The New World Order Versus The BRICS World Order

 

Last week’s Brics summit was supposed to herald the dawn of a new world order. It would announce the end of the American era and the rise of another, this time belonging to developing nations. It would even, according to excitable analysts, be remembered as another Bandung Conference, the 1955 meeting that paved the way for a non-aligned movement during the Cold War.

And on that front, the gathering in Johannesburg succeeded. The organisation announced its first expansion since its founding in 2009: next year, the five original Brics members — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — will be joined by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, Iran, Ethiopia and Argentina (provided the current government wins the upcoming elections, which seems unlikely). Even more significantly, the summit underscored the bloc’s inclination to use its increasing economic clout to challenge the Western-dominated global order. The combination of these two elements — growing economic muscle and political boldness — means that the bloc (to be renamed Brics Plus) has become a full-blooded geopolitical actor that can longer be ignored.

However western soft power is still too strong for Brics or Brics plus or Brics Alpha to have much immediate effect. Only time will tell whether it has long term staying power.

As long as the global population consumes Hollywood and Westen media, wears Westen luxury brands and accessories, aspires to western luxury vehicles, reads western content, sends their children to western schools, colleges and universities, prefers western sons and daughters in law, maintains savings in dollars, euros and pounds in western banks in western countries, this new bloc will have a mountain to climb if it is to fulfill the ambition to undermine American hegemony and replace the US$ as the global reserve currency. There are signs though that steady progress is already being made towards achieving those goals.

On the other hand, the Achilles’ heel of the USA and its NATO and EU allies is the finances of western, debt dependent economies – and especially in the use of the dollar as a reserve currency. This is the area in which BRICS can pose the greatest threat: if the dollar fails America fails. And NATO / EUmember states will be dragged down with it.

For comparison, the downfall of the British Empire was as much about declining financial strength as anything else. Having built up an enormous pool of investments by 1914 in America, Argentina, India, etc etc it had to sell half to finance WW1 and the rest for WW2. By 1945 it was running on IOUs of which one form was the continued willingness of many countries to hold their reserves as Sterling at the Bank of England. The history of 1945 to 1975 was largely a matter of these IOUs coming due and the British trying to cut their colonies, overseas garrisons and other commitments to economise – and simultaneously becoming subservient to their largest creditor, America.

Today America appears to be where Britain was then. The only difference is that Washington has dissipated its foreign investments and sold its bonds to the highest bidder in order to finance a credit driven boom rather than two world wars. American indebtedness at all levels is truly astounding.

The Chinese have long been adept at exploiting weaknesses in the West’s financial and foreign policies and usually astute enough to avoid challenging western supremacy where it cannot win. On a military level, they developed relatively cheap long range missiles which have neutralised the US Pacific fleet. Now they are using the BRICS to hit America where it will hurt financially – by pushing the de dollarisation of official reserves and the oil futures market.

The Chinese are playing a more crafty game in this new Cold War than the Russians did in the old one – or Putin has recently. Maybe Go produces subtler strategists than Chess or Poker.

 

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Dedollarisation Gathers Pace As Biden's Administration Gathers Dust

 In spite of our resident money and finance expert, along with myself and other contributors regularly being described as anti - American clowns, employees of Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, Nazis, capitalist scum and a some rather more colourful things when we write about currency wars and the decline of the US$ as China, Russia, Iran and other emerging economies plot and conspire to replace the US$ as global reserve currency, de - dollarisation is a fact.  From Brazil to Saudi Arabia, and from India to Argentina, and increasing number of nations are 'reportedly' shifting away from the dollar hegemon.

The Dollar Index (or any other index tracking movements in the currency market) reveals an underlying trend. Year on year for the past decade the dollar's share of world trade is declining. This is a relative measure of course, US pseudo - patriots will be able to point to increases in the total amount of trade done in dollars, it's true. But the global economy is growing too, and the amount of trade done in dollars as a proportion of all international trade is steadily declining. 

Picture: Zero Hedge

The dollar's fecal emissions are some way from hitting any rapidly rotating wind turbine yet,  but Stephen Jen, a currency trading guru  who now runs money at Eurizon SLJ,  recently speelled out exactly how rapidly the de-dollarization is ocurring.

Jen, warned in a recent briefing, that the dollar is losing its reserve status at a faster pace than generally accepted, as many analysts have failed to account for last year’s frantic swings in exchange rates.

“The dollar suffered a stunning collapse in 2022 in its market share as a reserve currency, presumably due to its muscular use of sanctions,” Jen and his colleague Joana Freire wrote.

“Exceptional actions taken by the US and its allies against Russia have startled large reserve-holding countries,” most of which are emerging economies from the so-called Global South, they said.

As this FT infographic illustrates,  if you adjust for price changes the dollar’s share of official global reserve currencies (values of a currency held by foreign governments,) has gone from about 73 per cent in 2001 to around 55 per cent in 2021.

Then, last year, it fell to 47 percent of total global reserves.

 Source: Eurizon SLJ Capital

More ominously, the USD is losing its market share as a reserve currency at a much faster rate than is commonly believed.

"After steady declines in its global market share for the past two decades, in 2022 the dollar lost market share at a pace 10 times as rapidly. Analysts have failed to detect this big change because they calculate the nominal value of the world’s central banks’ dollar holdings without considering the changes in the price of the dollar. Adjusting for these price changes, the dollar, we calculate, has lost some 11 percent of its market share since 2016 and double that amount since 2008.

This erosion in the USD’s reserve currency status has accelerated precipitously since the start of the war in Ukraine. Exceptional actions taken by the US and its allies against Russia have startled large reserve-holding countries, most of which are from the Global South.

...Without the need for us to take sides in this debate on Ukraine, it seems reasonable to speculate that the main driver of the collapse in USD’s reserve status in 2022 may have reflected a panicked reaction to property rights being jeopardised. What we witnessed in 2022 was sort of a ‘defund-the-global-police’ moment, whereby many reserve managers in the world disagreed with the conduct of both Russia and the US."

To put it bluntly the greenback’s share in global reserves slid last year at 10 times the average speed of the past two decades as a number of countries looked for alternatives after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered sanctions.

As any economist or corporate CFO will tell you there are two pillars that maintain the US dollar in is dominant position and thus prop up the entire American economy: its role as the reserve currency of choice, and its dominant use in global finance and trade. Investors far too often confuse these two different concepts.

Stephen Jen argues. "While the Global South seems unwilling to continue to hold dollar assets, they  have lacked the ability to divest from the US dollar as an international currency, particularly for financial transactions."

While it will be very difficult to overcome the strong network effects that have been behind the dollar’s international currency status, the bid led by China, Russia and Iran, now joined by Saudi Arabia, India and Brazil loks strong enough to be capable of doing just that.The key to topple the dollar’s throne as an international currency is predicated on the relative developments and stability in the various financial markets, but with China Russia and Iran having recently cooperated in launching the Petroyuan and announced plans for a gold backed reserve currency to rival the dollar the outlook is bleak for the world's more powerful economy and in the light of internal divisions and the loonytoons policies of the current government it is only likely to become bleaker.

 

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The recently minted Saudi-Russia-China oil alliance, which paves the way for international oil trades to be settled in a currency of the vendors choice effectively spells the end of the 'Petrodollar' system, an agreement concluded in the early 1970s between Saudi Arabia, as the world's largest oil exporter, and the USA, issuer since the Bretton Woods agreement of 1945, of the main global reserve currency for international trade.

This development has the potential to cause all kinds of trouble for the US economy, which has been propped up for decades by the US$ status as reserve currency, because it enabled the USA to dictate to nations and organisations needing to buy dollars to settle their trades, what price the USA would pay for its imports and how much its trading partners would pay for US exports.. At the OPEC+ (Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Cpuntries,) meeting earlier this month the decision by member states to cut crude output, for the second time since President Joe (Where am I, what's going on,) Biden flew to Saudi Arabia last summer to plead with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to increase oil output may be just the start of the oil producers revenge, after they have watched advanced nations try and fail to find alternative ways to power their economies which would have destroyed the oil producers revenue streams.

The April 2 announcement caused oil prices to spike by about $5 a barrel. OPEC’s projections on future demand show that the cuts will widen the supply shortfall later this year as futures contracts made before sanctions were applied to Russian oil exports expire. That means oil prices will go up further, with the usual knock on effects on food and manufactured goods, inflation will rise even faster, and recession risks become greater because consumers spending more on energy  and food will have less to spend on consumer goods. Worse, in spite of sanctions Russia is still managing to sell its oil via middle men in China, Iran, India, Pakistan and the Gulf States so Russian President Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, gets a bigger war-chest to fund his attack on Ukraine.

But what does the OPEC+ move tell us about the likely future for oil prices.

In a world of shifting geopolitical alliances, Saudi Arabia is breaking away from Washington’s orbit and cosying up to China and Russia which in addition to its detente with the traditional enemy and rival regional power Iran, is very bad news for businesses and citizens in the developed nations. The Saudis set oil production levels in coordination with Russia. When they wanted to ease tensions with regional rival Iran, they turned to China to broker a deal with the US left out of the loop. Western influence over the oil cartel, in other words, is no longer absolute and appears to be waning fast.

But while The White House  expects OPEC+ members  to dance to Washington's tune, all have their own priorities, from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s ambitious plans to reinvent his economy, to Putin’s war. Any extra revenue they get from charging more for oil will help and also serve China's long term aim of replacing the US$ as reserve currency with a trading system of its own creation.

Asked about concerns that OPEC+ has twice cut production since Biden's visit to Saudi Arabia, a State Department spokesperson said the administration is focused on controlling domestic energy prices and ensuring US energy security, adding that the US views production cuts as inadvisable given ongoing market volatility.

Meanwhile, the threat of competition from US shale fields, a deterrent to price hikes in the past, has receded. And while there’s a global effort to reduce fossil-fuel use — and higher prices will accelerate that effort — the dash to drill in the last year shows that the zero-carbon economy remains in the realm of wishful thinking than an achievable target in the short term.

However for the global economy, lower oil supply and higher prices are doubly bad news. The major exporters are the big winners, of course. For importers, like most European countries, more expensive energy is a double blow — dragging on growth even as inflation rises. Bloomberg Economics’ SHOK model predicts that for every $5 increase in oil prices, US inflation will rise by 0.2 percentage point, which  at a time when the Federal Reserve is struggling to bring prices under control is not welcome.

There are three key reasons why more such shocks may be in store: The geopolitical shift, the maturing of shale, and the Saudi spending splurge.

For decades, the US-Saudi “oil for security” pact has been the foundation of of the energy market.  Symbolized by the 1945 meeting between President Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud, aboard a US cruiser in the Suez Canal, the deal to make US$ the reserve currency later gave the US access to Saudi oil in exchange for guaranteeing the kingdom’s security.

But the pact is no longer what it once was: 

In 2018, Washington Post columnist and Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul.

In 2019, Joe Biden — then a presidential candidate — threatened to turn Saudi Arabia into a pariah state and halt arms sales.

In 2021, early in the Biden presidency, the US government published an intelligence report assessing that Crown Prince Mohammed, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, was responsible for the Khashoggi assassination.

In October 2022, OPEC+ lowered oil production by 2 million barrels a day — less than three months after Biden flew to Riyadh seeking an increase. The White House blasted the move as “short-sighted.”

Last month, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to restore diplomatic ties in a deal brokered by China and signed in Beijing. The Saudi government has also agreed to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization – a group with China and Russia at the helm, and seen as a rival to Western institutions,  as a “dialogue member”.

"The Saudis are looking for an aggressive hedge," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington-based think tank. "Given what the Saudis see as a radically unpredictable US policy, they think it's irresponsible not to look for a hedge. And by radically unpredictable, you're looking at a US policy that changed sharply between Obama and Trump and Biden."

In the aftermath of the April 2 move, Saudi officials said it was motivated by national priorities rather than any diplomatic agenda.

“OPEC+ has succeeded now and in the past in stabilizing oil markets, and contrary to claims by Western and industrial states this has nothing to do with politics,” former Saudi oil ministry adviser Mohammad Al Sabban said, according to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper

 

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Governments constantly make positive noises about the health of their economies although most people who are in work have felt no improvement on the position they were in after the crash of 2008. Wagest are stangnant, employment has reduced somewhat (see below) and while the banks are printing money and the super rich are widening the gap between themselves and ordinary people faster than ever, the real situation is frightening.

Obama's Posturing As Leader Of The Battle Against Climate Change Exposed At home in the USA, where his word does still carry some weight, if only by virtue of the fact that he is still their elected leader, after seven years of waffling (and somewhat under the radar but that is coincidence), Obama at long last rejected the proposed Keystone XL pipeline which would have transported over 800,000 barrels a day of low grade (dirty) oil ...

Another Oil Exporting State Surrenders: Last Nail In Petrodollar's Coffin
While record mainland deficits covered by the petroleum sector is nothing new in Norwegian budget history, the 2016 budget did raise some eyebrows. The net inflow to the Norwegian Treasury from North Sea oil will be lower than the required amount to cover the deficit. This has never happened before and is testimony of the sea change occurring in the world of petrodollar recycling.

Fracking Truth: Mainstream media reports only corporate lies and government propaganda.
The government, energy companies and their poodles in the science academy have been trying to sell us fracking as the cheapish, cleanish but ultimately more reliable than wind and mirrors way of meeting future energy needs. Nobody believed them of course, only a complete idiot would believe that nonsense. Unfortunately the idiots believed themselves.

[ Currency wars ] ... [ Petrodollar collapse ] ... [ oil, saudi arabia,qatar ] ... [ new world order ] ... [ Net Zero ]

De - Dollarisation: China, Brazil Make Deal To Ditch US Dollar For Bilateral Trades

 The Move To Ditch The US Dollar Is Gathering Momentum

China and Brazil this week concluded a deal to conduct trade between their nations in their own in their own currencies, ditching the established reserve currency for global trade, US dollar as an intermediary, the Brazilian announced said on Wednesday. This is Beijing’s latest strike against the almighty greenback in its currency war aimed at shifting the balance of geopolitical and economic power from west to east.

The deal will empower China, the top rival to US economic hegemony, and South America's biggest economy, Brazil, to conduct their massive trade in Brazilian commodities and Chinese manufactured goods, and the associated financial transactions directly, exchanging yuan for reais and vice versa instead of going through the dollar, a system which allowed US businesses and goverment agencies to skim off the cream from each transacyion for themselves.

It is this systematic abuse of the financial power gained from being issuer of the reserve currency that has kept the US economy on top throughout the past 30 years of failing US foreign and industrial policy.

“The expectation is that this will reduce costs... promote even greater bilateral trade and facilitate investment,” the Brazilian Trade and Investment Promotion Agency (ApexBrasil) said in a statement.

It is not the first bilateral agreement to abandon the US$ as the de facto world currency this week.

China settled its first LNG trade in yuan; but gold remains the bigger winner in the global de-dollarization.

 

The U.S. dollar's role as the world's reserve currency was further tested as more nations chose to settle commodity trades with national currencies or the Chinese renminbi.

On Tuesday, the Shanghai Petroleum and Natural Gas Exchange announced that it completed its first yuan-settled trade for liquid natural gas between China's National Offshore Oil Corporation and France's TotalEnergies.

According to press releases from the financial markets, confirmed by Reuters, 65,000 tonnes of LNG imported from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) changed hands. This latest  trade deal comes as China tries to establish the renminbi as an international non - dollar currency.

The trade also came after President Xi Jinping traveled to Saudi Arabia in early December to strengthen economic ties with the Middle East and encourage the region to use the renminbi to settle its oil and gas trades, a visit that has resulted in detente between the formerly hostile regional powers, Saudi Arabia and Iran, the latter being a long term ally of China.

.At the same time, the renminbi has been Russia's defacto reserve currency for the past year since it invaded Ukraine, which prompted Western Nations led by the U.S. to impose harsh economic sanctions, cutting the nation off from Western financial markets.As a result of this collaboration with China, now also supported by India, the west's economic sanctions have economically harmed America's NATO allies far harder that they have Russia, which had no problem finding customers in South est Asia and Aftica eager to buy it oil and minerals without having to pay exorbitant commissions to Ameican middle - men.

23 Countries Now Abandoning US Dollar

A new world monetary system is being set up right now which will completely kill the US dollar, which is the world's reserve currency.

23 countries (60% of the world's GDP) are setting up swap lines which bypass the dollar and SWIFT, which is the dollar-based worldwide financial transaction system.

These countries include Russia, China, India, and even Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

Once the new system is in place, the dollar won't be needed in these countries and a new reserve currency will come into being. All those dollars in foreign accounts will come home, which will annihilate the dollar dominated monetary system.

Also, China just announced that it will stop purchasing US Treasury bonds (holding dollars in reserve). This will force The Federal Reserve to print even more dollars than the $85 billion per month it's currently printing. NB: References to printing money in the financial press refer to the practice of borrowing money by selling bonds for hard currency. The seller must pay interest to the bondholder and also redeem the bond at face value after a fixed term (usually 2,5 or 10 years.) Bond trading is a complicated business and this is not the place for a more detailed explanation.)

RELATED:

[ Currency Wars ] ... [ Money & Finance ] ... [ dollar fears ] ... [ debt crisis ] ... [ Debt: a dollar ponzi scheme ]

U S Regional Bank First Republic Crashes As America's Banking 'Crisis In Confidence' Becomes Contagious
Shares in America's First Republic Bank's crashed when the New York stock market opened for trading this morning. The crash was triggered by a statement issued on Sunday night that sought to ease investor worries about the bank's liquidity situation in the wake of the failure of Silicon Valley Bank. Shares in the San Francisco based regional bank are down 60% on last week's close.

Negative Interest Rates - Final Nail In The Coffin Of Neoliberalism? Negative interest rates, in plain terms a situation in which we pay bankers for holding our money, are the latest ruse of politicians and economists to make uis start spending our investments and savings, thus kickstarting the global economy thy have screwed up.

Pupils Shut Out Of School Because They Refuse To Wear Gender Neutral Uniforms
Overshadowed somewhat by the idiocies in Parliament this week as Remain supporting, democratically elected MPs try to overturn the democratically expressed wish of the people and keep the UK in The Fourth Reich politely known as the European Union, the idiocy of politically correct, far left authoritarianism in education goes on...

The Elite’s Scheme to Eliminate Cash And Impose Negative Interest Rates
Politicians love inflation, it provides an easy way out of the financial mess they create, Bankers too love inflation because while they lend fiat money, the loans they issue are secured against real assets such as people’s homes and valuables. However both need “the punters they fleece to have faith in the value of the currency they hold or the numbers stored in computers that increasingly represent our wealth ...

Elites Losing The War On Cash? Sweden U-Turns On 'Cashless Society' Agenda
Sweden was leading the the War On Cash, the ruling elite had pushed the idea that a cashless society would protect citizens from crime and be more convenient. There was no mention that in a cashless society we would completely surrender control of our money to banks, and our privacy in financial matters to government security agencies...

War On Cash. If You Want To Buy A Car Or Appliance From A Friend For Cash, You Will Not Be Able To.

A geopolitical move by the globalist control freaks that began as a seemingly innocuous hypothetical discussion several years ago now appears to have become a deep state / corporate policy backed by a propaganda campaign involving some of the most powerful commercial and government agencies in the industrialized world. Throughout this omnibus web page we have called it the War on Cash.

War On Cash. If You Want To Buy A Car Or Appliance From A Friend For Cash, You Will Not Be Able To.

A geopolitical move by the globalist control freaks that began as a seemingly innocuous hypothetical discussion several years ago now appears to have become a deep state / corporate policy backed by a propaganda campaign involving some of the most powerful commercial and government agencies in the industrialized world. Throughout this omnibus web page we have called it the War on Cash.

Lord Rothschild: The New World Order Is At Risk
In the RIT Capital Partners 2014 annual report, the head of Rothschild family banking empire warned that the geopolitical situation is most dangerous since WWII. A year later, Baron Jacob Rothschild repeated his warning about the outcome of "the greatest experiment in monetary policy in history". Little did he know that, they would keep rising, but related to that, he also made another warning which the market has so far ignored:

Government Whistleblower admits Labour Opened Borders to Eastern Europe to ‘Lower Wage Growth’
It should be no surprise then that it was under a Labour government led by Tony Blair, our borders agencgy was ordered to open the door to uncontrolled mass immigration from eastern Europe. The move came folowing a series of secret meetings between Blair and then Bank of England governor Mervyn King in which King “pressed the case” that mass immigration would “lower wage growth” by creating a pool of cheap workers, a former senior diplomat has claimed.

Could Italy’s Banking Crisis Drag Down Mario Draghi?
The latest banking crisis in Italy risks focusing scrutiny on the leadership of both the Bank of Italy and Italy’s financial markets regulator Consob. The decision to give the central bank’s current Chairman Ignazio Visco a fresh six-year mandate despite his having presided over one of the worst banking crises in living memory ...

The Demise Of Dollar Hegemony: Russia Breaks Wall Streets's Oil-Price Monopoly In a move that went almost completely unreported in mainstream media, Russia has recently opened a market for the trading of physical and 'paper' oil (futures) in Moscow in Roubles. This is the most blatant challenge yet to the domination of the US dollar in world trade.

The Demise Of Dollar Hegemony: Russia Breaks Wall Streets's Oil-Price Monopoly
Significant moves in the global chess game have just rendered the huffing and puffing of warmonger Obama meaningless and will break Wall Street's monopoly in controlling oil markets. The move is part of Vladimir Putin's long-term strategy of decoupling Russia’s economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, in effect ...

Naked Bankers Go For Gold
... That gold sale in 2013 was a naked short. The seller had no gold to sell. COMEX reported having gold only equal to about half of the short sale in its vaults, and not all of that was available for delivery (quite a lot of it belonged to the german government) In effect the naked shorting of gold could only work because really the right hand was selling to the left hand.

Another Oil Exporting State Surrenders: Last Nail In Petrodollar's Coffin
While record mainland deficits covered by the petroleum sector is nothing new in Norwegian budget history, the 2016 budget did raise some eyebrows. The net inflow to the Norwegian Treasury from North Sea oil will be lower than the required amount to cover the deficit. This has never happened before and is testimony of the sea change occurring in the world of petrodollar recycling.

India Takes A Leading Role In De-Dollarization
Reuters reported last Wednesday that “India’s Oil Deals With Russia Dent Decades-Old Dollar Dominance”, which highlighted the growing tendency of those and many other using nations using national or or third-party currencies to settle cross border trades thus sidelining the US$ which has dominated international trade since the 1970s.

De-Dollarization Du Jour: Russia's Largest Bank Issues Yuan-Denominated Guarantees

Leading the charge to multipolarity and de-dollarization are Russia, resugent despite economic sanctions and the rising superpower in waiting, China. The downgrading of the dollar is clearly demonstrated in the launch of the BRICS bank and the establishment of the AIIB.

Cashless Society: The Spy In Your Wallet

Back In 1971 Libertarians Were Predicting Debit Cards Would Become A Spy Tool For Authoritarian Governments. In 2013 The Wall Street Journal reported that the Naional Security Agency (NSA) was monitoring the card transactions of American citizens. Following that, two Senators, Wyden and Udall – who both sit on the Senate Intelligence Committee and thus have access to classified information about the government’s digital snooping intelligenece gathering programs wrote ...,/p>

NATO Rhetoric About Russian Threat is 'Absurd'
The reasons being given for the latest NATO military buildup in Eastern Europe, the idea that the Russian 'Russian threat' to Eastern Europe grows every day is "simply absurd," according to former US diplomat and Senate policy advisor Jim Jatras. Effectively, Jatras says, the buildup is an attempt by the US to keep Germany and France on board with Washington's world domination agenda and ...

The Demise Of Dollar Hegemony: Russia Breaks Wall Streets's Oil-Price Monopoly
Significant moves in the global chess game have just rendered the huffing and puffing of warmonger Obama meaningless and will break Wall Street's monopoly in controlling oil markets. The move is part of Vladimir Putin's long-term strategy of decoupling Russia’s economy and especially its very significant export of oil, from the US dollar, in effect ...

WMD in Mayfair
Recalling yesterday's Machiavelli Blog which commented on events surrounding the unfortunate death of the alleged former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko, it seems the murder investigation has now found evidence of many caches (well OK, traces) of radio active toxins in various fashionable establishments in London's West End frequented by former Russian intelligence agents.

China launches global yuan payment system
China’s Central Bank has started a global payment system which provides cross-border transactions in yuan. The China International Payment System (CIPS) intends to internationalize the yuan and challenge the US dollar's dominance.

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Currency Wars: Venezuela Is About to Ditch the Dollar in Major Blow to US:

In what amounts to the biggest blow yet to the U.S. economy, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said last week that his country will be looking to disengage itself from dependence on the U.S. dollar next week, Reuters reports.

In our omnibus webpage, Currency Wars, we have fully reported on the currency war being waged against the US economy by a group of nations led by Russia, China and Iran, with the aaim of replacing the $US as global reserve currency. According to the report Maduro will look to use the weakest of two official foreign exchange regimes (the mechanisms by which nations manage their sovereign currency in relation to other currencies and the foreign exchange market).

According to Reuters, Maduro was referring to Venezuela’s current official exchange rate, known as DICOM, in which the dollar can be exchanged for 3,345 bolivars. At the strongest official rate, one dollar buys only 10 bolivars, which may be one of the reasons why Maduro wants to opt for some of the weaker exchange rates.

“Venezuela is going to implement a new system of international payments and will create a basket of currencies to free us from the dollar,” Maduro said in a far reaching address to Venezuela's new legislative superbody. According to reports in national media he did not supply details of how his government proposed to achieve this, but with support from the BRICS bloc it should not prove difficult.

Maduro hinted that the South American country would look to using the yuan and a bundle of other currencies instead. Over the past three years Russia and China have signed bilateral agreements with many nations to settle cross border trades in the currency of the vendor, thus signalling their intent to end the era of the Petrodollar.

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Fears Over Threat To Sovereignty Could Wreck EU European Army Plan

No they're not Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers, they are German soldiers assigned to an international peacekeeping force, showing how like Imperial Stormtroopers a pan European army might look (Image source)

Germany Threatens Sanctions Against Poland Over 'Lack of Western Values' (for Western read German)

Last year, Poland's conservative nationalist Law and Justice party (PiS), led by former Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, captured both the presidency and parliament at elections in May and November. Since taking office, the party's lawmakers have used their parliamentary majority to initiate a series of controversial legal reforms, causing concerns both at home and abroad, specifically in Brussels and in Berlin.

Europe's Bank Crisis Arrives In Germany: €29 Billion Bremen Landesbank On The Verge Of Failure

... yesterday we observed a surprising development involving Deutsche Bank, namely the bank's decision to quietly liquidate some of its shipping loans. Reuters reported, "Deutsche Bank is looking to sell at least $1 billion of shipping loans [a market sector] whose lenders face closer scrutiny from the European Central Bank.

BREXIT vs. GREXIT – The Truth About The European Union And How It Treats Members

The only thing that will halt the European Union in its tracks, stop the push beyond Europe's geographical borders and prevent EU expansion to incorporate Asian, middle eastern and north African nations is war. Unless the testicularly deficient politicians stand up to the bean counters of Brussels. That's what they are, bean counters; not one among them is a risk taker or a person who has advanced because of their willingness to put their arse on the line.

Adolf Hitler, His Part In Our Downfall

.pdf dowload

A thirty five thousand word book on the authoroitarian, undemocratic, bureaucratic dictatorship that is the European Union. Following the outburst of left wing hate politics following Boris Johnson's reminder that the EU has its roots in Hitler's Naziism, which as any intelligent person is aware is both true and very well documented. My blog colleagues and I decided to assemble this collection of our articles (with some long extracts quoted from public domain and creative commons sources) to help people misled by the REMAIN campaign into thinking the arguments are solely economic.

EU Vows To Use Powers To Block All Elected ‘Far Right’ Politicians From Power

... populist social conservatives are regularly topping the polls across the Europe, but have been victims of EU orchestrated stitch ups to keep them out of power and ddeny the democratic will, in France, Sweden, Holland, and now Austria – and anti-migrant populists are already in power in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Mr. Junker’s definition of “far right” is somewhat broad, noted by him previously describing Hungary’s conservative president, Viktor Orbán, as a "fascist".

EU Vows To Use Powers To Block All Elected ‘Far Right’ Politicians From Power

... populist social conservatives are regularly topping the polls across the Europe, but have been victims of EU orchestrated stitch ups to keep them out of power and ddeny the democratic will, in France, Sweden, Holland, and now Austria – and anti-migrant populists are already in power in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Mr. Junker’s definition of “far right” is somewhat broad, noted by him previously describing Hungary’s conservative president, Viktor Orbán, as a "fascist".

EU's Bureaucratic Dictatorship Is Losing The Support Of The Most Loyal Nations

When the unelected bureaucrats of the European Union Commission decided, without consulting member states, to comply with the wishes of the warmongering rent - boy in The White House and impose sanctions on Russia, after Vladimir Putin ordered the annexation of Crimea (to prevent the US backed neo - fascist government in Kiev carrying out a genocide of ethnic Russians in Crimea,) the idiotic goons were as usual duped into doing Washington's dirty work.

EU tiring of confrontation with Putin.

Huge reversal: the EU seeks a normal relationship with Russia. It seems that the EU is being greatly affected by the actions of Vladimir Putin in Syria: suddenly the EU President Jean-Claude Junker is saying that the EU must not let the US dictate their relationship with Russia.

Disillusionment With EU Grows as Swedish Support Slumps By 30%

A new opinion poll carried out on support for the European Union in Sweden has produced some shock findings as a massive turnround among Swedish voters probably due to mass immigration and migrant related crime waves in cities. From being one of the most solidly pro-EU member states, Sweden now has a substantial majority against membership of the EU.

Fears Over Threat To Sovereignty Could Wreck EU European Army Plan

No they're not Star Wars Imperial Stormtroopers, they are German soldiers assigned to an international peacekeeping force, showing how like Imperial Stormtroopers a pan European army might look (Image source)

The Real Refugee Crisis Is In The Future
Perhaps Angela Merkel thought we didn’t yet know how full of it she is. Perhaps that’s why she said yesterday with regards to Europe’s refugee crisis that “Everything must move quickly,” only to call an EU meeting a full two weeks later. That announcement show one thing: Merkel doesn’t see this as a crisis. If she did, she would have called for such a meeting a long time ago, and not some point far into the future.

Armed Forces Minister: Obama ‘Woefully Ignorant’ of Threat EU Membership Poses

Referring to a statement Mr Obama made in the Telegraph on Friday in which he said: “The European Union doesn’t moderate British influence – it magnifies it,” she responded: “Unfortunately this opinion betrays a woeful ignorance of the practical reality of the EU’s impact on our security, and the interests of the U.K. and the US.”

Hurricane Harvey, the big question

Russia and China delare outright war on the Petrodollar

Has USA delared full scale trade war on Russia