Lockdown for you, liquidity for BlackRock – or how to sell monetary policy as a public health measure

Sometimes reality is so elegantly constructed that it almost inspires awe. Take the pandemic. Officially a medical emergency, coincidentally global, inconveniently timed, organizationally chaotic – and yet remarkably efficient. Unofficially, according to Catherine Austin Fitts, COVID was less a virus than a pretext. A kind of dramatic framework to implement something that had long been planned and ready to go in the financial sector: the "Going Direct Reset." Sounds like a yoga retreat, but it's monetary policy.

Fitts isn't some conspiracy theorist on Telegram. She was an Assistant Secretary in the US Department of Housing and Urban Development, an investment banker, and for years she's been writing reports that could politely be described as "uncomfortable." She doesn't claim the virus was invented. That would be too blunt. She says something far more subtle—and therefore more uncomfortable: the pandemic was the perfect excuse to implement a financial experiment that was already planned. Public health policy as the PR department of central banks. Who could possibly disagree?

The story begins like a good thriller: Summer 2019, Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Central bankers, smart shirts, serious expressions. There, according to Fitts, a plan was being discussed, prepared by the BlackRock Investment Institute and a group of retired central bankers. Title: "Going Direct Reset." Even the name sounds like a shortcut in a strategy game. Direct. No detours. No banks as bothersome intermediaries. Money creation via a direct route.

Normally, it works like this: central banks pump money into the reserve fund, banks distribute it further, and somewhere in between, the real economy supposedly happens. "Going Direct" says: let's skip the charade. We'll go straight in. We'll buy securities from non-banks and distribute money where it makes political and strategic sense. Efficient. Radical. And, of course, completely without alternative.

Then came the fall of 2019. The Fed's first interventions. Repo markets were volatile. And shortly thereafter, as if on cue, the pandemic hit. What followed was monetary heavy industry. Five, six trillion dollars. Directly into the system. In any other era, this would have been called inflation. But don't worry: Inflation is "priced in," said a former undersecretary of state. You just won't feel it immediately. Why? Because something brilliant was happening at the same time.

Main Street was shut down. Small shops, local businesses, family-run companies. Not essential, of course. At the same time, publicly traded corporations were allowed to remain open. Amazon was permitted to deliver, the bookstore wasn't. McDonald's was essential, the local pub a risk. The result wasn't an accident, but a mathematical necessity: deflation at the bottom, a flood of money at the top. Wall Street got money, Main Street got rules.

Those with money go shopping. Those that are closed get bought up. Surprise. According to estimates, around 35 percent of small businesses in the US closed, in some cities almost half. At the same time – what a miracle – hundreds of new billionaires were created. You could call it redistribution. Or market consolidation. Or simply: business as usual, just with a mask.

Fitts says that from a financial perspective, it all made remarkable sense. Too much sense, in fact. The pandemic acted like a gigantic buffer, cushioning the immediate inflationary effects of the flood of money. Lockdowns as a monetary policy dampening mechanism. Anyone who thinks that's a coincidence probably also believes that central banks are surprised by their own decisions.

And then there's the issue of Digital ID. According to Fitts, the real jackpot. Not a bonus feature, not a convenience upgrade, but the foundation of a new system. Identity, surveillance, and programmable money all in one package. Once installed, something like that can't be undone. Why would you want to? It works, after all.

Digital identity connects everything: who you are, what you're allowed to do, where you're allowed to go, and what you're allowed to pay for. Access is conditional, behavior is rewarded or penalized. Not by police, but by code. Elegant. Clean. Efficient. The system no longer needs to force you. It compels itself through your participation.

The danger lies not in the convenience, but in the finality. When digital identity becomes a prerequisite for everyday life, refusal is no longer protest, but self-isolation. You can't "opt out" when money, mobility, and communication are tied to the same infrastructure. This isn't a science fiction scenario. This is system architecture.

Of course, all of this is sold as protection. Safety. Health. Efficiency. Nobody says: control. Nobody says: conditionality. Nobody says: exclusion. But systems don't say what they do. They just do it. And only in retrospect is it then called "necessary".

Fitts' warning is therefore not fear-mongering, but a structural analysis. She doesn't say: This happened because everyone is evil. She says: This happened because it was prepared, because it was opportune, and because no one seriously applied the brakes. The reset didn't come with a bang, but with a press conference.

Whether one agrees with it or not is almost irrelevant. More interesting is the question of why such voices are reflexively dismissed as "conspiracy theories" instead of engaging with their arguments. Perhaps because they are not emotional, but technical. And technology is dangerous when it replaces moral considerations.

Ultimately, an uncomfortable truth remains: For many, the pandemic was a health crisis. For others, an economic catastrophe. For still others, a social rupture. And for some, apparently, the perfect opportunity to restructure a system they had long desired to restructure.

Not secretive. Not chaotic. But efficient. Going direct, that's what it is.

And what's truly disturbing about it is not the theory, but how well it fits reality…

Catherine Austin Fitts Statement: The Great Reset on Trial