A "Financial H-Bomb" Has Exploded

Somebody exploded an H-bomb last week, and it wasn’t North Korea. It was the U.S.

This was not a kinetic H-bomb, the kind that leaves a mushroom cloud.

It was a financial H-bomb.

Financial warfare has its weapons, tactics and commanders, the same as kinetic warfare. In financial warfare, the leading commander is the secretary of the Treasury. The weapons include account freezes, sanctions and financial blacklisting of certain individuals and companies.

The financial warfare equivalent of an H-bomb is a complete ban from the U.S. dollar payments system. The U.S. dollar represents 60% of global reserves, 80% of global payments and almost 100% of global oil sales. Cutting off any party from U.S. dollars is like cutting off the oxygen from a patient in intensive care. They won’t last long.

That is exactly what U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin threatened to do to China on Sept. 12. He threatened to cut off China’s access to the U.S. dollar payments system if China does not rigorously enforce new U.N. sanctions on North Korea as a means to deter North Korea from pursuing its nuclear weapons and missile development.

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