Less than a week after India's surprise move to scrap its highest demonstration cash notes, another war on cash has intensified in Australia. Yesterday, the banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia's $150 bill would be good for the economy, eliminate black market money and strengthen banks so they only have to deal in digits, not actual money.
"You want to talk about true power? True power comes from everyone knowing exactly where you've spent your money, every penny, you not having the ability to make any transaction at all in cash. So somebody wants to stop you, all they have to do is freeze your funds. All they have to do is wipe out your bank account," Glenn said Thursday on his radio program.
Cash is one of the few remaining options for financial privacy that doesn't create a permanent record of every purchase or transaction you make. It's also an easy way to reduce your exposure to risk in the broader financial system. Without cash, you are an absolute slave to the system.
Read below or listen to the full segment for answers to these valuable questions:
• What happens in the event of a catastrophic failure if everything is digitized?
• Will every transaction require approval, like selling a car or gun?
• Will purchasing with cash become illegal?
• Can banks use your money to pay off their debt?
• What would be the biggest heist in human history?
Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors:
GLENN: This is absolutely incredible. Less than a week after India's surprise move to scrap its highest demonstration cash notes, another war on cash has intensified now in Australia. Yesterday, the banking giant UBS proposed that eliminating Australia's 150-dollar bills would be good for the economy and good for the banks.
Now, here in America, we've been hearing -- and nobody in the mainstream media is talking about this. And I'm telling you, there's going to come a time -- I promise you this: There's going to come a time that no one will be talking about this. And within two weeks, it will be the only thing that anyone is talking about: America going cashless.
Yesterday, they said that -- UBS said that it would be good for the economy and good for the banks. The reason why they say it will be good for the economy is because you'll stop any black market. You'll stop the, you know, drug trade, et cetera, et cetera. And good for the banks, because the banks won't have to handle all that money. It will all be digits.
This is the real reason -- I'm sorry. No. This is one of the real reasons why this is happening, is because it will save the banks a lot of money.
And, remember, the banks are the ones who are ruling the world. But you want to talk about true power -- true power comes from everyone knowing exactly where you've spent your money, every penny, you not having the ability to make any transaction at all in cash.
So somebody wants to stop you, all they have to do is freeze your funds. All they have to do is wipe out your bank account.
In a time where our Pentagon is being hacked by the Russians, the banks are saying, "Let's digitize everything."
You want to wipe out the debt? You want to wipe out the trillion dollars of debt? Digitize everything, and then have some catastrophic failure. Well, I guess we all have to start over again. Well, I guess everything's been equalized now.
In -- yes.
STU: Isn't that the plot from Mr. Robot?
GLENN: Yes, it is.
STU: Essentially.
(laughter)
GLENN: In September 2015, Australian bank Westpac published its free credit report -- its cash-free credit report, suggesting that the country would become cashless by 2022.
In July 2016, Australian payments from Tyro published an enormously self-serving blog touting the benefits of a cashless society, saying, quote, it's only a matter of time. The media and the political establishments have now chimed in as well.
Two days ago, Citibank -- yes, the Citibank that we have -- announced it was going cashless at its Australian branches.
In February of this year, Sydney Morning Herald released a series of articles, some of which were written by officials from Australia's Department of Treasury, suggesting that eliminating cash will save billions of dollars and moving to a cashless society is the next step -- is the next step for the Australian dollar.
The government, media, and banks and academia now have formed a single unified chorus to push the idea to consumers that cashless is good for everyone.
It's happening across the planet now: Australia, India, Europe, and in North America, partially right. Going cashless will save a lot of money. Paper currency is costly to transport in large quantities, due to the need of security. But it is also accurate to suggest that going cashless will be good for the banks.
As UBS pointed out yesterday, demonetizing Australia's 50 and 100-dollar bills would force anyone holding those notes to deposit them back into the banking system.
So bank deposits would rise as a result. So would bank profits. Now, let me think: If we're going to negative interest rates, which means that I would want to pull my money out of the bank because it's costing me money to put it in the bank. And that's the only way the bank survives, is by bleeding me dry, what could the bank possibly do?
Well, if I'm taking my money out because they're giving me a haircut -- they're just taking two -- one, two, three percent -- or if the government so deems it, 10 percent of whatever I have in my bank, I could either take my money out, or the banks could make it so I couldn't take my money out.
Now, they're already doing that by saying you can't make a big deposit -- or, a large withdrawal. They're already trying to make it impossible. But this traps the money because your money won't have any value on the street.
It's not like if you have the money, I can still go out and buy things. I take it out of the bank. No, no. They will outlaw all cash transactions. So no one will take cash, and cash will have zero meaning.
So it would be like trading in toilet paper. That way, I have to do business with the bank. They are able then to give all of us a haircut because all of us have to have our money in the bank.
PAT: And every transaction you ever make will be tracked. So if you ever wanted to be off the grid for whatever reason, you can't be. You just can't be.
GLENN: You can't.
If you want to let's say close the loophole on I want to sell my gun to my friend Steve for $200 -- that's totally legal to do. The gun show loophole. I'm just a private citizen, and I'm selling my private -- I'm selling like a chair. And I'm selling it to this guy. You don't have to worry about that gun show loophole anymore. Because I won't be able to sell even my car on the street with a sign that says, "For sale, call this number."
I can't say it's $800. Just give me $800, and I'll give you the title of the car and go drive away. He won't have the $800. I will have to go to a bank, who will then be paid to make that transaction for me.
Even policy wonk academics would have the rare opportunity to take their lousy theories and PHD dissertations for a test-drive. This means, your politicians have more control over your savings and fewer obstacles to impose capital controls and engage in civil asset forfeiture.
Remember what we were fighting against a year ago or so? Civil asset forfeiture, where already the government is just taking it?
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: And saying, "Well, we don't know where this money came from." Oh, well, you have been charged with a crime, so we're just going to take it from you.
And then you're guilty. They don't give it back. You have to go to court to get it back from them.
JEFFY: Prove that you're not a criminal.
GLENN: Prove that you're not a criminal. Prove that that money -- prove that that asset was yours. And we've been railing on this saying, "This is a really dangerous precedent." Well, what happens when somebody wants to stop you and nothing -- nothing is of value except a digital? You are an absolute slave to the system. Boy, you want to talk about bitcoin becoming through the roof and gold.
STU: It is up, by the way.
GLENN: Bitcoin is up?
STU: Yeah.
GLENN: Cash is one of the few remaining options for financial privacy that doesn't create a permanent record of every purchase or transaction you make. It's also an easy way to reduce your exposure to risk in the broader financial system.
Think about this: The banking system is full of institutions that never miss an opportunity to demonstrate they can't be trusted with our money.
Hardly a month goes by without some major baking scandal. They're caught colluding on exchange rates, manipulating interest rates, fraudulently establishing fraudulent accounts. It's disgraceful.
In many banking systems across the world, especially in Europe right now, banks have precariously low levels of capital and already suffering the effects of negative interest rates. In the United States, banks routinely employ very clever accounting tricks to conceal their true financial condition.
You won't have a say in the matter. Here's what could happen, and all of these things are contingent on a thousand different things. And it doesn't have to be this way. But what could happen is a major global financial disaster, where the markets all around the world are hit and hit hard. A global banking holiday, where everything has shifted so much, they've got to get a handle on the global markets because somebody hacked into the market. Somebody did something wrong. Somebody made a policy that was bad. A country collapsed. There was a terror strike. It doesn't matter what happened.
But there is a global impact on the markets. And we have a global depression. And a collapse of confidence in the banks, in the governments, and in currency.
And so the government says, "Banking holiday, okay. We're set. Two weeks later: Everybody bring all cash in. We're banning all cash. Bring it in. And we're resetting this as a global market. Global cash. It's all in digits. And, by the way, if you don't bring your cash in and you're caught trying to buy anything in cash, you're trying to buy anything without digits, you'll be thrown into jail."
It's pretty much what happened in the Great Depression. Don't think that it can't happen now. This is the kind of thing -- all you need is an excuse. What is -- you know, I just asked the financial adviser that we had on yesterday or day before. I said, "So is there another TARP?" Yeah, it's this.
What's going to save the banks? Because the minute you get scared, you're going to pull your money out, and then it all collapses. Well, they already have the right. Check your bank. Call your bank. Ask for the fine print. Almost all of the banks have changed their fine print to where a bail-in is now their right, that if the bank becomes insolvent, they can take the same percentage of everybody's account to pay off the debts that they have.
So you're the last line. You're the last creditor that they have to pay. You think that you're the first creditor. Because what you're doing is you are loaning your hard-earned money to the bank. The bank then takes that and makes more money on your money by lending that money out to somebody else.
But the bank also has made investments in the stock market, in -- in mutual funds, in treasuries, in all kinds of different things. So they've made investments.
They've also made loans to other people that they can't cover if everybody starts to default on their loans. So there's a hierarchy of who gets paid back. You are now the creditor of last resort. You are the last person the bank has to pay back. You lose your money. And that's all in the -- in writing now.
If they want to make sure the rich get richer -- if you want to see the biggest heist in human history, it's this: Force everyone to put their money into the bank, and then they'll pay off who they will. And then they'll divvy the rest out to you.
[break]
GLENN: You know, it's really amazing how this has just creeped up on the world. And what have we been doing? We have been arguing over --
PAT: Other things.
GLENN: -- nonsense.
JEFFY: Yeah.
GLENN: No, not even other -- we're not even talking -- we haven't been arguing for the last year and a half about anything important.
PAT: Yeah.
GLENN: We've been arguing about, you know, Miss Universe.
PAT: Uh-huh.
GLENN: We haven't been talking about anything important. And look at what happened: This week, in -- have we --
STU: Who is we?
GLENN: I know. I know. I'm saying the western world. Generally speaking, the western world. And especially North America has not been paying attention to what's happening.
STU: Yeah, that's fair.
GLENN: Really happening.
PAT: And people from Australia -- that this is happening at Citibank branches in Australia and think, "Eh, it's Australia."
JEFFY: Right.
GLENN: I want to make sure it's clear. I want to clarify something. This is not all branches. I thought it was all branches.
PAT: Yeah, it's some branches.
GLENN: It's some branches. So they're just starting this now at Citibank.
PAT: But they say the government, media, banks, and even academia have formed this single unified chorus to push the idea to consumers --
JEFFY: Yeah.
PAT: -- cashless is good for everybody. And it's happening across the planet from Australia to India, Europe to North America.
JEFFY: Right.
PAT: This isn't limited to Australia.
GLENN: Nobody is paying attention to what's happening in India. I mean, gold prices in India shot through the roof because they didn't go cashless. They just took everything over a 50-dollar bill. And it almost stopped the country. This week, they just did it. This cashless society is closer than any of us think, and if you think somebody is not going to -- they're going to let a crisis go to waste, you're mistaken.
Featured Image: Indian people wait in a queue to withdraw money from a mobile ATM machine in New Delhi on November 15, 2016. India is to use indelible ink to prevent people from exchanging old notes more than once, the government said, a week after the withdrawal of high-value banknotes from circulation in a crackdown on 'black money'. (Photo Credit: CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images)
