The legal base under which Europe froze the reserve currency issuer's assets.
Twenty-seven member states invoke Article 215 against the issuer of the reserve currency. Treasury holdings, Federal Reserve correspondent accounts, and dollar clearing inside EU jurisdiction are frozen. Tariffs average 45 percent by nightfall.
Ports, insurance, payments, designations. Hungary abstains and refuses to implement. Estonia records that the package "measures the rope while the arson is at the door."
Sixty-four pages designate forty-two logistics firms and pull the insurance out from under the Arctic sealift. Two chartered freighters bound for Nuuk lose their indemnity certificates at sea.
Six of my seniors came to me before practice asking about the recruiter. Six. Last year it was one, and he had already decided. I do not know what I am supposed to say to a seventeen year old this week. I said finish the season. It was the only true thing I ha…
Ireland is neutral. I have said that my whole life like it was a personality trait. This morning I found out it means "we have no idea what happens to us and no say in it either". Not a great feeling with a superpower going strange nine hundred miles away.
The European Council has adopted, unanimously, restrictive measures under Article 215 TFEU. All sovereign US Treasury holdings, Federal Reserve correspondent accounts and US government-controlled dollar clearing within EU jurisdiction are frozen with immediate…
Read that again slowly. The European Union has frozen the sovereign assets of the issuer of the world's reserve currency. I have taught this as a thought experiment for eleven years. I used it to illustrate why it would never happen.
Chancellor Merz: "The post-1945 security architecture has ceased to exist by American design. The euro cannot remain collateral for our own dismemberment."
Everyone is looking at Greenland. Greenland is an island with 56,000 people and no strategic product. What happened in Brussels this morning is the actual historical event. Article 215 TFEU, unanimously, against the issuer of the reserve cu…
They froze our money. Read that again. The European Union has frozen the assets of the United States of America. Over an island with 56,000 people that they were never going to defend anyway. We hold the reserve currency. We clear the world's trade. They have …
"Let's test it." Sir, with respect: the thing you are proposing to test is the belief that American assets are safe to hold. That belief is not a policy. It is the foundation the entire system stands on and it is the one thing in your possession that cannot be…
Two closings collapsed this morning. Both buyers pulled when their rate lock repriced overnight. I understand none of the geopolitics. I understand that a family of four is not moving into a house on Saturday because of something that happened in Brussels at l…
45% average tariffs. Critical minerals cut off. Emergency non-dollar clearing channels being stood up with the Bank of England and the SNB. The tariffs are the headline. The clearing channels are the actual event. Those do not get dismantled when this ends.
Nine person machine shop in Pennsylvania. I import a part from Stuttgart every six weeks. My bank returned the payment this afternoon. Not blocked, not sanctioned — a compliance officer somewhere decided not to risk it. That is forty percent of my order book s…
Diesel up 31 cents since Friday at the Flying J outside Cheyenne. I do not need an analyst. The whole thing reaches me through one number on a sign and that number has never once come back down after a week like this.
This is the mechanism, right here, in one shop. Sanctions almost never bite because of the rule. They bite because ten thousand compliance officers all decide independently not to risk it, and there is no appeal against a decision nobody formally made. I am so…
every generation gets a "where were you when" and mine is going to be "in the break room, on my phone, on a nine hour shift, watching the reserve currency get frozen by belgium"
Third year econ PhD. My entire dissertation is about dollar hegemony as a stable equilibrium. I have to email my advisor and I do not know how to start the sentence.
Let me get this straight. WE are the aggressor, but THEY froze the savings of a country of 340 million people over an island of 56,000? I have been talked down to about Europe my whole life. Explain to me how that is the proportionate one.
From Bengaluru, with no side in this whatsoever: Every finance ministry outside the west spent today in the same meeting. Not "will the dollar fall". Nobody thinks that. The question was "what fraction do we move, and how quietly". Five percent moved quietly i…
My husband's unit was told nothing today. The commissary card reader stopped working this afternoon. Somebody said it is the bank thing. I do not know what the bank thing is but I know my card did not work.
Deb — genuinely, not fighting — they did not freeze your savings. They froze government accounts. Your money is fine and nobody in Brussels wants it. And the "island of 56,000" is a country's territory. That is the whole point. Small is exactly why it mattered…
Alright. The savings thing I had wrong and I have checked and you are right. The rest of it I am keeping. But I looked up where Tartu is tonight, which I could not have done on Friday, so you got something out of me.
My parents came here in 1994 from a country where the government did whatever it wanted and everybody pretended that was normal. My mother called me tonight and asked, in Spanish, whether we should be worried. My mother. Asking me. About America. I said no. I …
Not political. I do not know what any of this means and I am getting nothing from the base. Card did not work at the commissary. Two aircraft that were supposed to take his section out on Monday are still sitting there. Somebody said it is …
Adopted. The European Union has imposed sanctions on the United States of America. Ports, insurance, payments, and a designation list on 2 February. Hungary abstained, which does not block, and has announced it will not implement. Four hours over the scheduled…
What was rejected matters as much. A general ban on US military aircraft and vessels using any EU infrastructure was dropped — Berlin and Paris said it would be "a blockade, drafted and signed." Naming US officials individually was set aside and "held in reser…
Estonia's minority statement, in full, because it is the best sentence anyone has produced this month: "The package as adopted measures the rope while the arson is at the door."
Genuine question for anyone who knows: what happens to ordinary things? I have a US pension from eight years in Boston. My sister banks with an American bank here. Is any of that in this, or is it only governments? Nobody in the coverage says and everyone I as…
Those weapons are American property, in American vaults, with American locks. Nobody needs a letter from me to understand who they belong to.
The port ban is retrospective and follows the vessel, not the voyage. Any hull that has called at US-controlled Greenland since 19 Jan is barred from every EU port, permanently. Charter desks were declining US government business within ninety minutes. Not bec…
Only governments and only named companies. Personal pensions, personal accounts, ordinary retail banking: not in it, not intended to be in it, not going to be in it. What CAN reach you is banks being over-cautious and slow. Annoying, not dangerous. Keep record…
The international rule of law is indivisible. It does not become negotiable because the state breaking it is powerful, or because it was once our closest partner.
Watching European officials discover, live, that a sanctions regime is easy to write and impossible to steer. We have been on the receiving end of eleven of these. Every single one hit a hospital supply chain nobody intended to hit. Every single one had an off…
Every step on this ladder makes the climb down harder.
EU: we have sanctioned the united states of america hungary: we have not EU: you voted for it hungary: i abstained EU: that counts hungary: does it though this is the funniest and worst thing i have ever watched
"I've seen a lot of letters this week." He has seen one. It arrived last night, it is one page long, and it asks for consultation before the warheads move. Not custody. Consultation. There is no reply being drafted. I have now checked three times.
Annex I is out. 42 firms designated across Panama, the Marshalls, Singapore, Canada. Seven ice-class hulls named. Polar Starling and Nordic Trader are both mid-ocean, Halifax to Nuuk, and their Scandinavian underwriters have just pulled their P&I certificates.…
the thing nobody tells you about living through history is how much of it is just checking your phone at work and going "oh no" and then serving the next customer