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Paul Merrell

"De-Dollarization" Continues - China Starts Direct Trade With UK | Zero Hedge - 0 views

  • Following the initial de-dollarization meeting, there has been a slew of anti-dollar moves around the world (including Gazprom's shift of 90% of its clients to non-dollar payments). However, on the heels of the "anti-dollar alliance" discussions yesterday, DW reports that China would start direct trade between the renminbi and the British pound on Thursday. China's Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) confirmed Sterling and yuan would be directly swapped without using the US dollar as an intermediary.   Via DW, China's Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) said Wednesday the Asian nation would start direct trade between the renminbi and the British pound on Thursday.   Sterling and yuan would be directly swapped without using the US dollar as an intermediary, the trade platform noted.   "The move will promote the bilateral trade and investment between China and the United Kingdom and facilitate the use of renminbi and pound in the cross-border trade settlement," CFETS commented.
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    "Following the initial de-dollarization meeting, there has been a slew of anti-dollar moves around the world (including Gazprom's shift of 90% of its clients to non-dollar payments). However, on the heels of the "anti-dollar alliance" discussions yesterday, DW reports that China would start direct trade between the renminbi and the British pound on Thursday. China's Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) confirmed Sterling and yuan would be directly swapped without using the US dollar as an intermediary.   Via DW, China's Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS) said Wednesday the Asian nation would start direct trade between the renminbi and the British pound on Thursday.   Sterling and yuan would be directly swapped without using the US dollar as an intermediary, the trade platform noted.   "The move will promote the bilateral trade and investment between China and the United Kingdom and facilitate the use of renminbi and pound in the cross-border trade settlement," CFETS commented.   China has long had direct currency trade with the US and has recently added Japan's yen, the Australian, New Zealand and Canadian dollars, Russia's ruble and the Malaysian ringgit to its options.   Wednesday's announcement came during a visit to the UK by China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang and after the signing of various bilateral business contracts.   Britain for its part has been looking to make London a European hub for overseas yuan trading in competition with Frankfurt and Paris. China's central bank announced Wednesday that a subsidiary of China Construction Bank had been chosen to undertake yuan clearing business in London. Still - there's always Iraq to trade USDs with..."
Paul Merrell

Russia and China: Watch Out Moody's, Here We Come! | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

  • In 1945 it was easy to get a defeated Europe to agree to Bretton Woods Gold Exchange Standard in which all currencies would be fixed to the US dollar and the dollar alone fixed to gold at $35 an ounce, where it remained until the system collapsed in August 1971 and Nixon abandoned gold-dollar convertibility. By then Europe was booming with modern reconstructed industry and the USA was becoming a rustbelt. France and Germany demanded US gold bullion instead of inflated dollars, and US gold reserves were vanishing. After 1971, the dollar flooded the world unfettered by gold reserve requirements and US military might during the Cold War forced Japan, Western Europe and others including OPEC to accept constantly inflating paper US dollars. From 1970 until about 2000 the volume of dollars in the world had risen some 2,900%. Because the dollar was the world “reserve currency” needed by all for trade in oil, goods, grains, the world was forced to swallow a de facto mammoth inflation after 1971.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/01/22/watch-out-moody-s-here-we-come/
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    The established New York credit agencies would play a strategic role in this post-1971 dollar system. During the 1970's the US Government's Securities & Exchange Commission, charged with oversight of bond and stock markets, issued a ruling giving the then-dominant New York credit rating agencies-Moody's and Standard & Poor's (and later Fitch Ratings)-a de facto guaranteed monopoly in an unregulated market, when they ruled that only "Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations" would be qualified to issue appropriate ratings, i.e. only Moody's and S&P. Corruption was made endemic to the US ratings game and Washington was party to the dirty deal. By the end of the 1970's, using the vast amount of OPEC "petro-dollars" from the two oil price shocks in 1973 and 1979, New York international banks, using London, began to loan to the rest of the world to finance imports of oil and other essentials. The New York credit rating agencies, previously primarily rating US corporate bonds, expanded into the new foreign debt markets as the largest and only established rating agencies in the new phase of dollarization and globalization of capital markets. They set up branches in Germany, France, Japan, Mexico, Argentina and other emerging markets much like the US Big Five accounting firms. During the 1980s the rating agencies played a key role in down-rating the debt of the Latin American debtor countries such as Mexico and Argentina. Their ratings determined if the debtor countries could borrow or not. Financial market insiders in London and New York openly spoke of the "political" rating agencies using their de facto monopoly to advance the agenda of Wall Street and the Dollar System behind it. Then in the 1990's, the New York rating agencies played a decisive role in spreading the "Asia Crisis" of 1997-98. With the precise timing of its downgrades they could worsen the panic because they had been suspiciously silent right up un
Gary Edwards

A New Reserve Currency to Challenge the Dollar | Veterans Today - 0 views

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    Author David Malone digs into world events, suggesting that all the saber rattling over Iran and nuclear weapons is really about GOLD!   He argues that the dollar is rapidly being replaced as the world's "settlement" currency.  As a function, "settlement" is different than "reserve", but since WWII and the Basel Conference, the USA Dollar has been both the currency of "reserve" and settlement".  That is now changing, and fast! David further suggests that the Iraqi wars with Saddam Hussein were also about his use of the Euro to "settle" oil purchases.  It could also be argued that Muamma Gaddafi in Lybia was removed because he was organizing all of Africa to "settle" oil and other commodity purchases in GOLD, and not the USA Dollar. Are the Islamic wars really about oil?  Or are they about how oil purchases are "settled"? David further argues that Russia, India, China and Japan are actively pursuing a GOLD based settlement currency agreement series where the Chinese Yuan plays a central role.  Interestingly, all of these countries have cut agreements with Iran.  Which seems to have triggered the December 2011 Obama response banning any banks, both private and government controlled, from dealings with Iran.   It's increasingly looking like it's not the Iranian nuclear weapons program that is upsetting to Obama and his Bankster buddies.  It's the rapid replacement of the worthless paper USA dollar as a settlement currency. One of the interesting points the venerable "Veterans Today" news sight is making is that our military is being used to forcefully prop up an inflationary Bankster Dollar, and force oil producing countries into accepting that inflated Bankster Dollar as payment.  The one thing the International Bankster Cartel doesn't want is for the trade of important commodities, especially energy, to be paid for in GOLD instead of the worthless paper they control. excerpt: I think the stand-off with Iran in the Straits of Hormuz over sanctions is a
Paul Merrell

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

  • 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.
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  • 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.
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    Soon to be joined by the other two BRICS?
Paul Merrell

US's Saudi Oil Deal from Win-Win to Mega-Loose | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • Who would’ve thought it would come to this? Certainly not the Obama Administration, and their brilliant geo-political think-tank neo-conservative strategists. John Kerry’s brilliant “win-win” proposal of last September during his September 11 Jeddah meeting with ailing Saudi King Abdullah was simple: Do a rerun of the highly successful State Department-Saudi deal in 1986 when Washington persuaded the Saudis to flood the world market at a time of over-supply in order to collapse oil prices worldwide, a kind of “oil shock in reverse.” In 1986 was successful in helping to break the back of a faltering Soviet Union highly dependent on dollar oil export revenues for maintaining its grip on power. So, though it was not made public, Kerry and Abdullah agreed on September 11, 2014 that the Saudis would use their oil muscle to bring Putin’s Russia to their knees today.
  • It seemed brilliant at the time no doubt. On the following day, 12 September 2014, the US Treasury’s aptly-named Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence, headed by Treasury Under-Secretary David S. Cohen, announced new sanctions against Russia’s energy giants Gazprom, Gazprom Neft, Lukoil, Surgutneftgas and Rosneft. It forbid US oil companies to participate with the Russian companies in joint ventures for oil or gas offshore or in the Arctic. Then, just as the ruble was rapidly falling and Russian major corporations were scrambling for dollars for their year-end settlements, a collapse of world oil prices would end Putin’s reign. That was clearly the thinking of the hollowed-out souls who pass for statesmen in Washington today. Victoria Nuland was jubilant, praising the precision new financial warfare weapon at David Cohen’s Treasury financial terrorism unit. In July, 2014 West Texas Intermediate, the benchmark price for US domestic oil pricing, traded at $101 a barrel. The shale oil bonanza was booming, making the US into a major oil player for the first time since the 1970’s. When WTI hit $46 at the beginning of January this year, suddenly things looked different. Washington realized they had shot themselves in the foot.
  • They realized that the over-indebted US shale oil industry was about to collapse under the falling oil price. Behind the scenes Washington and Wall Street colluded to artificially stabilize what then was an impending chain-reaction bankruptcy collapse in the US shale oil industry. As a result oil prices began a slow rise, hitting $53 in February. The Wall Street and Washington propaganda mills began talking about the end of falling oil prices. By May prices had crept up to $62 and almost everyone was convinced oil recovery was in process. How wrong they were.
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  • Since that September 11 Kerry-Abdullah meeting (curious date to pick, given the climate of suspicion that the Bush family is covering up involvement of the Saudis in or around the events of September 11, 2001), the Saudis have a new ageing King, Absolute Monarch and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman, replacing the since deceased old ageing King, Abdullah. However, the Oil Minister remains unchanged—79-year-old Ali al-Naimi. It was al-Naimi who reportedly saw the golden opportunity in the Kerry proposal to use the chance to at the same time kill off the growing market challenge from the rising output of the unconventional USA shale oil industry. Al-Naimi has said repeatedly that he is determined to eliminate the US shale oil “disturbance” to Saudi domination of world oil markets. Not only are the Saudis unhappy with the US shale oil intrusion on their oily Kingdom. They are more than upset with the recent deal the Obama Administration made with Iran that will likely lead in several months to lifting Iran economic sanctions. In fact the Saudis are beside themselves with rage against Washington, so much so that they have openly admitted an alliance with arch foe, Israel, to combat what they see as the Iran growing dominance in the region—in Syria, in Lebanon, in Iraq.
  • This has all added up to an iron Saudi determination, aided by close Gulf Arab allies, to further crash oil prices until the expected wave of shale oil company bankruptcies—that was halted in January by Washington and Wall Street manipulations—finishes off the US shale oil competition. That day may come soon, but with unintended consequences for the entire global financial system at a time such consequences can ill be afforded. According to a recent report by Wall Street bank, Morgan Stanley, a major player in crude oil markets, OPEC oil producers have been aggressively increasing oil supply on the already glutted world market with no hint of a letup. In its report Morgan Stanley noted with visible alarm, “OPEC has added 1.5 million barrels/day to global supply in the last four months alone…the oil market is currently 800,000 barrels/day oversupplied. This suggests that the current oversupply in the oil market is fully due to OPEC’s production increase since February alone.” The Wall Street bank report adds the disconcerting note, “We anticipated that OPEC would not cut, but we didn’t foresee such a sharp increase.” In short, Washington has completely lost its strategic leverage over Saudi Arabia, a Kingdom that had been considered a Washington vassal ever since FDR’s deal to bring US oil majors in on an exclusive basis in 1945.
  • That breakdown in US-Saudi communication adds a new dimension to the recent June 18 high-level visit to St. Petersburg by Muhammad bin Salman, the Saudi Deputy Crown Prince and Defense Minister and son of King Salman, to meet President Vladimir Putin. The meeting was carefully prepared by both sides as the two discussed up to $10 billion of trade deals including Russian construction of peaceful nuclear power reactors in the Kingdom and supplying of advanced Russian military equipment and Saudi investment in Russia in agriculture, medicine, logistics, retail and real estate. Saudi Arabia today is the world’s largest oil producer and Russia a close second. A Saudi-Russian alliance on whatever level was hardly in the strategy book of the Washington State Department planners.…Oh shit! Now that OPEC oil glut the Saudis have created has cracked the shaky US effort to push oil prices back up. The price fall is being further fueled by fears that the Iran deal will add even more to the glut, and that the world’s second largest oil importer, China, may cut back imports or at least not increase them as their economy slows down. The oil market time bomb detonated in the last week of June. The US price of WTI oil went from $60 a barrel then, a level at which at least many shale oil producers can stay afloat a bit longer, to $49 on July 29, a drop of more than 18% in four weeks, tendency down. Morgan Stanley sounded loud alarm bells, stating that if the trend of recent weeks continues, “this downturn would be more severe than that in 1986. As there was no sharp downturn in the 15 years before that, the current downturn could be the worst of the last 45+ years. If this were to be the case, there would be nothing in our experience that would be a guide to the next phases of this cycle…In fact, there may be nothing in analyzable history.”
  • October is the next key point for bank decisions to roll-over US shale company loans or to keep extending credit on the (until now) hope that prices will slowly recover. If as strongly hinted, the Federal Reserve hikes US interest rates in September for the first time in the eight years since the global financial crisis erupted in the US real estate market in 2007, the highly-indebted US shale oil producers face disaster of a new scale. Until the past few weeks the volume of US shale oil production has remained at the maximum as shale producers desperately try to maximize cash flow, ironically, laying the seeds of the oil glut globally that will be their demise. The reason US shale oil companies have been able to continue in business since last November and not declare bankruptcy is the ongoing Federal Reserve zero interest rate policy that leads banks and other investors to look for higher interest rates in the so-called “High Yield” bond market. Back in the 1980’s when they were first created by Michael Millken and his fraudsters at Drexel Burnham Lambert, Wall Street appropriately called them “junk bonds” because when times got bad, like now for Shale companies, they turned into junk. A recent UBS bank report states, “the overall High-Yield market has doubled in size; sectors that witnessed more buoyant issuance in recent years, like energy and metals mining, have seen debt outstanding triple or quadruple.”
  • Assuming that the most recent downturn in WTI oil prices continues week after week into October, there well could be a panic run to sell billions of dollars of those High-Yield, high-risk junk bonds. As one investment analyst notes, “when the retail crowd finally does head for the exits en masse, fund managers will be forced to come face to face with illiquid secondary corporate credit markets where a lack of market depth…has the potential to spark a fire sale.” The problem is that this time, unlike in 2008, the Federal Reserve has no room to act. Interest rates are already near zero and the Fed has bought trillions of dollars of bank bad debt to prevent a chain-reaction US bank panic. One option that is not being discussed at all in Washington would be for Congress to repeal the disastrous 1913 Federal Reserve Act that gave control of our nation’s money to a gang of private bankers, and to create a public National Bank, owned completely by the United States Government, that could issue credit and sell Federal debt without the intermediaries of corrupt Wall Street bankers as the Constitution intended. At the same time they could completely nationalize the six or seven “Too Big To Fail” banks behind the entire financial mess that is destroying the foundations of the United States and by extension of the role of the dollar as world reserve currency, of most of the world.
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    I give a lot of credibility to this article's author when it comes to matters involving the oil market. Remember when reading that the only thing propping up the U.S. dollar is the Saudi (later extended to all OPEC nations) insistence that they be paid for their oil and natural gas in U.S. dollars, which creates artificial demand for the dollar globally. If the Gulf Coast States begin accepting payment in rubles or yuan, it is curtains for the U.S. dollar in global markets.  
Paul Merrell

Russia Gets Very Serious on De-dollarizing | nsnbc international - 0 views

  • Russia is about to take another major step towards liberating the Ruble from the Dollar System. Its Finance Ministry just revealed it is considering issuing Russian state debt in Chinese Yuan. That would be an elegant way to decouple from the dependence and blackmail pressures from the US Treasury financial terrorism operations while at the same time strengthening the bonds between China and Russia–Washington’s worst geopolitical nightmare.
  • Russian Deputy Minister of Finance, Sergei Storchak, announced that his ministry is making a careful study of what would be required to issue Russian bonds denominated in Chinese Yuan. The latest news is part of a long-term strategy between Russia and China that goes at the heart of American hegemony—the role of the dollar as the leading world central bank reserve currency. The dollar is used in some 60% of central bank reserves today. The second largest is the Euro. Now clearly China is carefully moving, as the world’s largest trading nation, to create its Renminbi or Chinese Yuan as another major reserve currency. That has huge geopolitical implications. So long as the US dollar is leading reserve currency, the world must de facto buy US dollar Treasury bonds for its reserves. That has allowed Washington to have budget deficits since 1971 when the dollar left the gold exchange standard. In effect, China, Japan, Russia, Germany—all trade surplus countries, finance Washington’s deficits that allow her to make wars around the world. It is a paradox that Russia and China at least, are determined to end as soon as possible.
  • What all this indicates is that Russia and China are carefully planning a long-term strategy of getting out from dependence on the US currency, something that, as the US sanctions last year revealed, make both countries vulnerable to US currency wars of devastating impact. China has just been accepted “in principle” by the Group of 7 finance ministers to have its yuan included in the International Monetary Fund basket of currencies making up IMF Special Drawing Rights. Today only US dollar, Euro and Japanese Yen are included in the basket. Including the yuan would be a huge step towards making the yuan a recognized international reserve currency, and at the same time would weaken the dollar share. China’s foreign reserves consist overwhelmingly of US dollar claims, mainly US Treasury bonds, which is a strategic weakness, because in case of war these can be frozen, as Iran knows too well. It is imperative for China to increase the gold content of the reserves and to diversify the rest into other currencies. China has also agreed with Russia to unify the new Silk Road high-speed rail project with Russia and Russia’s Eurasian Economic Union. At the same time Beijing has announced it is creating a huge $16 billion fund to develop gold mines along the rail route linking Russia and China and Central Asia. That suggests plans to greatly build up gold as central bank reserve share. China’s central bank has greatly increased its gold holdings in recent years, though whether it is now greater than the alleged Federal Reserve gold holdings of 8000 tons is not yet public. It is expected China must reveal its gold reserves on being formally accepted into the IMF SDR basket perhaps later this year.
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  • Last year, 2014, Song Xin, president of the China Gold Association stated, “We need to establish our gold bank as soon as possible…It can further help us acquire reserves and give us more say and control in the gold market.” A gold sector fund involving countries along the Silk Road has been set up in northwest China’s Xi’an City this May, led by Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), part of China’s national bank, PBOC. China is the world’s largest gold producer. Among the 65 countries along the routes of the Silk Road Economic Belt, there are numerous Asian countries identified as important reserve bases and consumers of gold. Xinhua reports that 60 countries have invested in the fund, which will facilitate central banks of member states to increase their holdings of gold. Dr. Diedrick Goedhuys, former economic adviser to the Reserve Bank of South Africa in an interview told me, “I want to emphasize the unique quality of gold, when viewed as a financial asset, of being an asset that is no-one’s liability. A treasury bond, for instance, is an asset in my hands, but a liability, or debt to be repaid, in the books of the treasury. Gold is a pure asset. The Chinese gold mining plan is of vast importance. It’s a long-term plan; it may take ten years before it has a significant effect.”
Paul Merrell

By "Punishing" France, The US Just Accelerated The Demise Of The Dollar | Zero Hedge - 0 views

  • Not even we anticipated this particular "unintended consequence" as a result of the US multi-billion dollar fine on BNP (which France took very much to heart). Moments ago, in a lengthy interview given to French magazine Investir, none other than the governor of the French National Bank Christian Noyer and member of the ECB's governing board, said this stunner at the very end, via Bloomberg: NOYER: BNP CASE WILL ENCOURAGE ‘DIVERSIFICATION’ FROM DOLLAR Here is the full google translated segment:
  • Q. Doesn't the role of the dollar as an international currency create systemic risk?   Noyer: Beyond [the BNP] case, increased legal risks from the application of U.S. rules to all dollar transactions around the world will encourage a diversification from the dollar. BNP Paribas was the occasion for many observers to remember that there has been a number of sanctions and that there would certainly be others in the future. A movement to diversify the currencies used in international trade is inevitable. Trade between Europe and China does not need to use the dollar and may be read and fully paid in euros or renminbi. Walking towards a multipolar world is the natural monetary policy, since there are several major economic and monetary powerful ensembles. China has decided to develop the renminbi as a settlement currency. The Bank of France was behind the popular ECB-PBOC swap and we have just concluded a memorandum on the creation of a system of offshore renminbi clearing in Paris. We have very strong cooperation with the PBOC in this field. But these changes take time. We must not forget that it took decades after the United States became the world's largest economy for the dollar to replace the British pound as the first international currency. But the phenomenon of U.S. rules expanding to all USD-denominated transactions around the world can have an accelerating effect. In other words, the head of the French central bank, and ECB member, Christian Noyer, just issued a direct threat to the world's reserve currency (for now), the US Dollar.
  • Putting this whole episode in context: in an attempt to punish France for proceeding with the delivery of the Mistral amphibious warship to Russia, the US "punishes" BNP with a failed attempt at blackmail (recall that as Putin revealed, the BNP penalty was a used as a carrot to disincenticize France from concluding the Mistral transaction: had Hollande scrapped the deal, BNP would likely be slammed with a far lower fine, if any). Said blackmail attempt backfires horribly when as a result, the head of the French central bank makes it clear that not only is the US Dollar's reserve currency status not sacrosanct, but "the world" will now actively seek to avoid USD-transactions in order to escape the tentacle of global "pax Americana." And, the biggest irony of all is that in "punishing" France for dealing with Russia, that core country of the Eurasian alliance of Russia and China, the US merely accelerated the gravitation of France (and all of Europe) precisely toward Eurasia, toward a multi-polar (sorry fanatic believers in a one world SDR-based currency) and away from the greenback.
Paul Merrell

Non-Dollar Trading Is Killing the Petrodollar -- And the Foundation of U.S.-S... - 0 views

  • A profound transformation of the global monetary system is underway. It is being driven by a perfect storm: the need for Russia and Iran to escape Western sanctions, the low interest rate policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep the American economy afloat and the increasing demand for Middle East oil by China.The implications of this transformation are immense for U.S. policy in the Middle East which, for 50 years, has been founded on a partnership with Saudi Arabia.
  • A profound transformation of the global monetary system is underway. It is being driven by a perfect storm: the need for Russia and Iran to escape Western sanctions, the low interest rate policy of the U.S. Federal Reserve to keep the American economy afloat and the increasing demand for Middle East oil by China.The implications of this transformation are immense for U.S. policy in the Middle East which, for 50 years, has been founded on a partnership with Saudi Arabia.
  • s economic sanctions are increasingly part of the West's arsenal, those non-Western countries that are the target -- or potential target -- of such sanctions are devising a counterpunch: non-dollar trading. It would, in effect, nullify the impact of sanctions. Whether in yuan or roubles, non-dollar trading -- which enables countries to bypass U.S. claims to legal jurisdiction -- will transform the prospects facing Iran and Syria, particularly in the field of energy reserves, and deeply affect Iraq which is situated between the two. President Putin has said (in the context of reducing Russia's economic vulnerabilities) that he views the dollar monopoly in energy trade as damaging to the Russian economy. Since hydrocarbon revenues form the most substantive part of Russia's revenues, Putin's desire to take action in this area is not surprising. In the face of sanctions, Putin is seeking to reduce its economic dependence on the West. Russia has signed two "holy grail" gas contracts with China and is in negotiations to offer the latter sophisticated weaponry. It is also in the process of finalizing significant trade deals with India and Iran. All of this will be to the benefit of Iran, too: the Russians recently announced a deal to build several new nuclear power plants there.
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    Is this a trend? This is the second article I've read in MSM during the last two days that sounds the alarm that the petrodollar system is collapsing and that de-dollarization is in motion, along with noticing that U.S. fiscal and foreign policy is helping to accelerate de-dollarization. Perhaps the propagandameisters have decided that they can't squelch this information any longer because the alternative press has publicized it too widely?
Paul Merrell

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

  •  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.
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    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

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

  • 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.
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    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

Blowback Begins: EU To Ditch Dollar In Payments For Iranian Oil | Zero Hedge - 0 views

  • The dollar’s collapse is nearing.  The European Union is planning to switch it’s payments to the Euro for its oil purchases from Iran, eliminating United States dollar transactions.
  • it is highly likely that the US dollar will collapse as nations distance themselves from the United States’ often disastrous foreign policies.  As RTreported, dozens of contracts signed between European businesses and the Islamic Republic could be at risk of cancellation if Brussels obeys Washington’s sanctions. This would damage Iran’s economy and European firms would lose a huge market in the Middle East. Switching to alternative settlement currencies allows both sides to continue trading despite US sanctions and will damage the dollar in the process.  Earlier this week, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said that the foreign ministers of the UK, France, Germany, and Iran had agreed to work out practical solutions in response to Washington’s move in the next few weeks. The bloc is reportedly planning to maintain and deepen economic ties with Iran, including in the area of oil and gas supplies.
  • The dollar’s collapse is nearing.  The European Union is planning to switch it’s payments to the Euro for its oil purchases from Iran, eliminating United States dollar transactions.
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  • Just one more nail to the US dollar’s coffin.  Its collapse is all but imminent at this point. The EU has successfully found a way to scoff at potential future sanctions on Iran by openly defying the US; and as an “added bonus,” they’ve helped seal the dollar’s fate.  According to RT, a diplomatic source with the EU has told a news outlet of the decision.   “I’m privy to the information that the EU is going to shift from dollar to euro to pay for crude from Iran,” said the diplomatic source.  Brussels has been at odds with Washington over the US’s decision to withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, which was reached during the administration of Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has pledged to re-impose sanctions against the Islamic Republic as soon as he is able to do so. The Trump administration also has had plans to topple the current regime in Iran, according to leaked documents, and it looks like they’ve just given themselves the go-ahead:
Gary Edwards

Russia Breaking Wall St Oil Price Monopoly | New Eastern Outlook - 0 views

  • In the period up until the end of the 1980’s world oil prices were determined largely by real daily supply and demand. It was the province of oil buyers and oil sellers. Then Goldman Sachs decided to buy the small Wall Street commodity brokerage, J. Aron in the 1980’s. They had their eye set on transforming how oil is traded in world markets. It was the advent of “paper oil,” oil traded in futures, contracts independent of delivery of physical crude, easier for the large banks to manipulate based on rumors and derivative market skullduggery, as a handful of Wall Street banks dominated oil futures trades and knew just who held what positions, a convenient insider role that is rarely mentioned inn polite company. It was the beginning of transforming oil trading into a casino where Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and a few other giant Wall Street banks ran the crap tables.First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/
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    "Russia has just taken significant steps that will break the present Wall Street oil price monopoly, at least for a huge part of the world oil market. The move is part of a longer-term strategy of decoupling Russia's economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, today the Achilles Heel of the Russian economy. Later in November the Russian Energy Ministry has announced that it will begin test-trading of a new Russian oil benchmark. While this might sound like small beer to many, it's huge. If successful, and there is no reason why it won't be, the Russian crude oil benchmark futures contract traded on Russian exchanges, will price oil in rubles and no longer in US dollars. It is part of a de-dollarization move that Russia, China and a growing number of other countries have quietly begun. The setting of an oil benchmark price is at the heart of the method used by major Wall Street banks to control world oil prices. Oil is the world's largest commodity in dollar terms. Today, the price of Russian crude oil is referenced to what is called the Brent price. The problem is that the Brent field, along with other major North Sea oil fields is in major decline, meaning that Wall Street can use a vanishing benchmark to leverage control over vastly larger oil volumes. The other problem is that the Brent contract is controlled essentially by Wall Street and the derivatives manipulations of banks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP MorganChase and Citibank. First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2016/01/09/russia-breaking-wall-st-oil-price-monopoly/"
Paul Merrell

De-Dollarization: Dismantling America's Financial-Military Empire | Global Research - 0 views

  • 13 June 2009
  • The city of Yakaterinburg, Russia’s largest east of the Urals, may become known not only as the death place of the tsars but of American hegemony too – and not only where US U-2 pilot Gary Powers was shot down in 1960, but where the US-centered international financial order was brought to ground. Challenging America will be the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China).      The attendees have assured American diplomats that dismantling the US financial and military empire is not their aim. They simply want to discuss mutual aid – but in a way that has no role for the United States, NATO or the US dollar as a vehicle for trade. US diplomats may well ask what this really means, if not a move to make US hegemony obsolete. That is what a multipolar world means, after all. For starters, in 2005 the SCO asked Washington to set a timeline to withdraw from its military bases in Central Asia. Two years later the SCO countries formally aligned themselves with the former CIS republics belonging to the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), established in 2002 as a counterweight to NATO. 
  • Challenging America will be the prime focus of extended meetings in Yekaterinburg, Russia (formerly Sverdlovsk) today and tomorrow (June 15-16) for Chinese President Hu Jintao, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and other top officials of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). The alliance is comprised of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrghyzstan and Uzbekistan, with observer status for Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia. It will be joined on Tuesday by Brazil for trade discussions among the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India and China).    
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  • Yet the meeting has elicited only a collective yawn from the US and even European press despite its agenda is to replace the global dollar standard with a new financial and military defense system. A Council on Foreign Relations spokesman has said he hardly can imagine that Russia and China can overcome their geopolitical rivalry,1 suggesting that America can use the divide-and-conquer that Britain used so deftly for many centuries in fragmenting foreign opposition to its own empire. But George W. Bush (“I’m a uniter, not a divider”) built on the Clinton administration’s legacy in driving Russia, China and their neighbors to find a common ground when it comes to finding an alternative to the dollar and hence to the US ability to run balance-of-payments deficits ad infinitum.            What may prove to be the last rites of American hegemony began already in April at the G-20 conference, and became even more explicit at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 5, when Mr. Medvedev called for China, Russia and India to “build an increasingly multipolar world order.” What this means in plain English is: We have reached our limit in subsidizing the United States’ military encirclement of Eurasia while also allowing the US to appropriate our exports, companies, stocks and real estate in exchange for paper money of questionable worth.
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    Revisiting history: It's amazing to see how far the de-dollarization strategy has progressed since 2009.
Paul Merrell

Russia dumping dollars to use to protect currency and falling oil prices - National Fin... - 0 views

  • As the United States expands its proxy war against Russia and the BRICS nations through a newly discovered secret deal with Saudi Arabia to force down global oil prices, Russia is firing back to this monetary attack against their currency and economy. On Oct. 10, a new report on Russian currency outflows shows that during the third quarter ending in September, the Eurasian state paid off a near record $53 billion in foreign debt, and sold off dollars to use as capital to stabilize their declining currency, and to protect their primary resource industry from the deflation America has caused through the dumping of excess oil into the market supply. Some of this money was used earlier this week to support the declining Rouble as President Putin authorized the transfer of over $2 billion to be used directly to support the Russian currency. Additionally, the Russian central bank has already authorized funds to be set aside to supplement Russian corporations and oil industries should the need arise for liquidity and capital.
  • Russia is not the only Eurasian nation de-dollarizing at a fast pace. Earlier this week as well, long time U.S. economic ally South Korea disseminated that their foreign reserve holdings had grown in the Yuan over the past year, almost doubling its prior total of 13.7% which was the amount they held at the end of 2013. These reserves replace former dollar holdings, and rise a huge red flag that the Far Eastern manufacturing center is quickly moving into the Eurasian Trade camp, and away from Western hegemony. America's gambit to force down the price of oil is a ploy the U.S. used in the late 1980's to destroy the Rouble, and tear down the old Soviet Union's economy. However, the Russian leadership is not stupid, and have realized for a long time that this was an Achilles Heel in their economic system, and this time, the tables are quickly turning against the U.S. as Russia simply dumps more and more dollars to use as capital to supplement their currency and industry during these short term attacks by the West in their attempt to cripple them monetarily.
Paul Merrell

Big Oil's "Sore Losers" Lead the Drive to War » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts... - 0 views

  • Following a 13 year rampage that has reduced large swathes of Central Asia and the Middle East to anarchy and ruin, the US military juggernaut has finally met its match on a small peninsula in southeastern Ukraine that serves as the primary operating base for Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Crimea is the door through which Washington must pass if it intends to extend its forward-operating bases throughout Eurasia, seize control of vital pipeline corridors and resources, and establish itself as the dominant military/economic power-player in the new century. Unfortunately, for Washington, Moscow has no intention of withdrawing from the Crimea or relinquishing control of its critical military outpost in Sevastopol. That means that the Crimea–which has been invaded by the Cimmerians, Bulgars, Greeks, Scythians, Goths, Huns, Khazars, Ottomans, Turks, Mongols, and Germans–could see another conflagration in the months ahead, perhaps, triggering a Third World War, the collapse of the existing global security structure, and a new world order, albeit quite different from the one imagined by the fantasists at the Council on Foreign Relations and the other far-right think tanks that guide US foreign policy and who are responsible for the present crisis.
  • How Washington conducts itself in this new conflict will tell us whether the authors of the War on Terror–that public relations hoax that concealed the goals of eviscerated civil liberties and one world government–were really serious about actualizing their NWO vision or if it was merely the collective pipedream of corporate CEOs and bored bankers with too much time on their hands. In the Crimea, the empire faces a real adversary, not a disparate group of Kalashinov-waving jihadis in flip-flops. This is the Russian Army; they know how to defend themselves and they are prepared to do so. That puts the ball in Obama’s court. It’s up to him and his crackpot “Grand Chessboard” advisors to decide how far they want to push this. Do they want to intensify the rhetoric and ratchet up the sanctions until blows are exchanged, or pick up their chips and walk away before things get out of hand? Do they want to risk it all on one daredevil roll of the dice or move on to Plan B? That’s the question. Whatever US policymakers decide, one thing is certain, Moscow is not going to budge. Their back is already against the wall. Besides, they know that a lunatic with a knife is on the loose, and they’re ready to do whatever is required to protect their people. If Washington decides to cross that line and provoke a fight, then there’s going to trouble. It’s as simple as that. Perma-hawk, John McCain thinks that Obama should take off the gloves and show Putin who’s boss. In an interview with TIME magazine McCain said “This is a chess match reminiscent of the Cold War and we need to realize that and act accordingly…We need to take certain measures that would convince Putin that there is a very high cost to actions that he is taking now.” “High cost” says McCain, but high cost for who?
  • What McCain fails to realize is that this is not Afghanistan and Obama is not in a spitting match with puppet Karzai. Leveling sanctions against Moscow will have significant consequences, the likes of which could cause real harm to US interests. Did we mention that “ExxonMobil’s biggest non-US oil project is a collaboration with Russia’s Rosneft in the Arctic, where it has billions of dollars of investments at stake.” What if Putin decides that it’s no longer in Moscow’s interest to honor contracts that were made with US corporations? What do you think the reaction of shareholders will be to that news? And that’s just one example. There are many more. Any confrontation with Russia will result in asymmetrical attacks on the dollar, the bond market, and oil supplies. Maybe the US could defeat Russian forces in the Crimea. Maybe they could sink the fleet and rout the troops, but there’ll be a heavy price to pay and no one will be happy with the outcome.
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  • Here’s a clip from an article at Testosterone Pit that sums it up nicely: “Sergei Glazyev, the most hardline of Putin’s advisors, sketched the retaliation strategy: Drop the dollar, sell US Treasuries, encourage Russian companies to default on their dollar-denominated debts, and create an alternative currency system with the BRICS and hydrocarbon producers like Venezuela and Iran… Putin’s ally and trusted friend, Rosneft president Igor Sechin…suggested that it was “advisable to create an international stock-exchange for the participating countries, where transactions could be registered with the use of regional currencies.” (From Now On, No Compromises Are Possible For Russia, Testosterone Pit)
  • As the US continues to abuse its power, these changes become more and more necessary. Foreign governments must form new alliances in order to abandon the present system–the “dollar system”–and establish greater parity between nation-states, the very nation-states that Washington is destroying one-by-one to establish its ghoulish vision of global corporate utopia. The only way to derail that project is by exposing the glaring weakness in the system itself, which is the use of an international currency that is backed by $15 trillion in government debt, $4 trillion in Federal Reserve debt, and trillions more in unpaid and unpayable federal obligations. Whatever steps Moscow takes to abort the current system and replace the world’s reserve currency with money that represents a fair store of value, should be applauded. Washington’s reckless and homicidal behavior around the world make it particularly unsuitable as the de facto steward of the global financial system or to enjoy seigniorage, which allows the US to play banker to the rest of the world. The dollar is the foundation upon which rests the three pillars of imperial strength; political, economic and military. Remove that foundation and the entire edifice comes crashing to earth. Having abused that power, by killing and maiming millions of people across the planet; the world needs to transition to another, more benign way of consummating its business transactions, preferably a currency that is not backed by the blood and misery of innocent victims.
  • Paul Volcker summed up the feelings of many dollar-critics in 2010 when he had this to say: “The growing sense around much of the world is that we have lost both relative economic strength and more important, we have lost a coherent successful governing model to be emulated by the rest of the world. Instead, we’re faced with broken financial markets, underperformance of our economy and a fractious political climate.” America is irreparably broken and Washington is a moral swamp. The world needs regime change; new leaders, new direction and a different system.
  • In our last article, we tried to draw attention to the role of big oil in the present crisis. Author Nafeez Ahmed expands on that theme in a “must read” article in Monday’s Guardian. Check out this brief excerpt from Ahmed’s piece titled “Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry”: “Ukraine is increasingly perceived to be critically situated in the emerging battle to dominate energy transport corridors linking the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian basin to European markets… Considerable competition has already emerged over the construction of pipelines. Whether Ukraine will provide alternative routes helping to diversify access, as the West would prefer, or ‘find itself forced to play the role of a Russian subsidiary,’ remains to be seen.” (Guardian) The western oil giants have been playing “catch up” for more than a decade with Putin checkmating them at every turn. As it happens, the wily KGB alum has turned out to be a better businessman than any of his competitors, essentially whooping them at their own game, using the free market to extend his network of pipelines across Central Asia and into Europe. That’s what the current crisis is all about.
Paul Merrell

Gazprom Ready To Drop Dollar, Settle China Contracts In Yuan Or Rubles | Zero Hedge - 0 views

  • A little over a month ago, when Russia announced the much anticipated "Holy Grail" energy deal with China, some were disappointed that despite this symbolic agreement meant to break the petrodollar's stranglehold on the rest of the world, neither Russia nor China announced payment terms to be in anything but dollars. In doing so they admitted that while both nations are eager to move away from a US Dollar reserve currency, neither is yet able to provide an alternative. This changed rather dramatically overnight when in a little noticed statement, Gazprom's CFO Andrey Kruglov uttered the magic words (via Bloomberg): GAZPROM READY TO SETTLE CHINA CONTRACTS IN YUAN OR RUBLES: CFO In other words just as the US may or may not be preparing to export crude - a step which would weaken the dollar's reserve status as traditional US oil trading partners will need to find other import customers who pay in non-USD currencies - the world's two other superpowers are preparing to respond. And once the bilateral trade in Rubles or Renminbi is established, the rest of the energy world will piggyback.
  • But wait, there's more. Because only now does Gazprom appear to be unveiling all those "tangents" that were expected to hit the tape in May. Among Kruglov's other revelations were that Gazprom is in talks on a Hong Kong listing and is weighing the issuance of Yuan bonds. Gazprom is also considering selling bonds in Singapore dollars, the CFO said at briefing in Moscow. Wait, you mean that by alienating and embargoing Russia from western (USD, EUR-denominated) funding markets, it has pushed the country to turn to its pivoting partner, China and thus further cementing the framework for the next Eurasian strategic alliance? Unpossible But wait, there's still more, because it is  not just Gazprom. As the PBOC announced overnight,  PBOC Assistant Governor Jin Qi and Russian central bank Deputy Chairman Dmitry Skobelkin led a meeting held yesterday and today in Shanghai.  The meeting discussed cooperating on project and trade financing using local currencies. The meeting discussed cooperation in bank card, insurance and financial supervision sectors. In other words, central bankers of China and Russia discussed how to replace the dollar with Rubles and Yuan
  • In retrospect it will be very fitting that the crowning legacy of Obama's disastrous reign, both domestically and certainly internationally, will be to force the world's key ascendent superpowers (we certainly don't envision broke, insolvent Europe among them) to drop the Petrodollar and end the reserve status of the US currency.
Paul Merrell

The new European 'arc of instability' - RT Op-Edge - 0 views

  • The European Council on Foreign Relations and Berlin think-tank Friedrich Ebert Stiftung have just reached more or less the same conclusion. If the dangerous stand-off between the EU and Russia over Ukraine is not solved, the EU could face, up to 2030, a military build-up in eastern Europe; a new arms race with NATO as a protagonist; and a semi-permanent “zone of instability” from the Baltic to the Balkans and the Black Sea. What these two think-tanks don’t – and won’t – ever acknowledge is that a new European “arc of instability” – from the Baltic to the Black Sea, as myself and other independent analysts have stressed – is exactly what the Empire of Chaos and its weaponized arm – NATO – are working on to prevent closer Eurasia integration. By the way, the Pentagon excels in fabricating “arcs of instability.” The previous one was – and remains – massive, stretching from the Maghreb to Xinjiang in western China across the Middle East and Central Asia.
  • Moscow has totally identified the plot; Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, once again, has made it crystal clear, in detail. And crucially, some influential sectors in Germany also did, as in members of the cultural elite destroying the notion of a new war in Europe: “Not in our name.” The same applies to those that always preach more transatlantic cooperation, extol the US’s “defining” role in Germany, and effusively praise Germany as the most American country in Europe; that’s the case of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper – which stands for the core of the political and economic establishment in Germany. It’s still in an embryonic stage, and has not yet made Chancellor Angela Merkel see the light; but a reverse reengineering of Atlanticist relations is already in progress in Germany.
  • Meanwhile, the proverbial group of extremist US senators, plus the notorious poodles/vassals of Britain and Poland, haven’t stopped lobbying to shut Russia off from SWIFT – just as they did with Iran. This would be nothing but yet another declaration of (economic) war – or the economic counterpoint to NATO hysteria. In fairness, a great deal of the EU – especially Germany – knows this is madness. Germany’s top financial paper Handelsblatt recently published a key interview with head of VTB-Bank Andrei Kostin, which has still not been translated into any major English-language paper.
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  • Kostin went straight to the point: “Of course, there is a plan B [in the case of Russia being shut off from the SWIFT bank system], but in my personal opinion it would mean war – if this type of sanction will be introduced. America and Europe did that against Iran but with Iran at that time there were no diplomatic relations, only military containment...if Russian banks’ access to SWIFT will be prohibited, the US ambassador to Moscow should leave the same day. Diplomatic relations must be finished. Banking is the most vulnerable part of the Russian economy because the system is based so strongly on the dollar and the euro.” Next May, Russia’s Central Bank is planning to introduce an analogue to SWIFT – after key consultations with China. It’s always important to keep in mind that China set up a parallel SWIFT to do business with Iran under sanctions. But still there will be a window of four months for a lot of nasty things to happen after a Republican-controlled US Senate is empowered in January.
  • And then there’s the golden rule. Why is Russia buying so much gold? With the US dollar forced upward and gold downward, it makes total business sense to sell gas for inflated dollars and then buy cheap depressed gold; that’s what the Chinese call a “win-win.” And of course on both counts, the West loses. The Washington/Wall Street elites are fully aware that both Moscow and Beijing won’t accumulate US dollars anymore. As for the Masters of the Universe plutocrats who manipulate/control the value of the US dollar, a case can be made that one of their purposes is wrecking the US’s industrial base and the nation’s middle classes. Moscow, meanwhile, has adjusted to the new “instability.” The weak ruble has a positive effect – already stressed by President Putin – by forcing Russia to diversify its manufacturing and become more self-sufficient.
  • Of course, the problem remains for Russia to pay the foreign interest on its debt in US dollars. Moscow could always declare a moratorium in debt repayments. The ruble might go down even more. But as everyone from Lukoil to Rosneft converts more US dollars into rubles, that will drive the ruble back up. Not to mention that the ruble is shorted as it stands. The bottom line is that Moscow has learned yet another lesson for the immediate future: never become indebted to the West. What’s certain is that the Empire of Chaos won’t relent in its strategy of heating up the new arc of instability – inside Europe, across the economic/financial spectrum – and instrumentalizing its pre-fabricated New Iron Curtain from the Baltic to the Black Sea. The Kremlin seems to know exactly how high the stakes are. As The Saker told me in an email, “Putin is telling both the West and the Russian people that there is a long war in progress and that the Russian people have to morally be prepared to accept sacrifices for the survival of Russia. This is one more step in the 'coming-out' of what I call the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ in which the US [has] now openly declared as a Russophobic (Russia-hating and Russia-fearing) enemy, and the Europeans as a powerless colony. Military power is not directly a factor in this, the internal power balance between the pro-Western ‘Atlantic Integrationists’ and the ‘Eurasian Sovereignists’ is.” It’s all here – from the debacle of a regime (Bretton Woods) to the current, provoked crisis, all brilliantly explained by Mikhail Khazin. Russia is getting ready to rock. Is the West?
Paul Merrell

"Thank God This Is Happening": Russia Says Time Has Come To Ditch The Dollar | Zero Hedge - 0 views

  • With the US unveiling a new set of sanctions against Russia on Friday, Moscow said it would definitely respond to Washington’s latest sanctions and, in particular, it is accelerating efforts to abandon the American currency in trade transactions, said Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov. "The time has come when we need to go from words to actions, and get rid of the dollar as a means of mutual settlements, and look for other alternatives," he said in an interview with International Affairs magazine, quoted by RT. "Thank God, this is happening, and we will speed up this work,” Ryabkov said, explaining the move would come in addition to other “retaliatory measures” as a response to a growing list of US sanctions. Previously, Russian Energy Minister Aleksandr Novak said that a growing number of countries are interested in replacing the dollar as a medium in global oil trades and other transactions. “There is a common understanding that we need to move towards the use of national currencies in our settlements. There is a need for this, as well as the wish of the parties,” Novak said.
  • According to the minister, it concerns both Turkey and Iran, with more countries likely to join the growing dedollarization wave. “We are considering an option of payment in national currencies with them. This requires certain adjustments in the financial, economic, and banking sectors” to accomplish. Last week, we reported that the Kremlin was interested in trading with Ankara using the Russian ruble and the Turkish lira. India has also vowed to pay for Iranian oil in rupees. Meanwhile, the world’s second-largest economy and Washington's trade war nemesis, China, has been taking steps to challenge the greenback's dominance with the launch of an oil futures contract backed by Chinese currency, the petro-yuan. China and Iran have already agreed to stop using the dollar in global trade as China has ramped up purchases of Iranian oil in defiance of US sanctions.
Paul Merrell

Russia Finance Minister: We May Abandon Dollar In Oil Trade As It Is Becoming "Too Risk... - 1 views

  • One month ago, the bond market and political pundits did a double take when according to the latest Treasury International Capital report, Russia had liquidated virtually all of its US Treasury holdings, selling off the bulk of its US government bonds in just two months, March and April.
  • And with the US threatening to impose a new set of "crushing" sanctions on Russia, including in retaliation for the alleged Novichok nerve gas attack in the UK, Russia not only intends to continue liquidating its US holdings, but to significantly reduce its reliance on the US Dollar. Speaking in an interview for the Rossiya 1 TV channel, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said that Russia "aims to keep reducing its investments in American securities" following new U.S. sanctions and said that the "US dollar is becoming an unreliable tool for payments in international trade." The minister also hinted at the possibility of using national currencies instead of the dollar in oil trade. "I do not rule it out. We have significantly reduced our investment in US assets. In fact, the dollar, which is considered to be the international currency, becomes a risky tool for payments," Siluanov noted.
Paul Merrell

How Russia plans to disentangle its economy from US dollar - RT Business News - 0 views

  • The Russian Finance Ministry has announced a plan to wean the country of dollar dependence. It is expected to be a long and painful process. RT has asked analysts to explain how this could be done. According to the plan published this week, Russia seeks to de-dollarize the economy by 2024. The program is long and complicated, but its key point is that Russian exporters who use rubles instead of dollars would get huge taxation benefits including quicker VAT returns and other stimulus to ditch the greenback.
  • But there are also other ways to strengthen the role of the ruble in Russia. “It is necessary to gradually switch to such a system of international payments, which implies payment in rubles for Russia’s best and most popular goods on the world market like oil, gas and arms exclusively,” Andrey Perekalsky, analyst at financial institute FinIst, told RT.Russia should also unite with China and the European Union in creating a payment channel that can’t be controlled by the United States. The alternative to the SWIFT interbank settlement network that could bypass Iranian sanctions could be seen as a first step in that direction, the analyst notes.
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