Russia pushes back against U.S. sanctions, while they accumulate gold.
The U.S. is past master at the use of financial weapons and punitive sanctions. In World War I, the U.S. seized the Bayer Aspirin company from its German parent, Bayer AG. Months before Pearl Harbor, FDR froze Japanese funds in U.S. banks and put an embargo on oil shipments to Japan. In more recent times,