Posted on 02/26/2022 5:14:03 PM PST by upchuck
NOTE: See video embedded in article.
As Western allies levy increasingly harsher economic sanctions against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine, the latest target involves Russia's access to SWIFT.
An acronym for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, SWIFT is a messaging system founded in 1973 that allows large financial institutions to send money to each other.
The Belgian-based cooperative is used by more than 11,000 banks and financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories, including Russia. It handles 42 million messages a day, facilitating trillions of dollars worth of transactions. Russia accounted for 1.5% of SWIFT transactions in 2020, according to the Financial Times.
The White House announced Saturday evening that the U.S. will be disconnecting some Russian banks from SWIFT in partnership with the European Commission, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and Canada and are "imposing restrictive measures that will prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions."
"This will ensure that these banks are disconnected from the international financial system and harm their ability to operate globally," the White House said in a statement.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
What are you even talking about?
Russia (Putin) has been doing this for years. First during weak Obama with Crimea - then with pudding Biden.
It can be evidenced by NATO sitting there doing nothing, while the sanctions have very little effect on communist nation already used to living dirt poor.
Not sure where you interpreted my writings otherwise?
PS...good to see you back on FR.
SWIFT isn't even a monetary transactional system. It is a messaging system.
If messaging can be arranged through other avenues then international transactions could still take place.
The problems are actually a dim-witted trade war with China where most of the stuff comes from, helicopter money printed to give away in covid support and sanction policymaking numerous players doubt the reliability of the American-led system.
Germany has a massive industrial capability. If they decide to get natural gas resources from other avenues then they can make it happen.
They could also operate on other forms of energy for the time being.
Not easy...but not impossible...
India and China will still do deals with Russia. They're evil, and they're cowards.
China could quickly be shut off if we turned on our industrial machine and told the environmental globalists to go pound sand.
As far as the rest - you and I would probably agree a lot more than you think.
Our difference is that you believe we have massive inflation coming, while I believe it will be massive deflation.
Most people outside the US and Europe do not share your trust in the Western system, where services are getting cut over political considerations. Russia and China are apolitical in trade so far.
China has half a billion people to lift from poverty into the middle class, the whole of Africa and Latin America for this purpose. Your self-confidence is troubling.
As for deflation, we shall see,
What are the other avenues? The US Democrats were peddling the ban on the Russian gas for 10 years and now the capacity of the US LNG producers is good to cover the monthly European needs for 5 days. Qatar is lacking the ability to increase capacity and the Norwegian fields are losing output. Not to mention that the LNG is many time more expensive that the Russian pipeline gas.
They can by pass SWIFT with China many ways.
It’s not going to work.
It will only hurt the USD because there will be less demand for it. That will translate to more inflation on our part.
“or deliver gold bars instead.”
Yeah, where exactly is the U.S. gold? Anyone looked lately?
Agreed. One of us will be correct. It could be you - but I've spent many years developing my economics theory, which caused my to go completely to cash in January, 2007.
I also believe oil will eventually plummet, for what it's worth.
I also wouldn't be a bit surprised to see silver at $10/ounce.
Used to write an economic newsletter. Sadly lost a lot of great friends over it, since they were goldbugs and got angry when I wrote that gold and silver would retreat in price.
I know why the got angry, since I also used to be a goldbug until I sat down and really focused on what the very basis of modern economics is:
Labor
Specifically, the difference between "completed labor" and "the promise of future labor".
Our monetary system used to be based on "completed labor" until we started having our currency backed by Treasury securities.
Now, every single unit of currency (except coins, interestingly enough) is backed by debt (securities). Each security is a "promise of the future labor of a worker".
What does this accomplish for the global elites? Two things:
1) Our future labor is owned. We are economic slaves, controlled by our masters.
2) They can keep promising more and more and more and more and more (you get the idea) claims on future labor, since they're just claims. We're enslaved. Our kids are enslaved. Our grandkids are enslaved. Etc., etc., etc...
We must defeat that evil system and get back to our Treasury only issuing currency based on the "completed labor" of some type of project or effort - instead of it being backed by debt.
Of course this means that our nation's money supply would be limited by the total amount of labor that could be completed in a given timeframe - which would mean financial accountability, etc. Washington DC would hate it...
I’d say hyperinflation once more of the global players are going to find the more reliable politically-free alternative.
30 billion in debt plus the end of reserve currency makes Zimbabwean dollars great by comparison.
I almost hope we do it as that will FINALLY force us to deal with our debt and deficit once no longer the Reserve Currency. It will teach the Keyboard Warriors here a BIG LESSON as the US now will have to answer to the World Bank and their ‘austerity measures’, if we want any access to international trade.
It will be FUN to watch the reactions here.
You won’t like to live in this world. Better say Biden to stop idiocy.
“More like a mutual destruction.”
Won’t destroy Russia, they don’t have the debt that we do and they have workarounds. Closer to simple suicide.
But then again, perhaps this is what’s meant by The Great Reset.
Let's be honest.
China has hundreds of millions of units of cannon fodder.
These are males who will never get married or have a family, due to the one-child policy, in which Chinese families killed baby girls hoping they would eventually get a son.
China has a standing army that is second to none. Their main problem is how to get them across water - since their "navy" is pathetic.
This doesn't mean they won't seek expansion across land boundaries.
The Chinese government would be elated if their extra men perished in a battle for more power and control. It would kill two birds with one stone, as it were...
“You won’t like to live in this world. Better say Biden to stop idiocy.”
I don’t control it, so I’ll have to deal with it regardless. I probably have more resources than most here, but I also know that doesn’t mean much in a currency crash.
The Left has ALWAYS wanted the United States to be brought down a few pegs, to a level more in-line with the world average (if not a bit lower), due to our excessive resource consumption. I just wish people from our side weren’t in such a hurry to help the Left pull it off.
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