Biden Bucks Rejected!

The world is united in rejecting CBDCs. [The Rude Awakening] August 08, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( Biden Bucks Rejected! - Central Bank Digital Currencies - Biden Bucks, as we call them - face resistance. - Nigeria’s forced adoption of the “E-Naira” failed miserably. - Now Europe’s parliament members ask: “What’s the benefit?” [“Godfather Of AI” Reveals Stunning Prediction]( [Click here to learn more]( He’s a 35-year AI veteran who has worked closely on AI technology for decades… - In 1988, the National Science Foundation funded him to build an AI chess program. - He’s written and published academic papers on AI. - And he’s used AI to trade stocks as early as 2001. [But today, he’s stepping forward with a critical prediction that he says every investor needs to hear.]( Whatever you do, I’m urging you to not invest a single dime into AI technology until you see this man’s warning. [Click here for details.]( [Click Here To Learn More]( [Sean Ring] SEAN RING Happy Tuesday from lovely Northern Italy! As I was drinking my espresso at Fabrizio’s this morning, I fumbled onto Zero Hedge, as usual. And what I found… was good news! Yes, I found good news on the reliably downbeat and permabearish Zero Hedge! I’m going to talk about how the world is rejecting CBDCs. But first, I thought I’d share [a blog post I wrote over ten years ago]( about the time I trained a class in Lagos, Nigeria. In Nigeria, the Master Becomes the Pupil Oh, I don’t really consider myself a master at all. But when I go to a country to train delegates, I take full responsibility for my offering. Financial training can get quite complicated in that one must learn the rules of the country in which one is training – legally, ethically, and culturally. I’d been to Nigeria before, but this is the first time I really got a glimpse of the country from the locals. Before I left Singapore, my wife made me promise I wouldn’t leave the compound where I was staying. Alas, I broke my promise. It was totally worth it. I believe in taking calculated risks, and I’ve become pretty good at it over the years. (Finally understanding rudimentary statistics and behavioral finance goes a long way in the real world.) Most of my friends were incredulous when I told them I was returning to Nigeria, despite the fuel strikes and Boko Haram’s attacks in Kano. I figured it this way: though not impossible, it’s quite difficult to die on a plane. And Kano is nearly 750 kilometers from Lagos, my destination. For me, returning was an easy decision to make. Of course, I checked with my Nigerian friends on Facebook just to make sure it was ok. They said the MSM overdramatizes everything. I think they’re correct, especially since the BBC, ABC, and the rest are little more than government propaganda machines – boy, do those Keynesians need a war… And fast! I arrived in Lagos just under two weeks ago, and I wasn’t disappointed. My delegates are among the sweetest people I’ve ever met, and welcomed me back with open arms. For those two weeks, we discussed derivatives, commodities, compliance, corporate finance, and risk. But the real treats came when I wandered off the reservation. First, I stupidly forgot to get my yellow fever vaccination shot while I was in Singapore. I’m so used to traveling without worrying about stuff like that. But the last time I left Nigeria, I traveled almost directly to Australia and was quarantined. No, they didn’t put me in a cell, but I was given a big yellow piece of paper in case something went wrong during my stay. As I’m due to travel to Taipei almost immediately after I leave Lagos, I needed to get my shot quickly. My friends Robert and Tunji arranged for me to get vaccinated in Festac Town, which is where the Second World African Festival of Arts and Culture was held in 1977. It was a treat to drive, but to be honest, I thought the roads needed paving. And for a mere 1,000 Naira (pronounced NY-ra – about $8.00), my vaccination went quickly and painlessly. I also got to enjoy a night out on the town in Lagos, which my wife will definitely not be happy about. But I was accompanied by 5 strapping young lads, who not only paid the bill, but acted as bodyguards (though there was no need at all). The watering hole we went to was rather empty. But the company and conversation were good and flowing. While we were heading back I noticed the roads had no streetlights. That, along with the road conditions, made me think of infrastructure. Nigeria’s infrastructure needs an upgrade, to say the least. Not only were the roads and streetlights not in tip-top shape, there were frequent blackouts and no permanently running water where we were staying. (It had to be pumped manually.) This is a country with 160 million souls [in 2023: 224 million], the largest population in Africa. With all the wealth flowing from its high-grade Bonny Light crude, I wondered why this place didn’t look more like Dubai. According to Fiona Rintoul of [FT.com]( At the moment, …the average person spends 35 percent of their income on generating power, and companies spend 30 percent. But attempts to privatise the oil refineries and get them working at capacity in order to provide reliable electricity – or to tackle other infrastructure issues such as roads, education, and health – are hampered by corruption, and not just internally. Some Western interests do not want the black market trade in oil to cease. There is money to be made from importing generators. So the answer is rather simple: currently, Nigeria is at position 143 on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. It’s hardly a flattering spot, and it explains many of the things I saw and heard there. My delegates, who are the newest members of a government agency, are hell-bent on creating an environment in Nigeria conducive to foreign direct investment. They passionately discuss cleaning up their capital markets in order to woo foreign investors. They devoured as much information as I could give them. They worked tirelessly on their projects and presented their findings with passion and intelligence. Most countries nowadays are trying to keep out the foreigners, it seems. But, folks, Nigeria is open for business. We took a day trip to the Nigerian Stock Exchange as well. We were given the opportunity to watch, from the gallery, the brokers entering orders on the floor. It’s a lot tamer than the London Metal Exchange, I thought, which only added to my delegates’ resolve to create a great investment climate in Nigeria. After our tour, we were treated to a talk given by the managers of the exchange. They seem optimistic about the future, as well. And with good reason: [foreign investors made 70 percent of trades on the Nigerian Stock Exchange in 2011](. Now they just need to get the locals back, who were badly burned during the 2008 selloff. (That’s when Africa realized, rather rudely and suddenly, its markets were correlated with the developed world’s markets.) One last thing really surprised me: I had no idea how deeply religious Nigeria’s people are. Whether Christian or Muslim, these devout people say Grace before eating, go to Friday or Sunday prayers regularly, and truly believe God will see them through. I was even admonished for not going to church! Perhaps their faith is the one ingredient that will ensure they build a great nation. To them I give this quote from St Augustine: “Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as though everything depended on you.” Ah, the old days when I used to run around the cool parts of the world. I reprinted this to show you that Nigeria is an economy that still needs to stand up. It’s far from being a developed country and light years from the cartoonish “Wakanda” aspiration. [Urgent From Jim!]( [Click here to learn more]( Hey, it’s Jim Rickards. Big changes are coming to my research service, and I wanted to make sure you saw what was going on. [Just click here now to see my announcement.]( [Click Here To Learn More]( Running Before Walking One of the things that may surprise you about Africa is how developed it is when it comes to mobile payments. But it makes enormous sense to avoid carrying any cash around. Crime is real and omnipresent. But trying to force your country to adopt a central bank digital currency has proven to be a step too far. Ari Patinkin & John Berlau of [RealClearMarkets]( wrote the following: Nigeria rolled out its own CBDC, eNaira and, in the fall of 2021 and invalidated all paper banknotes, making the economy one of the first entirely cashless systems in the world. Nigerians were less than thrilled, as mass protests, boycotts, and utter rejection of the CBDC have ensued. Even though the Nigerian Central Bank released huge incentives for citizens to adopt eNaira, according to Kunwar Khuldune Shahid of the Daily Dot, only 1.5 percent of the downloaded wallets were used once a week in 2022. According to Nicholas Anthony from the CATO Institute, the Nigerian government “removed access restrictions so that bank accounts were no longer required to use the CBDC. Then… offered discounts if people used the CBDC to pay for [taxi]cabs.” No offer has swayed the population to this day. Nigeria’s political climate may be somewhat different from that of the U.S. and Europe, but the reasons for rejection of a CBDC carry some important similarities. A CBDC in which the government holds the ledger of the purchases and sales made with the electronic currency – whether issued by the Nigerian Central Bank or the U.S. Federal Reserve -- would grant the government total surveillance power over individual transactions. If Nigerians buy and sell anything using eNaira, the digital ledger will show the government their purchases. A CBDC in the U.S. would likely work the same way Given its poverty in comparison to the U.S. and Europe, the rejection of Nigeria’s citizens of a CBDC is a further blow to the dubious argument that issuance of CBDCs would somehow benefit the poor. Whatever benefits could be derived from the technology of the CBDC, Nigerians are concerned about their financial privacy and skeptical of government overseeing their purchases and sales. People worldwide agree that CBDCs greatly breach privacy regarding transactions between individuals. If the good but relatively poor people of Nigeria can reject their version of “Biden Bucks,” why couldn’t the United States? There’s no reason whatsoever. Even the ordinarily compliant Europeans are against the digital euro. Markus Ferber of the European People’s Party asked, “There’s one central question which hasn’t yet been credibly answered, which is what is the added value … what can I do with a digital euro that I can’t do with current payment options?” And if there’s no “benefit” besides the government being able to catalog your transactions, then there’s no benefit at all. Wrap Up Perhaps we’re not destined for a techno-dystopian future. Maybe there’s enough fight in us to save ourselves from the “elites” who think command and control is the way to go. And maybe, Africa will lead us out of the hole. Wouldn’t that be something? Have a great day! All the best, [Sean Ring] Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening Twitter: [@seaniechaos]( In Case You Missed It… The Oligarchy Strikes Back! [Sean Ring] SEAN RING Happy Monday on a chilly Asti morning! The Klimate Klowns are going to freak out… it was a frigid 56F when I walked to Fabrizio’s for my daily dose of Vitamin C. (“C,” in this case, means “Caffeine.”) It’ll get up to 81F today, but that’ll hardly turn the weather map red… unless you’re in London or Berlin. For us here in Italy, that’s positively frigid for August. But then, it’s “climate change,” not “ global warming.” As for me, this weather is perfect. I can walk around all day without sweating all that much. If you can’t be in a good mood in this weather, when can you be? And my mood is further improved by the news that the sanctions on Russia are proving to be a complete failure. Over the last eighteen months, I’ve written over 50 pieces on why sanctions were such a terrible idea… for us. According to the World Bank, the most significant evidence so far is that [Russia has just passed Germany as the fifth largest economy in the world by GDP on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis](. And it’s not like the World Bank, America’s mechanism for keeping countries inside the dollar system, wants to publish this. It’s an utter embarrassment for the US, UK, and EU. Be on the lookout for Thursday’s Morning Reckoning, where I’ll break down that mess. But for now, let’s see if we can divine whether Western courts will undermine Western foreign policy. Pirates! What the US, EU, and UK did was state-sponsored piracy. Period. Undoubtedly, the Oligarchs looted what was left of the Soviet Union thirty years ago. I’m not arguing that. But to sanction the Russian oligarchs thirty years later, after fees (of course), was ludicrous to begin with. To imagine these champagne-swilling, yacht-owning sugar daddies had any sway with Vlad Putin was always ridiculous. To think the oligarchs would “put pressure on Putin” when Putin wanted them poorer and back home in Russia was an idiocy only USG officials are capable of. And to think the international community would sit idly by, instead getting on maneuvers out of the dollar system, was a hubris worthy of Greek gods. We said as much from the beginning. In the March 24, 2022, edition of the [Rude]( I wrote this: The US, EU, and UK have proven themselves utterly untrustworthy as asset custodians. When I teach operations graduates in banks what the primary responsibilities of an asset custodian are, I name four. You must keep assets: - Safe - Secured - Recorded - Reconciled Right now, Western banks fall at the first hurdle. If we're going back to first principles, they've clearly violated the sanctity of private property. Sure, you may think the Russian oligarchs robbed their country blind. But if the West felt that way, why didn't those governments seize those ill-gotten assets thirty years ago and return them to the Russian people? Because the West just wanted the funds to earn enormous fees and loan out the assets as collateral. Now the West has seized - daylight robbery, folks - those assets. Why on earth would any Russian ever deposit another cent in a Western bank? And for that matter, after Kanada proved how easy it was to freeze accounts, are you safe even if you're not Russian, but a citizen? No. No, you're not. If you’re wondering why the BRICS countries and the Global South want a new currency so badly, look no further. [Urgent Notice From Paradigm CIO Zach Scheidt!]( [Click here to learn more]( Hi, Zach Scheidt here… I’m the Chief Income Officer at Paradigm Press. With inflation raging (and showing no signs of coming to an end any time soon), almost everyone in America is feeling the pain in a big way. Which is why, several months ago, I set out on a big mission… my goal was to create a [complete, step-by-step plan to surviving and beating inflation]( one that anyone could take advantage of. Today, after hundreds of hours of research, I’m revealing all of my findings. [Simply click here now to see how to survive America’s deadly inflation crisis](. [Click Here To Learn More]( Sanctions! We already knew that they don’t work on countries like Russia. In his June 2023 Strategic Intelligence Issue titled The BRICS Are Ready To Shock The International Monetary System, Jim Rickards listed three conditions that must be met for sanctions to work on the target country: - The target country must have a small- or medium-sized economy with little robustness or resiliency to sanctions. - The target country must have limited access to alternative payment channels and few allies in any effort to obtain hard currency. - The target country must have limited hard currency reserves or gold with which to evade or wait out sanctions. Back in June 2021, [I wrote this]( After 30 years of suffering at the hands of US sanctions, or worse, [US academics]( Russia has had enough. Russia's National Wealth Fund is its sovereign wealth fund. A sovereign wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund that invests in tangible and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such as private equity funds or hedge funds. The National Wealth Fund will cut the share of dollar assets it holds to zero from 35%. The $186 billion fund will then keep most of its assets in euros, yuan, and gold. To be perfectly frank, this will not crash the dollar. The fund is one of the smaller sovereign wealth funds on the planet. Depending on if you count the funds or the countries, Russia has the 10th largest stash of national wealth in an SWF. For instance, Norway’s SWF, the Government Pension Fund, has over $1.1 trillion in its coffers. That's about 10x what Russia has. But it's still a blow struck in the name of freedom. You read that right; Russia is fighting US dollar oppression. Watching this video in which [Putin bragged about how sanctions made the Russians use their brains]( is insightful. And if you doubt Putin's word - I don't blame you for that - that sanctions helped Russia become the world's number one wheat exporter, have a look at this chart from [Progressive Farmer]( [SJN] Russia never built helicopter and marine engines before. It does now. And while it doesn't dominate the world stage, watch this video (with the captions on) to see Putin brag about how the ruble is now more stable because they're not just an oil and gas country anymore. These sanctions aren't fit for purpose. No sanctions are. Now what? Reprisal! [The Wall Street Journal]( reported that some Russian oligarchs have had enough of the daylight robbery. “Never before have we seen so many billionaires with such large international footprints so massively sanctioned all at the same time,” says George Voloshin, a sanctions expert at the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, an association that shares best practices on fighting money laundering. Given that most of these oligarchs aren’t in Putin’s inner circle, “sanctions are painful for them and their families, but they’re not really effective from the point of view of policy.” Gee, ya think? The Journal continues: The aim is “to start to peel away the support [for Putin] because oligarchs have an outsize political and economic influence,” said John Smith, the former director of the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control and a partner at the law firm Morrison Foerster. “We are not at that tipping point yet. But it doesn’t mean that we won’t get to that tipping point.” Ah, former US officials are still smoking the Hopium, I see! The truth is, we are far from that non-existent tipping point. It’s a failed policy that has already blown up in the West’s collective face. Now, we’ve got to worry that our own courts will rule the sanctions unlawful. In that case, the rule of law will have trumped our foreign policy. Sure, that’s a good thing. But it’s an embarrassing thing, too. Wrap Up Oh, the embarrassment continues. Woe is the West. First, Ukraine’s vaunted counteroffensive is a complete failure, with NATO getting nowhere. Now, while we always knew the sanctions were a woodpusher’s move, everyone else is starting to come around. Like the rest of you (and Europe), I wish this whole thing would disappear. Have a great day! All the best, [Sean Ring] Sean Ring Editor, Rude Awakening Twitter: [@seaniechaos]( [Paradigm]( ☰ ⊗ [ARCHIVE]( [ABOUT]( [Contact Us]( © 2023 Paradigm Press, LLC. 808 Saint Paul Street, Baltimore MD 21202. By submitting your email address, you consent to Paradigm Press, LLC. delivering daily email issues and advertisements. To end your Rude Awakening e-mail subscription and associated external offers sent from Rude Awakening, feel free to [click here.]( Please note: the mailbox associated with this email address is not monitored, so do not reply to this message. We welcome comments or suggestions at feedback@rudeawakening.info. This address is for feedback only. For questions about your account or to speak with customer service, [contact us here]( or call (844)-731-0984. Although our employees may answer your general customer service questions, they are not licensed under securities laws to address your particular investment situation. 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