From Visa/MasterCard to UPC Bar Codes, Microchips and Beyond The True and Concealed Purpose of the Mark of the Beast
CASHLESS SOCIETY (Part 2)
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY
This report is the property of Rema Marketing and is considered to be strictly for reading only. With receipt of this report, the recipient acknowledges and agrees that written permissions must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this report, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles. A publication of Rema Marketing. ©2014, All rights reserved.
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY
666 SINGULARITY PART 2: CASHLESS SOCIETY Steve Harrison pulled a roll of notes from his pocket and laid it on the counter at HSBC bank. Just two hours earlier, the classic motorbike collector had sold a rare 1949 BSA ZB32 for £7,300 to a local enthusiast - and had been paid in cash. Steve, 68, has been an HSBC customer for 50 years and headed straight to the nearest branch, as he wasn’t comfortable carrying around such a large lump sum. He also needed the money to go straight into his account to pay off a credit card bill due in a couple of days. So he was baffled when the teller at the HSBC in Thetford, Norfolk, refused to take his cash - because he didn’t have a receipt proving where the money had come from. Then Mr Harrison remembered he did have a sales receipt in the back of his car. He rushed back to get it, but was then told the deposit was too big, anyway.
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CONSUMER EXPERIENCES OF THE CASHLESS ENVIRONMENT
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YOUR FUTURE IS IN THE PAYMENT CARD
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THE CASHLESS MASTER PLAN
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THE WAR AGAINST OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS
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THE UK GOVERNMENT CAMPAIGN AGAINST CELEBRITIES
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THE GLOBAL CASHLESS DRIVE
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY 1. CONSUMER EXPERIENCES OF THE CASHLESS ENVIRONMENT In February 2014, Patrick Collionson a journalist for the Guardian Newspaper wrote the following article.
After four days in Iceland I realised something very odd. I hadn't reached into my wallet to get out a single krona note. Even the coat check at a nightclub in Reykjavik breezily handed over a payment machine for the 250ISK (£1.30) fee. The buses don't take cash; taxis assume you are paying by card; coffee shops expect you to wave the plastic for the merest Americano. Iceland is on the way to becoming the first cashless society in the world, although Sweden is giving it a run for its money, so to speak. The End of Cash has been predicted for some time, and there's a mild thrill to the idea of visiting a foreign country and never having to go to a cash machine or change money at an expensive bureau de change. But how far and how quickly do we really want to follow the Nordics down this particular path? I have an old-fashioned love of cash. Petrol station attendants look startled when I hand over four folded 20s. Am I the last person in the country to hand over real money for petrol? Years ago in Guardian Money we identified petrol stations as one of the worst sources of ID theft (although that's probably no longer the case) and since then I've stuck with the habit. At cash machines I rarely take out less than £100. Not that I'm flash. Quite the reverse – relying on cash is the most basic form of budgeting. Studies as far back as the 1970s prove that we don't see cards as "real money" and have a tendency to spend more when using plastic rather than cash. At the extreme are casinos where the use of chips decouples gamblers from financial reality. Cash is vivid, transparent – and painful to spend. Debit and credit cards, and in the near future just waving your smartphone in front of a scanner, are "easy" and "fun". A report for the American Pyschological Association found that, when paying with cash, "there is a tight coupling of the consumption and the payment, thereby accentuating the pain of paying. In the case of credit card purchases, actual parting of the money occurs after the purchase decision, thereby dulling the pain of paying." In other words, we think "I'll worry about that later". The research also shows that our brains remember cash spending, but we are less able to recall spending on cards. In particular, substituting gift cards or credit notes for the same amount of cash make us spend as if it's play money. Ultimately, cash encourages self control while other forms of payment encourage spending, often on unnecessary luxuries. Moving to a totally cashless society is therefore only likely to accelerate the vast build up in personal debt witnessed over the past four decades – unsurprisingly the same period in which cards have become ubiquitous.
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY Steve Harrison pulled a roll of notes from his pocket and laid it on the counter at HSBC bank. Just two hours earlier, the classic motorbike collector had sold a rare 1949 BSA ZB32 for £7,300 to a local enthusiast - and had been paid in cash. Steve, 68, has been an HSBC customer for 50 years and headed straight to the nearest branch, as he wasn’t comfortable carrying around such a large lump sum. He also needed the money to go straight into his account to pay off a credit card bill due in a couple of days. So he was baffled when the teller at the HSBC in Thetford, Norfolk, refused to take his cash - because he didn’t have a receipt proving where the money had come from. Then Mr Harrison remembered he did have a sales receipt in the back of his car. He rushed back to get it, but was then told the deposit was too big, anyway. He called the bank’s hotline and was told he’d been wrongly advised in Thetford - and should drive to the regional branch in Norwich. But once there, as the cashier began to count out the notes, a manager shouted: ‘Stop! Put the money down!’ Mr Harrison says: ‘I was incredulous: again they said they couldn’t accept it, despite the call centre staff suggesting otherwise. This time I stood my ground and said: “Are you really going to let a pensioner walk out of here with £7,300 in his pocket because you won’t take my cash?” Finally, they agreed to take the money.’ Mr Harrison’s ordeal comes as HSBC was criticized for asking customers withdrawing cash for evidence of an imminent purchase. A similar thing happened to Stephen Cotton, of Worcestershire. Mr Cotton was a HSBC customer for nearly 30 years and well-known in the branch - but he was told he couldn’t have his money unless he produced a letter from his mother to confirm he intended to pay her the money. HSBC isn’t the only bank to get the jitters about large withdrawals and deposits. Others, including Barclays and Nationwide, also now reserve the right for counter staff to request proof of future purchase or where the cash has come from. Sums in the region of £5,000 or more tend to trigger suspicion. The problem is tighter money- laundering rules. Banks have a duty to check cash being paid in isn’t being used by criminals. David Black, spokesman for analyst Consumer Intelligence, says: ‘Fears of being used in this way have led to more suspicion of customers, even those who have been loyal for many years. It’s a difficult balance for banks, as complying with the rules does mean they risk alienating some customers.’
A spokesman for HSBC says Mr Harrison should not have had his deposit blocked - and apologized for the way he was treated. The spokesman said, “Cash presents more risk of financial crime than other payment methods..since last November, we may have asked customers to show us evidence of where the cash originated from or what it is required for. However, it is not obligatory to provide documentary evidence - and failure to show evidence, as in Mr Harrison’s case, is not a reason to refuse a withdrawal or deposit.”
He said all staff have been sent updated details of the new rules to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Eric Leenders, executive director in charge of retail banking at the British Bankers Association, says: “It can be frustrating for a customer to be asked questions. But there are risks associated with handling large amounts of cash, and banks must be sure they understand where cash is coming from.”
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY 2. YOUR FUTURE IS IN THE PAYMENT CARD “It’s one of those vast social upheavals that everyone understands but that hardly anyone notices, because it seems too ordinary: the long-predicted ‘cashless society’ has quietly arrived, or nearly so; currency, coins and checks are receding as ways of doing everyday business; we’ve become Plastic Nation. In the tangled history of American money—from tobacco receipts to gold and silver coins to paper money and checks—this is a seismic shift. Time to pay attention.”
Remember those people in the late ’60s who declared that Visa and MasterCard credit cards were “the mark of the beast?” Actually, the cards were called by other names back then. VISA was “Chargex” here in Canada, “BankAmericard” in the U.S. and went by other names elsewhere. Meanwhile, MasterCard went by the now awkward-sounding name “Mastercharge.” Some Christians (okay, mostly evangelicals) declared this was the beginning of the end when it came to interpreting the “666″ mark in Revelation. Most Christians probably wouldn’t make this association in 2014 considering that most are active users of Visa and MasterCard credit and debit cards. Whilst we can look back and denounce those people in 60s as conspiracy mongers it is interesting to note how much Visa and MasterCard has evolved in incorporating technologies which ultimately impact our freedoms and privacy such as paywave and paypass, functions based on RFID technology.
You may remember the old Visa commercials that were nationally broadcast that hailed the use of plastic and mocked the use of cash. One commercial had a rollicking version of Louis Armstrong singing “When the Saints Go Marching In” while a bunch of New Orleans Saints football fans were getting ready for game day by buying lots of stuff at a sports store. One by one they laid down their Visa cards to purchase their paraphernalia. These were real men. Real sports fans. Real Americans. Then a guy wearing a pink shirt and a sweater tied around his neck—obviously an outdated preppy—stepped up to buy some tennis balls. It’s obvious that he’s clueless. But his real crime? He paid with cash instead of plastic. The music stopped as the vendor gave him a “What, are you kidding me?” look and begrudgingly handed the customer his change. When the guy leaves, the music kicks back in, and the real football fans can get back to buying stuff with Visa. The ad ended with the now-familiar words, “Visa makes it easier for fans to get ready for game day. Life takes Visa.” Another commercial titled “Lunch” was set in a crowded food court at lunchtime with people busily obtaining their food and drinks with the timing and precision of a factory assembly line. The music was upbeat and fast-paced. One after another the customers received their order, swiped their Visa card, and moved on— with no signature required. The engine of commerce hums flawlessly. That is, until a man dared to hand the checkout lady a few well-worn dollar bills for his food. Everything came to a dead stop, including the music. 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY Chaos ensued. Trays of food fell to the floor, drinks spilled, and the line came to a screeching halt. There was dead silence. The other customers glared at him in disgust. His “foolish” decision to use cash had clogged the well-oiled gears of progress. He quickly moved on, the next man in line swiped his card, and the music revved back up. At the end of the commercial, a narrator stated, “The Visa check card—because money shouldn’t slow you down. Life takes faster money. Life takes Visa.” The third commercial featured a bunch of hip young people dancing their way toward a checkout counter. Upbeat music was playing. The same basic scenario from the other two commercials was played out. But this time the narrator said, “Life takes beat, life takes rhythm, life takes Visa.” These commercials were a window into the changing climate of how people transact business. More and more, cash is giving way to cashless means of payment. My wife was out shopping not long ago and went to a popular store in our city late in the afternoon. She told me that the checkout clerk who helped her commented that she was the first person all day who had used cash. The age of cashless transactions is here. According to Javelin Strategy and Research, 27 percent of all point-of-sale purchases are made with cash, and that number is expected to drop to 23 percent by 2017. Plastic card purchases comprised 66 percent of all in-person sales. Robert Samuelson notes the quantum increase in using plastic over paper. You can use a card almost anywhere. From 1999 to 2005, the number of card-swiping terminals nearly tripled to 6.8 million, says the consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. Habits and mind-sets change. In 1990, most Americans regarded paying for groceries by credit card as unnatural. Now cards cover about 65 percent of food sales, says the Food Marketing Institute. There’s electronic banking (83 percent of Social Security beneficiaries receive their monthly payments by automatic deposit), Internet buying, prepaid cards and automatic identity tags for toll booths.
The total amount of U.S. currency in circulation (dollar bills of all amounts) is consistently dropping. In 1970, the economy’s relative need for cash was almost twice as high as it was in 2006. The obvious reason for this drop is that more and more people are going cashless. Debit card use has soared in the United States over the last few years. As recently as 1996, cash and checks accounted for about 80 percent of consumer payments. It’s now less than half that, and electronic payments are expected to exceed 70 percent of consumer payments by 2010. According to the Federal Reserve, from a peak of almost 50 billion in 1995, the number of checks written in the United States fell to 36.6 billion in 2003, while the number of electronic payments rose from 15 billion to 44 billion and continues to rise dramatically. The Internet contains thousands of Web sites and articles announcing the trend from cash to cards. There are more than 2 billion—yes that’s billion with a b—credit and debit cards in the United States alone. Experts say there are about seven credit cards for every person over the age of 15. The nature of how we pay for things is already changing drastically, but this is just a fraction of what’s to come. It is estimated that by 2020, only 10 percent of financial transactions will be in cash. “We can safely predict that the idea of money as a physical object might well become extinct not long after, especially if a global pandemic starts us thinking about all the germs on those grubby notes. Instead, digital transactions will be made through computers, or cell phones, or even chips inserted into our forearms.” According to Forbes, Money is becoming much more of a concept than a physical entity, and most ordinary mortals haven’t really noticed the switch. People are using credit and debit cards in more and more everyday situations, from 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY meals purchased at fast-food restaurants and fuel purchased at gas stations to movies, groceries, sundries, highway tolls and clothing. Even New York City taxicabs are rigged with electronic card readers. Increasingly, paychecks are electronically deposited, and the money for the bills they pay, mortgages, utilities, cable and phone, are paid electronically as well. Banks offer incentives to consumers for using these direct-pay options, which allow them to keep better tabs on their customers and their money. Welfare and food stamps are issued on cards, which can be downloaded at the register or through an automatic teller machine. In 2007, Walmart launched its store-branded reloadable money cards. The prepaid Visa debit cards have experienced increasing demand. By the summer of 2008, Walmart had issued one million cards with a total of $1 billion loaded on them. Customers can reload their cards with a direct deposit and can also use the card to pay bills and shop anywhere that Visa debit cards are accepted. Traditionally Visa and MasterCard credit cards were only for people with good credit but now providing you can prove who you are, anyone can obtain a prepaid Visa or MasterCard meaning that the inclusion into the Visa and MasterCard network is no longer exclusive based on credit profiling but globally inclusive of all people from all walks of life. To give you a small glimpse of the kind of technology that exists, here are some new inventions that are already available that make many aspects of shopping and using cash obsolete or at least unnecessary. It’s a line of innovations that boggle the mind. And this is just the beginning of what will develop in the next decade. Veggie Tales: Here’s an item for all those who hate those slow checkout lines at the market: “For shoppers still trekking to the grocery store, IBM’s Veggie Vision software can identify their produce by sight at the checkout, even through a plastic bag. No more fumbling to enter a label code or waiting for the cashier. Soon you might be able to skip checkout altogether.” McCashless: This is already being tested at one McDonald’s in South Korea: Customers with special software on their cell phones can receive the restaurant’s updated menu as they walk through the door. While in line or even while seated, customers can point their phones at a menu and transmit their order to the counter. They then receive a text message when their order is ready, grab the food, and take a seat. And get this: McDonald’s simply adds the cost of the food to the customer’s cell phone bill. Intellifit: In the future, body-scanning software will allow you to create a virtual image of yourself to help with online clothes shopping. With this software, you can create your virtual counterpart, which will share the same physical dimensions as your real-world self. You can then use this virtual counterpart to “try on” the clothes you see in an online catalog. That way, you’ll have a better idea of how clothes will actually fit you, as opposed to some model in a catalog. A company called Intellifit has “a booth that performs a 360-degree holographic scan of your fully clothed body.”13 The scan produces a detailed printout of the results, which you can then use to try on clothes from catalogs to see what they will look like on you. Even refrigerators are now available with a touch screen that allows you to watch television, play a DVD, display recipes, and even get the weather forecast. But that’s nothing compared to the model Samsung rolled out in 2012. It uses “radio technology to inventory the contents of your fridge, alert you when expiration dates draw near, send shopping lists to your mobile phone, and possibly even place orders at 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY your local market.” It will allow you to buy without ever shopping. And we are told that “the best part of the fridge is that it connects to Samsung smartphones which means that users can remotely…check what is in their fridge while shopping…and write memos that act as a digital fridge magnet or Post-it note.” Between such inventions and the trend away from cash, the implementation of a cashless system would be fairly simple. Some kind of one-world currency could be required. All we need is for everyone to agree (or be forced) to have their paycheck direct-deposited. This is no big deal. As of 2007, over 80 percent of all Social Security and SSI beneficiaries received their checks by direct deposit. And according to a recent survey, over half (57 percent) of all Americans say that direct deposit is very important to managing their finances on a daily basis.
Think about your own financial transactions. Most of us are regularly engaged in many, if not all, of the kinds of transactions listed above on a regular basis. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with any of these activities. In fact, they are often helpful time-savers. However, it’s easy to see how all of them can move us ever closer to a cashless society. The easy and natural next step would be to issue some kind of “smart card” that everyone can use to make all their purchases. Again, this is no stretch. People are already accustomed to using cards to buy everything from gas to bread. The smart card would be individualized and initialized to prevent unauthorized use. There are all kinds of methods already available for doing this, such as fingerprints, eye scan, a microchip or some other means of biometric scan, or a secret number. And with all the advanced technology available today, imagine what kinds of further mind-blowing ideas await us on the horizon! A smart card looks like a credit card, only it’s a little thicker. It’s called smart because it is basically a computer disk that stores information about you. A smart card is a device that includes an embedded integrated circuit chip (ICC) that can be either a secure microcontroller or equivalent intelligence with internal memory or a memory chip alone. The card connects to a reader with direct physical contact or with a remote contactless radio frequency interface. With an embedded microcontroller, smart cards have the unique ability to store large amounts of data, carry out their own on-card functions (e.g., encryption and mutual authentication) and interact intelligently with a smart card reader. Smart card technology…is available in a variety of form factors, including plastic cards, fobs, subscriber identification modules (SIMs) used in GSM mobile phones, and USB-based tokens. There are two basic kinds of smart cards: contact and contactless. The main difference, as you can see by the names, is that one requires insertion into a smart card reader, while the other requires only close proximity to a reader. With the proximity cards, all you have to do is wave the card in front of a reader and 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY goods are paid for instantly, no signatures, no hassles. Several large companies have already jumped on the bandwagon and launched programs to gauge the effectiveness of the contactless technology. Smart cards have many applications worldwide, including: • Secure identity applications—employee ID badges, citizen ID documents, electronic passports, driver’s licenses, online authentication devices • Healthcare applications—citizen health ID cards, physician ID cards, portable medical records cards • Payment applications—contact and contactless credit/debit cards, transit payment cards • Telecommunications applications—GSM Subscriber Identity Modules, pay telephone payment cards Joseph Schuler, a Maryland consultant, said, “Smart cards’ time has finally come. In the U.S., we’re finally beginning to see some of the applications we thought we’d see three or four years ago. Millions of us already use these smart cards. For example, many college students purchase cards that operate soda, photocopy, or laundry machines. In Europe, many phone booths require smart cards. The idea behind these cards is simple. We buy, say, $10 worth of electronic money from a machine or a sales clerk. This $10 is stored on a plastic card and is electronically diminished every time we purchase something. In other words, the card has a memory.”
The move away from cash is nothing new or unexpected. Over a decade ago the cashless society was already moving quickly forward. “Our society is clearly moving towards an era when cash is no longer the most common form of payment. Smart cards will be the standard currency of this cashless society. Just as credit cards have replaced cash for large-value transactions in many parts of the world over the last 30 years, smart cards are likely to replace cash for many smaller transactions.” Back in 1995, Microsoft owner Bill Gates already envisioned a time when a wallet-sized personal computer will replace your cash. And he ought to know. We are all aware of the financial problems in our world, the dramatic shift toward more government control and globalism, and the simultaneous move toward a cashless system. But what does it mean? Terry Cook, an expert on modern technology, suggests the following: The New World Order economists are not ignorant of the importance of cash and its ability to inhibit their total control of the world. They are aware that in order to completely control, track, and monitor the global population, they must first eliminate the use of cash. With cash, there is no way to know how people are using their finances, whether for or against the government and its agenda. Because control of one’s finances in essence means control of one’s entire life, advocates of world government have for decades been promoting a move toward cashless transactions via a myriad of banking plans, ATM machines, credit cards, point-of-sale machines, credit data—all funneled through massive computer systems. Eventually the goal is control of all these computers by the economic leaders of the New World Order.
Growing up, almost everyone has played a hard-nosed game of Monopoly, working feverishly to drive their family members and friends into bankruptcy. Many families will have enjoyed many evenings of strenuous competition. Up to now, the first thing game participants had to do was distribute a certain amount of money to each player before the game started. Those colorful $500 and $100 bills always stir up feelings of greed 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY and competition. But that Monopoly money is quickly becoming a childhood memory. That’s right, even beloved Monopoly, the popular American board game, is on the cashless bandwagon. Monopoly is introducing a new version that ditches cash. This is the 21st century! No one uses cash anymore, it isn’t extreme or flashy enough.
At least that’s what Parker Brothers says, as it’s phasing out cash from its Monopoly sets and replacing it with an “Electronic Banking” flavor that could leave Mr. Moneybags turning his pockets inside out as his stash is replaced by a magnetic strip. New kits are completely devoid of the famous multi-colored bills; instead, you’ll find phony Visa debit cards and a calculator/reader which keeps a running tabulation of your riches—or lack thereof. A deal was struck with Visa to design the mock cards and readers, presumably after surveys showed that 70% of adults used cash less often now than they did a decade ago (no surprise there). When asked about the dramatic change, Parker said replacing cash with plastic “showed the game was moving with the times.” Monopoly is now equipped with a scanner that players swipe their cards through to debit or credit money. Who would have ever believed this would happen? The British version of the game, Monopoly Here & Now Electronic Banking, went on sale in 2006. When Monopoly goes cashless, you know that the rest of society can’t be far behind
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY 3. THE CASHLESS MASTER PLAN Many people today believe that the answer to the problems of our world is one world government. Their theory says that there are three major causes of war upon the earth; political differences, economic differences and religious conflicts. The theory goes that, if we had one world government, one world economy, and a one world religious system, however loosely configured it might be, we would remove the major causes of conflict upon earth, and therefore, we could usher in a period of unprecedented peace and safety and hence the justification for a cashless society is seen as an integral part of the strategy. The writing of checks and the use of credit cards are very expensive. Paper transactions, on the average, cost banks approximately 75 cents per transaction. A check must be microfilmed on both sides by the recipients bank. It must then be sent to the bank on which it was drawn and again be microfilmed on both sides. Finally, it is mailed back to the writer of the check. A totally electronic transaction, on the other hand, costs on the average of 3 cents per transaction. Some banks conduct as many as one million transactions per day. If all of these were done electronically, an average of 70 cents per transaction could be saved. Seventy cents times 1 million transactions per day would be $700,000 per day that one bank could save. Can you imagine the huge financial savings if you took into account all the banks throughout the country and world?! There are other severe problems with paper transactions. One-third of the men in Michigan City Prison in the state of Indiana are there for bad check charges. The problem of check verification and the bouncing of checks are continual headaches to the business community. The big corporations of America want to eliminate what we call "float", the time between receiving a customer's check and being able to draw on its deposit. One large corporation has $10 million in float at all times. If all transactions were done electronically, float would be totally eliminated, and this additional capital would immediately become available to those corporations. Credit cards also have their problems. They can be lost or stolen. And they still require the costly involvement of paper because of the needed signature. Many proponents of a cashless society have pointed out that we could eliminate almost all theft by moving our economy to a cashless basis. There would simply be no money to steal. The biggest force of all driving us toward the cashless society is the horrible drug trade. The drug industry depends on the use of cash to avoid detection by the law. If there were no cash and all transactions had to done electronically, then immediately the trail of the huge amounts of money involved in the illegal drug trade would become traceable. This argument alone is enough for some people to advocate moving quickly into a cashless society. Another powerful force in the favor of the cashless society is the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS would love for every single transaction to be done electronically. It has already been projected that soon US citizens will not even have to file tax returns. Once all transactions are done electronically, the government will have the ability to know which transactions are deductible and will be able to figure your taxes for you. Counterfeiting is one more force driving the economic planners of our nation into considering the cashless society. There would simply be no counterfeiting if all transactions were done electronically. In the day of smart cards, when an amount of money can be entered upon a card for use with your personal identification number (PIN), many people say the days of cash are now numbered. 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY It took from George Washington to 1980, 200 years, to accrue $1 trillion dollars debt for the United States government. From 1980 to 1984 we gathered a second trillion. By 1987 our national debt had climbed to three trillion. By 1991 it was four trillion. So it took 200 years to accumulate $1 trillion dollars indebtedness for the US government, but only eleven short years to accumulate $3 trillion more. We are now moving toward a total debt of $5 trillion dollars! Presently it takes all the income tax revenue collected east of the Mississippi River to pay just the interest on the national debt. That line is moving westward at 300 miles per year. Why in the world are our political leaders plunging us down the path towards national bankruptcy?! The world planners specialize in creating crisis’s and then benevolently curing the very crisis which they created. They are planning one world economy as the solution to the financial crisis toward which America is being steadily lead. Do you really think it is an accident that we accrued in eleven years three times as much national indebtedness as it took us 200 years to accumulate before that time?! It is no accident! It is done by deliberate design! We are right now being prepared for the new world economy-a cashless society where every person will be controlled by the computerization of the citizens of the world! One of the problems in moving toward a paperless, cashless society is the need for positive identification of the individual making the transaction. There has to be a signature unless another means of positive identification can be developed. Several ideas have been tried. One of them is fingerprinting of every individual for every purpose. However, this is costly, and the public does not like it. Another possible method that is in use in some areas is voice recognition. Machines can recognize a person's voice print and identify that person from every person in the world. The technology for this is quite expensive and doesn't seem to hold promise for the worldwide program such as is envisioned. For some time now certain scientists have wondered if a number could be permanently placed upon the body at birth. This number would be used throughout a person's life. It would become his personal identification number. This is the answer that seems to offer the most promise. In the Successful Farming magazine December 1986 on page B8, there is an article—"Goodbye Texas Cowboy, Hello Computer Cowspotter". "The computers at a couple of ranches near San Antonio, Texas, don't ride horses, but they can identify each cow in the combined 1,200-head operation better than even the most experienced ranch hand. All cows at Guadeloupe Cattle Company and George McAlister Ranch near New Braunfels and Blanco, Texas, are implanted with micro chips. No larger than a grain of rice, the chips-which are read with a scanner-are inserted under the hide between the nook and pin bones. A few key strokes on a computer and a cow's history appears, including a six-generation pedigree, her calving records, weight ratios and calf performance, physical characteristics and health history. If she is bred, given shots, branded, or calves, the action is recorded using a computer program called Herd-Soft."
The insertion of a computer chip under the skin is also being used for pets in many places in the country. If your pet is lost name, phone number, the pet's name and its entire medical history are immediately known with the mere wave of a laser beam. An article entitled, Food Stamp Benefits Go Electronic appeared in the Richmond Palladium-Item, December 21, 1991. It said, "Card-carrying customers simply slide them through a machine at the cashier checkout and enter an identification number on a keypad. The cash register then tells the machine the size of the bill, and that amount is subtracted from
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY the customer's monthly food subsidy. The store is credited for the purchase. Card holders can only spend what they're allocated. These are the new smart cards being used by the welfare system here in the United States.
In Good Housekeeping magazine, April 1989, an article explaining difficulties with bank cards and personal identification numbers said, "Bank cards and PIN's will soon be a thing of the past, as new cash machines that identify you by your fingerprints or the blood vein pattern in your hands come into use!"
The most bone chilling article of all comes from Reader Digest, November 1976, "Coming Soon: Electronic Money" by Ronald Schiller. In this article he explains all the benefits of the cashless society. His closing paragraph is the most startling: "In this new totally electronic age, the enforcement of financial obligations will present few difficulties, since failure to pay up could be disastrous. The culprit might even be forced to undergo what Electronic Fund Transfer men call 'plastic surgery'—the cutting off of his bank cards. Economically speaking, this would make him a non-person.”
If there is no cash, and if an individual's right to trade is suspended by putting a hold on his account in a computer system, this article says that person would economically become a non-person. This sounds startlingly like Revelation chapter 13-without the number a person will not be able to buy or sell! And if an individual's ability to buy and sell could be suspended for not paying his bills, could it also be suspended for refusing to embrace the New World Order and its conflict resolving one world religion?! It is absolutely amazing that a prophecy written 2,000 years ago could foresee the time that such a computerized program could be introduced. Never before in the history of the world has such an electronic cashless society been possible. We can credit these intricate prophetic fulfillments to coincidence it we so choose. But Jesus said in Luke 21:28, "And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh."
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY 4. THE WAR AGAINST OFFSHORE TAX HAVENS The vast flow of offshore money, legal and illegal, personal and corporate, can roil economies and pit nations against each other. Europe’s continuing financial crisis has been fueled by a Greek fiscal disaster exacerbated by offshore tax cheating and by a banking meltdown in the tiny tax haven of Cyprus, where local banks’ assets have been inflated by waves of cash from Russia. Anti-corruption campaigners argue that offshore secrecy undermines law and order and forces average citizens to pay higher taxes to make up for revenues that vanish offshore. Studies have estimated that cross-border flows of global proceeds of financial crimes total between $1 trillion and $1.6 trillion a year.
A 15-month investigation by International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICJ) was revealed in 2013 which found that, alongside perfectly legal transactions, the secrecy and lax oversight offered by the offshore world allows fraud, tax dodging and political corruption to thrive. Dozens of journalists sifted through millions of leaked records and thousands of names to produce ICIJ’s investigation into offshore secrecy. A cache of 2.5 million files had cracked open the secrets of more than 120,000 offshore companies and trusts, exposing hidden dealings of politicians, con men and the mega-rich the world over. The secret records obtained by ICJ lay bare the names behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands and other offshore hideaways. They include American doctors and dentists and middle-class Greek villagers as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY The leaked files provide facts and figures — cash transfers, incorporation dates, links between companies and individuals — that illustrate how offshore financial secrecy has spread aggressively around the globe, allowing the wealthy and the well-connected to dodge taxes and fueling corruption and economic woes in rich and poor nations alike. The records detail the offshore holdings of people and companies in more than 170 countries and territories. The hoard of documents represents the biggest stockpile of inside information about the offshore system ever obtained by a media organization. The total size of the files, measured in gigabytes, is more than 160 times larger than the leak of U.S. State Department documents by Wikileaks in 2010. To analyze the documents, ICIJ collaborated with reporters from The Guardian and the BBC in the U.K., Le Monde in France, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Norddeutscher Rundfunk in Germany, The Washington Post, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and 31 other media partners around the world. Eighty-six journalists from 46 countries used high-tech data crunching and shoe-leather reporting to sift through emails, account ledgers and other files covering nearly 30 years. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This secret world has finally been revealed,”
said Arthur Cockfield, a law professor and tax expert at Queen’s University in Canada, who reviewed some of the documents during an interview with the CBC. He said the documents remind him of the scene in the movie classic The Wizard of Oz in which “they pull back the curtain and you see the wizard operating this secret machine.” It is the result of investigations likes this which has caused Barack Obama and other leaders to initiate a war on offshore tax avoidance. In the City, firms have long used secretive foreign or offshore centers almost as a matter of course, channeling funds in their direction that would otherwise stay onshore and could attract tax. Obama vowed to "detect and pursue" U.S tax evaders and go after their offshore tax shelters. In announcing a series of steps aimed at overhauling the U.S. tax code, Obama complained that existing law makes it possible to "pay lower taxes if you create a job in Bangalore, India, than if you create one in Buffalo, New York." The president said he wanted to prevent U.S. companies from deferring tax payments by keeping profits in foreign countries rather than recording them at home and called for more transparency in bank accounts that Americans hold in tax havens like the Cayman Islands. He said "If financial institutions won't cooperate with us, we will assume that they are sheltering money in tax havens and act accordingly,"
The president, who hammered on this issue during his long campaign for the White House, said at a White House event back in 2009 that his plan would generate $210 billion in new taxes over 10 years and "make it easier" for companies to create jobs at home. The British government is also following the US lead on the war against offshore tax havens. On June 15th 2013 British Prime Minister David Cameron hosted a meeting with the heads of overseas territories and crown dependencies. This included Isle of Man, Jersey, Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Gibraltar, Anguilla, Guernsey, Montserrat and the Turk and Caicos Islands. 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY David Cameron told leaders from Britain's network of overseas territories and Crown dependencies that they must do more to clamp down on tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance. The Prime Minister summoned representatives for talks in Downing Street one week ahead of a G8 summit at Lough Erne in Northern Ireland where he made international tax compliance one of the key issues on the agenda.
The meeting with the overseas territories and Crown dependencies ended with all agreeing to sign up to the Multilateral Convention on Mutual Assistance in Tax Matters - an initiative led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). They also all agreed to publish national action plans on beneficial ownership, detailing the true owners of so-called "shell" companies. The following week at the G8 summit in Northern Ireland Cameron then met with G8 leaders including Barack Obama, Angela Merkel, Vladimir Putin and Angela Merkel, Herman Von Rompuy and others where he sought for an initiative which would help in revealing the ownership of shadowy companies regardless of where they were domiciled. Interestingly many of the countries were lukewarm preferring a much less aggressive approach. This ironically included Obama where in the United States, the tiny state of Delaware is the tax haven of choice for shell companies. The World Bank has also raised the alarm over “trusts” and “foundations” - non-profit financial entities which can also be used to make dodgy bank transfers. It costs just $1,950 to set up a trust company in the British Virgin Islands, which has a population of 25,000 people but is home to 500,000 international business firms, a number growing by 70,000 each year.
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY Trusts can be impenetrable due to confidentiality laws known as “bearer shares” protecting the identity of the owner. They also cause problems for asset recovery because once a trust has been formed, its assets do not legally belong to the person who gave the money. Explaining the problem, the World Bank said: “The person in legal possession of the physical shares is deemed to be their owner and thus the owner of the company. The problem is knowing who owns the shares at any given point in time ... No legitimate rationale exists for perpetuating bearer shares and similar bearer instruments. We recommend that all countries immobilize or abolish them.”
Despite the seemingly disappointing response from the G8 meeting for David Cameron this should not detract from the power that these countries wield when they are in unison to bring about new legislation. There is no better example of this than what happened to Switzerland.
Strict secrecy has helped Switzerland build up a $2 trillion offshore financial sector. But the country has faced an international campaign in recent years against tax evasion as governments with big budget deficits seek to boost revenues by clawing back money from countries they feel owed money is being sheltered. Swiss bank secrecy has protected funds deposited in Swiss banks for over 300 years. Genevan bankers were the French king's bankers, and the first known text on bank secrecy dates back to 1713. Louis XVI even had a Swiss banker, Jacques Necker, as director general of French finances. Until 1934, bank secrecy was covered by various provisions in the Swiss civil code and the labor code. Federal court jurisprudence fixed bank secrecy firmly in actual practice, so that a client who fell victim to violation of bank 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY secrecy could henceforth obtain damages from the bank. The federal law on banking passed in 1934 clearly stated that bank secrecy fell within the criminal domain. A banker who infringed bank secrecy was henceforth punishable by imprisonment, thus reinforcing the depositor's protection of the private sphere. There are two reasons why this protection was reinforced: •
Nazi spies: The 1931 crisis led to intensified foreign exchange control in Germany. Hitler promulgated a law whereby any German with foreign capital was to be punished by death, and the Gestapo began espionage on Swiss banks. When three Germans were put to death, the Swiss government was convinced of the necessity to reinforce bank secrecy.
•
Pressure from the French: In 1932, the Basler Handelsbank affair revealed that over 2,000 members of the French elite had accounts in Switzerland. French Leftists took advantage of this to denounce the austerity program of the Herriot government. It called for legal authority over French accounts in Switzerland, but to no avail.
In 1984, the people of Switzerland once again elected by overwhelming majority, with over 73% of voters in favor of maintaining bank secrecy. So banking secrecy was continually enshrined in Swiss law as it had been since 1934. However since the global banking collapse in 2008 Switzerland has been under continuous attack since the outbreak of the financial crisis for helping foreign tax evaders hide their assets. The OECD had originally placed Switzerland on a “grey list” of uncooperative tax havens in April 2009.The Swiss were removed from the list six months later after renegotiating several double taxation treaties. In February 2011, the Swiss government relaxed the terms of legal assistance further but still refused to automatically transfer information to tax investigators without proof of crimes.
However it was the damaging tax evasion case involving the activities of UBS bank which led to significant changes in regards to Swiss law. In February 2009, UBS was fined $780 million after admitting helping US citizens dodge taxes. It also handed over data of 285 account holders. In 2009 the Swiss parliament ratified a deal to transfer 4,450 UBS client files to the US – in effect violating Swiss banking secrecy to prevent a ruinous court case for UBS. The fact that a country like Switzerland, one of the great bastions of offshore privacy would break down under such pressure is clearly a sign that the globalist agenda has enough power to overrun any country regardless of its historical status as far as freedom of information and privacy is concerned.
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY 5. THE UK GOVERNMENT CAMPAIGN AGAINST CELEBRITIES From a moral perspective the clamping down on tax evasion is justifiable. However one of the great ironies is that this is part of a much bigger agenda. It is an agenda about full control of the distribution of money. This is why more and more banks are increasingly refusing or placing heavy penalties and restrictions on companies that deal primarily with cash. There was a time where as a local cash and carry business you could go to your local bank on a Friday afternoon and deposit your cash with the bank happy to provide you a service. Now take a big deposit of cash to a bank and you are treated with suspicion or hit with significant deposit charges. The present banking environment is one which is forcing companies to operate electronically. The money has to be in the system and stay within the system. As a business you now need to make an effort to ensure the majority of the funds you receive are on debit card, credit card or store card. Operating a cash only (cash n carry) enterprise is become a prehistoric way of operating which will carry more and more red tapes and penalties the longer you continue trading this way. The same reasoning applies to offshore tax havens who are now being forced hand and knee to bow down to this new global economic order so that all who operate commerce and buy or sell will be identifiable within the economic matrix. Touted as a means by which criminal networks and money launderers will be identified and purged this process is similar to the implementation of measures which impact on our personal privacy. We are told it is to identify terrorist networks, criminal rings and protect our security, however the deeper agenda is to enslave mankind into a system that is impossible to escape from. This is why over the last 12 months the UK government has put the focus on Celebrities that have used tax avoidance schemes to reduce their tax liabilities within the United Kingdom. According to The Times, several British celebrities have been accused of using tax avoidance schemes to shelter some £1.2 billion.
George Michael, Arctic Monkeys, Sir Michael Caine, Katie Melua, Gary Barlow and Anne Robinson are among 1,200 high-earners who invested in a tax scheme run by the company Liberty. 'Faith' singer Michael is accused of investing in Liberty seven years ago and sought to shelter £6.2 million. “Take That” star Gary Barlow and Watchdog host, Robinson, are also accused of investing £4.46m and £4m in the scheme. Other celebrities who it's claimed used the tax avoidance scheme are Jamie Cook, Nick O'Malley and Matt Helders, who are said to have sheltered between £557,000 and £1.1m. Caine is accused of sheltering at least £600,000, while footballers Darren Anderton and Kevin Davies are also believed to have been members. Melua is said to have sought to shelter £500,000 in 2008 at the advice of accountants, but repaid the tax to HM Revenue and Customs. 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY Liberty is set to be challenged by HMRC in court in March 2015, although its members are likely to have to pay back millions of pounds in disputed tax before that date, thanks to new Treasury legislation. Prime Minister, David Cameron, has in the past criticized celebrities who have avoided tax, but insisted that Barlow should not have to return his OBE. Even BBC Sports present Gabby Logan admitted to investing in what is essentially a tax avoidance scheme. The star has insisted that she acted "in good faith" and intends to pay back every penny after getting involved with the same Icebreaker Management partnership as the likes of Gary Barlow. In a statement, she says: "I was advised about a business opportunity 6 years ago (2008) and I invested in good faith. It was explained to me as a way of funding new acts in the music industry. Because of information which came to light in 2012, I decided the investment was not right for me."
In the post on her official website, she adds: "With new professional help and advisors, I have for some time been working to resolve the issue and I fully intend to pay any tax which should have been paid, had I not entered the business. "I have been completely open and honest with HMRC and I have never hidden anything.”
Celebrities and major companies locked in legal battles over tax-avoidance schemes will be forced to pay up before their cases are resolved, under new rules introduced in the recent UK government annual Budget. The rules will hit 65,000 companies and individuals in dispute with the taxman over their use of complex schemes, and could deliver Chancellor George Osborne a much-needed £5 billion boost to the Treasury’s coffers. The clampdown will mean that claimed tax will have to be paid by October 2014, even if a case is still being fought. The rule change was announced by the Treasury earlier this year, but will catch many by surprise, according to City accountants, because it will be backdated, covering not just new disputes but all outstanding cases of the past 15 years. The upfront payments of tax will affect TV presenters, footballers, singers and City bankers, as well as major companies, who have joined tax avoidance schemes. Under current rules, taxpayers who claim big tax reliefs through an avoidance scheme hold on to the cash until a court rules against them. The new system will require them to pay any disputed sums – only getting the money back if the tax tribunal eventually rules in their favour. David Gauke, the Exchequer Secretary, said in January: “Taxpayers and scheme promoters are incentivised to sit back and delay as long as possible, despite evidence that in the vast majority of cases, when the dispute is resolved, tax is due.”
A financier involved with some of the historical schemes said the move was a practical measure for Revenue & Customs, adding:
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY “There are lots of old deals. The Revenue has had no stick to beat the investors with, to move the inquiries forward any quicker. It’s quite a draconian measure, but no one is going to have any sympathy with investors in tax-avoidance schemes.”
The move will affect 12,000 people who bought into film schemes or versions of them. Celebrities including Ant and Dec, David Beckham, Gary Lineker, Guy Ritchie, Bob Geldof, Geri Halliwell, Davina McCall and Lord Lloyd-Webber could all be forced to find cash after investing in Ingenious film schemes, which qualified for tax breaks under rules designed to help the UK film industry. Hit movies such as Life Of Pi and Avatar benefited from tax relief. Ingenious disputes the Revenue’s claim. It plans to fight for its scheme at a tax tribunal in November. A further 16,000 people will face bills after they arranged to be paid through loans made by offshore companies or employee benefit trusts. Comedian Jimmy Carr used a version of those set-ups but has now unwound the structure. When the Revenue outlined its plan, it remained coy on the possible proceeds, saying: ‘The final costing will be subject to scrutiny by the Office for Budget Responsibility and will be set out at Budget 2014.’ But the figure will comfortably reach billions, with the tax at stake in the Ingenious dispute alone said to be worth £1billion. Tax advisers suggest that some who entered into such schemes will be furious. Andrew Hubbard, a tax adviser at City accountancy firm Baker Tilly, said: “Many people will have entered into avoidance schemes in the past – some of which may well not be seen as particularly aggressive or which may have a reasonable chance of success.”
Ingenious and investors in its plans have been particularly insistent that their schemes provided support for British films rather than purely generating tax advantages. Hubbard even suggested that someone could bring a judicial review of the proposals on the basis that the new rules give the Revenue too much power. Others are sceptical that a challenge could succeed, not least because the measures already apply in VAT cases. A key issue is how far the sweep will go. The broadest suggestion is that anyone who has told the taxman about an avoidance scheme under the disclosure regime must pay up. However, the scope is likely to be limited to schemes where the Revenue has opened an inquiry that has yet to be resolved. Because some schemes go back as far as the late-1990s, there will be significant interest to pay on top of the tax due. Richard Rose, a tax adviser at accountancy group BDO, suggests that for pre-2005 cases as much as a quarter of the bill could be made up of interest. The measure will result in a huge cash inflow for the Treasury, but auditors may warn the Chancellor not to claim the cash as a windfall. Technically the money is already in the national accounts as money the Government believes it is owed. What is more, in cases where the tax scheme is eventually deemed legal, the Treasury will have to pay the cash back. It is important to add that not all tax avoidance schemes are illegal or notorious yet the UK government is making no distinction between what is illegal or legal but simply beating the ethical drum that it is morally wrong and those who seek such schemes must be punished. 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY 6. THE GLOBAL CASHLESS DRIVE Most people think of a cashless society as something that is way off in the distant future. Unfortunately, that is simply not the case. The truth is that a cashless society is much closer than most people would ever dare to imagine. To a large degree, the transition to a cashless society is being done voluntarily. Today, only 7 percent of all transactions in the United States are done with cash, and most of those transactions involve very small amounts of money. Just think about it for a moment. Where do you still use cash these days? If you buy a burger or if you purchase something at a flea market you will still use cash, but for any mid-size or large transaction the vast majority of people out there will use another form of payment. Our financial system is dramatically changing, and cash is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. We live in a digital world, and national governments and big banks are both encouraging the move away from paper currency and coins. But what would a cashless society mean for our future? Are there any dangers to such a system?
Those are very important questions, but most of the time both sides of the issue are not presented in a balanced way in the mainstream media. Instead, most mainstream news articles tend to trash cash and talk about how wonderful digital currency is. For example, a recent CBS News article declared that soon we may not need "that raggedy dollar bill" any longer and that the "greenback may soon be a goner"....It's what the wallet was invented for, to carry cash. After all, there was a time when we needed cash everywhere we went, from filling stations to pay phones. Even the tooth fairy dealt only in cash. But money isn't just physical anymore. It's not only the pennies in your piggy bank, or that raggedy dollar bill. Money is also digital - it's zeroes and ones stored in a computer, prompting some economists to predict the old-fashioned greenback may soon be a goner. So will we see a completely cashless society in the near future? Of course not. It would be wildly unpopular for the governments of the world to force such a system upon us all at once. Instead, the big banks and the governments of the industrialized world are doing all they can to get us to voluntarily transition to such a system. Once 98 or 99 percent of all transactions do not involve cash, eliminating the remaining 1 or 2 percent will only seem natural. The big banks want a cashless society because it is much more profitable 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY for them. The big banks earn billions of dollars in fees from debit cards and they make absolutely enormous profits from credit cards. But when people use cash the big banks do not earn anything. So obviously the big banks and the big credit card companies are big cheerleaders for a cashless society. Most governments around the world are eager to transition to a cashless society as well for the following reasons.... •
Cash is expensive to print, inspect, move, store and guard.
•
Counterfeiting is always going to be a problem as long as paper currency exists.
•
Cash if favored by criminals because it does not leave a paper trail. Eliminating cash would make it much more difficult for drug dealers, prostitutes and other criminals to do business.
•
Most of all, a cashless society would give governments more control. Governments would be able to track virtually all transactions and would also be able to monitor tax compliance much more closely.
When you understand the factors listed above, it becomes easier to understand why the use of cash is increasingly becoming demonized. Governments around the world are increasingly viewing the use of cash in a negative light. In fact, according to the U.S. government paying with cash in some circumstances is now considered to be "suspicious activity" that needs to be reported to the authorities. This disdain of cash has also grown very strong in the financial community. The following is from a recent Slate article.... “David Birch, a director at Consult Hyperion, a firm specializing in electronic payments, says a shift to digital currency would cut out these hidden costs. In Birch’s ideal world, paying with cash would be viewed like drunk driving— something we do with decreasing frequency as more and more people understand the negative social consequences. ‘We’re trying to use industrial age money to support commerce in a post-industrial age. It just doesn’t work,’ he says. ‘Sooner or later, the tectonic plates shift and then, very quickly, you’ll find yourself in this new environment where if you ask somebody to pay you in cash, you’ll just assume that they’re a prostitute or a Somali pirate.”
Do you see what is happening? Simply using cash is enough to get you branded as a potential criminal these days. Many people are going to be scared away from using cash simply because of the stigma that is becoming attached to it. This is a trend that has begun significantly in a number of countries. Up in Canada, they are looking for ways to even eliminate coins so that people can use alternate forms of payment for all of their transactions. The Royal Canadian Mint is also looking to the future with the MintChip, a new product that could become a digital replacement for coins. In Sweden, only about 3 percent of all transactions still involve cash yet Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661. Now it's come farther than most on the path toward getting rid of them. In most Swedish cities, public buses don’t accept cash; tickets are prepaid or purchased with a cell phone text message. A small but growing number of businesses only take cards, and some bank offices, which make money on electronic transactions, have stopped handling cash altogether. The Swedish Bankers' Association says the shrinkage of the cash economy is already making an impact in crime statistics. The number of bank robberies in Sweden plunged from 110 in 2008 to 16 in 2011, the lowest 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY level since it started keeping records 30 years ago. It says robberies of security transports are also down. Most of the country’s biggest lenders, SEB AB, Swedbank AB (SWEDA) and Nordea Bank AB (NDA), have stopped manual cash-handling services in 65 percent to 75 percent of their local branches. They say cash is out as Swedes rely on credit cards, the internet and mobile phones to make all their payments. In Italy, all very large cash transactions have been banned. Previously, the limit for using cash in a transaction had been reduced to the equivalent of just a few thousand dollars. But back in December 2013, Prime Minister Mario Monti proposed a new limit of approximately $1,300 for cash transactions. And that is how many governments will transition to a cashless society. They will set a ceiling and then unlike Mr Monti’s graciousness they will keep lowering it and lowering it. And in London, UK, cash can no longer be used on any of London's buses in a move that Transport for London (TfL) says will save £24m a year. Passengers will need a prepaid or concessionary ticket, Research shows that 99% of customers use Oyster, prepaid tickets, contactless payment cards or concessionary tickets. TfL says the transition should be trouble free because passengers who have run out of credit on their Oyster card are now allowed to make one more journey. Mike Weston, TfL's director of buses, said: "The way our customers pay for goods and services is evolving, so we need to ensure our ticketing evolves too. Removing cash from our bus network not only offers customers a quicker and more efficient bus service but it enables us to make savings of £24m a year which will be re-invested to further improve London's transport network."
A decade ago, around 25% of journeys were paid for with cash. Dave Hobday, the managing director of Worldpay UK, said: "We're on the cusp of a seismic shift in shopper behaviour, and predict that everyone from farmers' markets to buskers will go cashless. Contactless kills queues and means businesses never lose a sale during peak times."
Africa is also witnessing gigantic shifts to a cashless society. Several years ago it was announced at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town, South Africa that MasterCard and the Nigerian National Identity Management Commission (NIMC) under the government of Nigeria would form a partnership to distribute a new identity card to every Nigerian citizen. The purpose of the card was to have all Nigerian citizens participate in the financial services sector under the control of MasterCard, a multinational financial services corporation headquartered in New York. 666 SINGULARITY A PRODUCTION OF REMA MARKETING AND WWW.GLOBALREPORT2010.COM ©2014, All rights reserved
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666 SINGULARITY PART 2 – CASHLESS SOCIETY As part of the program, in its first phase, Nigerians 16 years and older, and all residents in the country for more than two years, would get the new multipurpose identity card which has 13 applications including MasterCard’s prepaid payment technology that will provide cardholders with the safety, convenience and reliability of electronic payments. This would have a significant and positive impact on the lives of these Nigerians who have not previously had access to financial services.
MasterCard has predicted that the planned nationwide roll-out of the central bank's cashless initiative would reduce cash transactions in the country by 70 per cent. The African market, being a late entrant into the e-payment world, is seeking to leverage this opportunity to leapfrog technology, thereby ensuring it enjoys the benefits of security, speed and convenience of epayment transactions. This would allow for the reduction of cash in the economy, which will in turn reduce costs and eliminate inefficiencies and the significant financial fraud that has been associated with Nigeria generally. But is a cashless society really secure? Of course not. Bank accounts can be hacked into. Credit cards and debit cards can be stolen. Identity theft all over the world is absolutely soaring. So companies all over the planet are working feverishly to make all of these cashless systems much more secure. In the future, it is inevitable that national governments and big financial institutions will want to have all of us transition over to using biometric identity systems in order to combat crime in the financial system. And unless you didn’t know, biometric systems are the final completion of the onslaught against personal freedoms and privacy.
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