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Foreign Banks Are Embracing Russia’s Alternative To SWIFT, Moscow Says

On Friday, one day after Russia and China pledged to reduce their reliance on the dollar by increasing the amount of bilateral trade conducted in rubles and yuan (a goal toward which much progress has already been made over the past three years), Russia’s Central Bank provided the latest update on Moscow’s alternative to US-dominated international payments network SWIFT.

Russia

Moscow started working on the project back in 2014, when international sanctions over Russia’s annexation of Crimea inspired fears that the country’s largest banks would soon be cut off from SWIFT which, though it’s based in Belgium and claims to be politically neutral, is effectively controlled by the US Treasury.

Russia

Today, the Russian alternative, known as the System for Transfer of Financial Messages, has attracted a modest amount of support within the Russian business community, with 416 Russian companies having joined as of September, including the Russian Federal Treasury and large state corporations likeGazprom Neft and Rosneft.

And now, eight months after a senior Russian official advised that “our banks are ready to turn off SWIFT,” it appears the system has reached another milestone in its development: It’s ready to take on international partners in the quest to de-dollarize and end the US’s leverage over the international financial system. A Russian official advised that non-residents will begin joining the system “this year,” according to RT.

“Non-residents will start connecting to us this year. People are already turning to us,” said First Deputy Governor of the Central Bank of Russia Olga Skorobogatova. Earlier, the official said that by using the alternative payment system foreign firms would be able to do business with sanctioned Russian companies.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Iran “Finalizing” Mechanism To Bypass SWIFT In Trade With Europe

Just days after Europe unveiled a “special purpose vehicle” meant to circumvent SWIFT and US monopoly on global dollar-denominated monetary transfers – and potentially jeopardizing the reserve status of the dollar – Iran said it was finalizing mechanisms for the oil trade to bypass US sanctions against the country, said Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi.

According to RT, Araghchi said that Tehran is not ruling out the possibility of setting up an alternative to the international payments provider SWIFT to circumvent sanctions imposed by Washington.

As we know, Europeans are also trying to see how SWIFT can continue working with Iran, or if a parallel [financial] messaging system is necessary… This is something that we are still working on,” Araghchi said.

According to the Iranian diplomat, the independent equivalent of the SWIFT system that was earlier suggested by the EU to protect European firms working in Iran from US sanctions will be available for third countries.

This is the important element in SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) that it is not only for Europeans but other countries can also use this. We hope that before the re-imposition of the second part of the US sanctions [from November 4], these mechanisms can be in place and be functional,” said the official.

One can see why: the Iranian economy has been hit hard in recent days, and the Rial has plunged to all time lows, amid fears that the sanctions will cripple Iran’s most valuable export resulting in a shortage of hard currency, eventually leading to a replica of Venezuela’s economic collapse.

Separately, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi said that “after much negotiation over a clear mechanism with Europe, we have neared certain understandings; and for sure, US sabotage in that regard will fail.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Europe Unveils “Special Purpose Vehicle” To Bypass SWIFT, Jeopardizing Dollar’s Reserve Status

In a stunning vote of “no confidence” in the US monopoly over global payment infrastructure, one month ago Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas called for the creation of a new payments system independent of the US that would allow Brussels to be independent in its financial operations from Washington and as a means of rescuing the nuclear deal between Iran and the west.

Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt, Maas said “Europe should not allow the US to act over our heads and at our expense. For that reason it’s essential that we strengthen European autonomy by establishing payment channels that are independent of the US, creating a European Monetary Fund and building up an independent Swift system,” he wrote.

Maas said it was vital for Europe to stick with the Iran deal. “Every day the agreement continues to exist is better than the highly explosive crisis that otherwise threatens the Middle East,” he said, with the unspoken message was even clearer: Europe no longer wants to be a vassal state to US monopoly over global payments, and will now aggressively pursue its own “SWIFT” network that is not subservient to Washington’s every whim.

Many discounted the proposal as being far too aggressive: after all, a direct assault on SWIFT, and Washington, would be seen by the rest of the world as clear mutiny against a US-dominated global regime, and could potentially spark a crisis of confidence in the reserve status of the dollar, resulting in unpredictable, and dire, consequences.

However, despite the diplomatic consequences, Europe was intent on creating some loophole to the US ability to weaponize the global currency of account at will, something observed most recently as part of Trump’s latest sanctions on Iran, and as a result, late on Monday, the European Union said that it would establish a special payment channel to allow European and other companies to legally continue financial transactions with Iran while avoiding exposure to U.S. sanctions.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Germany Moving SWIFT-ly To CIPS?

Is Germany Moving SWIFT-ly To CIPS?

We have detailed how Russia and China have developed independent global payment systems that run parallel to the dollar based SWIFT system. We recently discussed how sanctions against Russia were actually “crushing the American empire“. The dollar based system is now obsolete and the entire world is questioning why the current system is the only way to conduct global trade. Well, it’s not.

The Federal Reserve Note (FRN), U.S. dollar is under attack in a variety of ways. We have been documenting the astronomical growth of the yuan backed futures oil contract and how this is going to impact the FRN and the American economy. We have also pointed out that Russia has dumped approximately 82% of their entire U.S. treasuries and Turkey recently announced they will be offloading approximately 50% of their treasury holdings.

At the most recent BRICS Summit, held in July, one of biggest take-aways was the fact the BRICS alliance was in talks with Turkey and the possibility of Turkey, which is a NATO “partner”, could join BRICS! This is to say nothing of China, which heads the BRICS alliance, is also in talks with Argentina and Venezuela.

Now we learn that Germany is on board with moving away from SWIFT and the “trade wars”, sanctions against Russia and President Trump forcing NATO “partners” to pay up. President Trump’s actions have pushed Germany away from their alliance with the U.S.. The German / Russian partnership is very important to the overall German economy and Trump’s recent demand that Germany stop doing oil business with Russia seems to have pushed them over the edge. There may be more at play here, but most all geopolitical issues in the 21st century boil down to oil, oil production and how to get the cheapest oil possible.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Germany Calls For Global Payment System Independent Of The US

In a stunning vote of “no confidence” in the US monopoly over global payment infrastructure, Germany’s foreign minister Heiko Maas called for the creation of a new payments system independent of the US that would allow Brussels to be independent in its financial operations from Washington and as a means of rescuing the nuclear deal between Iran and the west.

Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt, Maas said “Europe should not allow the US to act over our heads and at our expense. For that reason it’s essential that we strengthen European autonomy by establishing payment channels that are independent of the US, creating a European Monetary Fund and building up an independent Swift system,” he wrote, cited by the FT.

Maas said it was vital for Europe to stick with the Iran deal. “Every day the agreement continues to exist is better than the highly explosive crisis that otherwise threatens the Middle East,” he said, with the unspoken message was even clearer: Europe no longer wants to be a vassal state to US monopoly over global payments, and will now aggressively pursue its own “Swift” network that is not subservient to Washington’s every whim.

German foreign minister Heiko Maas

Swift, a Belgium-based global payment network, enables financial institutions worldwide to send and receive information about financial transactions. The system’s management claims Swift is politically neutral and independent, although it has previously been used to block transactions and enforce US sanctions against various countries, most notably Iran.  In 2012, the Danish newspaper Berlingske wrote that US authorities managed to seize money being transferred from a Danish businessman to a German bank for a batch of US-sanctioned Cuban cigars. The transaction was made in US dollars, which allowed Washington to block it.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hackers Used SWIFT To Steal $6 Million From Russian Bank

In the latest revelation about the Society for Worldwide Interbank Telecommunication’s vulnerability to hackers – who’ve stolen tens of millions of dollars from banks and central banks mostly by stealing the special private keys used to sign off on transactions – Russian authorities revealed that hackers had made off with about 340 million rubles ($6 million) during an attack carried out last year,according to Reuters.

While that’s not the largest sum ever stolen by infiltrating SWIFT (indeed it pales in comparison to the more than $80 million stolen from the Bank of Bangladesh’s reserve account at the New York Fed back in 2016) the news comes just days after Russian authorities said the country’s banking system would be ready to abandon SWIFT if the US and European Union tried to cut off its banks.

In a report about the incident, the Russian authorities said hackers had gained control of a computer at a Russian bank and used SWIFT to transfer the money to their own accounts. Of course, the bureaucrats who run SWIFT from Brussels insist that the SWIFT system itself has never been infiltrated – and that the vulnerabilities exploited by hackers are solely the responsibility of the participating institutions. The irony here is that this is the same excuse advanced by bitcoin evangelists and others who wax about the “immutable” blockchain and its security features, only to overlook that hundreds of millions of dollars in cryptocurrencies have been stolen by hackers over the past few years.

To be sure, SWIFT officials have warned that hacking attacks are becoming “increasingly prominent” after the theft of the Bangladesh funds, which disappeared after landing in accounts based in the Philippines and then Macau.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russian Deputy PM: Our Banks Are Ready To Turn Off SWIFT

Russian financial institutions are prepared to survive without access to SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) – the global dollar-based interbank payments network – should the US and European Union follow through with threats to cut it off, according to Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich.

“Certainly, it is unpleasant, as it will prove a stumbling block for companies and banks, and will slow down work. It will be inevitable to deploy some aged technologies for information transfer and calculations. However, the companies are technically and psychologically ready for the shutdown as this threat was repeatedly voiced,” Dvorkovich said, according to TASS and RT, adding that such a dramatic step would negatively corporations doing business in the US and Europe.

“In general, disconnecting Russia from SWIFT would be a crazy step on the part of our Western partners. It is obvious that for the companies which work in Europe and the US it would be harmful. And this applies not only to the shutdown of the service,” he said.

The US and European Union have been periodically threatening to disconnect Russia from SWIFT since 2014 (over SWIFT’s own objections), when the conflict in Ukraine flared up and the two powers introduced the first round of international penalties against Moscow for its alleged involvement.

As a reminder, at the time, the MasterCard payment system stopped serving clients of seven Russian banks without warning after Washington imposed its first set of sanctions on Moscow in 2014. In response, the Russian government ordered the creation of a national payment system. With the support of the country’s banking system, the Mir charge card was introduced in 2015, although there is no data on what its adoption rate has been in the following years.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The End Is Nigh

The End Is Nigh

The End Is Nigh
Recently, US Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin stated, “If China doesn’t follow these sanctions [against North Korea], we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the US and international dollar system.”

This is astonishingly shortsighted, as the US can no more do without trade with China than China can do without trade with the US. Further, the US will unquestionably pressure its other trading partners (particularly the EU) to endorse and follow the sanctions. This they will not comply with, as it would serve to cut their own economic throats. The relationships between the US and their partners have been wearing thin in recent years, and the present threat against China is very likely to prove to be the final straw. The net effect would be to place the US out on an economic limb, alone.

There may be those who disagree with this premise, under the assumption that, to cut China out of the SWIFT system would destroy China’s ability to make international transactions, forcing them to cave to US demands.

However, China, Russia, and others have seen this day coming and have created their own SWIFT system, world cable network, and world banking system. All that’s needed to kick it all into gear is a major international need to bypass SWIFT. The US government has just provided that need with this threat. There would certainly be teething pains in getting the new system running on a massive scale, but the sudden worldwide need would drive the implementation.

This threat by the US at a time when it’s broke is, in effect, economic suicide.

But, just as the ink is drying on this announcement, the increasingly impetuous US president has cracked a deal with Democrats to permanently abolish the US debt ceiling. As the debt ceiling was the last safeguard in governmental fiscal responsibility, he’s effectively chosen to assure that the US will experience economic collapse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Actions of A Bully Child or Dying Empire: Sanctions and Threats

Actions of A Bully Child or Dying Empire: Sanctions and Threats - Rory Hall

 

As the Western world continues to slide into the dust bin of history, it is not going without a fight. As with any “wounded animal”, once the reality of pain permeates the body, it typically lashes out at anything or anyone within arms’ reach. In the case of the Western world, arms’-reach is merely the push of a button and everything begins to change.

What Europe has already come to realize is these meaningless Russian and Iranian sanctions only hurt western manufacturing and have minimal impact on the country the sanction is directed. Threatening to cut off China from the SWIFT system is akin to threatening to keep a person out the restroom in a home with multiple restrooms – it doesn’t matter as there are alternatives and they simply begin using the alternative and go about their business. The financial weapon known as the SWIFT system fired it’s only bullet in 2011 when Iran was locked out. The chamber is empty and there will never be another bullet for this particular weapon. All it really does is upset people to the point of China actually telling the U.S. “ calm down and stop making threats“.

If the Trump administration puts sanctions on China, this would hurt America more because it just forces China and Russia and other countries to cooperate, says investor and financial commentator Jim Rogers.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned on Tuesday that the US could impose economic sanctions on China if it does not implement the new sanctions regime against North Korea, saying that the restrictions could involve cutting off Beijing’s access to the US financial system.

“If China doesn’t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the US and international dollar system, and that’s quite meaningful,” Mnuchin said at the Delivering Alpha Conference in New York City.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Threatens To Cut Off China From SWIFT If It Violates North Korea Sanctions

US Threatens To Cut Off China From SWIFT If It Violates North Korea Sanctions

In an unexpectedly strong diplomatic escalation, one day after China agreed to vote alongside the US (and Russia) during Monday’s United National Security Council vote in passing the watered down North Korea sanctions, the US warned that if China were to violate or fail to comply with the newly imposed sanctions against Kim’s regime, it could cut off Beijing’s access to both the US financial system as well as the “international dollar system.”

Speaking at CNBC’s Delivering Alpha conference on Tuesday, Steven Mnuchin said that China had agreed to “historic” North Korean sanctions during Monday’s United Nations vote. “We worked very closely with the U.N.  I’m very pleased with the resolution that was just passed.  This is some of the strongest items.  We now have more tools in our toolbox, and we will continue to use them and put additional sanctions on North Korea until they stop this behavior.”

In response, Andrew Ross Sorkin countered that “we haven’t been able to move the needle on China, which seems to be the real mover on this, in terms of being able to apply the real pressure. What do you think the issue is?  What is the problem?”

The stunner was revealed in Mnuchin’s answer: “I think we have absolutely moved the needle on China.  I think what they agreed to yesterday was historic.  I’d also say I put sanctions on a major Chinese bank.  That’s the first time that’s ever been done.  And if China doesn’t follow these sanctions, we will put additional sanctions on them and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system.  And that’s quite meaningful.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Russia Readies Back-up System For Potentially Explosive “Split With International Banking System”

Russia Readies Back-up System For Potentially Explosive “Split With International Banking System”

Vladimir Putin Examines Gold at Russia's Central Depository

The grand order of things could be undergoing some major overhauls.

To put it more bluntly, a war to reset the global financial order is about to be unleashed.

Preparations inside Russia are being made in case the ultimate banking sanctions are placed on them, cutting off commerce inside the all-encompassing Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecomm SWIFT system – which runs credit, debt, and banking card transactions across a real time global network.

As it would be doled out by the banking elites, the price for misbehavior at the Kremlin could be ostracization from this global commerce vehicle.

But that isn’t the end of the story… Putin is readying his people to divorce from the international banking system altogether, and start over with a nationalistic platform, backed by thousands of tons of gold, and growing alliances with Europe, China and the BRICS nations, the Middle East and several emerging powers.

A major attempt to bring Russia under heel could result in the greatest schism the global system of finance has ever seen. Then what?

via Russia Insider:

Russia has successfully developed and implemented an alternative should it be excluded from international banking systems, according to a recent report.

As far as western sanctions go, by far Russia’s largest vulnerability is in its banking sector, which for better or for worse is tied to the hip with international banking.

If Russia wishes to maintain the status quo, there’s not much that can be done about this dependency. But shortly after sanctions were announced in 2014, Moscow set out to prepare for the worst-case scenario: being cut off from the Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) system. 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why did Lagarde Stay at the IMF? To Increase its Global Power.

Lagarde Christine imf

Christine Lagarde Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund spoke at the IMF Arab Fiscal Forum: Fiscal Policy and Growth in Abu Dhabi on February 22, 2016. Her message was clear – forget downsizing government or reforming anything, just raise taxes.  She opened the conference saying:

“This event is taking place at a pivotal moment not only for this region but for many other countries that have seen fiscal issues rise to the top of their policy agendas.

Or, to be more precise, it is taxation that has risen to the agenda in many countries. If you wonder why this issue has become so important, let me assure you that this is nothing new in the history of mankind!”

Lagarde is calling for international taxation. She has threatened every tax haven with being sanctioned and removed from the Swift System unless they give up everyone. She has done far more damage to the world economy than any previous director. We have anemic economic growth and rising tax enforcement depriving us of our free society and the free movement of people as well as capital. If you owe taxes, government simply revokes your passport precisely as passports began to prove you owed the state nothing and could travel. She concluded her address and called for global tax enforcement and raising taxes; not reforming government in the least. She said:

“Political economy…proposes two distinct objects: first, to provide a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people…and secondly, to supply the state or commonwealth with a revenue sufficient for the public services.”

My main message today is this: creating successful 21st-century economies requires robust government revenues and an international tax system that works for everybody. These ingredients are essential for growth, fairness, and development.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This Is The Real Reason For The War On Cash

This Is The Real Reason For The War On Cash

These are strange monetary times, with negative interest rates and central bankers deemed to be masters of the universe. So maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that politicians and central bankers are now waging a war on cash. That’s right, policy makers in Europe and the U.S. want to make it harder for the hoi polloi to hold actual currency.

Mario Draghi fired the latest salvo on Monday when he said the European Central Bank would like to ban €500 notes. A day later Harvard economist and Democratic Party favorite Larry Summers declared that it’s time to kill the $100 bill, which would mean goodbye to Ben Franklin. Alexander Hamilton may soon—and shamefully—be replaced on the $10 bill, but at least the 10-spots would exist for a while longer. Ol’ Ben would be banished from the currency the way dead white males like him are banned from the history books.

Limits on cash transactions have been spreading in Europe since the 2008 financial panic, ostensibly to crack down on crime and tax avoidance. Italy has made it illegal to pay cash for anything worth more than €1,000 ($1,116), while France cut its limit to €1,000 from €3,000 last year. British merchants accepting more than €15,000 in cash per transaction must first register with the tax authorities. Fines for violators can run into the thousands of euros. Germany’s Deputy Finance Minister Michael Meister recently proposed a €5,000 cap on cash transactions. Deutsche Bank CEO John Cryan predicted last month that cash won’t survive another decade.

The enemies of cash claim that only crooks and cranks need large-denomination bills. They want large transactions to be made electronically so government can follow them. Yet these are some of the same European politicians who blew a gasket when they learned that U.S. counterterrorist officials were monitoring money through the Swift global system. Criminals will find a way, large bills or not.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Italy Races To Defuse €200 Billion Bad Loan Time Bomb With “Bad Bank”

Italy Races To Defuse €200 Billion Bad Loan Time Bomb With “Bad Bank”

When Portugal “surprised” senior Novo Banco bondholders with a €2 billion bail-in late last month, the market got an unwelcome reminder that euro periphery banks are far from “solid.”

Novo was supposed to house the “good” assets salvaged from the wreckage of failed lender Banco Espirito Santo, but as it turned out, a lot of those “good” assets were actually bad, and Novo ended up needing to plug a €1.4 billion hole. Initially, the plan was to sell assets but seizing €2 billion from bondholders ended up being a whole lot easier and far more efficient.

News of the bail-in came just a week after Lisbon announced that a second bank – Banif – would need state aid after running out of cash to repay a previous cash injection from the government.

As we head into the weekend, periphery banks are back in the spotlight, only this time in Italy where PM Matteo Renzi is scrambling to put the finishing touches on a plan to guarantee hundreds of billions of NPLs sitting on the books of Italian banks.

Talks with the EU Commission “have already dragged on for two years,” FT notes and need to be concluded over the next few days lest “the whole initiative should collapse.”

Of course Renzi missed what amounted to a deadline on “fixing” the problem under the old rules governing bank resolutions.

One reason the Novo Banco and Banif bail-in and bailout (respectively) were pushed through in what appeared to be a kind of haphazard, ad hoc fashion was because new rules came into effect on January 1 that would have put uninsured depositors on the hook for losses. The same rules require 8% “of a bank’s liabilities to be wiped out before public money can be used,” FT adds.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Birth Of The PetroYuan (In 2 Pictures)

The Birth Of The PetroYuan (In 2 Pictures)

Give me that!!

It belongs to the Chinese now!

h/t @FedPorn

As we previously detailed,  two topics we’ve deemed critically important to a thorough understanding of both global finance and the shifting geopolitical landscape are the death of the petrodollar and the idea of yuan hegemony. 

In November 2014, in “How The Petrodollar Quietly Died And No One Noticed,” we said the following about the slow motion demise of the system that has served to perpetuate decades of dollar dominance:

Two years ago, in hushed tones at first, then ever louder, the financial world began discussing that which shall never be discussed in polite company – the end of the system that according to many has framed and facilitated the US Dollar’s reserve currency status: the Petrodollar, or the world in which oil export countries would recycle the dollars they received in exchange for their oil exports, by purchasing more USD-denominated assets, boosting the financial strength of the reserve currency, leading to even higher asset prices and even more USD-denominated purchases, and so forth, in a virtuous (especially if one held US-denominated assets and printed US currency) loop.

The main thrust for this shift away from the USD, if primarily in the non-mainstream media, was that with Russia and China, as well as the rest of the BRIC nations, increasingly seeking to distance themselves from the US-led, “developed world” status quo spearheaded by the IMF, global trade would increasingly take place through bilateral arrangements which bypass the (Petro)dollar entirely. And sure enough, this has certainly been taking place, as first Russia and China, together with Iran, and ever more developing nations, have transacted among each other, bypassing the USD entirely, instead engaging in bilateral trade arrangements.

Falling crude prices served to accelerate the petrodollar’s demise and in 2014, OPEC nations drained liquidityfrom financial markets for the first time in nearly two decades:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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