I'm Jonathan capehart and welcome to capehart. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has led to significant global sanctions against Russia, its leaders in oligarchs. Smack in the middle of the United States effort is treasury secretary Janet Yellen. We have isolated Russia, financially, the ruble has been in a freefall, the Russian stock market is closed, Russia has been effectively shut out of the international financial system in this conversation for us recorded on March 10th for Washington Post live, secretary Yellen talks more about how the sanctions work, we also discuss record high inflation and gas prices hitting American consumers and she tells me when we'll be able to pay for things with a Harriet Tubman $20 bill. Secretary Yellen, thank you for coming to Washington Post live. Thanks so much for inviting me, Jonathan. Nice to be with you. So let's start with some a little bit of breaking news a few hours ago. The British announced sanctions against Roman Abramovich, the Russian oligarch who also owns the Chelsea football team, which he was trying to sell, but can't now because of the sanctions. Will the United States follow suit? Well, we have a list of individuals, Russians, on whom we have imposed sanctions and a further group of individuals that we're considering. So the names continue to be added to the sanctioned list and I don't want to talk about any specific individual, but certainly this is one of the ways in which we're trying to punish Russia for what they've done and make it clear to the older guards who are have been supporting president Putin and providing support for him to conduct this war that this is something that is in the atrocity and that we with our allies will take actions to raise the cost to them and hopefully they will express their views to president Putin as a consequence. Madam secretary, when your deputy, deputy secretary, Wally adeyemo is here last week, another round of sanctions were announced while we were discussed while we were talking against Russian officials, oligarchs, family members and associates, would you like to announce any more right now or at least you just mentioned that there are a list of people and organizations are considering might we see a new announcement today or this week? Well, we continue to work very closely with our allies to consider sanctions, certainly at this point we're not seeing Russia back off the horrific war that they've started in unprovoked invasion of Ukrainian homeland and in fact the atrocities that they're committing against civilians seem to be intensifying. So it's certainly appropriate for us to be working with our allies to consider further sanctions. But it's important to understand that we have already had a very devastating impact on Russia. We have isolated Russia, financially, the ruble has been in a freefall the Russian stock market is closed Russia has been effectively shut out of the international financial system and the war chest that Russia amassed over 600 $1 billion in Central Bank reserves that I think it hoped to use to cushion any blow to the Russian economy, the actions that we have already taken against Russia's banks and particularly against the Central Bank of Russia with many of our allies participating in that has made those reserves all but unusable. So the Russian economy will be devastated as a consequence of what we've already done, but we do consider continue to consider further steps we can take. But madam secretary, given the litany of things you just mentioned about the Russian economy, is it safe to say that the Russian economy is in freefall? It's certainly experiencing a very severe contraction and I don't want to make the forecast for what will happen to the Russia Russian economy over the coming year, but it is certain to contract meaningfully. And over the medium and longer term, we have put in place export controls that will deprive Russia of the advanced technologies, the semiconductors, and other things that they need to continue to advance economically and to fortify their defenses and so our longer term impact will also be negative degrading Russia's ability to Project Power and continue to threaten its neighbors. Madam secretary, is there any concern that the severe contraction of the Russian economy that you're talking about will have an impact on our European allies or even on the United States itself, economically? There are certain to be an effect on the United States and also one Europe. But let me say we have worked very closely with our allies, first of all, to be aligned about the sanctions because that means that they have a much greater effect. And we have been united in what we've done. And we've designed the sanctions so that they will have the maximum negative effect on Russia while to the extent possible a shielding the United States and Europe from negative consequences, but will there be some negative consequences, of course. And I think that unavoidable. And look, you know, the worship economy is the 11th largest it worship is a major exporter of.