Michael Greenwald (Tiedemann Advisors) on the Dollar as a Policy Tool (EP.196)

Michael Greenwald is a former U.S. Treasury official with expertise in sanctions programs and using USD infrastructure to promote policy objectives. In this episode: 

  • What the weaponization of the dollar really means
  • How sanctions mechanically work
  • How Treasury and the State Dept carry out sanctions
  • The risk of sanctions wearing blunt as a tool 
  • The growth of sanctions post 9/11
  • How sanctions against Russia represented a sea change in policy
  • How the US deputizes SWIFT for sanctions
  • How and why Europeans tried to route around US sanctions on Iran
  • Is the US led international order fraying?
  • China’s attempt to build a parallel financial infrastructure to challenge the dollar
  • The objectives of the Belt and Road Initiative
  • The purpose of the digital yuan
  • Can the yuan challenge the primacy of the dollar in the international system?
  • How China uses the belt and road initiative to advance the yuan
  • How the US should react to China’s aggressive move into closer economic relationships with the third world
  • What a digital US dollar or CBDC might look like
  • How the US can reassert dominance in the international sphere
  • Michael’s thoughts on stablecoins and Bitcoin

Read Michael’s paper, The Future of the US Dollar

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Check out this episode!