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Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

A Brush of Oversight Coming to the Art World

| Oct. 29, 2020

As the United States continues to utilize tools of financial statecraft to limit the cash flow and economic freedoms of adversaries around the world, an age-old mechanism for concealing illicit transactions has recently received more attention: the art market

 

Stock prices are displayed at the New York Stock Exchange, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2019.

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

The Geoeconomic Superstorm Threatening the Globe’s Three Financial Hubs

| Sep. 30, 2019

While New York, London, and Hong Kong will continue to play outsized roles in international business, their current privileged status may be more precarious than it seems.

Dollar bills

AP Photo/Mark Lennihan

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

The Consequences of Weaponizing the U.S. Dollar

| July 22, 2019

Should INSTEX itself be sanctioned, it would be a powerful signal to the rest of the world. In this scenario, critical dollar-denominated trade not currently facing sanctions, but at potential risk of being sanctioned in the future, could migrate to third party currencies, transferred through sanctions-resistant entities to an INSTEX-like body.

The European Central Bank by the river Main in Frankfurt, Germany.

AP Photo/Michael Probst

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Too Big to Evade: The Costs of Europe Sticking with Iran

| Feb. 20, 2019

In spite of initial hopefulness, the Europeans will eventually face a reckoning with the facts: Washington’s financial leverage over Brussels has, arguably, never been greater since the establishment of the euro in 1999. The power of the U.S. Dollar and weaponization of the U.S. financial system cannot be challenged successfully by Europe at this moment.

 

Photo of people crossing bridge in Shanghai that shows stock prices.

(AP Photo/Paul Traynor)

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

From Silicon Valley to Shenzhen: Dollar Exposures in Chinese Fintech

| Dec. 17, 2018

In the post-9/11 era, Washington has waged innovative campaigns against terrorism finance, sanctions evasion, and money laundering. Leveraging America’s heavyweight status in the international financial system, the United States Treasury has isolated and bankrupted rogue regimes, global terrorists, and their enablers. As financial technology transforms global business, the traditional financial system faces new competition across a suite of offerings, ranging from brokerage services to peer to peer lending. In no area is this clearer than in mobile payments, where a global hegemon lies ready to exercise its weight, and it is not the United States.