DeSantis vows to rein in Fed, ban central bank digital currency: ‘Cash is king’

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis laid out the broad strokes of his economic policy in an interview with Just the News, vowing to reinvigorate America’s manufacturing base, rein in the Federal Reserve and ban a central bank digital currency if elected president. 

"Cash is king,” he declared.

DeSantis harshly criticized President Joe Biden’s economic policies in the interview aired Thursday night on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show, saying they had injected a liberal orthodoxy into the marketplace that has harmed middle-class Americans by raising the cost of everything from food and gas to energy and transportation while suffocating people out of the job market. 

The Florida governor, tracking a distant second in the GOP presidential field behind front runner Donald Trump, said he would seek to tame inflation by working with Congress to immediately trim the federal budget back to 2019 pre-pandemic levels and pruning the regulatory powers that have been seized by federal agencies in recent years.

“At a minimum, they need to take back government to what it was pre-COVID 2019, that would save you probably over a 10-year period trillions of dollars,” DeSantis said.

“I think the biggest drag on the economy is the administrative state and the bureaucracy. And yes, I mean, I want lower taxes. I'll go as far as we can on that,” he also said. “But when I talk to small business people, I almost never hear about that. I hear about the growth of government and what government's doing to choke off their ability to just run their businesses the way they see fit.”

You can view the whole interview here.

Exploring the future battle with China for global economic superiority, DeSantis said he would focus on restoring U.S. manufacturing for critical supplies like health care, auto parts and defense products while building programs to entice workers back into the marketplace.

He emphasized there was enormous opportunity to encourage students to skip college in favor of trade skills that land them six-figure jobs as plumbers, electricians and masons. 

The Florida governor also addressed the growing push for cryptocurrency, saying he supported private crypto markets but would strongly oppose any effort to create a central bank digital currency. 

“What I would do as president is on Day One central bank digital currency dies in this country,” he said. “I think it's a huge threat to freedom. I think it's a huge threat to privacy, because ultimately, what they want to do is they want to get rid of cash. They want to get rid of cryptocurrency, and they want this Fed-monitored central bank digital currency to be what you have to use.”

He warned that a central bank currency would put America on a path to communist China’s social credit score system, allowing the government to track and ultimately limit purchases in line with the ruling party’s ideological wishes. 

“People at like the World Economic Forum, you know, they're like, ‘Oh, my God, I'm excited.' They're excited about it, and they said it publicly that it will allow them to block what they consider to be undesirable purchases, like too much fuel,” DeSantis said. “So if you have a Ford F-150, you may be using too much fuel, they just won't let the transaction go through. Maybe you're buying too much ammunition.

“What they want to do is like a social credit system. And they can impose that once they have control over the currency in that way. So cash is king. It gives you independence."

DeSantis also put the Fed on notice, saying he believes the central bank has far exceeded its authority over the economy. He specifically cited the Fed’s quantitative easing policy for creating economic inequality, saying it made the rich richer and slowed the middle class’s growth.

“The Fed should simply maintain price stability,” he said. ”They are not an economic central planner. They need to stop trying to micromanage the economy. If you go back – so you had the financial crisis. And then the Fed does this quantitative easing. And that was supposed to be kind of like an aberration, a crisis thing. Then that became the norm. 

“The problem with quantitative easing is the people that have assets, they inflates their assets. So they do very well, people at the top, But average people, they have had suboptimal economic results as a result of that. And so I think it's been a total disaster.”