the petro dollar

[bentech]

i dont get how this works,

The latest US sanctions, which sent the Russian currency to its steepest drop in the past three years, surprisingly helped to boost the country’s budget with an extra 232 billion rubles ($3.8 billion).

The decline in the value of the ruble, as well as recent purchases of hard currency by the Central Bank of Russia, brought an additional inflow of money for the Russian government.

The re-assessment of foreign-exchange reserves shows that, at the peak of the ruble crash, when the national currency fell to over 65 rubles to one dollar, Russia's sovereign wealth fund reaped a profit of some 470 billion rubles ($7.6 billion). However, the subsequent strengthening of the Russian currency wiped out nearly half of the gains

https://www.rt.com/business/425078-russ ... eak-ruble/

[bentech]

Iran recently announced it is dropping the US dollar in foreign trade. Just as Iraq did shortly before it was invaded by the US, or Libya planned to before it was bombed by NATO-led allies. Lee Camp is starting to see a pattern.

The US is gearing up to abandon the Iran nuclear deal, which has all but killed Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief, because it's not restrictive enough. With Iran already saying it won't accept more demands or more sanctions, it's anyone's guess what kind of chain reaction might ensue.

READ MORE: Iran dumps dollar for euro in foreign trade transactions
Comedian Lee Camp's guess is pretty grim. He notices how Iran recently ditched the dollar in favor of the euro – something Iraq also did 18 years ago, a couple years before the US invaded it under the phony pretext of weapons of mass destruction. Libya wanted to do the same, although its leader Muammar Gaddafi wanted to establish its own currency, the gold dinar – but in 2011, NATO warplanes bombed his country to support an uprising against him. Almost immediately, the rebels formed their own central bank and were given leave by the US and the UN to legally sell oil from the land they controlled.

On his show Redacted Tonight, Lee deconstructs these parallels and more, because "It's all about the banking!"

https://youtu.be/VobUNfYwlss

[Butcher Bob]

As I understand it, he's missing Syria as well.

[bentech]

Clear at this point, with Washington and London abandoning any pretense of rules of international law to justify their acts of war, Iran is facing a potentially devastating new round of economic warfare to follow months of softening up through the de facto currency warfare. Things could get really ugly in the Middle East after May 12. That will target Iran, a key link to the Eurasian Belt Road Initiative, the new Economic Silk Road of China and the economic cooperation with Russia. If that succeeds, we can be sure that further targeting of Russia as well as of China is next in line. If those key strategic Eurasian powers fail to strengthen their mutual cooperation on economic, political and military levels, it could be like shooting fish in a barrel for Washington to knock out the rivals to its undisputed sole superpower hegemony. That would not be at all good for world peace prospects.

https://journal-neo.org/2018/04/21/wash ... lize-iran/

[Jesús Malverde]

The Chinese may break the stranglehold on the petrodollar in trading but the USD as global reserve currency has no imminent competitors. The only likely ones, the Yuan and the Euro cannot run the trade deficits necessary and maintain their export driven economies. And as long as the USD remains the global reserve currency, deficits don't really matter which in turn limits the potential damage of attempts to undermine the USD can do. I am oversimplifying for brevity, but that's the gist of it.

[Butcher Bob]

China is a tricky one, considering the amount of US debt they hold. Sort of a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation. But one thing is certain, they could fuk US economically...it's just a matter if that would be beneficial for them.

[bentech]

19 May, 2018 07:23

Which countries are dumping the dollar and why?

The European Union is considering switching payments from the US dollar to the euro after Washington threatened to target European firms working in Iran, according to reports.
The measure may help the EU to retain one of the world's largest markets, which was opened for trade after the historic nuclear deal signed by Tehran and the P5+1 powers (China, France, Russia, UK, US, plus Germany) in June 2015.
Read more
Europe to ditch US dollar in payments for Iranian oil – source
The idea to eliminate the role of the greenback in international settlements is not new. Aside from the EU, a number of nations have been mulling the idea. RT discussed with analysts how realistic the prospect of countries ditching the dollar is.
In light of the recent developments Iran is the most pressured nation to drop the dollar with Tehran having partially adjusted trade without the US currency, Alexandre Kateb, president of Competence Finance SAS, told RT.
"When Iran was previously under sanctions from 2012 to 2015, it established new mechanisms to bypass US-related financial institutions, such as barter exchange and to replace the dollar with other currencies, such as the renminbi in its bilateral trade with China or the euro in its trade with European countries," the economist said.
At the same time, China's recent move to trade oil in yuan is seen as an initial step to challenging the dollar dominance, Stephen Innes, Head of FX Trading for OANDA in Asia Pacific told RT, stressing that the number of bilateral trade agreements, signed amongst Asia Pacific nations, will settle in yuan.
"Mainland it is laying the ground for the Belt and Road Initiative, and China is even sweetening the pot by offering swap facilities to local countries to promote the use of the yuan," he added.
Experts are unanimous on the point that bi- and multi-lateral pacts between various nations could become the major drivers on the way toward decreasing the dependence on US currency in international trade.
Read more
China urges ditching dollar & euro trade with Russia in favor of national currencies
"This would depend on the leverage the EU, the UK, Russia and China deploy. The likely scenario is diversification – bilateral arrangements between trading partners, or regional arrangements, substituting for multilateral arrangements that supported dollar dominance," Ramaa Vasudevan an Associate Professor at the Department of Economics, Colorado State University told RT.
At the same time, analysts admit that getting rid of the greenback is not an easy task. It took the US dollar nearly a century to unsettle the British pound that had been enjoying its preeminence through the 19th century and the first half of the 20th as the global reserve currency.
"Old habits are hard to break as most of the global hedging is still done on US exchanges like Nymex or ICE," Innes said. "The issues are working out the deliverable to hedge ratio factors which could put many off from breaking long-held settlement in US dollar."
"The US dollar is still, for many reasons, the international trade and reserve currency of choice," according to Kateb. "The whole international financial system is currently structured around the United States and around the central role of the dollar."
However, the expert noted that the international system will change dramatically. Rapid development of blockchain technology along with rooting of virtual currencies is reportedly set to bring about the changing process.
Read more
China can succeed with petro-yuan where Gaddafi failed – killing the US dollar in oil trade
"Eventually, the evolution of global finance will be very much related to the evolution of the global balance of power," the economist told RT. "This will not happen overnight. It will take time and many more crises and balance shifts. None really knows what the new system will look like."
The experts agreed that expelling the greenback from its dominant position in the international monetary system will take much more effort than just replacing it with the euro or other domestic currencies.
"Dollar dominance does not depend simply on its use to denominate trade, but on the dollar's role as the pivot of the international financial system – the fact that about 88 percent of the average daily turnover of foreign exchange instruments is against the dollar, in contrast to the share of the euro which is only about 31 percent," said Vasudevan.
The researcher highlighted that the recent impulse for dislodging the US currency is a symptom of a wider discontent with the rules of the dollar system, but is not a cure for the dollar problem.



https://www.rt.com/business/427177-who- ... us-dollar/

[bentech]

The share of yuan-backed crude oil contracts has soared to 12 percent of global trading since the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, compared to eight percent in March, when they were launched.


https://www.rt.com/business/427193-petr ... ollar-oil/

[Butcher Bob]

Wow....we could get fukked. I'm curious to see where we stand after a years time.

Wait a minute.....when was Tillerson fired?

[bentech]

seen this?

“Basically every country creates their own narrative story,” Stengel said. “My old job at the State Department was what people used to joke [call] the chief propagandist job. I’m not against propaganda, every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don’t necessarily think it’s that awful.”

viewtopic.php?f=48&t=11873

[bentech]

Vice President Dick Cheney cynically quipped, “debt doesn’t matter; Reagan proved that.” Up to a point that appeared so. Now we are getting dangerously near to that “point” where debt does matter.

Since 2009, US corporate debt has increased by 49%, hitting a record total of $8.8 trillion. Much of that debt has been used to fund stock repurchases by the companies to boost their stock price, the main reason for the unprecedented Wall Street stock market bubble.

we are overdue for our next recession and given the interest rate is only 1 point something the fed doesn't have any room to stimulate effectively...

https://journal-neo.org/2018/06/01/usa- ... th-spiral/

[bentech]

Russia dumps half of its US Treasury bonds
16 Jun, 2018

Russia has held a major selloff of US Treasury bonds, dumping some $47bn-worth of papers and momentarily dropping six places on a list of major foreign holders of US securities, recently released statistics for April have shown.

In just one month, Russia proceeded to sell $47.4 billion out of the $96.1 billion the country had in US treasury bonds in March. The latest statistics released by the US Treasury Department on Friday showed that, in April, Russia had only $48.7bn in American assets, occupying 22nd place on the list of “major foreign holders of Treasury securities.”

China, which holds the most US Treasury bonds, also sold off some seven billion-worth of its American assets, from March to April, and now has $1.18 trillion invested in securities. Japan, which is positioned second on the list, in the same timeframe sold off some $12 billion, leaving just over a trillion dollars in US coffers. Ireland, which had $300.4 billion in April also managed to ditch over $17 billion in US assets.

https://www.rt.com/business/429931-russ ... reasuries/

[Butcher Bob]

Less than .4% of total debt...trivial, insignificant.
Japan and Ireland shouldn't be included...down to aboot a quarter of a percent now.
Average daily trading...over half a Trillion.

[bentech]

i though the change in their position was worth note
its easy to forget that Russias
s economy is about the size of italy's

a couple years ago I heard an economist say that Russia had so much gold reserve the economic recession the west was forcing on it made its total debt so cheap that it might repurchase it outright...

[bentech]

Russia & India ditching US dollar in defense deals

Moscow and Delhi are seeking to bypass US sanctions by using the rupee and the ruble in facilitating military deals, according to Indian daily, the Economic Times.
The paper reports that US sanctions are hampering $2 billion in defense deals between Russia and India, as payments are getting stuck. The countries are seeking to avoid this by switching to settlements in domestic currencies and ditching the greenback.


https://www.rt.com/business/430185-russ ... ls-dollar/