US Sanctions One-Third of Countries, Fueling Global Resentment

The twentieth century in the United States began with a significant centralization of power, which replaced key elements of American liberty with a new interpretation of federal authority. The Federal Reserve Act, drafted by participants of the 1910 Jekyll Island Conference and enacted in 1913, established the Federal Reserve, the nation's central bank. The Fed was tasked with maintaining low inflation and high employment, primarily through controlling the money supply and the federal funds rate. However, the Fed's effectiveness was soon tested by the 1929 financial crisis, which escalated into the Great Depression. Despite the Fed's inability to prevent or mitigate these crises, many economists and political leaders concluded that the state needed greater control over the economy. This authoritarian shift mirrored trends in other countries, including asset confiscations by leaders like Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler.

During the World Wars, the US amassed the world’s largest gold stockpile as allied nations purchased American-made weapons with gold. Post-World War II, the Bretton Woods Conference established the US dollar as the global reserve currency, redeemable for gold, and founded the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. These institutions aimed to facilitate trade and promote development but often ensnared poor countries in debt. In the US, a postwar military-industrial complex emerged, ensuring a wartime posture in peacetime and enhancing GDP through arms dealing. This led to the Nixon administration suspending the redeemability of dollars for gold in 1971 and striking a secret agreement with Saudi Arabia to denominate oil purchases in dollars, recycling them back into the US economy. This petrodollar system is now unraveling as major oil producers price oil in other currencies, a response to US foreign policy since the Cold War, which has insisted on unipolar American dominance in international trade and military operations.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks became a pretext for the US to declare an open-ended war on terror, spending trillions on foreign wars and remilitarizing or fragmenting countries. This militarization of the homeland, anathema to the founders, involved eroding privacy rights in the name of counterterrorism through the AML/KYC of everything. The 1970s marked the full maturity of the Banker Revolution, with the Bank Secrecy Act requiring financial institutions to keep records of transactions and report large transfers. This act eroded Fourth Amendment protections against warrantless search and seizure, a ruling upheld by the Supreme Court in United States v. Miller (1976). The Right to Financial Privacy Act (1978) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) (1978) further weakened privacy protections, establishing a secret court for surveillance activities.

These legal maneuvers laid the groundwork for a full surveillance system, justifying the collection and sharing of financial and communication data via digital networks. Additional laws, including the Money Laundering Control Act (1986) and the USA PATRIOT Act (2001), broadened the scope of legal surveillance. Intelligence agencies like the Financial Action Task Force (1989), FinCEN (1990), and the US Treasury Office of Intelligence and Analysis (2004) were formed to collect and share financial data worldwide. The revolving door between Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and the Treasury accelerated collusion, ensuring that the machine built by the Banker Revolution and bolstered by the petrodollar system continued to run smoothly for elites.

The 1970s also saw the rise of rule by state of emergency, with the National Emergencies Act (NEA) formalizing the process for presidents to declare national emergencies. This led to frequent declarations, such as President Jimmy Carter's sanctions on Iran in 1979. The NEA and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) gave US presidents unilateral power to prohibit and punish economic activity globally. The US has used these laws to impose sanctions on numerous countries, often without legal due process. The ease of imposing sanctions and their popularity as a tool of punishment have contributed to their proliferation, with the US sanctioning approximately one-third of all countries. However, sanctions have had little political effect on targeted regimes and have often led to economic collapse and poverty in sanctioned countries, breeding resentment and enmity.

The consolidation of bank-state power since the 1970s has resulted in a political culture in deep crisis, with individual rights reconceptualized as privileges and the state seen as the holder of rights, money, and power. This perversity has led to a return to pre-American Revolution political assumptions, where the state is the primary political actor and individual rights are presumed guilty before the law. The Satoshi Papers, available in the Bitcoin Magazine Store, delve into these issues, offering reflections on political economy after Bitcoin.