A dangerous war on cash has started and it is threatening to eliminate all paper dollars forever. According to the economist James Rickards, plans that once seemed too absurd to be true and might have been dismissed as baseless speculation or conspiracy theories are now being publicly enforced by people who occupy the highest levels of power. The ongoing development of central bank digital currencies is going to be the next blow on our personal freedom, as governments will start to collect people's private information to impose punitive measures, negative rates, automatize the deduction of taxes and increase surveillance on all of our banking transactions. The United States is now facing a critical moment as rising inflation is putting the dollar's leading position as the world's reserve currency at risk and that, according to the expert, is going to be the perfect cue for our leaders to justify implementing digital dollars and abandoning paper money. But the consequences of this change will be obscure and will be many. And that's what we're going to discuss in this video. Economist, investment banker, and financial writer James Rickards recently published an article on the Daily Reckoning warning that the global financial system is experiencing a structural reform that will change money as we know it forever. The Great Reset, as most specialists call it, is finally here, and it is rapidly and silently developing on the dark backstage of central banks all around the world. The health crisis has undoubtedly ravaged economies all over the planet, but it also allowed governments, particularly the U.S. government, to engage in massive spending, expanding our money supply by the trillions. That, however, is putting our position as the world's reserve currency at risk, as rising inflation is threatening to sharply collapse the value of our currency. The more our deficits grow and our purchasing power declines, the less people will trust in our currency. Knowing that the narrative of a decaying dollar scares most Americans, the central bank has been quietly working on the perfect solution. So when things go downhill and the imminence of severe financial losses sparks panic and chaos across broad swaths of the US population, the federal government and policymakers will arise with a life-changing proposal: digital money. Arguing that in order to reverse runaway inflation and major wealth losses the only logical move would be to completely abandon paper dollars and fully embrace an entirely digital currency, world leaders - who, by the way, unleashed inflation through the staggering monetary response to the health crisis - will come up with what will look like a helpful and progressive plan to get us out from the mess they created themselves. The truth is that the total elimination of cash has been the global elite's pet project for decades, and now they finally found the ultimate chance to get started. For the wealthy 1%, digital currencies make the dream of infinite money come true, but for the average person, it means that central banks will have access to all of our private banking transactions, and more concerningly, it gives authorities a free pass to directly impose negative interest rates in our banking accounts. The European Central Bank agrees that negative rates will be applied as a “penalty” against “hoarding” cash. Although the roll-out of the new digital dollar is being kept a secret, the consequences of its imminent issuance are already raising many eyebrows in the financial sector. Considering that banks and other financial institutions are the very foundations of today's stock market, determining valuations alongside the tech sector, CBDCs may represent the end of traditional banks, which also implies that the stock market would either have to significantly shrink in size or cease to exist as a whole. On top of all that, there's an even more obscure side to CBDCs. With no cash, there's no anonymity, and therefore, governments will be allowed to track your whereabouts and habits at all times only by analyzing your use of funds through the CBDC payment system. A central bank digital currency can also result in the automatic deduction of taxes with no alternative for holders to escape. Given that our country has already started the process of enabling inflation and eliminating cash, anyone who is concerned about the prospect of being pushed into the new digital currency regime trap should make it a high priority to turn to hard money to preserve their savings outside of the financial system. Tough times are ahead for our nation in many different ways, and you should closely watch the next series of developments of the financial world, here, on Epic Economist.