Ahem...
Posted on 03/23/2022 10:06:05 PM PDT by Zhang Fei
India and Russia will have currency swaps in place to finance trade in rupees and rubles, bypassing the US sanctions regime against Russia, the president of India’s export association told CNBC Wednesday (March 23).
Several of India’s state-owned banks will execute the swaps under the supervision of the Reserve Bank of India, starting as early as next week, according to A. Sakthivel, president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO).
Although the volumes of prospective trade to be financed under this swap arrangement are small, the India-Russia agreement, if executed, would be the first open departure from dollar-based system of international trade financing.
The US sanctions regime doesn’t extend to Russia’s oil and gas shipments to Europe and Asia, which earn Moscow more than $1 billion a day, and Russia customers do not need to seek alternative financing mechanisms. The India-Russia swap, though, is an open break with the dollar regime.
Saudi Arabia reportedly is considering accepting China’s RMB as payment for oil, but the Gulf countries have released no information on non-dollar oil payments.
India has been an aggressive buyer of Russian oil, reportedly at discounted prices. News media cite a two-million-barrel sale to Hindustan Petroleum and a three-million-barrel sale to Indian Oil, although the true totals aren’t known.
Asian countries now have $380 billion of local-currency swap lines, which allow importers and exporters to pay in their own currencies rather than in US dollars in case of need. The balance of trade would then be settled by transfers among central banks in any acceptable reserve asset, including US dollars or gold. These swap lines remain inactive, as an emergency backup system. But Asian central banks have been eager to expand them. Japan’s central bank is a strong advocate of swap line expansion, according to Asian government sources.
(Excerpt) Read more at asiatimes.com ...
After the 1997 Financial Crisis, Asian countries accumulated reserves in order to prevent currency manipulation from being used against them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_Asian_financial_crisis#Outside_Asia
The freezing of Russian Central Bank dollar reserves by the US now clearly jeopardizes this strategy.
Every country that values independence will diversify reserves away from the dollar.
If we cut back on purchases from our enemies I would think that would have an effect. It’s coming. No more chinese stuff for me. And we don’t need russian oil. We’ve got plenty.
Soviets were different because of one key distinction: They came from 15 “republics”, while what we deal with now is “Russia proper”. Stalin’s homeland is now the independent country of Georgia; Brezhnez’s birthplace is in Ukraine today.
Ahem...
A certain section of the US military may have an excess of woke thinking (eg the ad with the ‘two moms’), but the fact still remains that the American fighting machine is the most dangerous military force in human history. If Ukraine is giving Russia issues imagine what the American military could do?
Without nuclear weapons Russia is not the threat it was thought to be. Sure, they will turn the cities in eastern Ukraine to rubble with artillery, and they have some interesting cruise and anti-ship missiles (the latter not doing anything in this conflict), but they really cannot be measured anywhere close to the US.
Emma (of the two moms) is part of a military that will still whoop the backsides of Russia before going home for a cafe latte with organic goat milk cream.
the Russians did use the Bastian-P in a land attack role.
The dollar’s status as reserve currency isn’t just due to the petrodollar. Neither one is going anywhere.
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