“‘There is a very healthy pipeline of Treasury officials being snapped up by foreign banks and companies to go help them observe U.S. sanctions law.’ That’s Elizabeth Rosenberg, herself a former senior Treasury official, now at the Center for a New American Security. She says the U.S. is regarded as a stable, safe place for global entities to park their money, and the U.S. dollar is the most commonly used hard currency in the world.
“‘The thing about the dollar in the global financial system is that it is preeminent. The majority of transactions, global wires, are done in the dollar.’ Rosenberg says those transactions run through about a half a dozen major banks in New York City, often where sanctions violations are spotted.
“‘So you can imagine they’re just doing trillions of these transactions at an extremely rapid pace. And they all have software set up so that they ideally will be able to see whenever there’s someone on a sanctions list that is trying to do a payment.'”
Listen to the full interview here: