Trading Cash for a Government Digital Leash

American Thinker ^ | 19 Feb, 2026 | Kevin Finn

[MtnClimber]

Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) are one of the most significant proposed shifts in modern currency. They're often marked as an efficient improvement over traditional cash. However, like those ubiquitous pharmaceutical commercials showing joyful scenes before rushing through a litany of terrifying side effects, the push for CBDCs tend to gloss over their profound risks.

SNIP

The obvious downsides revolve around privacy, security, and autonomy. Every CBDC transaction is traceable, and creates a comprehensive record of an individual's spending habits. When combined with digital IDs or social credit systems, this traceability opens the door to unprecedented government surveillance and intervention. Critics could conceivably be excluded from society, unable to purchase food, medicine, travel, or housing if they fall out of political favor. Recent examples from the COVID-19 era including restrictions tied to compliance illustrate how quickly such mechanisms can be deployed.

International Monetary Fund managing director Bo Li noted that CBDCs enable money to be "precisely control what people can and cannot spend their money on." Governments or banks could impose real-time blocks or reversals on transactions, enforce negative interest rates to discourage saving (forcing spending to prevent funds from eroding), or dictate permissible purchases.

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TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: surveillancestate

[MtnClimber]

We already know how this worked in China.

[Sirius Lee]

Critics could conceivably be excluded from society, unable to purchase food, medicine, travel, or housing if they fall out of political favor.

We were told this would happen millennia ago.

[Pearls Before Swine]

Effective step in administration of a wealth tax.

[PGalt]

Leash & tracking devices should be on elites, UNaccountable bureaucrats, elected representatives and criminals.

[sauropod]

Tyranny awaits.

[Brian Griffin]

Most transactions are digital nowadays, and even more so in Europe where the merchant debit card fees are much, much less.

[Brian Griffin]

If the government wants to crimp the drug trade, the government could limit bills to $1 (mainly bus fares) and $5 (mainly tips).

Is it still legal to ship suitcases of money out by Somalian courier?

[Tench_Coxe]

Ever wonder why the hue and cry on data centers?

Reminds me of the hard sell re: send in your DNA for some 5 page report, or vaccine cards are necessary for a safe working and shopping environment.

Or the resistance to legislation to removing kill switches in cars.

[jonatron]

"And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark,
or the name of the beast,
or the number of his name."

[Brian Griffin]

“Effective step in administration of a wealth tax.”

White collar people need to save up money for retirement.

Tradespeople can work when they need money.

Unlike 60-year-old managers, tradespeople don’t need to spend months looking for a job.

Unlike 45-year-old engineers, tradespeople don’t need to worry about having money for the next 30 years.

[Brian Griffin]

Every PPACA policy you might need to buy is “a wealth tax”.

[Brian Griffin]

Property taxes to ‘educate’ (i.e. indoctrinate) the ‘Young Pioneers’ are “a wealth tax”.

[butlerweave]

When the internet goes out so does your purchasing like happened in Canada a few years ago , you had to use cash , some places even dusted off those credit card imprinter, colloquially known as a ZipZap machine ,LOL

[BipolarBob]

Me, holding out my hands “I’m here for the golden handcuffs I was promised”.

[Manuel OKelley]

If those managers and engineers don’t have money to spend the tradespeople are pretty well screwed

White collar professional but owned and ran construction businesses for years on the side and when the upper middle class and above stops spending so much money everyone suffers

[UnwashedPeasant]

From Google AI on Trump's nominee to become Fed chair starting in May:

Kevin Warsh, a potential Federal Reserve chair nominee, supports a "wholesale" central bank digital currency (CBDC) specifically for interbank and government transactions to boost the dollar's competitiveness, but strongly opposes a "retail" CBDC that would allow consumer-level accounts, citing severe privacy risks, government surveillance, and anti-American principles.

Key details of Kevin Warsh's stance on CBDCs:

• Wholesale Focus: Warsh advocates for a digital dollar used exclusively for financial institutions and cross-border transactions to improve payment speed and efficiency.
• Retail Opposition: He has argued that a retail CBDC, which would give the public direct accounts at the Federal Reserve, is "dangerous" and would allow for government surveillance of individual spending.
• Competition Concerns: He has highlighted that China’s advanced e-CNY digital currency project could threaten the global dominance of the U.S. dollar, necessitating a modernized, secure, and private U.S. alternative.
• Alternative to Stablecoins: While skeptical that current private cryptocurrencies or stablecoins are sufficient proxies for the dollar, he prefers a regulated private sector approach to retail digital payments over a government-run CBDC.
• Privacy & Liberty: Warsh believes that a consumer-facing Fed-issued digital dollar is at odds with American values of privacy and could lead to financial overreach.

[dagunk]

Memo to all nsa, fbi, cia, dia, dea, atf, mba, aok, fmj, kgb, MI5,
and any others that might be listening/reading/tracking my
metadata...i share this computer with an old lady, an ex-con, a
priest, a used car salesman, a military veteran, a pacifist, a
vegetarian, a hunter, a circus midget, a Panamanian strong man, and
a chihuahua...so any data you have will be random and useless...good
luck.
— gspn

[bk1000]

I rarely use cash these days. That said, I would not want to see the end of cash.
When you need it, you need it!

[PeterPrinciple]

My observation is that almost all immigrants, legal and otherwise use cash exclusively.................