The (apparent) advent of central digital currencies (CBDCs) in various countries around the world might be the once-in-a-lifetime chance for the International Monetary Fund (IFM) to move from influencing individuals’ lives – and sometimes all but financially controlling – their governments and economies – to doing it much more directly.
In other words, the CBDCs are the one bandwagon that nobody should have expected the IMF to miss jumping on – and as the news now shows, the organizations is working on a “global platform” to help bolster the agenda of centralized, centrally-controlled digital money – that’s severely criticized by privacy, security, and civil rights groups.
However hard somebody else may be working on this – the IMF appears to be working harder. IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva said as much recently in Morocco.
“At the IMF we are working hard on the concept of a global CBDC platform to trade and to manage risks,” Georgieva, a former (unelected) EU bureaucrat, is quoted as telling her audience.
This hard work on a “platform” along with the push for digital ID adoption, is seen by critics as a concerted effort to make the dream – or nightmare, depending on where you stand – of ubiquitousness of CBDCs around the globe come true.
In order to sell the idea to as many people as possible, the negative consequences – such as their entire lives, and livelihoods, essentially centralized in a government-controlled place – officials are trying to offset those concerns by vocalizing positive concepts: financial inclusiveness, lower costs, and, of course, the king of all (often harmful) trade-offs – convenience.
Although even ostensibly serious and trustworthy – albeit certainly large, corporate media outlets sometimes in error or intentionally tend to confuse their audiences by referring to CBDCs as “crypto” – it bears repeating that this type of scheme has nothing to do with decentralized digital money, whose “claim to fame” is precisely that central banks – and authorities – cannot touch it.
On the contrary, CBDCs would cement a financial system firmly controlled by the authorities (and Canada’s “Freedom Convoy” participants, for one, are a good example of what happens, if…)
Be that as it may, the IMF now has a blueprint for its global, i.e., “cross-border CBDCs.”
