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Paul Merrell

The Ukraine Crisis and Vladimir Putin: A New Financial System Free from Wall Street and... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5374785

war & peace banksters BRICS Russia new-world-order?

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • This is the big secret that now cannot be covered anymore. The governments of the US and the European countries are NOT independent entities, they are not sovereign. They do not have the will or even the ability to act on behalf of their people. They are controlled by powerful banking interests. They have been taken over by two financial centers that do not care for the real economy. They pursue only speculation and looting. In response on March 4th the economic adviser to Putin, Sergey Glazyev declared openly that if the financial vultures persisted, Russia would create on the spot an independent financial system which is separate from that of the US Dollar. Glazyev explained to the vampires: ‘We have wonderful economic and trade relations with our Southern and Eastern partners. We will find a way not just to eliminate our dependence on the US but also profit from these sanctions….If sanctions are applied against Russia’s state structures we will have to move into other currencies and create our own settlement system. We will be forced to recognize the impossibility of repayment of the loans that the US banks gave to Russian state structures. Indeed, sanctions are a double-edged weapon, and if the US chooses to freeze our assets, then our equities and liabilities in dollars will also be frozen…’
  • On March 18, the spokesperson for the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, stated that Russia would switch to new partners in case of economic sanctions being imposed by the European Union and the United States. He highlighted that the modern world isn’t unipolar and Russia has strong ties with other states as well, though Russia wants to remain in good relations with its Western partners, especially with the EU due to the volume of trade and joint projects. Those “new partners” are not really new since Russia has been closely interconnected with them for almost 13 years. This is all about the so-called BRICS organization, consisting of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. BRICS represents 42 percent of the world’s population and about a quarter of the world’s economy, which means that this bloc of states is an important global actor. The BRICS countries are like-minded in regard to supporting the principles of international law, the central role of the UN Security Council and the principles of the non-use of force in international relations; this is why they are so actively performing in the sphere of settling regional conflicts. However, the cooperation between Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa goes beyond political aspects and is also demonstrated by dynamic trade and multiple projects in different areas. Today, in total, there are more than 20 formats of cooperation within the BRICS which are being developing. For example, in February the member-states came to an agreement about 11 possible projects of scientific and technical cooperation, from aeronautics to bio- and nanotechnology.
  • This strategy is known as the Financial Nuclear Option. It could lead to the end of the predatory looting system of Wall Street. The ‘Southern and Eastern partners’ Glazyev is talking about are clearly the members of the BRICS, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, the sane part of the world economy, the future. And it is  exactly  what the official spokesman of the Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov indicated in an interview to the BBC: “Sanctions against Russia could be the final trigger that will force many countries to create a new independent financial system based on the real economy. The world is changing rapidly. How many civilizations grew and died in the course of history? Who will be able to resist the pressure of dying systems and indicate to the people the road toward the future?”  The possibility of a new financial system independent from the collapsing dollar empire, as consequence of anti Russia sanctions was also emphasized by an authoritative the Russian media including  RT. (See:http://rt.com/op-edge/russia-switches-to-brics-sanctions-357/) …Western sanctions might push Russia to deepen cooperation with BRICS states, in particular, to strengthen its ties with China, which will possibly turn out to be a big catastrophe for the US and the EU some time later.
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  • In order to modernize the global economic system, at the center of which stand the US and the EU, the leaders of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa have created the BRICS Stock Alliance and are creating their own development bank to finance large infrastructure projects. On the whole, despite fierce criticism of BRICS as an organization with no future, it is developing and increasing cooperation with its members and, in fact, BRICS is showing pretty good results. With the suspension of Russia’s participation in G8 and the strengthening of economic sanctions against Russia, specific industries may be targeted, including limits on imported commodities. While the West seeks to hit Russia hard, it is important to notice that Russia is ready to switch to other markets, including BRICS, with a view to expanding its trade.
Paul Merrell

Greece Invited to Join New BRICS Development Bank | News | teleSUR English - 0 views

www.telesurtv.net/...opment-Bank-20150512-0039.html

BRICS Greece Russia

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 May 15 - No Cached
  • Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras will reportedly participate in the World Economic Forum of St. Petersburg after being invited by Russia on Monday to become the sixth member of the BRICS Development Bank. The Greek prime minister was invited to join the BRICS after a phone call conversation with Russian Finance Vice-minister Serguéi Storchak, RT reported. Tsipras has shown interest in the proposal and will join the BRICS countries in June at the forum in St. Petersburg to discuss the possibility. If Greece agrees to join the new Development Bank, the country would become its sixth member alongside Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The BRICS Development Bank is a new initiative that will help BRICS member states lessen their dependence on the IMF. The bank will have a $100 billion foreign currency reserve for the BRICS, which would protect national currencies from the volatility of global markets.
  • "A large part of the fund [International Monetary Fund] goes toward saving the euro and the national currencies of developed countries. Given that governance of the IMF is in the hands of western powers, there is little hope for assistance from the IMF in case of an emergency. That is why the currency reserve pool would come in very handy," said Russian ambassador-at-large Vadim Lukov. The currency reserve pool would ensure that, in the event of a financial emergency - such as a crisis in the banking system - the BRICS countries would no longer have to depend on the IMF. The BRICS group of nations includes five of the world's largest developing economies: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 May 15
     
    But adding Greece will really trash the very nice BRICS acronym. Time to rename Greece. 
Paul Merrell

​BRICS countries near development bank deal to rival IMF, WB - RT Business - 0 views

rt.com/...171500-russia-2bn-brics-bank

BRICS development-bank

shared by Paul Merrell on 10 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, are a couple of days from agreeing the $10 billion BRICS development bank, as well as a $100 billion currency pool. It could challenge global lenders like the IMF and World Bank. The bank will be called the New Development Bank, and will provide finance for infrastructure projects. Its creation will meet the needs of emerging and poorer economies according to Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. In a speech Wednesday he confirmed the funding would be divided equally, Russia will contribute $2 billion in initial capital for the BRICS bank over seven years. The bank will start with $10 billion in cash and $40 billion in guarantees. The $50 billion will be eventually built up to $100 billion.
  • The bank will be able to start lending in 2016, the minister says. The final decisions concerning the creation of the bank are expected to be made by the BRICS leaders at a summit in Brazil on 15-16 July. Apart from the BRICS countries other UN members may also participate in the bank’s development, but their total share won’t exceed 45 percent. The location of the headquarters is still not decided, but Siluanov said the two favorite cities are Shanghai and New Delhi. BRICS leaders are also expected to sign an agreement to establish an additional $100 billion fund to steady the currency markets.
  • Currently BRICS countries make up over 40 percent of the world’s population and account for more than 25 percent of global GDP.
Paul Merrell

German Economy Hit by US, EU Sanctions on Russia - SPIEGEL ONLINE - 0 views

www.spiegel.de/...ctions-on-russia-a-982075.html

banksters Russia sanctions Germany

shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • The US, for its part, penalized a dozen leading Russian conglomerates, including oil giant Rosneft, natural gas producer Novatek, Gazprombank and the weapons manufacturer Kalashnikov. From now on, they are forbidden from borrowing money from American monetary institutions and from issuing medium- and long-term debt to investors with ties to the US.
  • Even prior to the sanctions, the Russian economy had been struggling. Now, though, the Ukraine crisis is beginning to make itself felt in Germany as well. German industry's Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations believes that the crisis could endanger up to 25,000 jobs in Germany. Were a broad recession to befall Russia, German growth could sink by 0.5 percent, according to a Deutsche Bank study.
  • The most recent US sanctions, warns Eckhard Cordes, head of the Committee on Eastern European Economic Relations, have placed an additional strain "on the general investment climate." Particularly, he adds, because European companies have to conform to the American penalties.
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  • Already, the uneasiness can be seen in the Ifo Business Climate Index. One in three of the companies surveyed at the end of June said it expected adverse effects. "Russian customers have begun looking for suppliers outside of Europe," says Ulrich Ackermann, a foreign trade expert with the German engineering association VDMA. "They are concerned that European companies, because of the threat of increased sanctions, won't be able to deliver."
  • Even prior to the latest sanctions, business has been slowing in almost all sectors. The Düsseldorf-based energy giant E.on, for example, recently built power stations in Russia worth €9 billion. Most of the generators are already online, but because the economy in Russia is suffering, the returns are much lower than forecast. Volkswagen is a further example. The carmaker's sales figures for 2014 are 10 percent lower than they were last year. Opel's figures dropped by 12 percent during the first five months of the year.
  • Paul Merrell on 24 Jul 14
     
    Germany, and other European nations whose economies are interdependent on Russia's, are beginning to feel the pain from U.S. efforts to blockade BRICS nations from doing business with Europe. That's what U.S. meddling in Ukraine is about, another of the key U.S. initiatives in the the new Iron Curtain being constructed between BRICS and the U.S.-led Bankster Empire. I suspect that the sanctions will prove to be a dumb move. The BRICS nations will develop new industry to replace the goods it had been buying from Europe, all paid for without U.S. dollars. A pinch in the beginning, but longer term economic growth because the BRICS nations will also sell their new products to developing nations eager to hop off the U.S. dollar. That's when the new BRICS development bank counterpart to the IMF comes to the fore. That's the handwriting on the wall that the U.S. is painting for Germany and the rest of the E.U. Will Germany take that kind of economic hit out of loyalty to the U.S. and love of the sinking value of the dollar? The only end in sight for the dollar's sinking value is the inevitable crash. Or does Germany part ways with the dollar and hitch its wagon to the rising star of the BRICS nations' economy? Because Germany is the island of prosperity in the Eurozone, as goes Germany, so goes the future of the E.U. and NATO. Meanwhile, the Fed manipulates the gold market to keep the price artificially low and thus prop up the dollar a bit longer. But that keeps the price of gold low for China too. The drama of gangster capitalism's demise. http://goo.gl/DGfEq6
Paul Merrell

​Ready, reset, go! ...to Cold War 2.0 - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

rt.com/...068-eurasia-new-great-game-war

U.S.-foreign-policy sanctions Russia EU Germany BRICS

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Enter a fragile Europe. Russia is the EU’s third-largest trading partner. Top economies such as Germany, France and Italy are vastly integrated with the Russian economy. A key plank of Washington’s strategy is to de-link Europe from Russia, part of a much larger agenda of preventing by all means Eurasia’s trade/commercial/economic development integration. It all hinges on Germany. That’s the key debate in Berlin nowadays. German business – and even conservative politicians – are reaching a stark conclusion; they do not want a heavily dysfunctional relationship with Russia. Public opinion, at 57 percent, wants a foreign policy more independent from the US. The US Orwellian/Panopticon complex intrusions in Germany have been instrumental as a game-changer.
  • The real, no-holds-barred reason for the Empire of Chaos’s obsessive economic war on Russia is that Moscow, as a BRICS member, alongside especially China and Brazil, is at the leading edge of emerging powers challenging the global financial/political (dis)order – wallowing in the mire of casino capitalism – dictated by the Empire of Chaos. And it gets ‘curiouser and curiouser’, because the effect of the sanctions hysteria has been to accumulate even more sympathy from the developing world towards Russia. The typical Washington rumbling about “the world” united to “isolate” Russia – in a replay of the Iran case – only applies to NATO. I have closely followed the latest chapters in Eurasia integration, from the Russia-China gas ‘deal of the century’ clinched in Shanghai to the St. Petersburg Economic Forum and then closer Eurasia-South America integration at the BRICS summit in Brazil, which created the New Development Bank and advanced the BRICS drive to develop their own parallel global institutions. President Putin even proposed a BRICS energy coalition, complete with nuclear power agreements and its own “fuel reserve bank and an energy policy institute.” Moscow – as well as Beijing - is actively strengthening energy deals across South America, as in Rosatom signing with both Argentina and Brazil to build nuclear power plants.
  • Eurasia integration, on the Asian front, proceeds unabated. Russia will sell more gas at lower prices not only to China, but also, in the near future, to Japan and South Korea as well. Beijing, meanwhile, is carefully moving its financial, economic and geopolitical pieces on the chessboard, and now on full red alert regarding the sanctions hysteria; the collective leadership very well knows that the target one day may be Russia because of Ukraine, but the next day may be China, because of the South China Sea or even a Hong Kong currently moving towards an impasse; should candidates for Hong Kong chief executive be chosen by direct democracy, or by committee, as Beijing prefers? The key point is, forget about a US-Russia reset. The Russia-China strategic partnership will strengthen. China is preparing itself for its turn in the sanction hysteria show. And for the foreseeable future, the new game in the chessboard is Cold War 2.0.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Aug 14
     
    The U.S. throws its weight around expecting Germany (and the EU) to commit economic suicide by honoring U.S. sanctions on Russia and sticking with the sinking dollar. The U.S. invests in guns and projection of military power while Russia and the other BRICS nations just offer to do business. Methinks the U.S. has the losing strategy. 
Paul Merrell

Washington Misses Bigger Picture of New Chinese Bank « LobeLog - 0 views

www.lobelog.com/er-picture-of-new-chinese-bank

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • Bibi Netanyahu’s election, persistent violence through much of the Middle East and North Africa, and intensified efforts to forge a nuclear deal between the P5+1 and Iran topped the news here in Washington this week. But a much bigger story in terms of the future order of global politics was taking place in Europe and Beijing. The story was simply this: virtually all of the closest European allies of the United States, beginning with Britain, defied pressure from Washington by deciding to apply for founding membership in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). This Chinese initiative could quickly rival the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank as a major source of funding for big development projects across Eurasia. The new bank, which offers a serious multilateral alternative to the Western-dominated international financial institutions (IFIs) established in the post-World War II order, is expected to attract about three dozen initial members, including all of China’s Asian neighbors (with the possible exception of Japan). Australia, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and other Gulf states are also likely to join by the March 31 deadline set by Beijing for prospective co-founders to apply. Its $50 billion in initial capital is expected to double with the addition of new members, and that amount could quickly grow given China’s $3 trillion in foreign-exchange reserves. More details about the bank can be found in a helpful Q&A here at the Council on Foreign Relations website.
  • Along with the so-called BRICS bank—whose membership so far is limited to Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—the AIIB poses a real “challenge to the existing global economic order,” which, of course, Western nations have dominated since the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank in the final days of World War II. As one unnamed European official told The New York Times, “We have moved from the world of 1945.” That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the AIIB over U.S. objections offers yet more evidence that the “unipolar moment” celebrated by neoconservatives and aggressive nationalists 25 years ago and then reaffirmed by the same forces after the 2003 Iraq invasion is well and truly. And yet, these same neoconservatives continue to insist that—but for Obama’s weakness and defeatism—the United States remains so powerful that it really doesn’t have to take account of anyone’s interests outside its borders except, maybe, Israel’s. (That Washington’s closest Western allies are now racing to join the new bank over U.S. objections could also presage a greater willingness to abandon the international sanctions regime against Iran if Washington is seen as responsible for the collapse of the P5+1 nuclear negotiations with Tehran. Granted, Iran’s economy—and its potential as a source of investment capital—is itsy-bitsy compared to China.)
  • Indeed, commentators are depicting US allies’ decision to join the AIIB (see here, here, and here as examples) as a debacle for U.S. diplomacy. The Wall Street Journal editorial board has predictably blamed Obama for defeat, calling it a “case study in declining American influence” (although it also defended Washington’s decision against joining and accused Britain of “appeasing China for commercial purposes.”) What the Journal predictably didn’t mention was a key reason why the administration did not seek membership in the new bank: there was virtually no chance that a Republican-dominated Congress would approve it. Indeed, one reason Beijing launched its initiative and so many of our allies in both Asia and Europe have decided to join is their frustration with Republicans in Congress who have refused to ratify a major reform package designed to give developing countries, including China, a little more voting power on the Western-dominated governing boards of the IMF and the World Bank. The Group of 20 (G20) biggest economic powers actually proposed this reform in 2010, and it doesn’t even reduce Washington’s voting power, which gives it an effective veto over major policy changes in both institutions. As a result of this intransigence, the United States is the only G-20 member that has failed to ratify the reforms, effectively blocking their implementation.
  • Paul Merrell on 22 Mar 15
     
    U.S. global hegemony is rapidly disintegrating as former puppet states in Europe jump from the dwindling dollar economy to the rising remnimbi/ruble BRICS economies. And many of the "stans" south of Russia threatened by U.S. mercenaries provided by the Gulf Coast States are jumping in that direction too, along with Turkey, a NATO member. The Stans involved are oil and natural gas rich; combined with Russian oil and gas, they have enough oil and gas reserves to rival the Gulf Coast States.  The most interesting part to me is the debate now under way in the EU over dropping out of NATO and creating a replacement European mutual defense force that excludes the U.S. I'm beginning to hit some chatter about inviting Russia into that hypoethesized treaty. That makes sense for the EU because it would give Europe the benefit of Russian nuclear deterrence, both in land and submarine-based ICBMs. I'm not convinced that Russia would sign on. Russia is already running joint military exercises with China, which is playing the role of Russia's economic savior at this point. So China might have the final say on that scenario. A pan-Eurasian mutual defense treaty? What would be left of the U.S. Empire without NATO, particularly given that the dollar would surely collapse before such a treaty were signed? The War Party in Congress has only one tool to work with, war, and when all you have is a hammer, all problems look like nails. Current U.S. military power is built around the capacity to wage two major wars concurrently, but is very heavily dependent on NATO to do so. I'm not sure at all that the War Party has what it takes to cope with a peaceful group boycott by other NATO members. 
Paul Merrell

​Russia ratifies $100bn BRICS New Development Bank - RT Business - 0 views

rt.com/...027-russia-ratifies-brics-bank

war & peace economic-warfare BRICS-Bank

shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • The Russian State Duma has ratified the $100 billion BRICS bank that’ll serve as a pool of money for infrastructure projects in Russia, Brazil, India, China and South Africa, and challenge the dominance of the Western-led World Bank and the IMF. The New Development Bank is expected to start fully functioning by the end of 2015, according to the Russian Finance Ministry.
  • The decision to establish the BRICS bank, along with a $100 billion reserve currency pool, was made in July 2014. Each of the five member countries is expected to allocate an equal share of the $50 billion startup capital that will be expanded to $100 billion. The bank will be headquartered in Shanghai, India will serve as the first five-year rotating president, and the first Chairman of the Board of Directors will come from Brazil.
Gary Edwards

The Daily Bell - Gerald Celente on Multinationalism, Breaking the Chains and Individual... - 0 views

www.thedailybell.com/...ins-and-Individual-Renaissance

gerald-celente Globalist-Elites

shared by Gary Edwards on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Gerald Celente: As I said, they're in a trap and it's a tapering trap, the quantitative easing trap. They can't keep printing more money because it's going to devalue the currency. And by the way, this is complicated, because it's not only the United States that's doing it; most of the central banks are doing it. China, the Europeans – they're all pumping money into their systems to keep them afloat. They're all in a trap. A time comes when you just can't keep doing it anymore. You can only take heroin so much before it kills you. This is monetary methadone and it's not going to cure the problem so they're going to have to stop. When it stops, that's when we go back into a recession and/or a depression.
  • Is it a depression? Is it a depression if you live in Greece or Spain or Portugal? Is it a depression if you're among the over 12% unemployed in Italy? When you look at John Williams's ShadowStats, in the US we're looking at about 22% unemployment. So yes, it's a depression for a lot of people. And then again, median household income in the US, accounting for inflation, is 10% below 1999 levels. That's a fact. So if you're earning 10 percent less for your family than you were in 1999 and the costs have skyrocketed since then, particularly in healthcare, food, rent, property, gas and other costs, do you think you're living in a depression? Daily Bell: Is central banking an art, a science or just a fraud?
  • Gerald Celente: Neither. It's a criminal operation. Throughout the 1800s, one of the major issues of every presidential election was whether or not to have a central bank. They fought it successfully not to have one until 1913. These are private banks that are running our country and many others. This goes back to the scriptures; it's Christ chasing the moneychangers out of the temple. The moneychangers have just got new names – Deutsche Bank, Societe Generale, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and, of course, JPMorgan Chase got that name because you're going to have to chase them to get your money because they just put a limit on how much you can withdraw or deposit each month in certain accounts, with a limit of $50,000.
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  • Daily Bell: It seems like people don't believe in central banking anymore so why does it continue? What holds it up in a so-called democracy where people have a vote? Gerald Celente: Most people don't even know what a central bank is and they still believe the lie that the Federal Reserve is a quasi-government institution when it's not. It's a totally private bank. Most people don't even know that. So most people are uninformed and like in all countries, they follow their leaders. Very few people rebel. There was an incident that happened in late October in the States. Hillary Clinton was speaking in Buffalo, delivering her model for what is required to solve complex problems. There was a heckler in the crowd who she admonished by saying, "... which doesn't include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking." What patronizing bullshit. You know what happened? The audience of 6,500 stood up and gave her a standing ovation that extended on and on. So it's the people. The people can blame the politicians all they want, but as I see it, it's the people's responsibility for the state of their nation.
  • Daily Bell: What's the employment picture like going forward in the US?
  • Gerald Celente: Lower paying jobs, less benefits, more temporary jobs and I think the question at the end is rather than going forward in the US it should be what's going forward in Slavelandia, because that's what it's become. You get out of college and you're an indentured servant. For the rest of your life you have to pay off your debt for your degree in worthlessness, for the most part. There are degrees that are worth something but not a lot of them. Where are you going to work? Name the company – Macy's? Starbucks? You can become a barista. Are they going to start teaching Shipping & Handling 101 in college? What are they going to do? Who are you going to work for? What are you going to do – stock shelves? This is better than slavery because when they had the plantation you had to take care of the slaves. Now you can just use them up and send them home. It's kind of like Bangladesh right here in the good 'ol USA.
  • Daily Bell: How about the rest of the world? Give us a global summary.
  • Gerald Celente: The global summary is this: Everybody can see what happened when the Federal Reserve talked about tapering several months ago. All of a sudden you saw the emerging markets start to crash; they dropped about 11% in a year before the Fed reversed its policy because all the hot, low-interest rate money that was leaving the US was flowing into the emerging markets, where you could borrow the money cheaply. So when they started to talk about tapering the hot money started flowing out of these countries, such as India, Brazil. They were really suffering from it and so were their stock markets. So without the cheap money flowing from the central banks, the entire global economy goes on stall and then it turns negative. You can see what's going on in China now; they're facing a banking crisis. Real estate prices in cities like Shanghai and Beijing have gone up over 20% in a year and no matter how the government tries to deflate it, the housing bubble keeps growing. The banks also have a lot of bad loans they're carrying. Now the Chinese government is trying to restrain that free-flow of cheap money, and what happens to their stock market when they do? It dives and the contagion spreads to other Asian equity markets. They all start dropping. It's all tied to cheap money and when the cheap money spigot begins to tighten up the global economy goes down. As I've made very clear, when the interest rates go up the economies go down – it's as simple as that. They've run out of this game. Compare this with the Great Depression, when it began essentially in 1930. This recession begin in 2008. It's now 2013 – we're only in 1935.
  • Daily Bell: China and the BRICS seem to be making noises about setting up their own monetary infrastructure without the dollar. Will that happen?
  • Gerald Celente: Yes, they are making noise, but reality is another issue, and the currency issue is complicated. The dollar goes down but where are you going to go, the euro? We were talking briefly about what's going on in Europe. There's financial market propaganda boasting that the worst of the eurozone crisis is over. They're bragging that The GDP of Spain was just reported to have gone up 0.1% and they made a big deal out of it. "The recession's over" is the B.S. message. No, the recession is not over! They're cooking the numbers to make a rotten situation look less rotten. In countries like Greece and Spain, youth unemployment is running above 50% and overall unemployment around 30%. The recession continues unabated, and there's absolutely no way out of this and they can't print their way out. Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain, Ireland are doing terrible – what would anyone substitute euros for dollars? And what other currency choices are there, the yuan? As I mentioned, China has plenty of its own problems. They've been dumping a lot of cash into that society to keep it going. You know what China's greatest fear is? It's not the Spratly Islands or the South and China Sea territorial problems that are going on between them, the Philippines, Vietnam or the Japanese. China's greatest fear is its people. They've got 1.2 billion of them and if they're hungry or not happy there's going to be a lot of problems.
  • Again, what do you substitute the dollar for, Brazil's real or the Indian rupee? Remember, we saw what happened when the hot money started leaving the emerging market countries. The South African rand is also under pressure. The BRIC nations can speak as much as they want and they may have the greatest intention to create another reserve currency, but the fact is their economies are not robust or independent enough to create one at this time. As I said, talk is one thing, facts are another and although the world is less dependent on the dollar it is still by far the major reserve currency of the world and I don't see that rapidly changing unless there's a catastrophe that would cause it to happen. However, over the years, I do expect a new reserve model to develop.
  • Daily Bell: Let's talk about military action, particularly in Syria where Al Qaeda types have been fighting on the side of the US and NATO. Why does the US want to destabilize Syria and what country will be next – Iran? Russia?
  • Gerald Celente: We wrote about this in the Trends Journal going back to 2011. After Libya fell, Syria was the only port that the Chinese and the Russians had in the Mediterranean – the Port of Tartus. And also, Syria's only real ally in that area is Iran and, of course, Hezbollah in Lebanon. So with Syria out of the way there's nothing in the Middle East other than Iran to stop the continued spread of US influence and control in that area. It's really more about that than anything we see – again, having more control over that area for the US to do as it wants, with Iran really being the main target.
  • When President Obama backed off his red line threat and didn't attack Syria that was a tipping point. And, as important, the vast majority of Americans opposed the attack plan. That was a significant statement. The country said it was tired of war – and so are a lot of other nations.
  • Gerald Celente: Again, talk about morality and the recent Amnesty International report that said the United States was breaking international law in its use of drones to kill people that were convicted of nothing in addition to innocent people. How much more immoral could you get?
  • I can tell you how much immoral. How about starting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq – in Iraq with the proof that a war was started that killed at least a half a million people that was started under fake reasons; lies that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaeda. An Afghan war that's the longest war in American history, the war in Libya that they called a time-limed, scope-limited kinetic action that's destroyed the entire nation. You want to talk about immorality? How about the "too big to fail"? The government mandated immoral act of stealing money from the American people to give it to the banks, financiers and favored corporations? They say the fish rots from the head down and that's it; the fish has rotted in America for a long time. It didn't start with Obama. It goes back to Bush, Clinton, and keeps going back. Society gets the message from the top and, as I see it, they're simply following their leaders. For example, if their leader can start wars, rob people, take their money, why shouldn't I? Why should I operate on a moral level when immorality is condoned at the top?
  • Most recently, the United States government, in virtually every fashion of behavior, has been fascist. I don't say that by throwing the word out loosely. It's called the merger of corporate state and powers. It goes back to "too big to fail." Under capitalism there's no such thing. You're not too big to fail; you fail. Big, small, medium, you fail – it's capitalism.
  • Not anymore. You have your money taken from you by government order and it's transferred to the people who are the most favored by those in power. That's the only reason why the stock market keeps going up and why the multinationals are doing so well. That's where the $85 billion a month that the Federal Reserve is using in their quantitative easing is going. Then when you look at the other levels of immorality, as I mentioned, why shouldn't people feel as though they can do anything the government is doing? That's why it just keeps getting worse and worse. It's reflected in the music, the politics, every element of culture – both pop culture and political culture.
  • Under the dictates of the eurozone and globalization, the love of one's culture and pride of nation is denounced as "populism."
  • Daily Bell: Let's talk hard money. Can you give us an update on the price action of gold and silver? How about equity? Where is the stock market headed? We think the big boys are trying to rev it up and go for one last killing. Your thoughts?
  • Gerald Celente: The stock market will continue to rise as long as interest rates stay low. That's the best estimate you could give. They keep all of this quantitative easing that, for example, benefits the big private equity firms. Look what's going on in the United States with Blackstone Group. They own 40,000 homes. Where are they getting the money? Deutsche Bank is loaning them tons of money because they're getting money with overnight rates near zero, and they in turn loan it to the "bigs" really cheaply so it is just another example of what's keeping the whole stock market scam going.
  • As long as the money stays cheap the stock market keeps going up. As the money stays cheap gold and silver go up, and you're seeing gold making a bit of a rebound lately because of, again going back to the employment numbers in the States – there is no recovery, the jobs stink, they're not creating enough jobs. The tapering keeps going on, which is a devaluation of the currency, and quantitative easing continues. As long as money stays cheap gold goes up. Now, gold may go down when quantitative easing and tapering slow down. However, that's only going to be temporary because when that happens the bond market's going to explode, when interest rates go up, there's going to be another financial crisis. My best analysis at this time is the second quarter of 2014. The 'experts' are saying the stock market is booming. It has gone from a 14,000 high in 2007 to mid-15,000 now. Accounting for inflation, the stock market has to be about 15,750 just to be back at the 2007 level.
  • Daily Bell: There are other trends, of course, ones you often mention. You spoke to us last time about the New Millennium Renaissance.
  • Gerald Celente: Back to the renaissance... To me, that's the only thing that's going to change the future. We need a cultural, artistic and moral redevelopment, a restoration. Every issue that we've been talking about so far is based on human behavior and the human spirit – morality or immorality. Until morality is restored and the human spirit rises, nothing's going to change. As I was mentioning before, the fish rots from the head down. If you see the people at the head acting immorally, and from the head all the way down, why shouldn't you or I act immorally? What license do they have to steal that we don't? What license do they have to kill that we shouldn't?
Paul Merrell

Russia Expects to Ratify BRICS Bank Deal by March | News | The Moscow Times - 0 views

www.themoscowtimes.com/...515675.html

economic-warfare BRICS-Bank Russia de-dollarization

shared by Paul Merrell on 13 Feb 15 - No Cached
  • Russia is set to ratify an agreement on the creation of a bank for the BRICS bloc of large emerging economies this month or in March, the country's finance minister said. The establishment of the development bank, aimed at providing funds for infrastructure projects, has been slow in coming with prolonged disagreement over funding and management of the institution. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Russia was running ahead of the other BRICS nations. "We are ahead of everyone. Our ratification is possible for the end of February or at the latest March," Siluanov told reporters on the sidelines of a meeting of G20 finance chiefs on Tuesday. Russia is expected to commit $2 billion to the fund. The group has struggled to take coordinated action after an exodus of capital from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa prompted by a scaling back of U.S. monetary stimulus.
Paul Merrell

Furious Russia, Downgraded To Just Above Junk By S&P, Proposes "Scorched Earth" Retalia... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...scorched-earth-retaliation-aga

war & peace sanctions Russia U.S.-foreign-policy monetary-policy BRICS

shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • a few hours ago that joke of a rating agency, Standard & Poor's, which also earlier announced it was "affirming" France at an AA rating making it very clear it will no longer accept being sued for telling the truth and downgrading sovereigns or otherwise have its offices abroad raided, not only upgraded Cyprus from B- to B (please deposits your funds in Cyprus banks now: they are safe, S&P promises), but - far more importantly - delivered a political message to the Kremlin, and downgraded Russia from BBB to BBB-, one short notch away from junk status. This was the first downgrade of Russia by S&P since December 2008.
  • Russia's response was prompt. First, in retaliation to the downgrade, Russian economy minister Alexei Ulyukaev said S&P’s downgrade of Russia’s rating was expected by investors, won’t significantly change their behavior, adding the obvious that the decision to cut Russia’s rating was partly political, partly based on economic situation. In other words, entirely symbolic - it is not as if Russia has access to bond markets anyway, plus as we wrote earlier this week in "Why Putin Is Smiling At The Bond Market's Blockade Of Russia", it is not as if it needs them. But far more importantly, and ahead of yet another round of western sanctions which appears imminent unless Obama is to look even more powerless than he currently is (granted, a difficult achievement), Russian presidential adviser Sergei Glazyev proposed plan of 15 measures to protect country’s economy if sanctions applied, Vedomosti newspaper reports, citing Glazyev’s letter to Finance Ministry. According to Vedomosti as Bloomberg reported, Glazyev proposed:
  • Russia should withdraw all assets, accounts in dollars, euros from NATO countries to neutral ones Russia should start selling NATO member sovereign bonds before Russia’s foreign-currency accounts are frozen Central bank should reduce dollar assets, sell sovereign bonds of countries that support sanctions Russia should limit commercial banks’ FX assets to prevent speculation on ruble, capital outflows Central bank should increase money supply so that state cos., banks may refinance foreign loans Russia should use national currencies in trade with customs Union members, other non-dollar, non-euro partners In other words, a full-blown scorched earth campaign by Russia.
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  • Granted, Russian holdings of US Treasurys are not that substantial (and could be monetized entirely in three months of POMO by the Fed), and western financial linkages to Russia, aside from trade routes, are not life-threatening, but if Russia were to take the baton, and other BRIC countries, already furious by the recent US decision to not boost their IMF status, follow suit, then Obama's life is about to become a living nightmare. Especially, if that most important BRIC member - China - does any of the many things it can do to indicate if, in this brand new Cold War, it is with or against the US... Finally, those curious what are the linkages between the west and Russia are, review our recent post on the matter: All You Need To Know About Russia, In Charts.
Paul Merrell

Brazil: The Provisional Banana Scoundrel Republic - 0 views

sputniknews.com/...zil-latam-banana-republic.html

Brazil corruption car-wash-investigation coup Rousseff-impeachment Temer

shared by Paul Merrell on 31 May 16 - No Cached
  • Every political junkie on the planet has to be glued to the ongoing Brazilian House of Cards, consistently offering an unparalleled feast of cheap thrills.The latest cliffhanger was the leak of a conversation between one of the key operators involved in the oil giant Petrobras corruption scandal and a senator and short-lived Minister of Planning in the usurper interim government currently replacing President Dilma Rousseff while she is undergoing an impeachment trial by the Senate.  Call the leak a short autopsy of what from the beginning should have been defined as golpeachment; a mix of coup (“golpe”, in Portuguese) and impeachment, which took place in a one/two sequential vote in the Brazilian Congress and Senate, as a notorious congregation of crooks investigated for myriad offenses and crimes seized power in Brasilia in a full-fledged Buffon’s Opera. I call their scam Provisional Banana Scoundrel Republic (PBSR).  
  • The leak/autopsy duly unveiled how the PBSR cancer progressed.  One of the key plotters outlines the coup; stresses how it should protect Brazilian plutocracy/kleptocracy from unintended consequences of the ongoing, two-year-old Car Wash corruption investigation; and how the Left – from President Rousseff to Lula and the Workers’ Party – should be criminalized for good. 
  • The rest would be history, including the demolition of recently acquired social and workers’ rights via the imposition of a neoliberal restoration; total reversion in foreign policy, with geopolitical and geoeconomic relations back to a colonized mindset; and the reestablishment of a conservative, neoliberal, rentier hegemonic class lording over a socially-oriented, democratic society. That fits in with the current Brazilian Congress and Senate dominated by “BBB” interests. “BBB” stands for Beef (the powerful agribusiness lobby); Bullet (the weapons and private security complex); and Bible (evangelical fanatics), all supported by corporate media. Many of these unsavory characters are connected and/or represent the toxic Brazilian rural aristocracy – which are in fact heirs to nobility titles handed over to slave owners. It was going all so swell after only a few days – even with the former head of the lower house, notorious crook Eduardo Cunha, temporarily sidelined; Cunha – the ringleader of a campaign financing scam inside Congress – de facto had become the Prime Minister of the puppet former Vice-President and current, interim President Michel Temer. 
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  • The key variable from now on is how the PBSR gang will maneuver – possibly illegally — to cling to power. The Public Ministry and the Federal police are totally politicized. Increasingly there are no mediation powers. The PBSR gang will take no prisoners. The Public Ministry will go after Lula while the attorney general will try to block any chance of Rousseff being reinstated. Meanwhile, the social democrats turned neoliberal enforcers – key associates of the PBSR — will keep advancing their own agenda; hardcore privatizations; handing over the exploration of the pre-salt oil deposits to US Big Oil; and dutifully prostrating as Washington vassals. One just needs to examine the extreme interest by the US Department of Justice on all things related to the Car Wash investigation to infer how Washington is deeply involved in smashing leading Brazilian corporations.   
  • Washington has not had the balls to do it directly – relying on minions such as the State Department spokesman and the interim ambassador to the OAS. But the message is unmistakable; golpeachment is legal, and Washington trusts Brazilian “democratic institutions”. Compare it to the Russian Foreign Ministry, which alerted to “foreign interference” in Brazilian affairs. The new Brazilian Foreign Minister – a sore loser (twice) in presidential elections won by the Workers’ Party – took no time to launch his glorious Vassal of Washington/US Big Capital policy. He already issued a veiled “threat” to Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador. Mercosur will be sidelined to the benefit of the Pacific Alliance – where Mexico, Peru and Colombia are under Washington’s wings. Unasur will be ditched.
  • And then there’s the stale ice cream in the scoundrel’s tart; the “B” in BRICS is now dormant. This means the role of Brazil in the BRICS bank will be seriously compromised. Granted, the BRICS were never a homogenous group and have been riddled with conflicting interests. For instance, India’s nuclear-sharing agreement with the US effectively ties it up with Washington. The next BRICS summit is in India, in October. Brazil risks the ignominy of being represented by the PBSR gang.  Meanwhile, make no mistake; as much as the Car Wash investigation was revealed to be a totally politicized drive – where fighting corruption was just a convenient cover – the PBSR gang and their allies will do everything to get rid of the 2018 direct presidential elections. So here’s the sorry Brazilian road map up to 2018; total political, economic, social and juridical chaos. 
  • Paul Merrell on 31 May 16
     
    Pepe Escobar, himself a Brazilian expatriate journailist, riffs on the Brazilian coup-gone-sour-by-discllosure-of-plans. If you have a browser extension to do translations, read the article linked from the "U.S. Department of Justice" text. It seems that the U.S. played a part in setting the coup in motion. Surprise, surprise. A very fun read. 
Paul Merrell

The EU Demands Argentina to Ban Food Exports to Russia: Arrogance and Stupidity | Globa... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5396335

reserve currencies BRICS Argentina EU

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Aug 14 - No Cached
  • Imagine – Argentina – and the rest of Latin America – being urged by the EU, ultimate puppet of the US not to supply Russia with food stuff – vegetables, fruit, meat – after Argentina was ‘punished’ by a corrupt court in New York to pay 1.5 billion dollars to the fraudulent NML Capital et al vulture funds – out of its current agreed upon debt of US$29 billion – equivalent to Argentina’s total reserves. And yes, the hedge funds have to be paid 100%, when the remaining 93% of creditors agreed on a 20% reimbursement rate. – And, yes, Mr. Griesa, the bought NY judge, has blocked all of Argentina’s payments to the other creditors, unless his vulture clients are paid in full. So, Argentina is in forced default – having to pay now much higher interest rates on international money markets, if she is indeed still eligible for international credits. Unimaginable but true.
  • Under these circumstances, the boundless arrogance of Brussels expects Argentina to ascend to the US / EU sanctions on Russia to which Russia responded by banning all imports from the EU? – And is now seeking trading with South America? Not that Russia really needs food from South America – there is an enormous and willing Asia market open to them. Russia’s gesture is a helping hand to Argentina and South America to free themselves from the economic and political pressures constantly exerted on them by Washington. Argentina will laugh at such a ridiculously stupid request from the EU. Good for Russia – and good for Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Peru et al – to finally escape the claws of the predator empire of Washington and go the way of independence, namely towards a new area of economic sovereignty and world monetary system. Good for the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), as they may finally come to a consensus among themselves and issue their own currency, backed by about one third of the world’s economic output and about half the world’s population.
  • If the BRICS are not yet ready with an alternative, dollar delinked currency to replace the western predatory money machine, Russia and China are. The two countries have forged a solid political and economic alliance during the past few years, have a combined GDP of US$ 21.1 trillion (China – US$ 19 trillion; Russia US$ 2.1 trillion – est. 2014), equal to about 27% of the world economic output – US$ 77.8 trillion (est. 2014). Russia has already announced that the ruble is backed 100% by gold – which is not a reference in itself, but enhances the solidity of their countries’ manufacturing and construction output. This compares with a US GDP of US$ 17 trillion, mostly based on the output of the war and security industrial complex, meaning a GDP of destruction – and on consumption, as well as hollow financial and legal services. While the BRICS are getting their act together, it is conceivable that Russia and China will issue shortly their own combined currency – the ‘Ruyuan’ or the ‘Yuanru’, delinked from the corrupt, predatory western monetary system; a new monetary alliance could also replace the dollar as reserve currency. Controlling more than a quarter of the world’s economic output and a majority chunk of the Asian market, a combined China-Russian currency would have an infinitely more solid backing than has the fiat dollar – as well as meanwhile also the fiat euro – to become a serious reserve currency. – It is only a question of time until much of the rest of the world will jump on the occasion and abandon the dollar.
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  • Peter Koenig is an economist and former World Bank staff.
Paul Merrell

Russia's SWIFT Response operational by May 2015 | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...sponse-operational-by-may-2015

war & peace banksters Russia U.S.-foreign-policy SWIFT

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 14 - No Cached
  • The Central Bank of Russia (CBR), on Friday, admitted domestic banks to the Russian alternative to the international SWIFT banking system. Domestic banks can access the system after signing agreements with the Central Bank. The Russian alternative to the SWIFT system is expected to be fully developed and operational by May 2015.
  • The Central Bank of Russia issued a statement saying that the new service would allow credit institutions to transmit SWIFT-format messages through the Bank of Russia in all regions within the Russian Federation without restrictions. The CBR added that the new service had been established to ensure continuous and secure transmissions of financial messages inside the country. The decision to create the domestic alternative to the SWIFT system was made against the backdrop of EU proposals in September, to disconnect Russia from the international SWIFT system as part of the sanctions against Russia over the situation in and about Ukraine. Several U.S. Senators lobbied in support of the measure. Moscow responded by drafting an alternative to the Brussels-based SWIFT system by creating a Russian alternative non-governmental inter-bank communication system.
  • The Russian Tass news agency reported that the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT) transmits 1.8 billion transactions per year, remitting payment orders worth $6 trillion a day. Disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system, as proposed by certain EU members in September, would not only harm the Russian economy. Disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT system before an alternative is operational would also create substantial problems for Russia’s main trading partners within the EU, which include Germany, Italy and France.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Dec 14
     
    The BRICS bloc gains its own interbank transactions alternative to the SWIFT system, courtesy of U.S. sanctions and threats thereof. Do the Russians ever tire of playing chess against idiots?
Paul Merrell

U.S. urges allies to think twice before joining China-led bank - Yahoo Finance - 0 views

finance.yahoo.com/...taly-join-china-002209014.html

economic-warfare dedollarization AIIB Germany France Italy Luxembourg EC

shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Mar 15 - No Cached
  • (Reuters) - The United States urged countries on Tuesday to think twice about signing up to a new China-led Asian development bank that Washington sees as a rival to the World Bank, after Germany, France and Italy followed Britain in saying they would join. The concerted move by U.S. allies to participate in Beijing's flagship economic outreach project is a diplomatic blow to the United States and its efforts to counter the fast-growing economic and diplomatic influence of China. Europe's participation reflects the eagerness to partner with China's economy, the world's second largest, and comes amid prickly trade negotiations between Brussels and Washington.
  • European Union and Asian governments are frustrated that the U.S. Congress has held up a reform of voting rights in the International Monetary Fund that would give China and other emerging powers more say in global economic governance.
  • Washington insists it has not actively discouraged countries from joining the new bank, but it has questioned whether the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will have sufficient standards of governance and environmental and social safeguards. "I hope before the final commitments are made anyone who lends their name to this organization will make sure that the governance is appropriate," Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told U.S. lawmakers. Lew warned the Republican-dominated Congress that China and other rising powers were challenging American leadership in global financial institutions, and he urged lawmakers to swiftly ratify stalled reform of the IMF.
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  • In a joint statement, the foreign and finance ministers of Germany, France and Italy said they would work to ensure the new institution "follows the best standards and practices in terms of governance, safeguards, debt and procurement policies." Luxembourg’s Finance Ministry confirmed the country, a big financial centre, has also applied to be a founding member of the $50 billion AIIB.
  • A spokeswoman for the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, endorsed member states' participation in the AIIB as a way of tackling global investment needs and as an opportunity for EU companies.
  • Lew told lawmakers that the U.S. delay in ratifying the agreement was undermining its credibility and influence as countries question the United States' commitment to international institutions. “It's not an accident that emerging economies are looking at other places because they are frustrated that, frankly, the United States has stalled a very mild and reasonable set of reforms in the IMF,” Lew said.
  • Some Republicans have complained the changes would cost too much at a time Washington is running big budget deficits. The reforms have also ran afoul of a growing isolationist trend among the party's influential Tea Party wing.
  • Washington says it sees a role for the IAAB given Asia's immense infrastructure needs and regards it as a potential partner for established institutions like the ADB. But its strategy of questioning the IAAB's standards has drawn criticism from some observers, who say the administration should have been more accepting of the new bank or offered alternatives within the existing institutions. "If you try to fight the rising power's peaceful ascent you sow big problems in the future," said Fred Bergsten, a former top international affairs official at the U.S. Treasury and currently a fellow at the Peterson Institute in Washington. Scott Morris, a former U.S. Treasury official who led U.S. engagement with the multilateral development banks during the first Obama administration, said Washington was paying the price for delay on IMF reform. "It's a clear sentiment among a pretty diverse group of countries: We would like to mobilize more capital for infrastructure through MDBs (multilateral development banks)," said Morris, now with the Washington-based Center for Global Development. "And the U.S. stands in the way of that and now finds itself increasingly isolated as a result.”
  • Japan, Australia and South Korea remain notable regional absentees from the AIIB. Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said at the weekend he would make a final decision on membership soon. South Korea has said it is still in discussions with China and other countries about possible participation. Japan is unlikely to join the AIIB, but ADB head Takehiko Nakao told the Nikkei Asian Review that the two institutions were in discussions and could work together.
  • Paul Merrell on 20 Mar 15
     
    Oh, man. Angela Merkel just hitched Germany's wagon to China's, which implictly means Russia's and the rest of BRICS too. Plus the European Commission, UK, France, Italy, and Luxembourg   Keep in mind that China will open its RMB trading centers in the major financial hubs in September and that the folks in Brussels are making noises about a European combined defense organization, independent of NATO anjd the U.S.   I want more information to be certain that there is more here than moves to create bargaining leverage with Washington, D.C.. but it might soon be time to buy a wheelbarrow to carry my walkabout spending money. Wow!
Paul Merrell

Russia's Petro-Ruble Challenges US Dollar Hegemony. China Seeks Development of Eurasian... - 0 views

www.globalresearch.ca/...5377086

war & peace Ukraine U.S.-foreign-policy sanctions banksters Russia China Germany New-Silk-Road

shared by Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 14 - No Cached
  •  Russia has just dropped another bombshell, announcing not only the de-coupling of its trade from the dollar, but also that its hydrocarbon trade will in the future be carried out in rubles and local currencies of its trading partners – no longer in dollars – see Voice of Russia Russia’s trade in hydrocarbons amounts to about a trillion dollars per year. Other countries, especially the BRICS and BRCIS-associates (BRICSA) may soon follow suit and join forces with Russia, abandoning the ‘petro-dollar’ as trading unit for oil and gas. This could amount to tens of trillions in loss for demand of petro-dollars per year (US GDP about 17 trillion dollars – December 2013) – leaving an important dent in the US economy would be an understatement. Added to this is the declaration today by Russia’s Press TV – China will re-open the old Silk Road as a new trading route linking Germany, Russia and China, allowing to connect and develop new markets along the road, especially in Central Asia, where this new project will bring economic and political stability, and in Western China provinces,where “New Areas” of development will be created. The first one will be the Lanzhou New Area in China’s Northwestern Gansu Province, one of China’s poorest regions.
  • Curiously, western media have so far been oblivious to both events. It seems like a desire to extending the falsehood of our western illusion and arrogance – as long as the silence will bear. Germany, the economic driver of Europe – the world’s fourth largest economy (US$ 3.6 trillion GDP) – on the western end of the new trading axis, will be like a giant magnet, attracting other European trading partners of Germany’s to the New Silk Road. What looks like a future gain for Russia and China, also bringing about security and stability, would be a lethal loss for Washington. In addition, the BRICS are preparing to launch a new currency – composed by a basket of their local currencies – to be used for international trading, as well as for a new reserve currency, replacing the rather worthless debt ridden dollar – a welcome feat for the world. Along with the new BRICS(A) currency will come a new international payment settlement system, replacing the SWIFT and IBAN exchanges, thereby breaking the hegemony of the infamous privately owned currency and gold manipulator, the Bank for International Settlement (BIS) in Basle, Switzerland – also called the central bank of all central banks.
  • Paul Merrell on 09 Apr 14
     
    Will Obama rethink his push for sanctions against and military encirclement of Russia? One would suspect that the banksters will soon be pushing him to do so.
Paul Merrell

The IMF forgives Ukraine's debt to Russia | The Vineyard of the Saker - 0 views

thesaker.is/rgives-ukraines-loan-to-russia

war & peace banksters IMF Ukraine dollar-denominated-debts

shared by Paul Merrell on 12 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • On December 8, the IMF’s Chief Spokesman Gerry Rice sent a note saying: “The IMF’s Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors. We will provide details on the scope and rationale for this policy change in the next day or so.” Since 1947 when it really started operations, the World Bank has acted as a branch of the U.S. Defense Department, from its first major chairman John J. McCloy through Robert McNamara to Robert Zoellick and neocon Paul Wolfowitz. From the outset, it has promoted U.S. exports – especially farm exports – by steering Third World countries to produce plantation crops rather than feeding their own populations. (They are to import U.S. grain.) But it has felt obliged to wrap its U.S. export promotion and support for the dollar area in an ostensibly internationalist rhetoric, as if what’s good for the United States is good for the world. The IMF has now been drawn into the U.S. Cold War orbit. On Tuesday it made a radical decision to dismantle the condition that had integrated the global financial system for the past half century. In the past, it has been able to take the lead in organizing bailout packages for governments by getting other creditor nations – headed by the United States, Germany and Japan – to participate. The creditor leverage that the IMF has used is that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments. This has been the system by which the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. The beneficiaries have been creditors in US dollars.
  • But on Tuesday, the IMF joined the New Cold War. It has been lending money to Ukraine despite the Fund’s rules blocking it from lending to countries with no visible chance of paying (the “No More Argentinas” rule from 2001). With IMF head Christine Lagarde made the last IMF loan to Ukraine in the spring, she expressed the hope that there would be peace. But President Porochenko immediately announced that he would use the proceeds to step up his nation’s civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the East – the Donbass. That is the region where most IMF exports have been made – mainly to Russia. This market is now lost for the foreseeable future. It may be a long break, because the country is run by the U.S.-backed junta put in place after the right-wing coup of winter 2014. Ukraine has refused to pay not only private-sector bondholders, but the Russian Government as well. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving further IMF aid. Refusal to pay for Ukrainian military belligerence in its New Cold War against Russia would have been a major step forcing peace, and also forcing a clean-up of the country’s endemic corruption. Instead, the IMF is backing Ukrainian policy, its kleptocracy and its Right Sector leading the attacks that recently cut off Crimea’s electricity. The only condition on which the IMF insists is continued austerity. Ukraine’s currency, the hryvnia, has fallen by a third this years, pensions have been slashed (largely as a result of being inflated away), while corruption continues unabated.
  • Despite this the IMF announced its intention to extend new loans to finance Ukraine’s dependency and payoffs to the oligarchs who are in control of its parliament and justice departments to block any real cleanup of corruption. For over half a year there was a semi-public discussion with U.S. Treasury advisors and Cold Warriors about how to stiff Russia on the $3 billion owed by Ukraine to Russia’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. There was some talk of declaring this an “odious debt,” but it was decided that this ploy might backfire against U.S. supported dictatorships. In the end, the IMF simply lent Ukraine the money. By doing so, it announced its new policy: “We only enforce debts owed in US dollars to US allies.” This means that what was simmering as a Cold War against Russia has now turned into a full-blown division of the world into the Dollar Bloc (with its satellite Euro and other pro-U.S. currencies) and the BRICS or other countries not in the U.S. financial and military orbit. What should Russia do? For that matter, what should China and other BRICS countries do? The IMF and U.S. neocons have sent the world a message: you don’t have to honor debts to countries outside of the dollar area and its satellites. Why then should these non-dollarized countries remain in the IMF – or the World Bank, for that matter. The IMF move effectively splits the global system in half,between the BRICS and the US-European neoliberalized financial system.
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  • Should Russia withdraw from the IMF? Should other countries? The mirror-image response would be for the new Asian Development Bank to announce that countries that joined the ruble-yuan area did not have to pay US dollar or euro-denominated debts. That is implicitly where the IMF’s break is leading.
Paul Merrell

TASS: Business & Economy - BRICS countries mulling formation of single gold trade system - 0 views

tass.com/977276

war & peace economic-warfare BRICS gold trade-system

shared by Paul Merrell on 28 Nov 17 - No Cached
  • RICS countries are discussing the possibility of establishing a single gold trade system, First Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Central Bank Sergey Shvetsov said Friday.
  • "The traditional (trade) system based in London and partially in Swiss cities is becoming less relevant as new trade hubs are emerging, first of all in India, China and South Africa. We are discussing the possibility to establish a single (system of) gold trade both within BRICS and at the level of bilateral contacts," he said, adding that this system may serve as a basis for further creation of new benchmarks. According to Shvetsov, the Bank of Russia has already signed a memorandum on development of bilateral gold trade with Chinese colleagues. The regulator plans to take first steps towards formation of a single trade system with the People’s Republic of China in 2018, he added. "We assume that trade and clearing links should be established. The point is that gold buyers should decide on the place of purchase," the official said, adding that trade links would enable market participants to make deals on international exchanges via the central counterparty.
Paul Merrell

The coming collapse of Iran sanctions - Opinion - Al Jazeera English - 0 views

www.aljazeera.com/...201322584515426148.html

iran sanctions european union China WTO foreign policy blunders

shared by Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Western policymakers and commentators wrongly assume that sanctions will force Iranian concessions in nuclear talks that resume this week in Kazakhstan - or perhaps even undermine the Islamic Republic's basic stability in advance of the next Iranian presidential election in June.  Besides exaggerating sanctions' impact on Iranian attitudes and decision-making, this argument ignores potentially fatal flaws in the US-led sanctions regime itself - flaws highlighted by ongoing developments in Europe and Asia, and that are likely to prompt the erosion, if not outright collapse of America's sanctions policy.       Virtually since the 1979 Iranian revolution, US administrations have imposed unilateral sanctions against the Islamic Republic. These measures, though, have not significantly damaged Iran's economy and have certainly not changed Iranian policies Washington doesn't like. 
  • Secondary sanctions are a legal and political house of cards. They almost certainly violate American commitments under the World Trade Organisation, which allows members to cut trade with states they deem national security threats but not to sanction other members over lawful business conducted in third countries. If challenged on the issue in the WTO's Dispute Resolution Mechanism, Washington would surely lose.  
  • Last year, the European Union - which for years had condemned America's prospective "extraterritorial" application of national trade law and warned it would go to the WTO's Dispute Resolution Mechanism if Washington ever sanctioned European firms over Iran-related business - finally subordinated its Iran policy to American preferences, banning Iranian oil and imposing close to a comprehensive economic embargo against the Islamic Republic.   In recent weeks, however, Europe's General Court overturned European sanctions against two of Iran's biggest banks, ruling that the EU never substantiated its claims that the banks provided "financial services for entities procuring on behalf of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programmes". 
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  • On the other side of the world, America is on a collision course with China over sanctions. In recent years, Beijing has tried to accommodate US concerns about Iran. It has not developed trade and investment positions there as rapidly as it might have, and has shifted some Iran-related transactional flows into renminbito to help the Obama administration avoid sanctioning Chinese banks (similarly, India now pays for some Iranian oil imports in rupees). Whether Beijing has really lowered its aggregate imports of Iranian oil is unclear - but it clearly reduces them when the administration is deciding about six-month sanctions waivers for countries buying Iranian crude.  
  • However, as Congress enacts additional layers of secondary sanctions, President Obama's room to manoeuver is being progressively reduced. Therein lies the looming policy train wreck.  
  • If, at congressional insistence, the administration later this year demands that China sharply cut Iranian oil imports and that Chinese banks stop virtually any Iran-related transactions, Beijing will say no. If Washington retreats, the deterrent effect of secondary sanctions will erode rapidly. Iran's oil exports are rising again, largely from Chinese demand.
  • Once it becomes evident Washington won't seriously impose secondary sanctions, growth in Iranian oil shipments to China and other non-Western economies (for example, India and South Korea) will accelerate. Likewise, non-Western powers are central to Iran's quest for alternatives to US-dominated mechanisms for conducting and settling international transactions - a project that will also gain momentum after Washington's bluff is called.   Conversely, if Washington sanctions major Chinese banks and energy companies, Beijing will respond - at least by taking America to the WTO's Dispute Resolution Mechanism (where China will win), perhaps by retaliating against US companies in China. 
  • Chinese policymakers are increasingly concerned Washington is reneging on its part of the core bargain that grounded Sino-American rapprochement in the 1970s - to accept China's relative economic and political rise and not try to secure a hegemonic position in Asia.   Beijing is already less willing to work in the Security Council on a new (even watered-down) sanctions resolution and more willing to resist US initiatives that, in its view, challenge Chinese interests (witness China's vetoes of three US-backed resolutions on Syria).  In this context, Chinese leaders will not accept American high-handedness on Iran sanctions. At this point, Beijing has more ways to impose costs on America for violations of international economic law that impinge on Chinese interests than Washington has levers to coerce China's compliance.   As America's sanctions policy unravels, President Obama will have to decide whether to stay on a path of open-ended hostility toward Iran that ultimately leads to another US-initiated war in the Middle East, or develop a very different vision for America's Middle East strategy - a vision emphasising genuine diplomacy with Tehran, rooted in American acceptance of the Islamic Republic as a legitimate political order representing legitimate national interests and aimed at fundamentally realigning US-Iranian relations.  
  • Paul Merrell on 27 Feb 13
     
    Keep in mind that Iran has the military power to close the Straits of Hormuz, thereby sending the West into an economic depression as the world's oil supply  suddenly contracts. 
Paul Merrell

Russia Holds "De-Dollarization Meeting": China, Iran Willing To Drop USD From Bilateral... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...lling-drop-usd-bilateral-trade

war & peace economic-warfare dollar Russia China Iran

shared by Paul Merrell on 14 May 14 - No Cached
  • That Russia has been pushing for trade arrangements that minimize the participation (and influence) of the US dollar ever since the onset of the Ukraine crisis (and before) is no secret: this has been covered extensively on these pages before (see Gazprom Prepares "Symbolic" Bond Issue In Chinese Yuan; Petrodollar Alert: Putin Prepares To Announce "Holy Grail" Gas Deal With China; Russia And China About To Sign "Holy Grail" Gas Deal; 40 Central Banks Are Betting This Will Be The Next Reserve Currency; From the Petrodollar to the Gas-o-yuan and so on). But until now much of this was in the realm of hearsay and general wishful thinking. After all, surely it is "ridiculous" that a country can seriously contemplate to exist outside the ideological and religious confines of the Petrodollar... because if one can do it, all can do it, and next thing you know the US has hyperinflation, social collapse, civil war and all those other features prominently featured in other socialist banana republics like Venezuela which alas do not have a global reserve currency to kick around. Or so the Keynesian economists, aka tenured priests of said Petrodollar religion, would demand that the world believe. However, as much as it may trouble the statists to read, Russia is actively pushing on with plans to put the US dollar in the rearview mirror and replace it with a dollar-free system. Or, as it is called in Russia, a "de-dollarized" world.
  • Voice of Russia reports citing Russian press sources that the country's Ministry of Finance is ready to greenlight a plan to radically increase the role of the Russian ruble in export operations while reducing the share of dollar-denominated transactions. Governmental sources believe that the Russian banking sector is "ready to handle the increased number of ruble-denominated transactions". According to the Prime news agency, on April 24th the government organized a special meeting dedicated to finding a solution for getting rid of the US dollar in Russian export operations. Top level experts from the energy sector, banks and governmental agencies were summoned and a number of measures were proposed as a response for American sanctions against Russia. Well, if the west wanted Russia's response to ever escalating sanctions against the country, it is about to get it. The "de-dollarization meeting” was chaired by First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Igor Shuvalov, proving that Moscow is very serious in its intention to stop using the dollar. A subsequent meeting was chaired by Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev who later told the Rossia 24 channel that "the amount of ruble-denominated contracts will be increased”, adding that none of the polled experts and bank representatives found any problems with the government's plan to increase the share of ruble payments.
  • Further, if you thought that only Obama can reign supreme by executive order alone, you were wrong - the Russians can do it just as effectively. Enter the "currency switch executive order": It is interesting that in his interview, Moiseev mentioned a legal mechanism that can be described as "currency switch executive order”, telling that the government has the legal power to force Russian companies to trade a percentage of certain goods in rubles. Referring to the case when this level may be set to 100%, the Russian official said that "it's an extreme option and it is hard for me to tell right now how the government will use these powers". Well, as long as the options exists. But more importantly, none of what Russia is contemplating would have any practical chance of implementation if it weren't for other nations who would engage in USD-free bilateral trade relations. Such countries, however, do exist and it should come as a surprise to nobody that the two which have already stepped up are none other than China and Iran.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Of course, the success of Moscow's campaign to switch its trading to rubles or other regional currencies will depend on the willingness of its trading partners to get rid of the dollar. Sources cited by Politonline.ru mentioned two countries who would be willing to support Russia: Iran and China. Given that Vladimir Putin will visit Beijing on May 20, it can be speculated that the gas and oil contracts that are going to be signed between Russia and China will be denominated in rubles and yuan, not dollars. In other words, in one week's time look for not only the announcement of the Russia-China "holy grail" gas agreement described previously here, but its financial terms, which now appears virtually certain will be settled exclusively in RUB and CNY. Not USD. And as we have explained repeatedly in the past, the further the west antagonizes Russia, and the more economic sanctions it lobs at it, the more Russia will be forced away from a USD-denominated trading system and into one which faces China and India. Which is why next week's announcement, as groundbreaking as it most certainly will be, is just the beginning.
  • Paul Merrell on 14 May 14
     
    Soon to be joined by the other two BRICS?
Paul Merrell

Division over bank as Australia caught between China and US | nsnbc international - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...bank-australia-caught-china-us

BRICS China Australia development-bank free-trade-agreements

shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Senior cabinet ministers are believed to be divided over whether Australia should sign up to an internationally funded infrastructure development bank that China is set to launch next month.
  • Australia has been under pressure from the United States not to participate in the new bank. The position of Prime Minister Tony Abbott is unclear on the issue, that could have ramifications for the final days of bedding down the Australia-China free trade agreement which the government wants concluded this year and preferably by the G20 leaders meeting in Brisbane next month. The Chinese plan is being viewed internationally in the wider geopolitical context of Chinese-US competition in the region. The Americans, who see the bank as potentially a way of China increasing its clout with countries in southeast Asia, have been strongly lobbying Australia to keep out of it. The issue is to come before cabinet imminently, as China plans to announce the bank at the APEC summit, which will be held in Beijing in November. Hockey will be in Beijing next week for the APEC finance ministers meeting, where the bank will be a topic of discussion.
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