Thursday, March 24, 2022

Links — 24 Mar 2022 Part 1

AntiWar
Will Humans Be the Next ‘Freedom Fries’
Ray McGovern, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, and retired 27-year career CIA whose tasks included preparing and briefing The President’s Daily Brief and leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch^
https://raymcgovern.com/2022/03/23/will-humans-be-the-next-freedom-fries/

Moon of Alabama
More Sanctions On Russia Will Destroy Europe
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/more-sanctions-on-russia-will-destroy-europe.html

Reminiscence of the Future
I Know It Hurts But...
Andrei Martyanov, former USSR naval officer and expert on Russian military and naval issues
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2022/03/i-know-it-hurts-but.html

India Punchline
Biden wings his way to the borderlands of Ukraine
M. K. Bhadrakumar | retired diplomat with the Indian Foreign Service and former ambassador
https://www.indianpunchline.com/biden-wings-his-way-to-the-borderlands-of-ukraine/

The Vineyard of the Saker
The danger of American bio laboratories
Batko Milacic for the Saker Blog
http://thesaker.is/the-danger-of-american-bio-laboratories/

Sitrep: How Russia [and China] slew the US Dollar
http://thesaker.is/sitrep-how-russia-slew-the-us-dollar/

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2022/03/russia-counter-sanctions-unfriendly-nations-by-requiring-gas-payments-in-roubles-dallas-fed-predicts-2022-global-recession-if-russian-energy-supply-remains-restricted.html 

CaitlinJohnstone.com
They’re Enslaving Our Minds And Driving Us Toward Destruction
Caitlin Johnstone
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2022/03/24/theyre-enslaving-our-minds-and-driving-us-toward-destruction/ 




3 comments:

Ahmed Fares said...

re: PetroRuble AND AgroRuble

This is huge — I cannot emphasize how big a deal this is.

As a practical matter, European demand for Rubles will mean that the Ruble as a currency will have enormous price support.

Europe will buy Russian gas in Rubles or not at all, so they will end up doing it.

In other words, NATO countries will be forced to pump the Ruble’s value back to what it was before.

Get ready for the PetroRuble and the AgroRuble. This is basically what the petrodollar is.

Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakstnan and Russia amount for something like 40% of world’s wheat production, not to mention other essential commodities like fertilizer, aluminium, neon gas, oil, etc.
—Chris Black (Investment Watch blog)

Incidentlly, a Google search for "agroruble" gave only 6 hits yesterday and only 10 hits today. I expect this number to get larger very quickly. I first heard the term in a video by Gonzalo Lira, and it appears he picked it up from the above article, as he quotes the first part in one of his Twitter tweets.

Tom Hickey said...

@ Ahmed

The question remains whether the US will apply secondary sanctions to its allies violating sanctions by using the ruble.

What Russia may being doing is denying access to its resources to "hostile countries" without actually denying them access to the resources. They either pay in rubles, violating the sanctions, or go without themI

Either way, Russia is fine. Russia issues the ruble, so it obviously doesn't need rubles from export sales, so it's just accounting.

Ahmed Fares said...

While it's true that Russia doesn't need rubles, the only way these countries can pay with rubles is to earn them in the first place by exporting to Russia. In that case, and seeing money here as a veil over barter, you then have trade in both directions which makes the money accounting irrelevant.

What Russia currently has is giving up its exports in exchange for US dollar claims, which it has no access to. By switching to rubles, it gets imports in exchange for its exports, at least for those countries that risk having those secondary sanctions.