TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced comprehensive legislation to protect Floridians from the Biden administration’s weaponization of the financial sector through a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).
The legislative proposal protects consumers and businesses from a federally controlled CBDC by:
Expressly prohibiting the use of a federally adopted Central Bank Digital Currency as money within Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).
Instituting protections against a central global currency by prohibiting any CBDC issued by a foreign reserve or foreign sanctioned central bank.
Calling on likeminded states to join Florida in adopting similar prohibitions within their respective Commercial Codes to fight back against this concept nationwide.
“The Biden administration’s efforts to inject a Centralized Bank Digital Currency is about surveillance and control,” said Governor Ron DeSantis. “Today’s announcement will protect Florida consumers and businesses from the reckless adoption of a ‘centralized digital dollar’ which will stifle innovation and promote government-sanctioned surveillance. Florida will not side with economic central planners; we will not adopt policies that threaten personal economic freedom and security.”
The whole thing looks terribly stupid, since all things related to the nation’s money are the purview of the US Congress, not the president and not the states. No?
Unfortunately, we already have a de facto digital currency: credit cards. As an example of the need for states to push back, the Democrats are trying to weaponize credit card processing to keep track of gun sales. No pun intended. Republican Attorney Generals are threatening to sue the credit card processing companies so they’re putting their tracking on hold.
The DeSantis proposal attempts to regulate federally adopted CBDC if such a thing were to happen. The states do not have jurisdiction over the nation’s money. They can’t control what currency is or isn’t acceptable.
You are wrong. The states have control over the use of money in the form of digital currencies in their state by businesses through the uniform commercial code (UCC), which is implemented by separate state laws in all 50 states.
This is from the discussion of a bill in South Dakota that was vetoed by the governor because she said it would allow a CBDC
(The UCC provides the necessary legal infrastructure for all business transactions for those conducting business in South Dakota or across state lines.*
What DeSantis is doing is preemptively stopping the use of a CBDC in Florida by modifying their UCC law.
DeSantis explains his position in his usual clear way in this video
Here’s a discussion, referred to by my previous post, by a banker opposing the veto by governor Noem of South Dakota of a bill that would in her opinion facilitate a CBDC. It’s a useful discussion that shows that states do have power to regulate the use of digital currencies.
First I don’t see any discussion in there, it’s just 2 short paragraphs.
Second, whatever power the UCC does or does not give states, I’m quite certain it cannot supersede federal law, the Constitution, etc. So they can regulate bitcoin all they want (and they should), but they can’t regulate anything that the Congress passes and the President signs, which is what would have to happen for a CBDC.
As stated in DeSantis’ announcement in the video, the legislation he introduced is intended to stop a back door implementation of a CBDC through the UCC. It is not intended to stop a law passed by Congress. Hopefully the chance of a law implementing a CBDC passing is small with a Republican House.
Biden may try to implement a CBDC with an executive order. He is well on his way to doing that as shown by his executive order from a year ago. Although not explicitly stated by DeSantis, I think he hopes that the legislation will slow down an executive order CBDC enough so the courts can stop it.
Ah, I didn’t catch that from the video. I think I understand now, thank you for the explanation. The thing about the UCC, based on my understanding, is that it attempts to set uniform rules across all states, but there is no requirement for everything in it to be adopted by every state – states can take some parts and ignore others. So DeSantis is preemptively prohibiting something that may appear in the UCC in the future. Seems like a symbolic move to highlight the problems of a CBDC. Symbolic because Florida doesn’t have to adopt anything in the UCC in the first place, so if and when the backdoor came to pass, they could have just ignored it. But still, perhaps not as stupid as I suspected.
Yeah I’m gonna have to disagree with you here. That EO simply directs toward research, and given that others are trying the same thing, researching it is a good idea. We don’t want to fall behind if this happens to be the next best thing in money technology. But I’m also pretty sure the President does not have the authority to designate a federally adopted central bank digital currency. Logic dictates that this power belongs to Congress.
Lotta “sanctuary cities”, from gun rights to immigration law to abortion, out there. seems like flaunting the federal laws and stonewalling their enforcement is just par for the course these days.
It’s the Missile Gap that the CIA implied Russia was advancing ahead of us in ICBMs and Nukes. The military industrial complex played it up to get contracts and pie in the sky budgets.
IIRC, it was eventually shown to be overblown and was mocked mercilessly in movies and by comedians. One of the earliest movie references was by George C. Scott, in one of his best performances, talking about a ??? gap of some kind in Dr. Strangelove.
But then there’s this. They should not mind if the Republicans in the house zero their subsidy
NPR’s budget is funded in part by taxpayers and the company claims that amount is 2 percent of their overall revenue. The rest is made up of ads, payments from stations, and donations.
the mother said the lunches she packs for her child “are according to my son’s preferences.”
The mom also wrote, "The usual lunch that I send him to school with is small celery sticks with blue cheese and goat cheese, kimchi and spam (we are Korean and he absolutely adores this dish), and spicy Doritos marinated in Sriracha (I know, I know, but he deserves a snack, and I don’t put that many chips in the baggy.
Republican Attorney Generals are threatening to sue the credit card processing companies so they’re putting their tracking on hold.