‘FedNow’ Marks a Good Time to Get ‘Off Wall Street’

By Nilus Mattive

The FedNow program is set to roll out in just a few short weeks.

On the surface, it’s simply a government-run payment processing system designed to make financial transactions faster and more efficient.

And according to recent articles from places like PolitiFact and the Charlotte Observer, FedNow is nothing to worry about. As they put it:

“Even if federal leaders decided they wanted to block Americans’ everyday purchases this way — and there’s no indication they do — the laws currently on the books would not allow it.”

Really?

Let’s start with the idea that the government doesn’t have any interest in monitoring what everyday citizens are doing.

As Martin has been pointing out for months now, the reality is that this type of thing already happened here in America.

For example, the federal government illegally spied on millions of American citizens who were never suspected of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

That was revealed in a slide from a top-secret PowerPoint presentation that the NSA and FBI used to train their agents.

It showed the so-called “providers,” or companies that provided American citizens’ confidential data to the government.

When the spying — called the President’s Surveillance Program … or “The Program” — was first rolled out by the NSA under the George W. Bush administration in the wake of Sept. 11, it included big telecom companies like AT&T (T) and Sprint providing user data to government officials.

According to an investigation byUSA Today, this included “customers' names, street addresses and other personal information.” In addition, the government received “detailed records of calls they made — across town or across the country — to family members, coworkers, business contacts and others.”

Under the Obama administration, the NSA’s domestic spying efforts expanded to include Big Tech providers like Microsoft (MSFT), Alphabet (GOOGL), Yahoo!, Facebook, Skype, AOL, Apple (AAPL) and others.

Government agents could search and spy at any time, whether live or recorded. Things like chats, videos, photos, stored data, files that had been sent, websites that had been visited and even details about a person’s social networks.

So it’s evident that this could happen under any government, left, right or in-between, and a program like FedNow would make it…

Extremely Easy to Apply the Same
Type of Thing to Our Financial Lives

What about the idea that the government would never dare seize control of your money?

Well, again, they have already seized control over the assets of millions of private U.S. citizens ... many of whom never did anything wrong.

Sure, in a court of law, people are presumed innocent until proven guilty. But when the government confiscates your money or any other asset, you’re presumed guilty until you can prove your innocence.

How often does it happen? According to the Institute for Justice, it’s a massive nationwide problem.

Since the year 2000, it’s documented 17 million cases of confiscation by 45 states, the District of Columbia and the federal government.

Even investigative reporters at The Washington Post looked into this.

They found that just in one recent year, the U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Treasury received $5 billion in assets confiscated from private citizens.

But only $3.5 billion was stolen money. The rest was taken away from innocent Americans.

Most of those cases involved hard cash or other physical assets.

The new FedNow program opens up the potential for the government to cast a far wider, far more efficient net — essentially covering an entire world of digital financial transactions.

All they’d have to do is …

Declare Some Type
of New Emergency

Indeed, there are plenty of other examples of government officials tossing personal freedoms aside under the auspice of emergencies.

This might be a controversial example, but consider a famous case from New Orleans during the Hurricane Katrina disaster back in 2005 …

Shortly after the storm hit, the city’s police chief made the following announcement:

“No one will be able to be armed. Guns will be taken. Only law enforcement will be allowed to have guns."

He then instructed police officers — as well as the National Guard — to begin seizing firearms throughout the city, even if those guns were lawfully owned.

All told, thousands of weapons were confiscated at a time when their rightful owners needed them the most. The seizures only stopped after a legal injunction was awarded through the court system. And weapons were only returned to their lawful owners after a subsequent lawsuit.

Since then, a new federal law has been put on the books to explicitly prevent this type of thing from happening again. But it’s a reminder of how authorities can blatantly ignore fundamental liberties once some type of emergency is declared.

Heck, consider what happened during World War II, when roughly 80,000 full-fledged, U.S.-born American citizens were rounded up and put into camps simply because they had Japanese ancestry!

I could keep going, but the point is simple: Governments — including Uncle Sam — have a long history of …

Bending the Rules
As They See Fit

That’s particularly true during times of stress.

Meanwhile, rapid technological advancements are giving authorities greater powers of surveillance and control than ever before. Many of them can be instituted with the push of a button.

And lately we’ve seen nearly constant national emergencies …

Plus, a political environment that’s as polarized as it’s ever been …

While Uncle Sam’s finances are hitting new all-time lows.

So, it’s perfectly reasonable to imagine a scenario where a new program like FedNow could be subject to future abuse by whoever’s in charge at any given time.

This is another one of the many reasons I’ve been talking a lot about alternative assets and strategies, and why Dr. Martin Weiss and I are holding an emergency briefing this afternoon, Tuesday, June 6, at 2 p.m. Eastern, to explore more advanced ways for you to gain greater financial flexibility and freedom going forward.

Click here to learn more about how to protect your wealth and privacy from government overreach.

I hope to see you there …

Best wishes,

Nilus Mattive