August 31, 2026
On the heels of the Leah File's expose of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's major skill-set, this time targeting us, we find a new 25-year "US government agreement" to take ownership of 65% of Venezuelan oil reserves, wherefrom Washington sends back to the government of Venezuela $19 from each barrel produced and sold. We don't know if the $19 is a proportional share based on barrel pricing over time, or a flat fee. We do know, much as all mortgage holders realize, paying for a real asset over time with continually devalued dollars can be a smart use of paper.
Plunder, pillage and piracy are popular in Washington, as this latest Trump post illustrates. Donald Trump and Scott Bessent understand debt and currency destruction extremely well, even if they cannot define the word "gift."
Immediately upon the kidnapping of Mr. and Mrs. Maduro and the "new" US relationship with Delcy Rodriguez, Trump issued Executive Order 14373 " Safeguarding Venezuelan Oil Revenue For The Good Of The American And Venezuelan People." This order starts with the declaration of a "national emergency" to "threat of attachment or imposition of judicial process" on the Venezuelan funds held in the US Foreign Government Deposit Funds account to be "a threat to the United States."
This executive order is similar to the George W. Bush EO 13303 of May 22, 2003. That order also declares a national emergency, and establishes the Iraq Development Fund, directing all Iraqi oil revenues into a USA Federal Bank account in NYC. This order meshes nicely with the March 20, 2003 EO whereby the US outlines the policy of "Confiscating and Vesting Certain Iraqi Property."
I asked Grok to compare these two orders, one confiscating Iraq oil, the other setting the stage for the current "arrangement" regarding Venezuelan oil. Grok determined that they are close cousins, with the bottom line:
[both establish an] IEEPA emergency used to put oil revenue beyond the reach of judgment creditors so the executive branch can use that revenue for a foreign-policy project. The Iraq order is a wide asset shield around a reconstruction fund and Iraqi oil in U.S. reach, backed by UN authority and older wartime sanctions. The Venezuela order is a narrow account shield around money already in Treasury's hands, with extra findings about ownership, custody, non-commercial use, and non-waiver of immunity, plus State Department control over disbursement and an express override of prior Venezuela sanctions orders.
Trump is presenting this Venezuelan oil arrangement as US ownership of Venezuelan oil reserves, much as he does with the fundamental booty Trump still hopes to extract from Iran. Trump fantasizes about owning the Strait of Hormuz and extracting both Iranian oil as his property, and charging many times more fees and profits than the Persian Gulf Strait Authority could ever envision. He has cartoonishly claimed to own not only the Strait and Venezuela, but Canada and Greenland. Trump recently directed the "Department of Justice" to legalize physical confiscation of energy and other "US forbidden" shipments directly from ships on the high seas, requiring a novel interpretation of "Prize Law."
Americans of various political persuasions alternatively ridicule and praise Trump in his gleeful promotion of an America that most of us sense is in slow motion collapse. Beyond the entertainment factor, we all see an explosion in domestic unconstitutionality and a cold, clear agenda of direct theft via military-backed or "legalized" plunder, and the pursuit of dollar denomination everywhere.
The US unilaterally issues trade, travel or transport sanctions and prohibitions, direct and indirect, primary and secondary. Then, in the name of enforcing its own Washington, DC mandates, the US government via its military and policing forces, including the State Department. Treasury and the FBI, unilaterally takes what it wants. Many Americans have no problem with this utilization of "national power." But when other countries do the same, or more commonly, respond to these American presumptions, we whine, cry, scream and beat our chests in rage as if some major shared value system has been violated.
None of this should be surprising, because it is not new. The whole world is familiar with colonial practices, not just in the Western colonial era, but throughout history. This behavior from dominant or dominant-hopeful military powers is expected. Even Americans, many of whom have limited visibility into world history, US history, or how their government actually operates today, are beginning to notice.
The state insatiably takes what it can - overseas as well as domestically - using legal construct, lies, and force. Controlling productive assets, rather than creating value, defines our current national economic trend, a trend marked by drastically reduced purchasing power of the US dollar, and increasing reluctance of international and domestic to buy risky US debt. The Federal Reserve by design is a bottomless well of dinero from which the federal government network of politicians and cronies draw, for enormous short term benefits - and subsequent private asset accumulation using US paper.
Bottomless wells are imaginary, and those who believe in such things eventually hit a very disappointing wall.
Donald Trump and his supra-party elitist ilk have long embraced a world where imaginary bottomless wells will make you rich and powerful. Spending other people's money for sparkly casinos that rely on the patronage of the poor and working classes to survive, and overstating asset values in order to access credit is fine in commercial real estate. I'm not sure a nation can be managed like this for much longer. So long alienated from its original promise of liberty and limited government, what we call America is long past due for a reset.
The ruling class is planning, and some would say implementing, such a reset now. They intend to salvage and retain assets, get paid first, retain a super-centralized financial system using stablecoin and programmable money. More importantly, the ruling class has prepared and fueled a surveillance state designed to monitor the national temperature and predict trouble-spots - but not to anticipate growth or decline, health or safety, to satisfy emerging needs of Americans, or even to predict and prepare for the American future. The surveillance state is entirely, and always, focused on the survival of the state, amidst a diverse and growing set of enemies, foreign and domestic.
We already have a vivid ongoing example of what eternal subsidies to a ruling class, government rejection of natural rights and popular adoration of state-granted permissions posing as "the law," and no Constitution does to an imperial government - that of Israel. After three years of a largely one-sided war against Hamas, the conflict has evolved beyond a planned genocide for land and gas fields, into impoverishment and national Israeli panic. The top Israeli military commander just issued orders to kill Gazan children who dare to fly kites. The IDF will follow that order, much as the many militarized and policing departments of the federal government will do when similar orders are given here at home.
Many of us are just beginning to imagine the coming state of play in the US. The dollar desperados and thieves in and around Washington have been thinking about it for decades.