Russian oligarchs and US confiscation of their assets
Will the Biden administration come after our assets too?
The Wall Street Journal reported (“U.S. Prosecutors Target Russian Assets, but Legal Hurdles Remain”) that Federal prosecutors are on a mission to seize the assets of Russian oligarchs to provide funding for Ukraine's war effort and reconstruction. If this is not pure legal theft, I don’t know what is.
What is a justification for US authorities and our allies to track down and seize these assets? A task force has been created, REPO, which stands for Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs that allegedly "represent ill gotten gains that help prop up president Vladimir Putin's rule.”
The task force does not spell out what the so-called ill-gotten gains are. Moreover, where is the presumption of innocence and what are the specific laws that these oligarchs have violated in the US and in other countries?
If the oligarchs have violated Russian laws, why are US prosecutors and other countries pursuing this matter? Alleged crimes in Russia are none of the business of federal prosecutors.
In short, we are witnessing our government’s war on Russia, especially since Western governments have frozen approximately $300 billion of Russia's central bank assets that are held in foreign bank accounts.
Where are the so-called constitutional Republicans not pushing back against the Biden administration’s undeclared war on Russia? To ask the question is the answer it. Republicans, who claim to be for limited government, are AWOL on the confiscation of Russian oligarch’s assets.
What's next? It is obvious. The Biden administration undoubtedly has a list of “enemies of the state”—anyone who doubts the efficacy of Covid vaccines and boosters, anyone who questions the narrative about climate change, anyone who opposes the welfare state, anyone who opposes the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of interest rates, anyone who opposes the IRS and the income tax, anyone who supports the first and second amendments and all the other constitutional protections we are supposed to have against intrusive government, anyone who opposes public education and supports parental rights in public schools, anyone who opposes abortion, anyone who opposes military alliances around the world, and the list goes on and on.
The next step is the creation of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) to confiscate the assets of Americans who object to the welfare warfare state. Confiscation of American people’s assets occurred with FDR’s gold heist in 1933. In other words, a "national emergency" would set the stage after the creation of a central bank digital currency, to confiscate the money and assets of any American who is branded an enemy of the state.
The American people need a wake up call. Hopefully, the unfolding scenario will scare the hell out of them. If not, will widespread confiscation occur in the not too distant future? And will dissenters be shipped to an American gulag to be reeducated?
As Ludwig von Mises concluded in Human Action: A Treatise on Economics,
The body of economic knowledge is an essential element in the structure of human civilization; it is the foundation upon which modern industrialism and all the moral, intellectual, technological, and therapeutical achievements of the last centuries have been built. It rests with men whether they will make the proper use of the rich treasure with which this knowledge provides them or whether they will leave it unused. But if they fail to take the best advantage of it and disregard its teachings and warnings, they will not annul economics; they will stamp out society and the human race.
Sound economics, the rule of law and peaceful international relations are the necessary elements of sustainable property and social harmony. We are witnessing the Great Reset’s nefarious assault on human civilization. It is time to push back…and hard.