Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 6/30/23: Hollywood Advice For Joe Biden, JPMorgan Deletes 47 Million Emails, John Kerry Confronted On Iraq War Crimes, Fox Struggles To Defend Leaked Trump Audio, James Li On FedNow Central Payment System

Episode Date: June 30, 2023

This week we discuss Jeffrey Katzenberg's "Hollywood Advice" for the ageing Joe Biden, JPMorgan sued for deleting over 47 million emails, French TV confronting John Kerry over the Iraq War Crimes, Fox struggling to defend Trump's leaked audio of his classified documents, and our partner James Li brings a new Beyond The Headlines about the dystopian FedNow Central Payment System.To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Hey guys, Ready or Not 2024 is here, and we here at Breaking Points are already thinking of ways we can up our game for this critical election. We rely on our premium subs to expand coverage, upgrade the studio, add staff, give you guys the best independent coverage that is possible. If you like what we're all about, it just means the absolute world to have your support. But enough with that. Let's get to the show. quite an interesting and insightful piece of reporting from the wall street journal into what is going on with the biden campaign put this up on the screen he's getting advice from an interesting place um the headline here is Jeffrey Katzenberg's

very Hollywood advice for Joe Biden. Entertainment mogul is a campaign advisor with Harrison Ford and Mick Jagger as presidential role models. Here's what they mean by that. Apparently, the movie mogul has joined with other advisors in counseling President Biden to, quote, own his age and turn it into an asset. If Harrison Ford, 80 years old, can star in a new Indiana Jones movie and the Rolling Stones' Mick Jagger, who turns 80 next month, can strut around the stadium stage, Katzenberg says, then Biden should lean into his longevity as a sign of wisdom and experience while offering a sense of humor about it. They go on to say that that's one of the things Katzenberg has brought to bear. The primary thing he's brought to bear is massive fundraising potential.

Yes, exactly. Bundling in a campaign that is going to need it and doesn't have a lot of grassroots fundraising support. So that's probably the most important piece of what he's offering here. But what do you think of the advice, Sagar? Yeah, look, whenever we're looking at this one, you have an 80-year-old who is literate. What is it? An 80-year-old who is literally what is it an 80 year old who is looking

to inspiration to other 80 year olds I think that there might be maybe Crystal a slight difference between Biden and Mick Jagger and some others

apparently George Harrison Ford some of it might be a drug cocktail to be quite honest I'll need to get that drug cocktail yeah exactly I guess Biden should start shooting whatever these guys are taking. But also,

look, what we've always talked about is being 80 itself is not necessarily disqualification. Right. It's about, well, when you're at that age, the risk of being mentally incapacitated is much higher. And are you beginning to show the signs of potentially getting to that point? Yeah. And I think it's quite obvious if you look at Harrison Ford, the new trailer for Indiana Jones looks decent. I'm, you know, personally, I'm going to wait until we actually see the whole movie, just like the last one. With holding judgment. Well, it was just the last one was such a disaster. Oh, was it? I never watched it. Oh, God, it was horrible. The Crystal Skull. Well, Mick Jagger, of course, you know, has shown

his proven ability. But with Biden, like we literally have him on camera every single day. So we know, you know, what exactly it looks like and what some of the missteps are. So thus, the comparison is just not the same, both with Harrison Ford and with Mick Jagger. The proof is in the performance. And the performance here is just not even comparable. So you can't take advice from those people, right? That's the thing is like, it's probably the best advice you could give. No, no, no, for sure. I agree.

It's just the ability to execute on that advice that remains in significant doubt. So here's part of what Biden has said about his age when he was asked about it. He was actually asked about a press conference with the South Korean president. And he said, quote, with regard to age, I can't even say, I guess, how old I am. I can't even say the number. It doesn't register with me. I respect them taking a hard look at it, talking about voters. I take a hard look at it as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run and I feel good. I feel excited about the prospects. I mean, one thing we have always said is if he had the ability to get out there on a debate stage and tangle with Bobby Kennedy and Marion or whoever,

and prove that he's up to the job, then he should do that. But they're probably, they're probably, I don't think this is the right ethical, moral strategy, but they're probably executing the best possible political strategy in keeping him out of the cameras and kind of hiding from people how he is actually doing at this point. So yeah, it'd be nice if he was in a position to avail himself of this advice and lean into his age or own his age, as they say, and demonstrate that he's still just as sharp and wily as ever. But I just, I don't know that you can really execute on this advice. Yeah, I agree. And you know, look, Jeffrey Katzenberg, complicated history. So on the one hand, I personally owe a lot of my childhood to a guy like Katzenberg. He was responsible for some

of the greatest hits in Disney animation history. But also, this is the guy who just did Quibi, so maybe we should hold off on any of his more recent advice on communication, specifically in allaying younger people's fears, because it's not exactly like he knows what they want. Remind people what Quibi was. It was like a one billion, maybe more, boondoggle in terms of like short form content within an app. It included like the Punk'd rebuke and 60 Minutes did deal. It was a whole disaster. Yeah, they were throwing cash at people.

And they shut down almost overnight. Had a bunch of high level, what's that lady's name? I don't know. Anyway, so former Republican. That's the one. Former Republican presidential candidate. Yeah. Anyway, yeah, that was kind of a disaster. I forgot about that. But anyway, the Biden White House is apparently listening because he's also bringing cash to the table and that's what it takes to get an audience with the president. So there you go, folks. A stunning new story out of the SEC and JPMorgan. Let's go and put this up there on the screen, guys. So SEC is fining JPMorgan subsidiary for deleting 47 million emails, some related to an ongoing subpoena. The broker deal subsidiary of JPMorgan Chase, $4 million for accidentally deleting 47 million

emails for early 2018. Some of these emails were sought by subpoenas in at least a dozen regulatory investigations. The firm in late 2021 agreed to pay $125 million in penalties for failing to preserve text messages and other electronic communications sent from January 2018 and November of 2020. So they are willing to pay over $125 million plus another $4 million, so $129 million for a loss of 47 million emails. A loss. Yeah. Quote, unquote.

Do you believe for one second that these emails were not deeply incriminating? No. And here's the thing, all right? You're going to pay $125 million just for losing the emails. How much were they going to pay for keeping the emails? Yeah, well- If you- Yeah, that's the real question.

I mean, here's what's amazing. Yeah. And the way that, I mean, white collar crime just, it's the cost of doing business. I mean, that's the way they view it. This penalty, this latest one of just $4 million, that's nothing to them. $4 million for them, nothing. And they get to claim that they lost these millions and millions of emails. This is the third time that this has happened. It happened in late 2021, as you referenced. It also happened in 2005 when they were supposed to preserve electronic records from mid-99 to mid-2002.

J.P. Morgan's spokeswoman declined to comment on the latest sanction. And they claim, you know, oh, they began a project to delete their older communications and documents no longer required to be retained. And oopsie, they just accidentally deleted tens of millions more that were the subject of ongoing investigations, etc. It's just astonishing. These people, they literally get away with anything. They really do. They really do. Yeah. I mean, look, when you have it here in front of you that you can have three separate instances where you delete emails for the SEC and you get fined every single time, do you really believe that it can be an accidental loss? That's the other thing I have with CNBC. How can you in good conscience call this an accidental loss and just take them at their word?

They say that there were glitches in their project with identified documents not in fact being expunged and that while troubleshooting that issue, employees of the firm executed deletion tasks on electronic communications from the entire first quarter of 2018 that these employees erroneously believed that all of those documents were coded in a way to prevent permanent deletion, even though that permanent deletion had happened multiple times before and since. Here's the other part I like. This settlement was actually, they let the firm, J.P. Morgan, themselves suggest what settlement they wanted. As one does.

And then the SEC is like, all right, sure. But don't worry, guys. As part of that settlement, the SEC also ordered the firm to cease and desist from committing any future violations. So I'm sure they're going to clean up their act here. They're going to fly right from here on out. They've learned their lesson with this, you know, pathetically small fine in the grand scheme of their massive wealth, and it'll all be good from here on out. Right. Very, very intelligent people who are running this country. Inmates truly are the ones who are running the asylum. Fascinating moment. U.S. envoy for climate change, John Kerry,

appeared on French television, presumably to talk about some of his climate change, John Kerry, appeared on French television, presumably to talk about some of his climate initiatives. But he was asked about the war in Ukraine, about whether Putin was a war criminal, and also about war crimes trials, when the French host decided to hit back a little bit and say, yeah, but what about Bush and Iraq and the war that you voted for? Let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. Unfortunately, it was dubbed, so we only have subtitles in terms of what was asked here. And so he says, well, he didn't know that that was a lie. Referencing to Bush.

You know, the evidence that was produced, people couldn't have known that there was a lie. So no, again, I think they're stretching something that's not a constructive thing whenever he's asked there about Iraq. It's not a constructive thing whenever he's asked there about Iraq. It's not constructive. He says, sir, I am not going to re-debate the Iraq war here right now. We spent a lot of time doing that previously. I was opposed to going in. Not true. I thought it was the wrong thing to do. Not true. But we gave the president the power, regrettably, the Congress based on a lie.

And when we knew it was a lie, people stood up and did the right thing. Well, I'm not so sure about that. Many, many years later. Did you set up and do the right thing? That's interesting. So interestingly enough, I believe Kerry does speak fluent French in terms of that debate and in terms of that appearance. But I think that is a perfect view of the hypocrisy of the way that we look and that we talk whenever we conduct ourselves in international affairs. And that's not China. That's not India. That's not an adversary or somewhere that's non-Western. That's France. That's a country which obviously rejected going into Iraq with us, but that's a country which

is in NATO, ostensibly our ally, right? These are the people who should see things somewhat our way. But even our version of events, though, whenever it comes to the way that we want to cast certain events, well, certainly doesn't go over that way with the rest of the world. And that is why I increasingly believe that the great divide right now is between, like, Western liberal thinking in terms of NATO, international world order, and all that stuff, and then every other country on earth. And increasingly, the rest of the world is trending much more towards realism, towards multipolarity, towards a very traditional conduct of relations between states, whereas we're still stuck in like 1991, where we think it's the unipolar moment, and we haven't invaded Iraq and had the devastation of Afghanistan and been humiliated, you know, and had all this other stuff. I think we still have

some kind of moral authority. I mean, we really squandered that. Iraq, listen, it's the least devastating part of Iraq, but, you know, any idea that we have moral authority on Russia invading Ukraine was really destroyed by that moment. And Bush and Cheney, obviously the number one culprits and all of their architects and enablers, et cetera. But it was truly a bipartisan effort. I mean, Joe Biden was really central. John Kerry is such a mess. I don't even know how he could really say like, I opposed it and I thought it was wrong at the time. He voted for the authorization and he was still, I looked it up, he was still defending it even when he was

running for president. So like, it's such an attempt to rewrite history that like, oh, you had it right all the way along. And then he also offers in the same breath, the cope that you hear from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden and other Democrats in particular, but across the board who voted to justify what ended up being totally unjustifiable, which is that like, well, we couldn't have known. We couldn't have known it was a lie at the time. Oh, really? Because there were people who were out there who were raising a hell of a lot of red flags at the time. There were a few very lonely journalists who had the story 100% correct, that this was all the weapons of mass destruction stuff was complete bullshit. And if anyone had had any curiosity at the time, you know, there were also plenty of young people like

myself in college who thought this is bullshit and this is not a remote justification for, you know, this upending of the entire world in this massive war that you're getting us into, which, you know, more than 20 years later, we're still dealing with the aftermath of. So it's kind of astonishing to me, honestly, Sagar, that, I mean, number one, just the dishonesty of Kerry, but why do you feel the need to defend Bush at this point? Well, because it's about, you know, it's not about Bush. It reflects on him.

It's about him, yeah. It's like, you voted for it, dude. Yeah, I mean, I think that that's the ultimate problem. I mean, like you referenced, look, I was 11 years old whenever the US invaded Iraq, and even I remember the day. I remember exactly where I was sitting. I remember the newspaper.S. invaded Iraq. And even I remember the day. I remember exactly where I was sitting. I remember the newspaper.

I remember the teacher, social studies teacher. And I was a shitster even at that time. And I said, wasn't this about bin Laden? And she was like, well, according to the president, Saddam was supporting bin Laden. And I was like, but what about weapons of mass destruction? I was like, what does that have to do with anything? And everybody was just giving me a very nasty look. I'm from a hometown where George H.W. Bush has his library.

So the Bush family are like gods, or they were at that time, where I was. And yeah, it didn't take a genius to figure it out. You don't have to be as smart. You don't have to be smart to think, oh, this whole smoking gun is mushroom cloud based on yellow cake and fake intel around Al-Qaeda. Like, this doesn't add up. It seems fishy. And, you know, a lot of people had questions secretly at the time.

They just didn't voice them. There were also a lot of people who said, you know what, even if it's true. Yeah, even if it's true, not worth it. Not worth it. You know, I also think it's worth reflecting just for a minute on the decision was made after Bush is, you know, out of office and Democrats are in charge. And there was an opportunity of like, maybe we should investigate what happened here. Maybe there should be charges against the, you know, most preeminent war criminals who brought us to this catastrophe and Bush in particular. And the decision was made that for the good of the country and the healing and bringing together of the country, that there should be no elite accountability for those things. And it was the easier path at the time. It definitely,

you know, probably smoothed the transition into democratic power, et cetera. But I think it left a real lasting damage on the body politic because it just showed that even the most brazen of lies and criminality, if you had the right amount of power and you had the right friends or enough powerful people were sort of complicit with you, which was the real problem for them, you're going to get away with it. And so even as we, you know, look at like the Trump indictments now and the charges that he's facing for actual real criminality that I think he more than deserves, we may have been in a better position to convince more than half the country that holding elites accountable for their crimes is the thing to do

if we had gone after the Bush-era people, gone after other American presidents who arguably committed worse crimes, certainly, than holding onto classified documents. Yeah, I think that's very well said, Crystal. Fox & Friends is reacting to some of what continues to come out, including that tape CNN got of Donald Trump and the classified documents he was allegedly waving around that factors into some of the prosecution on those charges, the special counsel prosecution on those charges. Let's actually, Crystal, I can't even describe it.

You can never capture these things with words. Let's just play the clip. You know, regarding the leaking of this particular tape, when you look at what Jillian just said, where she said Trump posted on True Social, the deranged special prosecutor Jack Smith, working in conjunction with the DOJ and FBI, illegally leaked and spun a tape and transcript of me, which is actually an exoneration. So you know what? If Trump thinks it's an exoneration of him, perhaps somebody on his side actually did the leaking to CNN and Maggie Haberman. That's amazing, Co. This is actually, it's an exoneration. So actually, it was probably good for Trump. They probably leaked it.

The Meadows part of that is actually quite interesting, though, where he's saying, this is Steve Doocy is saying, he's admitting he's got classified documents and quote, clearly Mark Meadows has, oh, this is from Brian Kilmeade. He says, clearly Mark Meadows has flipped. He has disappeared as chief of staff. He knows everything. And he seems to be in control of these tapes, you would think, or his biographer does, in a book that nobody read, Kilmeade adds. And that's what's interesting to me from their theory is that Mark Meadows' biographer is allegedly the person who is, you know, we've heard from the indictment that the other person on the tape is a writer. And nobody's really been able to figure out who that writer is.

You know, is it a journalist? I heard someone throwing around, like, different names. I won't even name them because it's not substantiated, but journalists. And in fact, it actually could just be that this was a Meadows ghostwriter. And that's actually been reported out, that this was apparently somebody who was helping a Mark Meadows memoir. So then it raises this question of, has Mark Meadows flipped

in all of this? Because apparently Trump is also being investigated for, well, we know that he is, for January 6th stuff. But the special counsel is apparently looking into January 6th stuff too. Mark Meadows is obviously a huge part of all of that as chief of staff at the time. We've seen some of the text messages. And so for this to then make it not just to CNN, but into the special counsel, into their indictment, that's kind of interesting. Yeah.

I mean, if I was Meadows, I'd flip, right? I mean, for real, he's, I'm sure, in legal jeopardy, you know? And no guarantees that Trump would win and be in a position to pardon him. No guarantees that he would pardon him if he did get, you know, back into the White House. So, you know, if he was offered a deal to cooperate, first of all, I mean, it is a big problem for Trump because we've been right understandably talking about the classified document stuff recently because that's what the latest charges came down. But they're moving forward with, you know, investigations into January 6th and fake electors and whatever. Mark Meadows was there for all of this stuff. So he no doubt knows the, you know, inner mindset and potentially has some, you know, other information that he could provide or other recordings or whatever.

So the theory is basically that it was Mark Meadows''s ghostwriter that was the other person in the room. That's the writer that's in the room. Because you hear a Trump aide who is embarrassingly sycophantic. You hear Trump being classic quintessential Trump talking about Anthony Weiner and asking for the Diet Cokes. Yeah, he's like,

can we get some Cokes in here? Which you've said before, I've heard it. Crystal will sometimes just be like, just demand it. We need some Cokes in here. When you said before, I've heard it. Crystal will sometimes just be like, just demand it. Like, we need some cokes in here. When you need a Diet Coke, you need a Diet Coke. There's a button under the desk. But yeah, that would be, if Meadows truly did flip, that I have to think is an issue for Trump. But he has struggled to explain away this tape. He's claiming Trump is claiming that the papers you hear rustling, like it was just bravado. He didn't really have these classified documents. Didn't he say they were like building plans or something like that?

That's what I was just going to pivot to. Here's Donald Trump himself. Speaking of copes, gives an interview on his plane to CIMA for an ABC News, I believe on, I believe this was on Tuesday night. He says, quote, I would say it was bravado. If you want to know the truth, it was bravado. I was just talking and just holding up papers and talking about them, but I had no documents. I didn't have any documents. He said, I just held up a whole pile of, my desk is loaded up with papers. I have papers from 25 different things. And yeah, this is, yeah. he says. Kind of like a locker room talk defense, right? Isn't it? A sophisticated locker room talk.

It's the same though. It's like, yeah, it was just, you know, it was just bullshit. Well, so he had told Fox on, this was also Tuesday, quote, that he had plans, building plans. And then he goes to CMA4 and ABC News and says, did I use the word plans?

What I'm referring to is magazines, newspapers, plans of buildings. I have plans of buildings, you know, building plans. And then he goes to Seema for an ABC News and says, did I use the word plans? What I'm referring to is magazines, newspapers, plans of buildings, plans of buildings, you know, building plans. I have plans of a golf course. So it's just a, I don't know what to make of it. Who knows at this point? Yeah, right. It's, I mean, if this was the only piece of evidence that they had against him in the classified documents thing, you might be like, maybe he can try to create some reasonable doubt. Maybe he's got a shot at it. But given that they appear to have a lot more than that, including, you know, surveillance tapes of him moving boxes around and getting his lawyers to lie and all this sort of stuff, or at least lying to his lawyers and then getting them to repeat the lie, you know, just wiggling out of this one. Potentially, I think it's not going to be enough.

But this one is also pretty damning. I mean, you got the papers rustling in the background. You have him actually saying, yeah, these I could have declassified these documents when I was president, but I didn't. And they are still secret and confidential because I did not declassify them. Like, right. That's devastating for the defense they were planning to mount. But at this point, I mean, I think all he really cares about is like the political defense, because in terms of a case, you never know. Maybe you get a juror who's just

like super pro Trump and they're not going to convict him no matter what. But if you take him out of it, the details of the case are pretty open and shut. Right. And I think that's why there's so much focus on this audio. Like, first of all, media is always going to gravitate towards something when there's audio of it actually happening. Like, that's fun. But secondly, it's because he says the thing about these documents not being declassified. I could have declassified them. And what people are trying to ascertain now is the severity, like, because there's such an over classification problem is what he's waving around with this writer about, I mean, about Iran and what he's talking about with Mark Milley. Is it about golf courses or is it what we've heard from

the special counsel was in those stacks of papers that were being shuffled around Mar-a-Lago and actually pertaining to our nuclear secrets? That's a pretty legitimate question because it gets to how Donald Trump was actually using the classified information he had at Mar-a-Lago, a den of spies. An obvious den of spy activity. Yes. So there's a pretty legitimate question. And people have floated these theories that he was using it to give to foreign leaders and he was selling it for Trump organization business ideas. Or is he just keeping it as trophies? Or is it a little bit of both? I don't know. Or is he just keeping it as trophies or is it a little bit of both?

I don't know. Or is he keeping it like the most legitimate defense he has is that he's keeping it for his own records because the intelligence community has tried to screw him over so many times. He wants to know what everything said, what was said, and what they may be using against him. Now, if I were Donald Trump, that is the most legitimate argument that I would have and I would focus on it. I don't think that's the case here. Well, here's the thing.

Remember early on when there was discussion about these classified documents, there was a theory that all the classified documents had to do with Russiagate. And so he was keeping them because of proof of whatever, deep state plot, et cetera, et cetera. But now that we know what was in the documents, I mean, the documents, some of them may have had to do with Russia game, but there were there was a lot else that was in there, including, you know, very highly sensitive information that isn't the type of stuff that's just like, oh, it's over classified. That if if anything should be a government secret, the stuff about our nuclear weapons program should probably be a government secret. Like, that's a pretty legit one that I think everyone would pretty much agree on. So I give less credence to that argument about Trump's mentality. There's no evidence that he was actively like selling this information. Not that I put it past him, but just, you know, you gotta like, there was nothing offered in this indictment that would lend credence to that view. But in some cases, the risk that you have all this so easily accessible in a wildly

insecure place where you have all these people, some of them already documented as being foreign spies coming and going, I mean, it could be just as damaging and ultimately to national security. So yeah, not a good set of facts. I was going to say, yeah, it's not good either way. There's no real cope here that's going to... It's not going to work out for you. Yeah, this particular case,

it's just too hard for him to wriggle out of on that point. The question of whether Meadows flipped is interesting, but we'll keep an eye on that for sure. Imagine a future where every transaction you make, is interesting, but we'll keep an eye on that for sure. with the introduction of FedNow, a new digital payment system that could give the federal government a direct line into your financial transactions, which could fundamentally impact all of our privacy and freedom. So what exactly is FedNow?

Well, launching July 1st, 2023, pretty much as we speak, FedNow is a new instant payment system run by the Federal Reserve. It's designed to enable banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions to deliver end-to-end payment services to their customers 24-7, 365 days a year. They say the service will roll out in stages. The initial launch will include core clearing and settlement functionality, requests for payment capability, and tools to support reconciliation. Basically, the processes that take place behind the scenes that you probably don't even think about at all with making sure that the money that is zipping around the country is being accounted for properly and no fraud is happening.

Future phases will introduce additional capabilities that are more consumer facing, such as instantaneous peer to peer account transfers and online bill pay. All good stuff, right? A much needed advancement in technology, some are saying. Today, when you, for instance, deposit a check, it takes three to 10 days for that check to clear the other bank. And that system is operating like the 1930s right now, and they're trying to move it into the digital world. In a digital world, that should take three to 10 seconds. Overall, this is good. Overall, this is good. So you might be thinking, instant payments, don't we already have something like that? The answer is yes, we do. Back in

November of 2017, the Clearinghouse introduced the first real-time payment service in the United States called the RTP network. And since its launch, the network has steadily grown. In Q3 of 2022, 45 million transactions for a total of close to $20 billion were processed through the RTP network. If you are a free market proponent, the introduction of FedNow to compete with RTP could be seen as a good thing, spurring innovation and price competition. That being said, while the Clearinghouse's RTP and FedNow

are very similar in its capabilities and fee structure, there is one major difference, governance. Clearinghouse's RTP is operated by a consortium of banks and FedNow is centrally controlled by one bank, the Federal Reserve Bank. This has raised some eyebrows among folks who are distrustful of centralized financial planning, one of them being Professor Richard Werner, an economist well-known for his research on monetary policy, banking systems, and economic development. You know, the central bankers want to compete against banks, so we can't really trust them anymore to really take the benevolent policies that are good for society and create stability. Maybe there's a different agenda.

Interesting. What agenda might that be? Because on one hand, real-time transactions can be a boon for fraud prevention, like I previously mentioned. If something suspicious does occur, it can be identified and dealt with immediately. But on the flip side, this real-time logging of transactions means that a detailed record of your financial activity is being created and stored. Every purchase, every bill paid, every penny sent to a friend for that pizza last night, it's all logged in real time by a government-backed entity. To reiterate, FedNow is run by the Federal Reserve Bank, which in theory operates independently from the federal government, but it does maintain a close relationship with them.

So it's not inconceivable that transaction data could be shared under certain circumstances. The question then becomes, under which circumstances might this data be shared? For criminal investigations? For tax purposes? Economic analysis? These are all questions that we don't yet have answers to. In the past few years, the Chinese government has trialed similar technologies in an attempt to expand its surveillance state.

Cosmetics, groceries, a new phone, a year's worth of laundry detergent. Citizens of the Chinese city of Suzhou entered an official lottery to win up to 200 yuan, or roughly $30, from the government in order to spend it in any way they liked. But the money that the people won was not physical cash. It was digital yuan. China's actually already pretty advanced in this regard in that many people hardly use cash at all in their daily lives. They mostly pay for things through Alipay, which is owned by Ant Group or under WeChat Pay, which is owned by Tencent. Our understanding is that what the People's Bank of China wants to do is quite similar, except that it wouldn't happen necessarily through Alipay or through WeChat Pay. It would happen through a separate app that the PBOC has created that would allow

people to pay that way. On a micro scale, and this is something that many in the West would probably not be comfortable with, and many in China, frankly, would not be comfortable with, is that it would allow authorities to be able to track precisely how you or my neighbor or the person down the street is spending the money. Are they spending their money on buying things they shouldn't be buying? Whatever, however you define that. Are they gambling with their money? Are they doing this or that with their money? Sound dystopian?

Well, this can become a reality with a centrally run system like FedNow. For the record, Fed officials and banking experts say the new FedNow service does not give the agency additional surveillance and enforcement authorities. Quote, while there are many sound concerns around FedNow being an unnecessary expansion of the Federal Reserve's footprint, I do not share that same concern that FedNow will expand surveillance. I don't know, would you expect them to say anything different? Let me know what you think. But a closer look at FedNow's published privacy policy reveals that the terms that have been laid out are very vague, perhaps by design.

Similar to private networks, FedNow is, quote, authorized to collect and use your personal information for a variety of purposes, one of them being to comply with legal requirements. But if the Fed is buddy-buddy with the folks who make the law, you could see why some people are getting concerned. So the central bank, which is the bank regulator, used to be an umpire, is suddenly stepping into the arena, into the into the game, is participating, is competing against the banks. That's an extraordinary development. You see, as with many cases relating to centralized expansion of power,

they claim to not have such an authority until all of a sudden they do. Another important point, typically when it comes to private digital payment systems, you have the power to choose which platform you want to use or not use any of them at all. But with FedNow, the choice isn't entirely in your hands. In the first phase, it's up to the banking institutions whether or not they decide to implement FedNow. If your bank decides to use FedNow, your transactions will be processed through this system, whether you're comfortable with it or not.

So yes, while the Fed continues to assure and reassure us that there is quote-unquote nothing nefarious about FedNow, it would also behoove us to pay attention to what else they've been cooking in the oven. Could FedNow be just a precursor to something even bigger? As presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. astutely observed, could FedNow be just a stepping stone, a first step towards the implementation of a U.S. currency what is a central bank digital currency and how would an introduction of such a digital currency impact our financial privacy and our ability to control our own money well you can find out in part two of this deep dive into Fed now hosted on my channel 51 49 with James Lee where we're

gonna tackle these questions head-on So join me by clicking on the link below. But before you do so, don't forget, like this video so more people see it and also subscribe to Breaking Points if you haven't done so yet. Thank you for your time today, and I hope to see you in the next video. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. But there were some dark truths behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. Enter Camp Shame, an eight-part series examining the rise and fall of Camp Shane and the culture that fueled its decades-long success. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame

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