“There is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar,” Treasury Secretary Janey Yellen told Fareed Zakaria in a CNN interview.
“Of course, it does create a desire on the part of China, of Russia, of Iran to find an alternative,” she said. “But the dollar is used as a global currency for reasons that are not easy for other countries to find an alternative with the same properties.”
But those reasons for the power of the dollar, including the supposed rule of law in the United States, are undercut by her discussion of “what might lie in the future” to get around “legal constraints on what we can do with frozen Russian assets.”
Stealing Russian assets would be one of the best ways to encourage nations to avoid the dollar!
