Authored by Pepe Escobar,
The “rules-based worldwide order” – as in “our approach or the freeway” – is unraveling a lot quicker than anybody might have predicted.
The Eurasia Financial Union (EAEU) and China are beginning to design a brand new financial and monetary system bypassing the U.S. greenback, supervised by Sergei Glazyev and supposed to compete with the Bretton Woods system.
Saudi Arabia – perpetrator of bombing, famine and genocide in Yemen, weaponized by U.S., UK and EU – is advancing the approaching of the petroyuan.
India – third largest importer of oil on this planet – is about to signal a mega-contract to purchase oil from Russia with an enormous low cost and utilizing a ruble-rupee mechanism.
Riyadh’s oil exports quantity to roughly $170 billion a yr. China buys 17% of it, in comparison with 21% for Japan, 15% for the U.S., 12% for India and roughly 10% for the EU. The U.S. and its vassals – Japan, South Korea, EU – will stay throughout the petrodollar sphere. India, identical to China, could not.
Sanction blowback is on the offense. Even a market/on line casino capitalism darling similar to uber-nerd Credit score Suisse strategist Zoltan Pozsar, previously with the NY Fed, IMF and Treasury Dept., has been pressured to confess, in an analytical observe:
“If you happen to suppose that the West can develop sanctions that may maximize the ache for Russia by minimizing the dangers of economic stability and value stability for the West, then you too can belief unicorns.”
Unicorns are a trademark of the large NATOstan psyops equipment, lavishly illustrated by the staged, utterly faux “summit” in Kiev between Comic Ze and the Prime Ministers of Poland, Slovenia and the Czech Republic, completely debunked by John Helmer and Polish sources.
Pozsar, a realist, hinted in actual fact on the ritual burial of the monetary chapter of the “rules-based worldwide order” in place because the early Chilly Warfare years: “After the top of this struggle [in Ukraine], ‘cash’ will by no means be the identical.” Particularly when the Hegemon demonstrates its “guidelines” by encroaching on different individuals’s cash.
And that configures the central tenet of twenty first century martial geopolitics as financial/ideological. The world, particularly the International South, should determine whether or not “cash” is represented by the digital, turbo-charged on line casino privileged by the Individuals or by actual, tangible belongings similar to vitality sources. A bipolar monetary world – U.S. greenback vs. yuan – is at hand.
There’s no surefire proof – but. However the Kremlin could have actually gamed that through the use of Russia’s international reserves as bait, prone to be frozen by sanctions, the top outcome might be the smashing of the petrodollar. After all of the overwhelming majority of the International South by now has absolutely understood that the backed-by-nothing U.S. greenback as “cash” – in response to Poznar – is completely untrustworthy.
If that’s the case, speak about a Putin ippon from hell.
It’s gold theft time
As I outlined the emergence of the brand new paradigm, from the brand new financial system to be designed by a cooperation between the EAEU and China to the arrival of the petroyuan, a severe knowledgeable dialogue erupted a few essential a part of the puzzle: the destiny of the Russian gold reserves.
Doubts swirled across the Russian Central Financial institution’s arguably suicidal coverage of maintaining belongings in international securities or in banks weak to Western sanctions.
In fact there’s all the time the likelihood Moscow calculated that nations holding Russian reserves – similar to Germany and France – have belongings in Russia that may be simply nationalized. And that the overall debt of the state plus Russian firms even exceeds the quantity of frozen reserves.
However what in regards to the gold?
As of February 1, three weeks earlier than the beginning of Operation Z, the Russian Central Financial institution held $630.2 billion in reserves. Virtually half –
$311.2 billion – have been positioned in international securities, and 1 / 4 – $151.9 billion – on deposits with international business and Central Banks. Not precisely a superb technique. As of June final yr, strategic companion China held 13.8% of Russia’s reserves, in gold and international foreign money.
As for the bodily gold, $132.2 billion – 21% of complete reserves – stays in vaults in Moscow (two-thirds) and St. Petersburg (one-third).
So no Russian gold has been frozen? Nicely, it’s sophisticated.
The important thing downside is that greater than 75% of Russian Central Financial institution reserves are in international foreign money. Half of those are securities, like authorities bonds: they by no means depart the nation that issued them. Roughly 25% of the reserves are linked to international banks, largely personal, in addition to the BIS and the IMF.
As soon as once more it’s important to recollect Sergei Glazyev in his groundbreaking essay Sanctions and Sovereignty:
“It’s vital to finish the de-dollarization of our international alternate reserves, changing the greenback, euro and pound with gold. Within the present situations of the anticipated explosive progress within the value of gold, its mass export overseas is akin to treason and it’s excessive time for the regulator to cease it.”
It is a highly effective indictment of the Russian Central Financial institution – which was borrowing in opposition to gold and exporting it. For all sensible functions, the Central Financial institution might be accused of perpetrating an inside job. And subsequently they have been caught flat-footed by the devastating American sanctions.
As a Moscow analyst places it, the Central Financial institution “had delivered some volumes of gold to London in 2020-2021. This determination was motivated by a excessive value of gold at the moment (close to $2000 per ounce) and will hardly be initiated by Putin. In that case, this determination could be certified as very silly, and even a part of a diversionist tactic (…) A lot of the gold delivered to London was not saved however offered and transferred into international foreign money reserves (in euro or kilos) which have been frozen later.”
No surprise lots of people in Russia are furious. A fast flashback is so as. In June final yr, Putin signed a legislation canceling necessities for the repatriation of international alternate earnings from gold exports. 5 months later, Russia’s gold miners have been exporting like loopy. A month later, the Duma wished to know why the Central Financial institution had stopped shopping for gold. No surprise Russia media erupted with accusations of “an unprecedented [gold] theft”.
Now it’s far more dramatic: RIA Novosti described the American-dictated freeze as – what else – a “theft” and duly predicted world financial chaos. As for the Central Financial institution, it’s again on the gold shopping for enterprise.
Not one of the above although explains some “lacking” gold that de facto just isn’t underneath the possession of the Russian Central Financial institution. And that’s the place a considerably shady character similar to Herman Gref is available in.
Let’s examine this out with State Duma deputy Mikhail Delyagin, who had a number of issues to say in regards to the gold-exported-to-London bonanza:
“This course of has been happening for the previous yr. Exported, in response to some estimates, 600 tons. [Head of Russian Central Bank] Nabiullina stated – whoever needs to promote gold to get money, or if you happen to mine gold and commerce it, remember that the state, in my particular person, won’t purchase gold from you at a market value. We’ll take it at a giant low cost. If you wish to get trustworthy cash for it, please export it. The world heart of gold buying and selling is London. Accordingly, everybody started to export and promote gold there. Together with Mr. [Herman] Gref. The top of the formally state-owned Sberbank offered an enormous a part of his gold reserves.”
Look right here for fascinating particulars about Sberbank’s Gref shenanigans.
Look ahead to the gold-backed ruble
It could be a case of too little too late, however at the least the Kremlin has now established a committee – with authority over the Central Financial institution nerds – to deal with the intense stuff.
It boggles the thoughts that the Russian Central Financial institution doesn’t reply to the Russian structure in addition to to the judicial system, however in actual fact is subordinated to the IMF. A case could be made that this cartel-designed monetary system – implying zero sovereignty – merely can’t be tackled head on by any nation on the planet, and Putin has been attempting to undermine it step-by-step. That features, in fact, maintaining Elvira Nabiullina on the job whilst she duly follows the Washington consensus to the letter.
And that brings us again to the extremely excessive stakes chance that the Kremlin could have wished from the begin to go no holds barred, forcing the Atlanticists to disclose their true hand, and exposing their system in a “The King is Bare” spectacular for a worldwide viewers.
And that’s the place the EAEU/China new financial/monetary system is available in, underneath Glazyev supervision. We will actually envision Russia, China and huge swathes of Eurasia progressively divorcing from on line casino capitalism; the ruble reconverted to a gold-backed foreign money; and Russia centered on self-sufficiency, productive home funding and commerce connectivity with many of the International South.
Method past its confiscated international reserves and tons of gold offered in London, what issues is that Russia stays the last word pure useful resource powerhouse. Shortages? A bit of austerity for a short time will maintain it: nothing as dramatic because the nationwide impoverishment underneath the neoliberal Nineties. And additional enhance would come from exporting pure sources at premium low cost costs to different BRICS and most of Eurasia and the International South.
The collective West has simply fabricated a brand new, tawdry East-West divide. Russia is popping it the other way up, to its personal revenue: after all of the multipolar world is rising within the East.
The Empire of Lies gained’t again down, as a result of it doesn’t have a Plan B. Plan A is to “cancel” Russia throughout the – Western – spectrum. So what? Russophobia, racism, 24/7 psyops, propaganda overdrive, cancel tradition on-line mobs, that don’t imply a factor.
Details matter: the Bear has sufficient nuclear/hypersonic {hardware} to shatter NATO in a couple of minutes earlier than breakfast and train a lesson to the collective West earlier than pre-dinner cocktails. There’ll come a time when some exceptionalist with an honest IQ will lastly perceive the which means of “indivisibility of safety”.