India and Russia in Direct Rupee-Ruble Payments; Goodbye US Dollars By Charles Taylor (Florida)
Is this an unintended effect, or is it part of the New World Order Great Reset plan, to dismantle the West? If the latter, then American elites are right on board with this. Kicking Russia off SWIFT and imposing sanctions has simply meant that Russia moves off the US dollar circuit and trades with its own currency. Just as it is now doing with India, who has moved into the vacuum created by Western trade sanctions, with not a care in the world. I will never forget how Trump licked the boots of the Indian PM in a visit, stoking his ego. What an embarrassment. RT.com, the pro-Russian site tells the present Russia-India trade story. RT.com, sure has its bias like everything else, but to find any truth now we need to consider a plurality of perspectives, and on Russia, this is a site we need to study.
https://www.rt.com/business/552531-india-russia-ruble-trade-deal/
“A system allowing direct rupee-ruble payments in trade between Russia and India could be launched this week, the president of the Federation of Indian Export Organizations (FIEO), A Sakthivel, told CNBC on Wednesday. The arrangement would allow India and Russia to carry out financial operations bypassing the US dollar. Russia is effectively blocked from using US currency due to Western sanctions over the conflict in Ukraine.
According to the official, the Indian government is working on a proposal to allow up to five nationalized Indian banks to be engaged in the rupee-ruble trade mechanism, and discussions between the central bank governor, the finance minister, and the banks on the matter have already been held. The arrangement would let Indian exporters continue doing business with Russia despite sanctions banning, among other things, international payment mechanisms in the country, such as SWIFT. It would also let India continue buying Russian energy exports and other goods.
According to Sakthivel, the Indian economy could profit from sanctions Russia is facing, as they give Indian exporters an opportunity to expand on the Russian market.
India to think twice before buying Russian oil
“Export to Russia is not much, only in agriculture and pharmacy products. Now that the whole of the West is banning Russia, there will be a lot of opportunities for Indian firms to enter Russia,” he stated.
India’s finance ministry and the Reserve Bank of India have not yet commented on the new trade arrangement.
Unlike the US and the EU, India has not criticized Russia over its military operation in Ukraine, and has abstained from condemning Moscow during the recent UN voting rounds. When asked whether India’s continued commerce with Russia would draw Western ire, Sakthivel said his country had taken a “neutral stand” on the situation in Ukraine.
“The government will take into account all the factors. The government is playing it very carefully,” he stressed.
India exported $3.3 billion worth of goods to Russia in 2021, mostly pharmaceutical products, tea, and coffee. In terms of imports, India bought $6.9 billion worth of Russian products, including arms and defense goods, mineral resources, fertilizers, metals, diamonds and other precious stones. India also imports Russian oil, with recent media reports stating that the country’s major refiner, Indian Oil Corp, has stepped up purchases of Russian crude over the past month. India is also reportedly considering buying raw materials from Russia and Belarus for fertilizer production amid skyrocketing commodities’ prices.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin is predicting that the world will move away from the U.S.-dominated financial system after Washington, along with Western governments, seized his country’s currency assets as part of their sanctions for invading Ukraine.
In a video posted to social media, Putin blasted the “theft” of Moscow’s resources and mocked the notion that first-world currency reserve holders are “reliable.”
“Let me reiterate, the whole global economy and trade have suffered a major blow, as did the trust in the U.S. dollar as the main reserve currency” of the world, the Russian leader says in a translated clip.
“The illegitimate freezing of some of the currency reserves of the Bank of Russia marks the end of the reliability of so-called first-class assets,” he added. “In fact, the U.S. and EU have defaulted on their obligations to Russia. Now everybody knows that financial reserves can simply be stolen.”
He added: “And many countries in the immediate future may begin — I am sure this is what will happen — to convert their paper and digital assets into raw reserves of raw materials” such as “land, food, gold, and other real assets.”
Astute economic analysts foresee a world coming soon which will once again be dominated by hard currencies like gold and silver, as well as other precious metals, in addition to physical assets like land and food because paper fiat currencies and ‘virtual’ currencies like bitcoin are not just increasingly unreliable, they can be — as Putin said — simply stolen from the owner as if they never really belonged to someone else.
Brett Arends, writing in MarketWatch, picked up on something that a leading Russian official said last week that Putin alluded to in his speech.
“Here’s a strong argument for adding some gold bullion to your retirement portfolio right now, alongside those stocks and bonds. And it comes courtesy of Pavel Zavalny, the head of the Russian parliament,” his column begins.
It continues:
Zavalny spoke last week on the subject of all the economic and financial sanctions being levied against Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. Most of the coverage of his remarks implied that Russia might respond to the sanctions by switching from U.S. dollars to “bitcoin” for international trade.
But a look at the transcript being reported shows something quite different. Zavalny added bitcoin only at the end of a long list of other currency and trading options, almost as an afterthought.
What Arends found far more intriguing was Zavalny’s primary point, though it has been essentially overlooked by most economists (or dismissed outright as insignificant). If other nations want to buy Russian energy and other commodities, from now on “let them pay either in hard currency, and this is gold for us, or pay as it is convenient for us, this is the national currency.”
The ‘national currency’ being rubles.
Notes Arends, “In other words, Russia is happy to accept your national currency — yuan, lira, ringgits or whatever — or rubles, or ‘hard currency,’ and for them that no longer means U.S. dollars, it means gold.”
“The dollar ceases to be a means of payment for us, it has lost all interest for us,” Zavalny noted further, describing the greenback as no better than “candy wrappers.”
Arends adds: “What will this mean? Maybe nothing. Or maybe a lot. Especially if Russia’s lead is followed by countries such as China, India and others — countries that may not welcome Washington’s ability to control the global financial system through its monopoly power over the global reserve currency.”
If Putin is right, those countries won’t.”
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