The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Russia Creates Its Own Payment System

This is important:

Almost 91 domestic credit institutions have been incorporated into the new Russian financial system, the analogous of SWIFT, an international banking network.

The new service, will allow Russian banks to communicate seamlessly through the Central Bank of Russia. It should be noted that Russia’s Central Bank initiated the development of the country’s own messaging system in response to repeated threats voiced by Moscow’s Western partners to disconnect Russia from SWIFT.

Much of the West’s power comes from our financial hegemony. Our ability to cut people off from loans, payments and so on.  Since this new system is Russian only, it isn’t, right now, that big a deal.

But start connecting other countries to it, say China, Iran, India and so on, and it becomes a way of breaking financial blockades.  Include some calculable financial law (less of a challenge than it used to be as New York and London courts make increasingly punitive decisions), and start lending in Yuan (with which one can buy much of what one needs in the world, since the Chinese make so much of it), and you have a fully credible financial system.

The key is to get one major manufacturing country in.  Most of the nations the West is punishing these days, financially, are oilarchies ( Venezuela, Iran, Argentina).  They need the ability to buy manufactured goods.  The obvious country is China.  If China agrees to go in, Western financial hegemony is broken.  Japan could work; India could almost work, and Japan or India have a lot more to gain from it than it might seem (as we watch the Japanese economy implode.)

Even before then there are deals which can be cut.  Say Greece wants to buy Russian oil.  Russia can lend them Rubles, the use those rubles to buy Russian oil, in exchange Russia gets use of Greek ships and ports and access to the EU.

This is, then, in one sense, not a big deal.  As long as its only Russia, it’s a defensive move of somewhat limited utility.

But if it expands beyond Russia, well then, it’s earth-shaking.

Get out the popcorn and watch it develop.


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10 Comments

  1. Q.T.

    Life is a cabaret?

  2. Ramona

    Stirling,

    It begins? I wish I knew the reference for that pronoun. Seems like everything on this planet is in a fragile state when it isn’t outright nightmarish. I would hope the ‘it’ has to do with the breaking of the new world order via the banking system.

  3. You’re going to see if the Russians can make a payment system work. because one of these times, probably by the Chinese, it will happen.

  4. John Casper

    Ian, thanks. You know a lot more about this than I do, but could there be some benefit to the U.S. balance of trade deficit in terms of the value of the dollar declining and our exports becoming more competitive? And there’s the flip side which more expensive imports would help unions and hurt the oligarchs plans for the Trans-Pacific-Partnership …. other unfair trade practices.

  5. gregorylent

    long term it will be beneficial for america if its hegemony is broken in this way … firce it to learn how to live in this world as a good neighbor, and much benefit will ensue

  6. Robert Weller

    We owe China way too much money for them to want to her the U.S. And who would buy their crappy goods?

  7. Robert Weller

    America owes China too much money for the to seek to hurt us. Plus we buy way many of their exports. Russia is a country 0f 142 million peasants with no buying power.

  8. pete

    can’t wait for the American Zionist strangle hold on the whole world to be broken and then we can get our economies running again and trade with who we like. its only America’s Zionist strangle hold that crashed the worlds economy and there attempts to crash the Russian economy and there back door politics that has created 99% of the on going worlds problems. roll on BRICS, roll on the new world.

  9. Aqw

    I’ve always had the sneaking suspicion that a goodly fraction of the anti-Semitic trolls are paid provocateurs. Sorry, Pete: I’m not bingo.

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