The invention of the bank note – or ‘paper money’ – can be accredited to the Chinese. The Chinese have now introduced their own digital Yuan, in what The Wall Street Journal describes as ‘a re-imagination of money that could shake a pillar of American power’. While Bitcoin and numerous other cryptocurrencies have previewed the future of digital currencies, China’s digital Yuan will be controlled by their central bank and be issued by them, too. A digital version of an established currency has benefits that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are lacking. ‘Cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin have foreshadowed a potential digital future for money, though they exist outside the traditional global financial system and aren’t legal tender like cash issued by governments’, writes James T. Areddy. However, unlike Bitcoin and its anonymity, the digital Yuan is expected to enable the Chinese government to further monitor people and the economy. – Jarryd Neves
I. A Growing Risk
The United States, along with the United Kingdom and European Union, has increasingly wielded economic sanctions against major commercial actors and financial transactions, sometimes roiling global markets in the process. It is now common for sanctions to target not only rogue regimes, terrorists, and drug traffickers, but also major corporations that are deeply integrated into international financial markets – including derivatives markets. For evidence of this trend, one need look no further than the November 12, 2020 Executive Order (“E.O.”) “on Addressing the Threat from Securities Investments that Finance Communist Chinese Military Companies.” The Order prohibits transactions by U.S. persons in the securities of identified Communist Chinese military companies (“CCMCs”), including “any securities that are derivative of, or are designed to provide investment exposure to such securities.”
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January 13, 2021
Washington – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) took action today against two organizations, along with their leaders and subsidiaries, controlled by the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order (EIKO), and Astan Quds Razavi (AQR). While purportedly charitable organizations (bonyads), EIKO and AQR control large swaths of the Iranian economy, including assets expropriated from political dissidents and religious minorities, to the benefit of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and senior Iranian government officials. Alongside the previously designated Bonyad Mostazafan, itself controlled by the Supreme Leader, and the IRGC-owned Khatam al-Anbiya, AQR and EIKO are said to control more than half of the Iranian economy.