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Page added on August 14, 2014
Putin Says The Petrodollar Must Die, “The Dollar Monopoly In Energy Trade Is Damaging Russia’s Economy”
On one hand, despite initial weakness following Europe’s triple-dip red alert, futures declined only to surge higher after some headline or another out of Russia was again spun to suggest imminent Ukraine de-escalation (something which Russia whose only interest is to keep crude prices high, has absolutely zero interest in), perpetuating a rumor which was set off by a Russian media outlet tweet last week that has sent S&P futures over 50 higher in less than a week on… nothing.
On the other, Putin just said the following, which no matter how one spins it, shows precisely how Russia is inclined vis-a-vis future (un-de-counter) escalations.
PUTIN SAYS RUSSIA SHOULD AIM TO SELL OIL AND GAS FOR ROUBLES GLOBALLY, AS DOLLAR MONOPOLY IN ENERGY TRADE IS DAMAGING ECONOMY
President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday Russia should aim to sell its oil and gas for roubles globally because the dollar monopoly in energy trade was damaging Russia’s economy.
“We should act carefully. At the moment we are trying to agree with some countries to trade in national currencies,” Putin said during a visit to the Crimea region, which Moscow annexed from Ukraine earlier this year.
Countries such as China, India, Iran, Brazil, and virtually every other non-insolvent, that is to say “developed, Western” country.
And now, bring on the Russian “isolation” (which is about to push Europe, not Russia, into a triple-dip recession) and further de-escalation.
28 Comments on "Putin Says The Petrodollar Must Die, “The Dollar Monopoly In Energy Trade Is Damaging Russia’s Economy”"
penury on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:40 am
Remember what happened to the last two who tried this. Putin should watch out for another false flag event and the resulting attacks from the West.
fausto on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 11:24 am
@penury “…attacks from the West…”
This is fantasy. Russian oil is not replaceable, and so there isn’t a valid method to attack the Russians. Except the self-destructive ones, of course.
I am broadly in agreement with the article.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 12:14 pm
Actually, what MUST die is the excessive American consumption of resources in relation to the consumption of other people in the world on a percentage of population basis. America has had a great ride for a long time, with the petrodollar being a prime component in greasing that ride. Look at the result. Miles of cars packed on freeways and in lines at burger joints, wasting that precious fuel just sitting there idling. Grotesque overweight people more the norm than the exception. Enormous health issues and related expenses to society due to all the crap we are fed and the lack of exercise. Five and ten thousand square foot homes built from scare resources with just one or two people residing within. The gluttony must end at some point, and weakening of the petrodollar would go a long way toward reducing America’s over-consumption. Sure, it will hurt to give up all those luxuries and all those fine food imports from around the world, but the long term benefit to Americans and the rest of the world will be significant. No pain = no gain. Americans, get ready for some pain, you’re going to have to tough it out, coming soon to your home town.
Davy on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 12:15 pm
Russia is attacking itself with Chevez style economics and anti BAU/globalism actions. To bad for the anti Russian crowd the world has progressed to this point through hyper globalism. There will be no repeat of Reagan helping the Soviet Union destroy itself likewise Putt is delusional in his plans for an alternative de-Americanized world. There is no constructing of something new through trade wars. There is only a tearing down of everything through a destructive trade civil war. Like all civil wars the purpose is inflicting pain not conquest of booty.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 12:49 pm
NWR, Do you mean to tell me that I will have to give up my Prosciutto di Parma, Spanish Manchego cheese, tomato, and French baguette sandwiches, like the one I’m having for lunch righ now? I don’t know if I could make it in that kind of world. 😉
Northwest Resident on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 1:01 pm
JuanP — It sounds like you might be new to this country, so let me give it to you straight: Prosciutto di Parma is for woosies! 🙂
Actually, that sounds really tasty. But yeah, sadly for you and for me and for everybody else in America with fine tastes, I think the writing is on the wall. America as an export destination for all kinds of exotic and expensive foods from exotic lands around the world is about to undergo a major scale-down.
Arthur on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 1:43 pm
Putin is rather modest here. He does not say that the dollar needs to disappear in international trade, he merely says that it should be possible to pay for oil and gas in other currencies than dollar as well.
Yes, it is true, Saddam and Khadaffi tried something similar and were efficiently killed by the benevolant hegemon. This time it is different. Russia is backed by China, India, Brasil and Iran. And no need for Collin Powell to show up in the security counsel with photographs of Russian and Chinese WMDs. This time we believe him.
PrestonSturges on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 2:44 pm
Pay in rubles? OK, those rubles are going to purchased (with some other currency) on some currency spot market where their value will fluctuate daily depending on what Putin does.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 2:52 pm
NWR, I’m sure you’ll bake some great homemade breads with your own home grown grains soon! Your garden’s pictures were inspiring.
At least I grew the tomato, but what blows my mind away are the frozen baguettes imported from France available at Costco.
Northwest Resident on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:02 pm
JuanP — As it turns out, tonight my girlfriend and I are scheduled to make a batch of tomato sauce for canning, and after that we will be making our first attempt at making zucchini bread, and probably some garlic roasted zucchini — actually, there’s a million zucchini recipes and that’s a good thing, because we have a million zucchinis. I thought I was planting half cucumber and half zucchini, but I must have been stoned or something — turns out, it is all zucchini. Sweet corn — we have been harvesting and freezing that, and eating fresh “baby” ears picked right off the stalk for the last few days — very tender and sweet and I assume not entirely un-nutritious also. I harvested my wheat last Saturday, now it is sitting drying, next weekend I’ll thresh it (beat it with a baseball bat), and then I’ll be making my first bread from wheat I grew. I dug under the soil about an inch to get a look at my carrots, and the two I checked are already an inch thick and bright orange. Black eye peas are flowering. Potatoes are starting to bulge through the soil and are already big. Who knows what I would have grown this summer if I had my soil as well-prepped as you!! But hey, I’m working on that too — including that last book you recommended — I bookmarked it at home, can’t remember the name, but looks very good. Oh yeah — my two giant sunflowers are sprouting big round yellow flowers now, sunflower seeds for the chickens, they’ll love me even more!
Arthur on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:24 pm
Tonight finished my 12th and last potato based meal, finishing my entire 2014 harvest.lol
Every journey of thousand miles starts with a single step.
Have big plans for next year.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:27 pm
NWR, Your food gardening achievements are incredible for a first attempt. I like what you did a lot. I moved up to the top of my book shopping list the mini farming book you recommended and look forward to reading it soon.
My idea is to go off grid and use less than one acre applying permaculture and soil building methods to grow veggies, fruits, chickens, worms, fish in Aquaponics setup, bees, and/or rabbits in a closed system where all nutrients and water get reused and recycled and nothing goes to waste, and leave the rest of the land to nature and assist wildlife, while purchasing grains while I can to store for bad times and eating, except corn that I grow. At least that’s the idea I base my research on.
Enjoy your dinner!
Northwest Resident on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:34 pm
JuanP — I’m still wrestling with the idea of rabbits. Logically, they are a “must have”. I might be letting a little squeamish emotion influence my thought process on meat rabbits. But bees?! Definitely. I’ve researched them, read all about it, have links bookmarked and am ready to get started next spring which is when we need to start bee colonies around here. That honey is too sweet and nutritious and versatile, and the bees wax too valuable to not do it. Not as much work as a having a dog, but more work than having a cat — doesn’t sound like a lot of work to me. Keep me posted on your efforts to raise bees, and I’ll do the same.
Arthur on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:40 pm
I would not be surprised if Russia intervenes in Donbass very soon. There are several signals to that effect.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:45 pm
NWR, Rabbits can wait till last, when things get really bad.
I haven’t done any bee research lately, but my mind is made up on the system I will use. It will be a rectangular box with vertical removable slats, are you aware of the type I’m talking about? They are smaller than the commercial, traditional cubic ones with horizontal slats, lighter, and much easier to use for our kind of use. Be careful and ask your neighbors to prevent accidental allergic reactions when you get down to it.
Davy on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:47 pm
NR, Juan, Art, please don’t talk about food I am fasting today and very hungry at the moment.
Art, can you blame Russia considering how the Ukr’s are handling things. I see an invasion under the guise of humanitarian relief. The fall is approaching and Europe will want to.consider how anti Russian they want to get. As soon as the people are in the street like Fergusion I imagine there will be a rethink.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 3:59 pm
Art, I hope Russia doesn’t send troops into Ukraine, it would be very bad news. I think Putin decided a couple of months ago, at least, to let the provinces go. I read an article on Spiegel International today that agrees exactly with my view on this one point. I believe the cities of Luhansk and Donetsk will be bombed and shelled until they are virtually destroyed, and Putin will let it happen.
Most Russians will find this hard to understand and that is why Russia’s government is mounting this aid convoy to Eastern Ukraine, right now. This is a great PR move on Putin’s part because he can’t be seen by the Russians to be doing nothing to help the Donbass people. If they let them through, they will have all that footage of the distribution of goods for the Russian media and population; if they don’t let them through, they can claim they did all they could and were block by Western powers every step of the way. The Russians are eating this convoy news like candy.
Arthur on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 4:57 pm
There is unconfirmed report that Russian hackers have hacked Ukrainian accounts and revealed who was behind the MH17 crash:
http://deepresource.wordpress.com/2014/08/14/hackers-learned-who-shot-down-mh17-in-ukraine/
This comes from Russian hackers, who obviously have “a horse in the race”, so great caution needs to be applied.
If this materializes, Putin could use this as a pretext. A very important signal is that the rebel commander “Strelkov” resigned today. A plausible explanation could be that the rebels are virtually defeated. The Ukrainian defense minister has already announced that Crimea is next. Since Putin can no longer avoid direct involvement in the war, he might as well strike now. If that happens a very serious situation develops.
Tonight Paul Craig Roberts has recommended an article by Karel van Wolferen. He is about the only one who in the past dared to (thinly veiled) address who is actually running the US, in a similar fashion as Mearsheimer and Walt later repeated full throttle. Now he adequately summarizes the present situation:
unz. com/article/the-ukraine-corrupted-journalism-and-the-atlanticist-faith/
jim anglin on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 5:03 pm
Russia has always been the enemy of Western elites because they have staunchly refused to be a part of the corrupt Western banking system. This dates back over a 100 and some years …
Which doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be willing to try and set up their own corrupt banking system …
Davy on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 5:07 pm
Art, the Crimea next is bluster. It is a suicide battle for Ukr’s. Not only because of military inadequacies of Ukr army compared to Russians there is also the issue of fighting across a narrorow strip of land impossible to offensively take by the Ukr’s to get to Crimea proper. Maybe the Ukr’s want the Russians to attack so they are intimidating them.
bobinget on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 6:30 pm
It doesn’t really matter what currency is used in any given transaction. How oil is valued is what counts.
Speaking of which, CL is looking at $95.57 at this moment.
Ladies and germs: we are witness to one of the biggest crude moves this decade and its happening rat now.The plan seems to be to punish Putin and stimulate European and US economies at the same time. The punish Putin idea is pure speculation but
what’s that compared to a zero war premium?
IS Fighters Gathering:
Islamic State militants are massing near the Iraqi town of Qara Tappa, 73 miles north of Baghdad, security sources and a local official said, in an apparent bid to broaden their front with Kurdish peshmerga fighters.
The Sunni militants have made a dramatic push through the north to a position near Arbil, capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.
The movement around Qara Tappa suggests they are getting more confident and seeking to grab more territory closer to the capital after stalling in that region.
What is ISIS?
Good question: What Is ISIS?
“The Islamic State is massing its militants near Qara Tappa,” said one of the security sources. “It seems they are going to broaden their front with the Kurdish fighters.”
Islamic State has also been using tunnels built by Saddam Hussein in the 1990s to secretly move fighters, weapons and supplies from strongholds in western Iraq to towns just south of Baghdad.
The group, made up of Iraqis, other Arabs and foreign fighters has threatened to march on Baghdad, part of its ambition to redraw the map of the Middle East and impose its radical version of Islam.
U.S. SUPPORT
The governor of Iraq’s Sunni heartland Anbar Province said he has asked for and secured U.S. support in the battle against Islamic State militants because opponents of the group may not have the stamina for a long fight.
Ahmed Khalaf al-Dulaimi told Reuters his request, made in meetings with U.S. diplomats and a senior military officer, included air support against the militants who have a tight grip on large parts of Anbar and the north.
Dulaimi said the Americans had promised to help.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-iraq-isis-baghdad-20140814-story.html
“Our first goal is the air support. Their technology capability will offer a lot of intelligence information and monitoring of the desert and many things which we are in need of,” he said in a telephone interview.
“No date was decided but it will be very soon and there will be a presence for the Americans in the western area.”
The was no immediate comment from U.S. officials.
SAS DEPLOYED
Britain has deployed SAS special forces in northern Iraq where thousands of civilians are trapped on a mountain by Sunni militant fighters, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.
Davy on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 7:01 pm
Juan, a good friend of mine is into bees. I am going to get set up with some eventually. Sweets are going to be in high demand someday.
Davy on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 7:05 pm
Juan/NR, if you are interested in rabbits check out polyface farms. They incorporate rabbits and chickens together. Makes good natural fertilizer.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 7:19 pm
That’s one of my ideas, Davy, together with worm castings and plant litter to build an organic compost rich in micronutrients and the fish shit goes to an hydroponic installation in a small greenhouse, and then to the veggie garden. The veggies and corn from the garden feed the rabbits and chickens that provide the nutrients, you let the bees keep enough honey to prevent diseases and starvation, and everything has as much space as possible.
JuanP on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 8:00 pm
Davy, thanks for that link, I added it to my bookmarks. I have read about the family and farm. Their chicken book interests me. Thx!
Northwest Resident on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 10:22 pm
Davy, thanks for that link. I’m still debating the rabbit question. But they are great for green manure fertilizer as JuanP mentions, which is a big consideration. Maybe I’ll get a few for pets — one male and two females — but keep the male and females separated (sorry guys!). Then, if we get hit with global economic collapse and I find myself feeling hungry for meat one day in the future, perhaps my inhibitions against executing a cute furry rabbit will not be as big a factor.
Makati1 on Thu, 14th Aug 2014 11:12 pm
NWR, I am in the same emotional situation as you with rabbits. I can gut a fish without thinking or kill a chicken, if necessary. Anything larger in the animal kingdom is going to take some mental effort. However, I am not likely to have to do it. I have a neighbor at the farm that will take care of it for me, do the killing and butchering, for a percentage of the meat. Trade is great!
Arthur on Fri, 15th Aug 2014 2:20 am
A convou of 23 Russian military vehicles is said to have entered Ukrainian territory:
http://www.elsevier.nl/Buitenland/nieuws/2014/8/Journalisten-zien-Russische-legertrucks-Oekraine-binnenrijden-1577545W/
My prediction: is probably going to be justified as a protection of the aid convoi of these 289 or so white trucks.