congress has the power over the money in the us government.
congress has the power over the money in the us government.
who has the power over the money in the us government?
congress
regarding the first question, at issue was not the federal government’s right to coin or originate us money (because the us government had already done so in the past by issuing "greenbacks") and it is a sovereign power and responsibility of congress stated in the u.s. constitution (article 1, sec.8, clause 5 - which states that the congress has the power to "coin money" not to print it, and article one, section ten of the constitution states that "legal tender" in any state may only be gold or silver coin). rather, the constitutional issue was and still is that, through the federal reserve act, the federal government purported to delegate its power to create u.s. money to the private banks that comprise the federal reserve system. in delegating that power, congress (and, by the 1980s, the fed itself) lost control over the money supply, the quantity of which determines the value or purchasing power of any unit thereof. thus, the argument goes, congress is no longer able to fulfill its constitutional responsibility to the public to regulate the value of our money, the vast majority of which private banks (and, by the 2000s, shadow banks) create through private-interest-bearing debt.
federal reserve act
over a period of almost six years, china's zte corporation obtained us-origin items, including controlled dual-use goods, incorporated the items into zte equipment and shipped the equipment to customers in iran. zte engaged in this conduct knowing that such shipments to iran were illegal. zte further lied to federal investigators during the course of the investigation when it insisted, through outside and in-house counsel, that the company had stopped sending u.s.-origin items to iran. while the investigation was ongoing, zte resumed its business with iran and shipped millions of dollars’ worth of us items there.  zte also created an elaborate scheme to hide the data related to these transactions from a forensic accounting firm hired by defense counsel to conduct a review of zte's transactions with sanctioned countries. it did so knowing that the information provided to the forensic accounting firm would be reported to the us government by outside counsel. outside counsel was not aware of this scheme and indeed was wholly unaware that zte had resumed business with iran. after zte informed its counsel of the scheme, counsel reported – with permission from zte – the conduct to the us government. uncovered in the investigation were two zte corporate documents entitled “report regarding comprehensive reorganization and the standardization of the company export control related matters” and “proposal for import and export control risk avoidance.”  these documents outline a zte-developed scheme to violate u.s. export control laws by establishing, controlling, and using a series of “detached” (e.g., shell or front) companies to illicitly reexport controlled items to sanctioned countries without authorization. zte agreed to enter a guilty plea and to pay a $430,488,798 penalty to the u.s., and simultaneously reached settlement agreements with bis and the us department of the treasury's office of foreign assets control. in total zte agreed to pay the us government $892,360,064. bis originally suspended an additional $300,000,000, which would be reinstated if zte were to violate its settlement agreement. on april 15, 2018, bis activated the suspended denial order against zte in response to zte falsely informing the us government that it would or had disciplined numerous employees responsible for the violations, when in fact zte had rewarded that illegal activity with bonuses.  under this agreement, zte paid $1 billion and placed an additional $400 million in suspended penalty money in escrow before bis removed zte from the denied persons list. these penalties are in addition to the $892 million in penalties under the march 2017 settlement agreement.
office of export enforcement