This article was originally published by JD Heyes at Natural News under the title: Federal Reserve set to introduce a privacy-crushing digital currency that can be ‘controlled’ and ‘programmed’ by government bureaucrats

When Barack Obama was in the White House and Democrats controlled Congress for his first two years in office, they passed a bill dubbed “Obamacare” that was the first step toward giving federal government bureaucrats complete control over Americans’ health care.

Since all Americans require medical care during their lives, the move was seen by critics as the ultimate authoritarian move; after all, if the government controls all healthcare decisions, tyrannical government bureaucrats could then begin to dictate behaviors and reward or punish people based on behavior.

Now, the government is attempting yet another major authoritarian move: The creation of a “digital currency” with the endgame objective being to control behaviors through “programmable” money that can influence and/or block certain spending habits.

“The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Innovation Center, or NYIC, announced that it would be launching a 12-week proof-of-concept pilot for a central bank digital currency or CBDC,” Coin Telegraph reported this week.

The outlet continued: “In a Nov. 15 announcement, the New York Fed said the program would explore the feasibility of an ‘interoperable network of central bank wholesale digital money and commercial bank digital money operating on a shared multi-entity distributed ledger’ on a regulated liability network. Banking giants including BNY Mellon, Citi, HSBC, Mastercard, PNC Bank, TD Bank, Truist, U.S. Bank, and Wells Fargo will be participating in the pilot by issuing tokens and settling transactions through simulated central bank reserves.”

Mind you, the participating banks are advertising this simply as a concept to make interoperability more feasible, but make no mistake, this ‘test’ is research: The Fed wants to develop and then hone this technology so that a ‘programmable’ digital currency can be introduced to the general public for the express purpose of controlling spending habits by favoring or disfavoring products (think ‘yes’ for electric cars, solar panels, and fake ‘meat’ but ‘no’ for cigarettes, alcohol, gasoline, and anything deemed ‘harmful to the planet’).

“The NYIC looks forward to collaborating with members of the banking community to advance research on asset tokenization and the future of financial market infrastructures in the U.S. as money and banking evolve,” NYIC Director Per von Zelowitz said in announcing the pilot program.

“Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George said in an interview that inflation is at risk of growing entrenched in the economy, making it difficult for the Federal Reserve to fight inflation without a recession. George said that labor is the driver of inflation now, rather than supply chain or production shortages, and the real challenge for policymakers is prematurely ending rate increases,” private intelligence firm Forward Observer reported in a note to subscribers earlier this month.

An accompanying analyst comment noted: “Fed officials have previously waved off the risk of recession, so this admission is significant. George is now saying the proverbial quiet part out loud, as [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome] Powell has been engineering a deliberate recession since last year.”

Now, as an engineered recession is upon us, the same Fed will be introducing a digital currency that it can manipulate on behalf of the wishes of the deep state permanent government.

The N.Y. Fed said in a statement: “This U.S. proof-of-concept project is experimenting with the concept of a regulated liability network. It will test the technical feasibility, legal viability, and business applicability of distributed ledger technology to settle the liabilities of regulated financial institutions through the transfer of central bank liabilities.”

“The NYIC looks forward to collaborating with members of the banking community to advance research on asset tokenization and the future of financial market infrastructures in the U.S. as money and banking evolve,” said Per von Zelowitz, Director of the New York Innovation Center.

…’as money and banking evolve.’

Why do either of these have to “evolve” in the first place?