Catherine Austin Fitts has spent her life following one question: How does money shape power, neighborhoods, and personal freedom?

 

Catherine Austin Fitts is a financial professional who moved from Wall Street to the corridors of federal finance and then into public advocacy. Her story traces a path from the row houses of Philadelphia to high finance and later to founding Solari, Inc. Her work centers on one persistent theme. How does money shape neighborhoods, institutions, and liberty? The answer she offers is equal parts technical, moral, and practical.

From stoops and neighborhood decline to an obsession with money

Growing up in a tight knit Philadelphia neighborhood left a lasting imprint. Empty, boarded houses sat catty corner to blocks where families struggled to share cramped apartments. The contrast puzzled a young mind. Why would homes stand vacant when families needed shelter? The usual answer from adults was tied to money. Those explanations sparked curiosity.

Rather than accept easy answers, Catherine focused on the mechanics. She approached money the same way she approached childhood entrepreneurship. Lemonade stands and simple trades taught an early lesson. To explain why a single neighborhood could deteriorate while resources existed elsewhere, a local perspective was not enough. She needed to learn how the global financial system moved capital, created incentives, and allocated resources.

Education, curiosity, and the path to finance

Curiosity drove the choices that followed. Early access to books and an encouragement to read broadly fueled a habit of lifelong learning. Sherlock Holmes became an early intellectual model. That character’s method taught the value of observation, disciplined reasoning, and the practical use of acquired skills. Those lessons applied as much to finance and policy as to detective work.

The educational path was not linear or preordained. Catherine did not begin as an exemplar student. She attended a local two year college, then broadened her horizons by studying Mandarin in Hong Kong at Yale in China. Cross country travel through Asia and Europe gave a comparative framework for thinking about culture, governance, and economic systems. Returning to Philadelphia to attend Penn and later Wharton, she combined global curiosity with formal business training. A summer internship recruiting process led to an offer from Goldman Sachs. An honest explanation of commitment and a practical definition of language skill turned an interview into an entry point to the training floor on Wall Street.

 

Wall Street lessons: relationships and integrity as currency

Investment banking taught two complementary truths. First, technical and analytical skills matter. Second, the intangible value of relationships and trust often decides whether a complex financial operation succeeds. Catherine recounts a period when high stakes deals were executed on verbal commitments and a shared professional ethic. Four hundred firms could coordinate in seconds to take on multi billion dollar exposures. People trusted one another and reputations carried enormous weight.

That trust based model had practical advantages. Speed, flexibility, and the ability to innovate came from a high integrity environment. Those features would later become reference points when she contrasted decentralized, community oriented solutions with centralized systems that concentrate decision making and fees

From Washington to Hamilton Securities: seeing the system from the inside

Service in the federal government clarified where power was really exercised. Monetary policy rested with the central bank while fiscal policy lived in elected chambers and the treasury. But working inside the system revealed a second layer. Federal programs and credit decisions often produced outcomes that were not optimized for local wealth creation. Instead, many decisions created predictable fee flows and benefited intermediaries.

At the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a striking example illustrated the problem. Large scale public housing projects were being funded at costs far higher than alternatives. In one comparison, a $250,000 per unit public housing approach contrasted sharply with a $50,000 option to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed properties from FHA inventory. Reallocating funds to support local acquisition and rehab could yield multiple homes for the price of one conventional approach. Yet the standard choice persisted because the system generated fees and structures aligned with centralized contractors and interests.

“But how would we generate fees for our friends?”

That reaction, offered by an aide when shown local mapping data, crystallized the underlying issue. Complex systems of public spending can be captured by actors who structure projects in ways that maximize their own returns rather than community outcomes. The result is both inefficiency and a centralization of wealth and influence.

Using technology to decentralize: Hamilton Securities and the Community Wizard

Hamilton Securities aimed to use new technologies to decentralize economic and political activity. Catherine and her team built tools that exposed federal spending by place using geographic information systems and relational databases. With that data, it became possible to produce a different kind of financial statement. Counties, congressional districts, and zip codes could be analyzed to show the true flows of appropriations and credit.

When the team simulated place based re engineering of federal investment, the projected gains were astonishing. An optimization model that treated appropriations and credit as design variables and allowed local decision makers more flexibility produced wealth increases so large they initially seemed impossible. Re running the analysis confirmed the result. The conclusion was blunt. Central control imposes massive hidden costs. Allowing local optimization frees enormous potential.

Conflict, litigation, and the turn to public education

Introducing transparency and challenging established patterns of fee generation created political pushback. Litigation followed. An extended legal battle with the Department of Justice lasted more than a decade. The legal struggle and an experience of corporate media indifference convinced Catherine that public education and direct engagement were necessary.

Out of that conviction came Solari, Inc. The organization began as a way to answer persistent questions about money, credit, and public policy. What began as individual exchanges evolved into regular briefings, a podcast, advisory services, and a public repository of analysis focused on the intersection of finance, governance, and liberty.

The central thesis: a financial coup and the risk of programmable money

Catherine frames current developments in stark terms. She describes a trend toward a “financial coup.” The phrase captures a shift in institutional control. Historically the Federal Reserve and the banking system have managed monetary policy while elected representatives designed fiscal policy. Digital technologies, however, create the potential for central bankers and financial intermediaries to manage both monetary and fiscal levers.

Two technologies are central to the risk. First, digital identification systems can create high quality, persistent identities that make every transaction traceable. Second, programmable money can embed rules into the unit of exchange. Combined, they convert money from a bearer instrument into an instrument of direct control. That control can be exercised by setting or enforcing rules at the level of individual accounts and transactions.

“He talks about how much he hates cash because he doesn’t know what you’re doing with your money. But if you do programmable money, then the central bankers have the technology now to make the rules and enforce the rules centrally.”

That quote captures the contrast. Cash is anonymous to a degree and portable across jurisdictions. Programmable money is transparent and enforceable at the protocol level. In one vision, programmable money is an efficiency improvement. In another, it is a mechanism for unprecedented coercive power.

What programmable money looks like in practice

Programmability means rules can be attached to money. Rules can limit where funds may be spent, when they may be spent, and who may receive them. Rules can be conditional on behavior. A central authority can deploy and update rules dynamically. This moves money from neutral medium to policy instrument in real time.

Consider this hypothetical scenario. A central authority decides a policy objective. Programmable money can then be used to incentivize or punish specific behavior. Access to certain goods could be conditioned on metadata, health records, or social behavior. Taxes could be levied, credits removed, or accounts frozen instantly. The systems make enforcement frictionless and immediate.

Stable coins, CBDCs, and private sector variants

Policy makers and technologists debate the architecture of digital money. Central bank digital currencies are one option. Stable coins on distributed ledgers are another. Both approaches can support programmable features. Private sector stable coins may replicate the control vectors of public CBDCs. The critical issue is not the ledger architecture. It is whether money remains user controlled or whether it becomes a programmable obligation whose rules are centrally enforced.

Arguments in favor of digital money emphasize efficiency, inclusion, and the ability to implement monetary policy more precisely. Those arguments often omit the countervailing risk that financial intermediaries and central authorities may be able to exert direct control over individual economic choices. That control works at scale when identity and money converge in a single digital profile.

Debanking and the economics of fees

Debanking is a related phenomenon. It occurs when financial intermediaries refuse to do business with certain customers or sectors. Examples include merchants denied access to payment networks for products or services that fall outside a provider’s policy. Debanking has a chilling effect beyond the immediate denial. It limits market access and channels capital into favored domains.

The pattern that Catherine noticed years earlier persists. Federal spending and credit decisions often generate fee streams for intermediaries. These fee streams can create incentives to centralize activity and protect incumbents. Debanking is one mechanism by which market access is restricted when private companies align policy choices with centralized preferences.

How states are responding and the constitutional argument

States have begun to push back. A number of state legislatures have enacted measures that explicitly ban central bank digital currencies or limit the ability of financial platforms to debank citizens. The constitutional basis for state action rests on two pillars. First, the Tenth Amendment reserves to states powers not delegated to the federal government. Second, state attorney generals have enforcement tools and standing to challenge federal overreach.

Practical state measures include:

• Bans on CBDCs that would prevent state institutions from adopting central bank digital currency architectures.
• No debanking protections that restrict financial intermediaries from cutting off lawful businesses.
• Regulatory sandboxes that permit experimentations with place based financial innovations while protecting local autonomy.

These actions reflect a broader strategy. Instead of waiting for federal clarity, states use their authority to preserve transactional freedom and maintain analog alternatives.

Model legislation to block programmable money

To provide practical tools, policy advocates have drafted model bills designed to protect consumers and state sovereignty. One such text is the Consumer Payment Protection and Transparency Act. The goal is to prevent programmable money systems that can restrict lawful purchases or discriminate based on content of transaction.

At the core of these proposals are three principles:

• Transaction neutrality so consumers can decide how to spend their money without hidden constraints encoded into the payment system.
• Transparency in how payment rules are applied and who sets them.
• Local control to ensure fiscal policy remains accountable to elected representatives.

Model legislation aims to block both public and private implementations that would strip citizens of meaningful transactional choice.

Place based optimization and the enormous cost of central control

Beyond immediate civil liberties concerns, centralization carries deep economic costs. The Community Wizard project made this starkly visible. By mapping federal spending and credit flows to local geographies and running optimization simulations the team found dramatic potential for wealth creation if funds were reallocated to maximize local outcomes.

Optimization models borrowed techniques used in telecommunications routing and airline scheduling. Those models quantify the cost of rules and constraints. When regulations or privileges constrain system flexibility, the model produces a price tag for that constraint. In one airline example referenced by Catherine, seniority privileges produced system wide inefficiencies that reduced the economic benefit to the pilots who held them. The insight generalizes. System wide constraints that benefit a narrow interest often produce net losses at the community level.

Policy tools that expand state and local options

To counter centralization and increase local optimization, a menu of policy tools is available to states and localities. These include:

• Regulatory sandboxes allowing experimentation with alternative payment systems or credit arrangements on a limited basis.
• Jumbo waiver programs that permit states to request broad waivers from federal program rules to redesign spending for place based goals.
• Procurement reforms to ensure that federal dollars spent locally produce the largest economic multiplier rather than feeding fee generating contractors.
• Local credit facilities that pair federal credit with local management to foster entrepreneurship, housing rehab, and workforce development suited to the community.

These interventions do not propose an absence of rules. Rather they propose smarter rules that enable local actors to design solutions with superior economic outcomes.

Practical steps for individuals and communities

Individuals and small organizations have levers as well. The strategy is both defensive and constructive. Defensive steps preserve transaction privacy and autonomy. Constructive steps strengthen local economies.

Recommended actions include:

• Use cash where feasible. Cash remains the simplest and most direct way to keep transactions private and outside programmable rails.
• Support local businesses and farms that accept non digital payments and prioritize community supply chains.
• Encourage local governments to accept cash and maintain analog processes, including checks and physical receipts.
• Engage with state legislators to pass laws that protect payment autonomy and block programmable money in all its forms.
• Participate in civic organizations such as chambers of commerce and Rotary clubs to promote cash friendly practices and local economic resilience.

“You want the right to have a non digital life if you want it. So let’s have a very strong commitment to using cash and keep analog transactions alive including checks.”

The political reality: federal dependence and the choice for states

One of the more difficult political problems is the dependency of states and counties on federal dollars. Many local budgets are underpinned by appropriations and credit that, in turn, create leverage for federal policy preferences. That dynamic complicates efforts to push back against centralization.

A lawmaker in Idaho summarized the tradeoff plainly. Every year the state sends dollars to Washington and receives more back. Local officials and constituents often prefer the immediate fiscal benefit over the more abstract long term benefit of preserving constitutional limits. Reducing dependency requires both a policy agenda and political will.

Two complementary approaches make sense. First, create alternative funding and credit channels that reduce the need to accept conditional federal dollars. Second, make the case publicly that short term gains often produce long term costs in autonomy and economic efficiency.

Why shifting civic energy to state level fights matters

Catherine argues that much of the productive civic energy that currently focuses on federal politics would deliver greater returns at the state level. State governments make many practical choices about education, payments, procurement, and regulatory design. When states act, they create precedents and policy laboratories that can protect freedoms and re engineer incentives.

History shows that when a minority mobilizes effectively at the right level of governance it can change outcomes. Catherine emphasizes that only five to ten percent of engaged citizens can change the political dynamic in a state. That is an argument for targeted, local activism rather than diffuse national anxiety.

Resources for legislators and policy makers

Practical policy change requires information. To that end a number of resources exist that translate technical and legal issues into legislatable proposals and briefs suitable for state officials. Among these are tools that map federal financial flows to local geographies, model bills to restrict programmable money, and briefings tailored to legislative agendas.

Legislators and staff can use these tools to draft laws, design regulatory sandboxes, and create contingency plans that reduce dependency on conditional funding. Monthly briefings and Q and A sessions help prioritize policy choices and adapt model language to jurisdiction specific needs.

How to prioritize action now

Three priorities emerge for citizens, community leaders, and state officials who want to protect transactional freedom and enable local economic optimization.

1. Protect analog transactional options by promoting the continued use of cash and checks and by urging merchants and local governments to accept them.
2. Stop programmable money at the state level through model legislation that addresses both public CBDCs and private stable coin implementations that embed control logic into money.
3. Build local capacity by creating regulatory sandboxes, local credit instruments, and procurement reforms that maximize community multipliers from every dollar spent.

These priorities combine cultural habits with legislative action and institutional design. They are complementary. A culture of cash usage increases the political latitude of legislators to enact protections. Legislative protections make it easier for businesses to operate outside programmable rails. Local capacity building reduces the temptation to accept conditional federal dollars for short term budget relief.

Closing perspective: agency, risk, and the next decade

The technological forces that enable programmable money are not inherently evil. They are tools. The policy choice society faces is how those tools get governed. Unchecked centralization risks converting money into a control grid. That outcome would alter the texture of civic life and reduce individual autonomy.

Catherine’s view is both cautionary and practical. She offers a strategy that preserves options and builds resilience. The first step is individual. Preserve a non digital life for those who want one. The next step is local and legislative. Work with state officials to assert constitutional limits on monetary control. The final step is institutional. Build local financial systems that optimize wealth creation by place and avoid fee extracting centralization.

“Get off the couch. When you support the right state representatives and state senators and local officials, you will see enormous progress in protecting freedom.”

Summary of actionable steps

The roadmap for preserving financial freedom and improving local economic outcomes is straightforward and achievable.

• Start using cash and encourage local suppliers to accept it.
• Support state legislation that bans CBDCs and private programmable money architectures that impair autonomy.
• Promote and participate in regulatory sandboxes that allow local innovation.
• Encourage local procurement reforms to ensure federal dollars produce actual local wealth.
• Engage with state legislators and provide constituency support for officials who defend transactional freedom.

Where to find more information

Several online resources consolidate research, model legislation, and policy briefings focused on financial transaction freedom and programmable money. These repositories include detailed analyses, model bills, monthly briefings tailored to legislative needs, and tools that map federal financial flows by geography.

Policy makers and community leaders can access these materials to draft laws, educate constituents, and design place based financial strategies. Regular briefings and recorded interviews provide continuing education on fast moving technological and institutional developments.

Final reflection

Money shapes more than markets. It shapes incentives, institutions, and ultimately the space for individual freedom. The challenge is not technological. It is governance. When citizens insist on transactional choice, support their local institutions, and demand public accountability, the next decade could be defined by renewed local prosperity rather than a digital consolidation of control.

Catherine Austin Fitts has spent her life following one question: How does money shape power, neighborhoods, and personal freedom? From the row houses of Philadelphia to the trading floors of Wall Street, from the corridors of HUD to founding Solari, Inc., her journey exposes the hidden architecture of modern finance — and the new risks emerging from programmable digital money. In this episode we explore:

• 🔹 Why neighborhoods crumble even when money is available
• 🔹 How Wall Street once ran on trust, reputation, and speed
• 🔹 What Catherine learned inside HUD — and why federal programs often enrich intermediaries, not communities
• 🔹 The massive wealth creation revealed by her “Community Wizard” optimization models
• 🔹 How litigation and political pushback shaped her turn toward public education
• 🔹 Why she believes a “financial coup” is underway
• 🔹 The real danger behind CBDCs, programmable money, and debanking
• 🔹 What states are doing to push back — and how citizens can defend financial autonomy
• 🔹 Practical steps to preserve cash, build local resilience, and reduce dependency on centralized systems This conversation is not about fear — it’s about agency. Catherine explains why the next decade will be shaped by the choices we make at the local and state level, and how a small, organized minority can restore economic freedom and rebuild local prosperity. If you care about liberty, money, or the future of governance, this is a must-watch. ⸻
• Chapters 00:00
• – Introduction 01:45
• – Philadelphia origins 05:10
• – From Wharton to Wall Street 12:50
• – What HUD revealed 25:00
• – Hamilton Securities & Community Wizard 37:20
• – A decade of litigation 48:45
• – The “financial coup” 1:02:00
• – CBDCs & programmable money explained 1:15:30
• – State-level protections 1:27:10
• – How citizens can act now 1:32:00
• – Closing reflections
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• Catherine Austin Fitts is an American investment banker and former public official who served as the Assistant Secretary of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner under President George H.W. Bush. She is a former managing director at Dillon, Read & Co. and is also known for her work with Solari, Inc. and her writings on finance and economics. #politicit #utahelections #utpol