The Scottish National Party (SNP), Scotland’s largest party and the UK’s third largest party, agreed to a motion supporting the introduction of a basic income in Scotland at its spring conference, held on 12-13 March 2016.
The motion, which was submitted for agreement by the Cumbernauld SNP branch, explicitly opposes the UK government’s approach to social security and proposes an alternative formed around the introduction of a basic income.
The motion states that the “conference believes that a basic or universal income can potentially provide a foundation to eradicate poverty, make work pay and ensure all our citizens can live in dignity.”
Ronnie Cowan MP (SNP) argued that a basic income could “be the flagship policy for a socially just independent country.”
Your currency is being transformed into a digital leash that dictates where you travel, what you eat, and the medical decisions you are forced to make.
Catherine Austin Fitts warns that the elite push for programmable digital currency is the literal construction of the biblical “Beast System,” designed not to streamline commerce, but to mandate absolute submission over every aspect of human life.
Digital currency is coming and it will limit what money can be used for. If your expenditures are not for approved uses or you express opinions that are contrary, you may find your money no longer works. Finance used as a control tool.
We’re experiencing the conflict between two systems of governance. Understanding what that means could be the most important knowledge we need today.
This is part 2 of the 3-part report on alternative systems of governance. We can think of them as a society’s operating system and it follows that the better we can understand it, the better we can shape the society’s future and the brighter the future we can leave behind for future generations.
In part 1, we compared and contrasted the two opposed systems of governance in general terms and then looked at the way British free trade system all but ruined British economy and its society.
In this report we’ll look in the opposite direction: how the national system of political economy impacts the societies of nations that implement it.
Free Trade and how it distorts the economic affairs of sovereign countries ...
"This is part 2 of the 3-part report on alternative systems of governance. We can think of them as a society’s operating system and it follows that the better we can understand it, the better we can shape the society’s future and the brighter the future we can leave behind for future generations.
In part 1, we compared and contrasted the two opposed systems of governance in general terms and then looked at the way British free trade system all but ruined British economy and its society.
In this report we’ll look in the opposite direction: how the national system of political economy impacts the societies of nations that implement it."
The borrowing rate at a 17-year high, an interest bill of $1.4 trillion a year, a doubled debt-buyback program, a quiet mechanism the script calls stealth money printing, and a President floating the military over bond markets — the script presents these as parts of one machine with a single purpose: get the government’s borrowing cost down...
It looks like the Trump administration is getting desperate ... over the money required to service the rapidly rising debt that is at a record high of something like 40 trillion US$.
The plan is to buy back some of that debt, the treasury bonds that are being traded at over 5% interest. How do you do that? Simple - print more money and use it to buy back debt.
Of course there is a drawback to this and it's called inflation. US Dollars people saved and invested will be worth less after all this is over.
America can’t refinance its way out of nearly $40 trillion in debt forever. At some point we need extraordinary economic growth, and radically cheaper, abundant energy could help create it.
We keep trying to manage an enormous debt problem with more debt. At some point America is going to need something much bigger: real growth. And the answer may begin with energy.
A breakthrough in energy production might actually help the economy! What a novel thought. Perhaps it is time to look at those garage inventors in a new unit of time ... what exactly is out there that could make us less dependent on those hydrocarbons ...
Capitalism is run by voting - with dollars. What if we take ownership of this and change how we make purchases? Maybe with a collectively intelligent buyer’s club ...
As Foulds writes, “Capitalism simply rewards competitive advantage.” It does not possess a conscience of its own. It rewards whatever behavior succeeds under the conditions we create.
When exploitation lowers costs and consumers continue purchasing anyway, exploitation may become an advantage. When employees cannot afford to leave, poor treatment may become an advantage. But when customers possess reliable information, workers have realistic alternatives, and ethical conduct attracts both talent and business, the incentives can begin moving in a different direction.
Perhaps capitalism can be reformed, its incentives changed, by consumers taking an interest and banding together to nudge things in a new direction ...
The architecture I warned about is no longer a thesis at the edge of crypto. As of May 4, 2026, it has an institutional rollout schedule.
"In January, I published “The Tokenization of Everything.” The argument was not that blockchain is evil or that every tokenized asset is a control device. The argument was narrower and more dangerous: once property, money, credentials, and access rights are converted into programmable digital instruments inside a regulated, bank-integrated ecosystem, ownership quietly mutates into conditional permission. Tokens are not neutral representations of property. They are code that can be designed to expire, freeze, restrict, or revoke based on compliance scores, policy triggers, or algorithmic rules set somewhere upstream."
"In February, I published “The Proof of Persona: Decoding Patent 060606.” That essay went one layer deeper. Microsoft’s published patent application WO2020060606A1 describes a cryptocurrency system in which a task is issued to a user device, a sensor captures body activity, the resulting data is transformed into a compact proof, and a cryptocurrency reward is issued if the proof satisfies validity conditions defined by the system. The patent publication explicitly contemplates that a user can solve the validation problem “unconsciously.” The point was not that this system is currently deployed. The point was that someone considered it feasible enough to file: a published blueprint for moving the credential from what you do to what your body does — proof-of-work to proof-of-response to proof-of-compliance. I called it the hash of the soul, and I argued that the deepest battle is not technical but metaphysical: whether persons are real prior to systems, or whether personhood is a status conferred by what a validation server can read and certify."
That was the warning.
This is the rollout.
What DTCC Just Announced
On May 4, 2026, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation announced that its subsidiary, The Depository Trust Company, will facilitate initial, limited production trades of tokenized real-world securities in July 2026, with a planned full service launch in October 2026. The service has been developed with input from more than fifty financial industry firms. The published working group is not a marginal coalition. It is, in effect, the spine of the U.S. financial system plus the institutional crypto layer:
Major banks: J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, HSBC, BNP Paribas, UBS, State Street, BlackRock, RBC Capital Markets, TD Securities, Lloyds Bank.
Asset managers and clearing/custody: BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Invesco, Charles Schwab, Apex Clearing, Broadridge, FIS, SEI, BetaNXT.
Market makers and brokerages: Citadel Securities, DRW, Virtu Financial, Jefferies, StoneX, Robinhood, TradeStation, Raymond James, Marex.
Crypto-native infrastructure: Circle (issuer of USDC), Anchorage Digital, BitGo Bank & Trust, Fireblocks, Ondo Finance, Ripple Prime, Payward (parent of Kraken), Digital Asset (creators of the Canton Network), Talos, Bitwave, Backpack.
Courtenay Turner documents the current state of construction of the future control grid, from the tokenization of financial assets for the world of finance, to the "wearable proof" design of the planned internet of bodies.
Those two layers are brought together and are given substance by an implementation strategy that unites America's major banks and financial institutions - a collection of veritable movers and shakers - a strategy that is being rolled out right now and that is designed to lock in control not only over major financial assets but over our personal future and freedom of choice ... or lack of it as well.
All is not lost yet. There is a window of action open to those interested in the preservation of human freedom. The architecture of control is being worked out right now in its technical details, giving us an opening to comment and eventually influence the outcome.
This is technocracy coming in "like a thief in the night" as someone insightfully commented.
A discovery by Europe’s ruling class — that desperation is more effective than force — has driven five centuries of enclosure, colonialism, and financialization. It still governs our world today.
We are often taught a story about modern history that feels reassuring: that the wealth and power of the West emerged through innovation, industriousness, and enlightened institutions; that development flowed outward from Europe and America to the rest of the world; that whatever injustices occurred were collateral damage that belong mostly to the past.
But that story leaves out too much.
The truth is that the global system we live in was not built simply through ingenuity. It was built through violent enclosure, dispossession, colonization, forced extraction, and the systematic transfer of wealth from the many to the few. And until we understand that history, it is almost impossible to understand why today’s world remains so extremely unequal—and why ecological devastation is woven so deeply into the foundations of our civilization.
Western industrial civilization is mighty proud of its economic achievements. Turns out, the real benefits do not spread out beyond a very restricted circle of the privileged, those who are in control of both finance and industry.
This story is about the rest of us, how peasants have been forced into laboring for the few, through a strategy of starvation ... sometimes to the death.
There’s a moment that feels almost disorienting, like seeing yourself for the first time in a mirror you didn’t know existed. You’ve lived your whole life inside something, navigating it instinctively, never questioning its shape because it was everywhere. As a child, you know every neighbor’s house you’ve visited, every path you walk, every shortcut. Then one day you climb a tree or a hill, and suddenly you see it: all those houses are part of a single landscape. Roads connect them. Boundaries repeat. Some places flood, others sit higher. What felt like separate stories snap into one terrain.
That’s what real economic awareness feels like. Not learning new facts, but recognizing a pattern you were already inside. You realize money, markets, aid, debt, labor, platforms, welfare, extraction … these aren’t separate systems. They’re features of the same landscape, shaped by shared rails you’ve never been shown from above. You haven’t changed. The world hasn’t changed. But your position in consciousness has. And once you see the shape, you can’t unsee it.
Trump just threatened military action against Nigeria for accepting non-dollar payments for oil exports—and it's backfiring spectacularly. This isn't diplomacy, it's the desperate death rattle of dollar hegemony as Africa's largest nation says "no" to American financial dominance.
Professor John Mearsheimer reveals how Nigeria's currency decision triggered Trump's most unhinged threat yet. With 220 million people and Africa's biggest economy, Nigeria has alternatives America can't compete with—Chinese infrastructure, Russian energy cooperation, and BRICS partnerships that respect sovereignty without lectures.
The mask has slipped completely off. We're now explicitly threatening war to enforce economic compliance, proving American "leadership" depends on coercion, not cooperation. Nigeria's response? Coordinating with African Union, strengthening BRICS ties, and showing the world that resistance to dollar tyranny is possible.
This is the death of the Monroe Doctrine for the digital age. European allies won't endorse threatening war over currency choices. Latin America quietly supports African sovereignty. Asia watches as dedollarization accelerates globally—Brazil, Saudi Arabia, India all reducing dollar dependence.
Key revelations: How Nigerian oil revenues fund African development without Western conditions, why post-colonial nations reject selective moral standards, and what happens when empire threatens violence over economics. The unipolar moment dies where it began—with small nations refusing submission.
Nigeria's message reverberates globally: sovereignty is non-negotiable, alternatives exist, and the future belongs to nations brave enough to claim independence. Trump's threats were meant to preserve dominance—instead, they've accelerated American decline.
The dollar's African death spiral has begun, and the whole world is watching.
🔔 Subscribe for more analysis on dedollarization, African resistance, and the end of American financial empire.
Disclaimer: This dramatized story is inspired by real events and public figures. All dialogue and incidents are fictionalized for commentary and educational purposes. This is not intended to defame but to explore themes of intelligence oversight, institutional accountability, and government transparency.
When investing, choose to support the real economy, not a gamble with money for its own sake.
Investment
I would like to bring something in finance back to basics. Money is a tool, not something to strive for in and of itself. If you see yourself as an investor, someone with money that can be put to good use and to grow, this one is for you.
Investment isn’t gambling with money. It isn’t putting money into stocks or currencies to “make more money”. Investment is putting your money to work to help make actual useful products that help people live better, more healthy, more fulfilled lives. In other words, invest in the real economy, in production and distribution of real, useful products, in services that make people more healthy, that help them lead a happy and fulfilled life.
What passes as investment today is actually gambling with money. The stock exchange should be re-named as the stock gambling facility. Speculating is not investing. It is gambling with money, hoping that the stocks of some company or the relative value of a currency will go up, “appreciate” or go down, “crash” so you can cash in on the differences. That kind of activity does nothing for society. It is only re-distributing pieces of the pie from one “investor” to another, from one pool of money to another. That is not economy, it’s gambling just like in a casino.
If you have money available to invest, be sure to recognise the difference between gambling and actual investment in the real economy.
Choose to support human efforts and civilisation by putting your resources – both the money and your mind – in an activity where they can support life. Useful products, delivered to the people who need and appreciate them. This could be food, tools, conveniences, but it could also be art. If you choose to invest in art, find an artist who’s still alive to support. Give them a hand to be able to produce more of whatever art they are producing. If you want to do something for the environment, do something that respects the earth and what it so freely provides for us but above all, think for yourself. Learn the ins and outs of human society, respect the other life forms that share the planet with us, and abstain from things that do harm.
Let your money support life, not some dead idea, not a gamble.
I guess that’s enough of a rant and I am sure you got the idea. Perhaps let it sink in for a while before you decide what to invest in. Don’t fall for what today poses as “investment advice”. Do what brings you pleasure and what supports our beautiful home, planet earth and the creatures that share it with us.
On July 18, 2025, President Trump signed the so-called GENIUS (Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins) Act into law.1 This act creates a legal framework for so-called stablecoins.
The GENIUS Act primarily codifies and regulates stablecoins. It does not create them, but it defines them and thereby provides both legal certainty and legitimacy. This is likely to substantially increase the popularity and adoption of stablecoins. As a result, there is likely going to be an increased demand for U.S. Treasuries, which will help the federal government finance the national debt but may also reduce the amount of capital available for economic growth (e.g., through stocks and loans).
Ultimately even more impactful, however, will be the effect of mass adoption of stablecoins on individual liberty and human freedom, especially if stablecoins increasingly replace cash.
Programmable money is the key requirement for total control of human behavior. An all-digital payment system will allow for global tyranny and leave no way for a human being to try to escape into freedom. Whether this payment system is run by a central bank, a government, or private entities makes little difference. By design, stablecoins, like CBDCs, not only allow for the complete and permanent documentation of every single transaction, however insignificant, but make it possible to allow or deny individual transactions remotely and automatically, down to the smallest detail. Hence, for example, you might be able to use a stablecoin to purchase a snack but not a train ticket, if some decision-maker or algorithm so decides.
This is exactly how the Chinese system works. Although the GENIUS Act does not implement a social credit score system, stablecoins (which the Act codifies) allow for the easy activation of one...
Here is Darren Moore Jr interviewing Catherine Austin Fitts. Darren is into cryptocurrencies and the talk is about how crypto can and likely will be used to restrict our freedom. Catherine is asking the question: "how can this trend be turned around?" She suggests we need to go local, and we need to make sure that cash continues to be used.
Catherine warns that once digital identity is imposed and everything is on crypto, there won't be a way to escape the control that electronic currencies afford governments, where basically "they" have all the power and people can only watch what they do with it...
Darren Moore, who is into crypto currencies, interviews Catherine Austin Fitts. Catherine warns that once digital identity is imposed and everything is on crypto, the world's natural resources are likely to be bought up. She adds that there won't be a way to escape the control that electronic currencies afford governments, where basically "they" have all the power and people can only watch what they do with it...
"Bitcoin is the solution to broken money, global inflation, and government overreach.
With $450 trillion in global wealth just waiting for preservation, Bitcoin’s role as an incorruptible, and moral form of money becomes clear. Hurley explores why Trump’s potential Day-One Bitcoin executive order could reshape the world economy and how Bitcoin preserves your time, energy, and labor for generations."
This is so interesting. Any kind of official "adoption" of Bitcoin could change everything for international finance. It could even lead, in time, to an end run around the current extractive finance and banking system...
The spectacular civilizational renaissance of China makes the case for national system of economy undeniable.
Western colonialism favors and seeks to impose the British free trade system. Nations that prefer independence and wish to chart a sovereign path of their development, prefer the national system of political economy, also known as the American System.
The national system seeks to stimulate domestic manufacturing, accumulate capital at home, and invest it into its society’s own development, infrastructure, education, research, innovation, culture, and other uses that raise the country’s living standards and quality of life.
By contrast, the British free trade system extracts wealth and concentrates it in the hands of a financier oligarchy and their largest corporate clients. Free trade entails removing all barriers to unobstructed worldwide flow of capital, always in pursuit of highest available returns. Any costs that reduce the returns on capital must be slashed, including social spending and protection of the environment.
Under the free trade system, nations are obliged to compete for investment capital by systematically depressing wages, job security, pensions, health care services, and education."
In this article, Alex Krainer uses the example of the economic renaissance of China as a point of comparison. The question he asks and attempts to answer: What is better, free trade and the unhindered dominance of finance and capital or the system of national economy, where each country is free to pursue the development of its own industry, local production, education and health for the population. The answer may be a surprise for many ...
The EU has now legally mandated that all member states offer a Digital Identity Wallet by the end of 2026—with banks and telecoms required to accept it a year later. In the U.S., similar digital ID systems are rolling out state by state. Once money is fully digitized, every purchase can be tracked, limited, or even denied. That’s not some far-off scenario, it’s happening now.
We live in a self-reflective Universe
Each of us can take action by withdrawing our consent to digital slavery, by using cash as much as possible this week and beyond.
Why cash?
Using cash is one of the simplest, most effective ways to thwart the march toward an all-digital financial system. Make the deliberate choice to pay with cash as often as possible—groceries, coffee, gas, eating out, or any brick-and-mortar merchant.
Digital payments are convenient, but cash is privacy, independence, and local impact all in one. Every time you pay with cash at a local business, you’re putting your money directly into your community.
There is something to be said for using cash when all trends are going towards the digital with a prospect of tight control over all of our lives ...
Using cash is one of the simplest, most effective ways to thwart the march toward an all-digital financial system. Make the deliberate choice to pay with cash as often as possible—groceries, coffee, gas, eating out, or any brick-and-mortar merchant.
Digital payments are convenient, but cash is privacy, independence, and local impact all in one. Every time you pay with cash at a local business, you’re putting your money directly into your community.
What Julio Linares and Diana Finch helped me understand about money
I read Julio Linares’s Decolonizing Money and Diana Finch’s Value Beyond Money after more than fifteen years of helping to develop community currencies, mutual-aid systems, vouchers, digital ledgers, and commitment pools through Grassroots Economics.
I expected both books to draw me back into the question that first animated much of my work: What kind of money should communities create?
Instead, reading them together reinforced a different question:
What if money should no longer be the center of how we understand coordination?
The two books reach that threshold from very different directions...
The article is a wide ranging discussion not only about alternative currencies, but perhaps more importantly, alternatives TO currencies. Find the whole article here:
Here is Will Ruddick on his substack in a wide ranging discussion of alternative currencies and - perhaps more importantly - alternatives to currencies...
The United States just intervened in the yen market for the first time since Fukushima — but this time, there was no earthquake, no tsunami, and no nuclear disaster. The emergency is the bond market, and the signal came from Scott Bessent’s notepad.
The US has been racking up debts like there is no tomorrow. The way to finance those debts is the Treasury Bond market.
Several countries, mainly in Asia, have been selling their accumulated US Treasury Bonds for various reasons. Japan, it appears, must do so because of a weakening Yen, probably brought on by an economic slowdown that has its origin in rising energy prices.
So Treasury Secretary Bessent, in a desperate attempt to stabilise the Treasury Bond market, has directed the Treasury to buy Japanese Yen, asking the Japanese to hold on to their Treasury Bonds.
Somehow it seems that the grand plan of the US to hijack and close Hormuz while sitting smugly on its own oil (actually to a large part Venezuela’s), to starve the East of energy in a desperate bid to keep empire going for another round, it seems that it’s not working out too well, as this piece tells us.
Quote (courtesy of The Corbett Report):
Worth the price of admission if for this paragraph alone:
“The third variable is Trump. The thesis requires you to believe that the same administration that fired its own Navy Secretary three weeks ago for not building ships fast enough is, simultaneously, executing a coherent 25-year plan to reorganize global energy markets and replace fifty years of monetary architecture. Trump and 25-year strategic patience are two phrases that have, to my knowledge, never previously occupied the same sentence before.”
Somehow it seems that the grand plan of the US to hijack and close Hormuz while sitting smugly on its own oil (actually to a large part Venezuela’s), to starve the East of energy in a desperate bid to keep empire going for another round, it seems that it’s not working out too well, as this piece tells us.
Quote (courtesy of The Corbett Report):
Worth the price of admission if for this paragraph alone:
“The third variable is Trump. The thesis requires you to believe that the same administration that fired its own Navy Secretary three weeks ago for not building ships fast enough is, simultaneously, executing a coherent 25-year plan to reorganize global energy markets and replace fifty years of monetary architecture. Trump and 25-year strategic patience are two phrases that have, to my knowledge, never previously occupied the same sentence before.”
This post makes a very basic argument … one that democracy brings in all the wrong incentives for government to act with a view to only present time gain, not long term stability or development.
It goes against everything we have been taught, that democracy brings progress and safety for the populace.
The Digital Currency Modernization Act was signed into law Monday morning. It takes effect this Saturday at midnight. And when you wake up Sunday, the America of financial privacy will be gone.
The new law drops the cash transaction reporting threshold from $10,000 to $600. That means virtually any significant cash purchase—a car repair, a medical bill, a piece of furniture—now triggers a federal report with your name, address, and identification.
It mandates digital dollar wallets for all federal payments starting January 1st. No more paper checks. No more direct deposit to your bank account. A Federal Reserve digital wallet tied to your Social Security number becomes the only way to receive government money.
It requires reporting of all precious metals purchases over $200. Buy three ounces of silver? Reported. Buy a single gold coin? Reported. The government is building a registry of metal owners.
Every digital dollar transaction will be recorded on a Federal Reserve ledger accessible to Treasury, IRS, FBI, and Homeland Security. Complete financial surveillance becomes law this weekend.
In this comprehensive video, I walk through the 847-page legislation section by section. I reveal the $600 threshold that captures routine transactions. I expose the precious metals registry designed for future confiscation. I explain why both parties supported it—because banks, tech companies, and the security state all benefit.
I show you where this leads: programmable money, expiring currency, negative interest rates, and social credit scores tied to your purchases. Everything implemented in China becomes possible in America.
Most importantly, I tell you exactly what to do in the 72 hours before implementation. Cash withdrawals. Precious metals purchases. Private documentation. Geographic diversification.
The window is closing. The surveillance state is activating. Your preparation determines your freedom.
This one isn't about money. It is about the economy though, because energy is what lets economies fluorish... and there are big changes in the wings for how we produce energy. As we get off the old hydrocarbons and bypass the limited capabilities of what they call "renewable" energy today, things may change quite dramatically.
A guest editorial by Michel Foata-Prestavoine. The Problem is the Transactional Symmetry, and the proposed solution is the Common Good Unit, a commons-based monetary system.
China’s cash is vanishing overnight. Banks are limiting withdrawals, ATMs are shutting down, and millions of citizens are frozen in panic. Right now, across the country, people are lining up, only to be told: “You can’t access your money.” What’s happening isn’t just a glitch, it feels like the entire financial system is locking down in real time.One thing is certain: China’s economy has never felt more fragile.
What triggered this sudden banking freeze across China? Why are ordinary people being blocked from their own life savings? And could this be the beginning of a full-blown economic collapse?
To understand how this crisis exploded so quickly, we have to start with the moment it all began just 48 hours ago.
This is a major development, bound to deeply affect not only the Chinese but businesses and people the world over.
A very worrying detail: It seems like the USA is getting ready to go very much in the same direction with Trump's "big beautiful" digital money bill being pushed through the legislature.
Catherine Austin Fitts talks at Hillsdale College about the Danger of Central Bank Digital Currencies. The discussion of CBDCs starts at around 18 minutes into the talk.
After explaining how CBDCs will bring in a level of control over our lives that is nothing short of tyrannical, she says
“… remember, we don’t have a financial problem. What I would tell you is that if we were free to re-engineer the federal flows and come back into compliance with the law, particularly with the blessings of new technology, the wealth on this planet could be so many multiples of what it is now that words cannot express to you how expensive tyranny is.
It is a miracle that we have done this well despite the drain of the tyranny. It’s quite remarkable and if you look at all the simulations I’ve done of the federal finances over the last 20 and 30 years, you know, the price of tyranny is beyond what any of us can imagine. So if we can turn this around, the opportunity is there. There is no financial problem at the root of this. It’s a political problem, it’s a governance problem.”
A digital control grid is being set up as we move towards CBDCs and Crypto. Do we want a tyranny of the Central Bankers? How bad would it be? Listen to Catherine Fitts here...
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
Basic income in Scotland?