal Reserve wanting to create a digital dollar, I immediately thought of the transaction efficiencies gained between banks using digital banknotes. Most people probably don’t know this, but the current method banks use to handle transactions is to literally move pallets of money from one bank’s “vault” to another. Just like people with personal bank accounts that allow them to conduct business and pay bills, banks have their own bank accounts at the Federal Reserve that permit them to move money between banks. Most people today use credit and debit cards more than actual cash, so they might think everything is “digital” already, but at some point, actual cold hard cash has to move, which happens between banks and the Federal Reserve. Moreover, banks must hold certain cash reserves at the end of the business day based on their current liabilities; these reserves change constantly and daily. To meet these regulatory requirements, banks may borrow money from another bank or the Federal Reserve. How are these short-term loans accomplished? By moving pallets of cash. This happens every day. Back and forth. Physical stacks of bundled greenbacks move from one bank’s vault to another. Digital currency would eliminate this process and I guess retire a lot of forklifts and their operators.