Meet Kenneth Rogoff, Unreconstructed Statist

Cash is Only for Criminals

We always try to keep an eye on the pronouncements of establishment-approved intellectuals, especially economists and pundits connected with the welfare and warfare rackets. The ruling elite regularly employs them to launch trial balloons concerning its plans. Today’s intellectuals are mainly concerned with promoting establishment propaganda, often engaging in fake ‘pro and con’ debates, with the ‘compromise solutions’ that are then offered revealing what the real goal was in the first place. As Hans-Hermann Hoppe points out:

“[…] insofar as today’s intellectual output is at all relevant and comprehensible, it is viciously statist. There are exceptions, but if practically all intellectuals are employed in the multiple branches of the State, then it should hardly come as a surprise that most of their ever-more voluminous output will, either by commission or omission, be statist propaganda.”

For instance, there is now a movement underway to decriminalize drugs. As the Daily Bell recently noted, the effort has recently been expanding to include all ‘entertainment drugs’, even ‘hard’ ones. While this is as it should be (what people want to ingest should be none of the State’s business), there has to be an ulterior motive driving this promotion. One guess we have come up with is that the goal is to disempower the currently active criminal drug cartels and transform their illicit and untaxed profits into taxed profits that are earned by large pharmaceutical companies and/or other licensed enterprises. Very likely obtaining a license will eventually become so onerous that only big business can afford to actually pursue this opportunity, in keeping with the current state-capitalistic system. This is only one of the possibilities though. There are other goals that may be pursued, such as the ‘panem et circenses‘ aspect. According to the definition of the term at wikipedia:

“In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the creation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace, as an offered ‘palliative’.”

Or putting it into context with modern times: grant the serfs a little bit of liberty in one area, while concurrently taking away a number of liberties in others. One of the liberties that has been under heavy attack in recent years is financial privacy. We encourage readers to check out this article at Casey’s about FATCA’s ugly step-child GATCA. After reading this, remember the IMF’s proposal for a giant wealth grab in developed nations to ‘fix’ the insolvency of governments. It all fits very neatly.

And here comes Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff, promoting the idea that cash currency needs to be made illegal, in, where else, the Financial Times. Readers may recall that we have previously discussed this topic in the context of Sweden (see: “Sweden Discusses Cash Ban”), where cash has almost disappeared by now and politicians and banks are actively promoting its complete abolition.