[HN Gopher] Why the West is reluctant to deny Russian banks acce...
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Why the West is reluctant to deny Russian banks access to SWIFT
Author : doener
Score : 284 points
Date : 2022-02-25 14:58 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| forty wrote:
| My understanding is that the US is okay doing it.
|
| The ones that are blocking this are Germany and Italy. Even
| France (where I am) said okay, even though our economic interests
| in Russia are quite big (I read that France companies are in
| total one of the largest foreign employer in Russia, la Societe
| Generale owns a big Russian bank, and some of our energy
| companies have interest in Russia).True we don't depends as much
| on the gas.
|
| Germany, I'm so disappointed in you :(
| zxcvbn4038 wrote:
| If Russia is cut out of SWIFT they will just use their own
| system, minor inconvenience at first but long term works out well
| for them.
|
| A few years ago the US said they were going to forbid oil
| speculation and force people to accept delivery of all trades.
| They backtracked on that immediately when they found out Dubai
| was rushing to fill the gap by opening their own commodity
| exchange that would allow speculation.
|
| Likewise I think the US and even the EU might talk tough about
| ejecting Russia from SWIFT, but won't follow through out of fear
| of losing control to a Russia and/or China controlled system. A
| lot of western countries use SWIFT to spy on each other. The US
| would supposedly monitor SWIFT traffic looking for transfers to
| Airbus and feed that info to Boeing so they could try to undercut
| them on price.
| DevKoala wrote:
| What's more interesting to me is why the whole world is so energy
| deficient that they cannot stop using Russian oil. IMHO that was
| the first mistake.
| lazide wrote:
| It isn't that the whole world is energy deficient (in any real
| sense), it's that key modern economies have become reliant on
| specific sources, and interruptions in those sources make them
| very vulnerable to very expensive impacts. So they're
| blackmailable.
|
| And lots of cheap energy and global trade is almost like heroin
| for dealing with internal problems and social ills - no need to
| confront inefficiencies, figure out sane monetary policies,
| have hard conversations on hard topics, etc.
|
| So a lot of countries have pent up BS that will tear them apart
| when the heroin (I mean oil) stops flowing.
|
| International strongarm politics 101.
| godmode2019 wrote:
| Europe gives Russia 700 million a day for petrochemicals.
|
| They are financing the war in Ukraine, and will continue to do
| so, Europe makes their war donations via the swift payment system
| because they rely on Russian oil and gas.
|
| The Syrian war was largely about stopping a gas pipeline planned
| to go through Syria from Qatar to Europe which would have
| challenged the Russian gas monopoly.
|
| The Russian pipeline travels through Ukraine.
| swframe2 wrote:
| To paraphrase Hanlon's razor "Don't confuse reluctance with
| incompetence". The US is a rat's nest of different interests; it
| is too internally divided to fix hard problems. There are always
| wealthy political donors who control enough politicians to
| prevent a good solution. At this point, the US can only put
| lipstick on its incompetence. I do feel sorry for Ukraine but the
| GOP represents 40+% of the US electorate and they are now a cult
| rooted in disinformation (and supported by Russia). A nation this
| divided can't save itself; how can it save anyone else?
| freshthought wrote:
| What is SWIFT, behind the scenes?
| chasd00 wrote:
| probably a TCP socket and an old, well established, EDI format.
| FooBarBizBazz wrote:
| Russia has been pushing BTC on RT for a while now. Seems related.
|
| That would push the price up.
|
| Counter-move: Will this precipitate the banning of Bitcoin by/in
| the US?
|
| That would push the price down.
|
| (Simultaneously, possible rate increases also tend to push the
| price down.)
| derbOac wrote:
| I was asking in some forums a few days before the invasion
| whether Russia would start pumping money into crypto,
| especially things like Monero. The response I got (aside from
| accusing me of selling crypto, even though I don't own any),
| was that it's seen as too unstable and too unpredictable an
| asset for oligarchs and so forth to put their money into.
|
| Switzerland also indicated they weren't doing anything about
| sanctions. There's other tax havens out there as well.
|
| That seemed like a good point to me; why put your money in
| bitcoin or Monero when you could put it into gold, or keep your
| money in a Swiss account?
|
| I'm sure these oligarchs have very solid ways of laundering
| money.
|
| On the other hand, maybe this _will_ be just the sort of thing
| that kicks of practical reasons for use of crypto. Today there
| 's articles about huge donations to Ukraine in the form of BTC,
| so who knows.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > maybe this will be just the sort of thing that kicks of
| practical reasons for use of crypto
|
| There's already practical uses for crypto for exactly the
| same reasons you think there will be. All those uses
| currently exist and people are using them for that, no SWIFT
| lockout needed.
| mahkeiro wrote:
| Switzerland is imposing their own sanctions, and will make
| sure that Switzerland cannot be used to circumvent EU & US
| sanctions. https://twitter.com/BorisBusslinger/status/1497205
| 3992290222...
| yrgulation wrote:
| The west? I thought it was a handful of countries that russia has
| quite cozy relations with.
| jdrc wrote:
| weak arguments though. It would be a swift action, a shock with
| immediate effect. the long-term points are not that relevant but
| evenso, the non-western allied world is comparatively small. a
| disconnection is not going to be forever.
| cheriot wrote:
| > So, instead, we have an hour-long technical discussion where I
| ask them questions about web vitals, accessibility, the browser
| wars, and other similar topics about the web.
|
| I'd _dramatically_ prefer a good programmer that needs to learn
| something new over a poor programmer applying the knowledge they
| already have. I 've never come across a perfect interview
| question, but the goal should be to focus more on problem solving
| than knowledge.
|
| I've been out of web development for a while so the article was
| an interesting review/update, though.
| mig39 wrote:
| Did you reply to the wrong thread?
| orangecat wrote:
| This is a bunch of words around "it would be inconvenient for us
| because we allowed ourselves to become economically dependent on
| a criminal state". In particular Germany gets a gold (red?) star
| for shutting down their nuclear plants.
|
| Meanwhile the Chinese Communist Party has to be enjoying this. If
| we can't agree to take the relatively minor hit of financially
| cutting Russia off from the civilized world, we'll obviously be
| unwilling to do anything significant when they invade Taiwan.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| TSMC probably already has all their facilities mined.
|
| It doesn't take much, to turn a fab into a junk heap. You just
| need to break the clean room containment, and you have a
| billion dollars' worth of permanently useless garbage.
|
| Heck, just turning off power would probably do it, but they'd
| want to be sure.
|
| I actually have a story, from the company I worked for, that
| supplied lithography stuff (big, expensive steppers).
|
| They need to maintain clean room standards from the first
| framing, to the final delivery (special airplanes and trains).
|
| They delivered a set of them to a company that then went belly-
| up.
|
| The power was turned off, and the equipment became junk.
| ebruchez wrote:
| TSMS is not the reason China wants Taiwan, and there is more
| to Taiwan than TSMC: a wonderful people, a thriving liberal
| democracy, and great local culture, for example. I understand
| why there is so much focus on HN on TSMC, but it's
| disheartening to observe the lack of realization that we are
| not just talking about a fab on a rock, but about human
| beings.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| That's a very good point.
|
| People, in general (not just HN geeks), tend to have
| difficulty looking at other folks as "human." This applies
| to our next-door neighbors; let alone, people in a distant
| nation.
|
| I appreciate your making that point.
|
| But TSMC is a _very_ big fab on a rock...
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Because the US is no longer the dominant economic force, nor the
| dominant military force (perhaps larger but spread too thin).
|
| We watched the USSR waste itself in Afghanistan, and then the US
| did the same thing. And just as public opinion was the lowest on
| the war, after a botched exit, Putin attacks Europe.
|
| The US should not have been in Afghanistan or Iraq, but oil
| companies said yes. It should be on the ground in Ukraine, but it
| can't because it is spent.
|
| On the subject of military power, Arther C Clarke's Superiority
| [1] is a great short story. "It shows the side which is more
| technologically advanced being defeated, despite its apparent
| superiority, because of its willingness to discard old technology
| without having fully perfected the new. Meanwhile, the enemy
| steadily built up a far larger arsenal of weapons that while more
| primitive were also more reliable." Ironically, the "advanced"
| technology isn't advanced anymore: the weapons are out of date.
| But they still manage to be expensive.
|
| The US knows this, and they can do nothing. All the screaming and
| howling in the media is just propaganda. They have already agreed
| to cede Ukraine.
|
| Putin already won the war electronically. The US is hopelessly
| divided. The nation that once put a man on the moon, that
| dominated science, now has radicalized citizens call in bomb
| threats to hospitals because they wont treat a patient with
| ivermectin. 50% of the population believe that the election was
| rigged. No surprise that Trump supports Putin. The US can't agree
| on whether covid is real, how can it keep promises it made to
| Ukraine?
|
| The US is a failed power. It is like the UK after it lost its
| empire: delusional.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)
| pettusftw wrote:
| > It should be on the ground in Ukraine, but it can't because
| it is spent.
|
| Should it? That's not a foregone conclusion. Your justification
| for why it "can't" is also quite debatable.
|
| > Meanwhile, the enemy steadily built up a far larger arsenal
| of weapons that while more primitive were also more reliable."
| Ironically, the "advanced" technology isn't advanced anymore:
| the weapons are out of date.
|
| How so, can you expand on justification for this line of
| thinking?
|
| > 50% of the population believe that the election was rigged.
|
| Not true, but I agree with your overall idea about the extreme
| levels of division.
|
| > how can it keep promises it made to Ukraine?
|
| What promises? If you're referencing denuclearization in the
| Budapest Memorandum, my understanding that it was not an
| assurance of protection from third parties, only an assurance
| of non-aggression from each signatory. Meaning the US made no
| guarantee to protect Ukraine from Russia if Russia broke the
| pact, which they have. Do you have any reason for disagreeing
| with that assessment?
| donarb wrote:
| Alternate link to article: https://outline.com/GpZnXy
| actuator wrote:
| Maybe because of the same reason, "West" can't even not sell
| Gucci bags to oligarchs.
|
| https://mobile.twitter.com/barnes_joe/status/149719400903862...
|
| If this is true, it is quite shameful on Italy's part
| sjsvsnd wrote:
| Why is it any more shameful than German BMWs or securing
| Germany's gas?
|
| So far the Germans haven't given up anything meaningful that
| they don't already have. Not a cubic cm of gas has turned away.
| All they've done is delay _future_ flows from NS2.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| This was some story from before the agreement, and it seems the
| story lived on. The legal text is not yet out, but you will
| find it on consilium.europa.eu probably later tonight and can
| check then.
| HstryrsrBttn wrote:
| If there are still more than 300bn in Russia: maybe time to
| deinvest?
|
| Do it. Let them feel the pain. Either the Russian people start to
| realise what they support with Putin or they don't deserve any
| more mercy than Nazi-Germany.
| rufusroflpunch wrote:
| From any adversary's perspective, the ability to shut them out is
| as good as shutting them out. They need to prepare an alternative
| solution.
|
| The moment the SWIFT system became political, it was already
| doomed, and the petrodollar along with it.
| ukraineally wrote:
| My understanding Germany made a huge mistake in connecting with
| Russia. Swift and or petroleum product sanctions would just crush
| germany. This is going to be a key reason. Given the context, no
| real major war had ever happened in a long time. Perhaps Germany
| was connecting in order to build relationships. Which may
| actually be a long term benefit for everyone. In the long run
| maybe preventing further conflict.
|
| Germany did halt Nordstream 2, which wasnt doing anything yet,
| but I dont believe they did anything else yesterday? Most likely
| they fear retribution.
| hef19898 wrote:
| Well, Germany got gas, very reliably, from the USSR before
| Russia all the way back to the Cold War. Hickups only happened
| when Ukraine and Russia couldn't agree on transit fees. Hence
| Nordstream 2. If NS2 wouod already be live, Russia could also
| just turm of Ukraines gas. Now they can't without directly
| hitting one of their biggest markets.
|
| In a sense, not certifying NS2 limits Russias options. Not that
| I am convinced someone in the Gean government, old or new, ever
| thought this through so.
| ukraineally wrote:
| >In a sense, not certifying NS2 limits Russias options. Not
| that I am convinced someone in the Gean government, old or
| new, ever thought this through so.
|
| The way I see it and one of my political opinions.
|
| 1. Big business runs governments around the world.
|
| 2. Big business decides the shots and war is bad for
| business(unless you're in that business)
|
| 3. Those big businesses are who prevent wars from happening.
|
| Then again, this is what forced putin's hands. A ton of big
| business went to ukraine over US investment treaties and the
| EU stuff.
| seniorivn wrote:
| for some reason mainstream media and politicians don't talk about
| it, but there is an option to maximize chances to stop Putin
|
| detain families of all the people who have any connections to
| him, and freeze/seize their western assets and accounts. Until
| further notice. Everyone in Russia will know what it means, and
| some of Putin's establishment might be able to stop him to save
| their families and fortunes.
|
| It's absurd that families of most of Russian elites live in the
| west, all their money is stored in western banks and yet the only
| sanctions on the table are the ones that hurt the most regular
| people
| politician wrote:
| SWIFT is WhatsApp for payments. It doesn't move money, it moves
| messages concerning the movement of money. The alternative to
| SWIFT for banks is picking up the phone and calling the other
| bank to setup a transfer, or setting up a private API between
| banks.
| dsl wrote:
| The actual reason is because SWIFT gives the US/EU visibility
| into all inter-bank transfers, which provides us intelligence to
| build sanctions on top of. It's the financial equivalent of
| kicking Russia diplomats out of a building where we have every
| conference room bugged.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_Finance_Tracking_Pro...
| throwhauser wrote:
| That makes no sense. If Russia had an effective way to conduct
| its business without SWIFT in the event of sanctions, it would
| also have a way to conduct its business outside of SWIFT any
| time it has something to hide.
|
| To follow your analogy, if they had a separate office in a
| separate building that they could use in the event that they
| get kicked out of the bugged office, they would already be
| using it whenever they wanted additional privacy.
|
| The only way SWIFT actually forces Russia to be visible is if
| it's their only option, so no visibility can be lost if they're
| cut off.
| dsl wrote:
| Think of SWIFT like the internet. You can build your own new
| internet, but you also need everyone else to connect to it as
| well. If a Russian oligarch wants to transfer money to a
| Swiss bank to buy a new boat, they'd need to convince that
| Swiss bank to be part of the new network as well.
|
| At a practical level, swapping out SWIFT would be like
| changing the engine in your car. You can do it, but doing so
| is time consuming and prone to risk. Running more than one at
| a time just isn't feasible.
| treis wrote:
| >If a Russian oligarch wants to transfer money to a Swiss
| bank to buy a new boat, they'd need to convince that Swiss
| bank to be part of the new network as well.
|
| I don't think it's about being actually able to send a
| message. It's having the transfer of dollars recognized.
| Say I send $50 million from my account at Sberbank to UBS
| and then try to transmit from UBS to my boat builder in the
| Netherlands. That won't work because UBS won't get $50
| million added to their balance sheet because other banks
| don't recognize the Sberbank -> UBS transfer since it's not
| on SWIFT. To them, UBS will be trying to spend money it
| doesn't have and the transfers will get rejected.
|
| In short, No SWIFT = No Dollar transfers outside the
| country.
| rowls66 wrote:
| Absolutely wrong. SWIFT is just a financial messaging
| system (secure email for banks). Transfers of USD
| anywhere in the world ultimately require messages to/from
| US banks. US regulations require that those messages
| disclose the ultimate payer and payee of every transfer,
| and US banks must follow US regulations and block
| transfers that violate US sanctions. US banks are free to
| use whatever communications channels they choose, but
| SWIFT is used for 99% of international transfers today.
| SWIFT has nothing to do with balance sheets and banks
| recognizing fund transfers.
| treis wrote:
| >. US banks are free to use whatever communications
| channels they choose
|
| They're free to choose today because they all choose
| SWIFT. The second they choose a Russian backed system to
| evade sanctions is the second they lose that privilege.
|
| Given that, I don't see how your post shows mine to be
| "absolutely wrong". If anything you're supporting my
| point that "No SWIFT" really means "No dollar transfers".
| rr808 wrote:
| > Think of SWIFT like the internet. You can build your own
| new internet, but you also need everyone else to connect to
| it as well.
|
| Yes, but if you include China, Russia, Venezuela, Iran,
| Sudan, Syria that's like 2 Billion people.
|
| CIPS already has big Western banks as part owners.
| https://www.reuters.com/article/china-banks-clearing-
| idUSL3N...
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Running more than one at a time just isn't feasible."
|
| When it comes to money everything is feasible. Banks would
| use a many systems as needed and will build something on
| top that will make operations look uniform
| s_dev wrote:
| >The actual reason is because SWIFT gives the US/EU visibility
| into all inter-bank transfers
|
| But like clearly it doesn't if Russia and China have their own
| systems. How would Swift reveal Russian/Chinese internal
| transactions?
| gonzo wrote:
| Lack of traffic is also g2.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Doesn't have to reveal all transactions to be of extreme
| value on the whole.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > Why the West is reluctant to deny Russian banks access to SWIFT
|
| Possibly because the banks using it don't really understand it.
| After succesfuly delivering one project at Credit Suisse I was
| charged with implementing a SWIFT interface, but no-one, and I
| really mean no-one, could tell me what such an interface should
| look like, or how it should be used.
|
| After a lot of mucking around at and around Canary Wharf (which
| did at least get me to the top of the Canada Square building a
| couple of times - remarkably shoddy indoors, at least on the CS
| floors) I came to the conclusion that this was a project that
| never could work, and left.
| leto_ii wrote:
| I've heard similar stuff about the Dutch iDEAL [1] system. It's
| probably true of a lot of complex software systems. These
| things always remind me of Jonathan Blow's talk (I think here
| [2]) about the collapse of civilization.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IDEAL [2]
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZSRHeXYDLko
| phkahler wrote:
| I see this more and more. When software infrastructure become
| mature and stable, the people who built it eventually leave or
| retire. You end up with systems that people use and
| occasionally modify, but the real understanding is gone. The
| ability to make big changes is reduced. Knowing what secondary
| effects a change may have is nearly impossible. But you can
| keep right on using it just fine.
| zabzonk wrote:
| > the people who built it eventually leave or retire.
|
| Exactly right. At Credit Suisse I asked questions of the
| back-office people regarding the proposed interface that were
| to use it and notionally understanding it, such as:
|
| - what are you going to do with it?
|
| - how are you going to access it?
|
| - why are you going to access it?
|
| - what's the security to it?
|
| And so on, to no avail. I had really long given up being a
| systems analyst, but I had to start again, to little avail.
|
| And I had the full (crap) SWIFT message documentation. God
| help us if we try to bring Putin down via this route.
| hackerfromthefu wrote:
| It boggles my mind the endemic shortsigtedness regarding deep
| knowledge of systems that is shown by software owners.
|
| Case in point, higher salaries for new hires without deep
| knowledge, and lack of retention salaries for those who have
| years of history with systems.
|
| Another example, getting contracted consulting developers to
| build business critical systems, without locking in retainer
| arrangements to ensure continuity of deep support knowledge.
| duped wrote:
| I mean it doesn't help that the developer class has a giant
| incentive not to make things that last
| no_wizard wrote:
| incentives tend to follow other incentives. As noted
| above, the best way in the industry most of the time is
| to move companies to get better compensation, and
| sometimes better workplace conditions as well. Companies
| don't incentivize people staying around. At bigger
| companies sometimes - not always though - you can make
| progress in these areas by getting promoted, however that
| only works for N percent of a workforce at any given
| place.
|
| If companies incentivized retention with realistic paths
| to better compensation and growing your career, they'd
| see lower turn over with these systems.
|
| There's a reason that in recent times there were
| newsworthy stories about companies giving out retention
| bonuses and salary increases when some sticks started to
| plateau / lose value (and therefore RSUs not retaining
| value), because its relatively rare
| duped wrote:
| That's making a giant assumption that the employer
| considers software development to be a core operation in
| their business. For a lot of companies, paying for
| software is like paying for a copier - you buy the thing
| to sit in the office, maybe you pay for X years of
| maintenance, and when it stops working you buy another
| one. Maybe at a business with tons of copiers you'll have
| staff trained in how to maintain and repair them
| internally, but that's never going to be considered a
| core operation.
|
| A _lot_ of businesses treat software like copiers; they
| don 't want to build it (because they don't consider
| themselves "tech"). And for a lot of the developers that
| make or maintain this software, there is little incentive
| to build it to last.
| no_wizard wrote:
| That's exactly my point. They don't have an incentive
| structure so that it is _not_ treated like copiers. We
| are definitely on the same page here, in that sense. When
| I can only get 6% increases in a year to my base
| compensation by staying at a place and get 10, 20
| sometimes even 30 % by leaving for a competitor doing a
| similar job, the calculus isn 't hard, all things being
| relatively equal.
|
| This is just an unfortunate reality, and its true beyond
| even tech. I have a few friends with MBA's (accountants /
| finance) and they say similar things about their jobs
| too, switching every few years to get better compensation
| and once their growth starts to plateau they just rinse
| and repeat.
| avgcorrection wrote:
| Isn't this like saying that doctors have incentives to
| encourage people to get sick? What am I missing?
| jdbernard wrote:
| Assuming the giant incentive you refer to is job
| security, constant purposeful refactors, I don't know if
| this theory plays out in real life. There are a lot of
| reasons that software tends to be brittle and short-
| lived, but I feel pretty confident in saying that none of
| the teams I've worked with have purposefully engaged in
| planned obsolescence.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Is there a situation where sanctions have done anything other
| than impoverish the general population?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| What is the alternative?
| gpsx wrote:
| For better or worse I think that is often the plan. First,
| presumably the government cares about the welfare of its
| people. Second it can make the people unhappy with the
| government.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| That sure seems to have worked out well in North Korea and
| Iran and Cuba and also the last time we tried it with Russia.
| The presence of external threats, in general, tend to
| strengthen support for dictators rather than to weaken them.
| phatfish wrote:
| Surely it has? All those countries are crippled
| economically and only get attention on a global stage by
| saber rattling or when they decide to start looking to
| negotiate their way out.
|
| I hardly think Kim Jong Un has "strengthened support" from
| NK citizens, bar the top elite. They just get shot if they
| step out of line.
|
| Iran has a similar environment of fear, though not as
| totally controlling.
|
| I'm not sure what Cuba is like for political repression,
| but the people are hardly supportive of the government as i
| understand it.
|
| For what its worth, i don't believe imposing sanctions on
| Iran/Cuba is reasonable now. With the right diplomacy Iran
| looks to want to come to an agreement, and Cuba is no
| threat to anyone.
|
| Russia is in a better position while they have support from
| China. But there is still an affect. Also, i don't think
| it's possible to happily trade with Russia as if they were
| an ally while Putin grabs land from other eastern European
| countries.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Right, but it hasn't actually accomplished anything other
| than making their populations suffer. Every single one of
| these regimes are still around. The sanctions haven't
| succeeded in anything other than making the countries
| more miserable places to live in.
|
| If the premise was that the governments would care about
| their people and give in, or the people would turn on
| their governments, then no, that's just not happened.
| gpsx wrote:
| Just to make a counter point, we only know when this
| doesn't work. We don't know the times people relied in
| diplomatic solutions rather than suffer these
| consequences.
| fulafel wrote:
| The oil embargo against the US improved car fuel economy.
| belorn wrote:
| The treaties on conflict resources and blood diamonds in
| particular seems to have worked fairly well in reducing the
| money flow to war lords. It seems about as effective as arm
| trade regulations. Naturally it is impossible to prove if
| either is effective since we can't run a control group with
| identical circumstances.
| jdbernard wrote:
| The idea, as I understand, is that it's better to impoverish
| the population than to kill them (and us) in open warfare. It's
| not something we want to do.
| tzs wrote:
| How about the sanctions on Iran to try to get them to stop
| pursuing nuclear weapons?
|
| They made a deal to stop in exchange for removal of sanctions.
| That worked for a while but then a few years later the US
| reimposed sanctions claiming that the deal was not working (but
| was unable to cite any evidence to support this), so this time
| the sanctions provide no incentives.
| s_dev wrote:
| Yes, the sanctions aimed at the oligarchs impoverish the
| oligarchs.
| ancientworldnow wrote:
| Impoverished or made slightly less obscenely wealthy. How
| many are truly penniless and only surviving through state
| welfare etc?
| knodi123 wrote:
| I don't know if you can call a slight reduction in an
| unimaginably massive fortune "impoverishment". Putin could
| lose tens of billions of dollars and still not be able to see
| poverty with a telescope.
| ck2 wrote:
| SEIZE THE YACHTS AND REAL-ESTATE
|
| It's not rocket science. Physical assets. All of them.
|
| Every country, especially USA, if there is Russian owned
| property, it's not theirs anymore. Every holding company or if
| some oligarch is dumb enough to have something in their name.
|
| Lots of penthouses in NYC and Florida. Seize them all.
|
| Sell them and pay for the funerals of all the innocent people
| that are about to needlessly, pointlessly, brutally die in fear.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Sell them and pay for the funerals of all the innocent people
| that are about to needlessly, pointlessly, brutally die in
| fear."
|
| I bet millions of Vietnamese, Iraqis and whole bunch of others
| are already enjoying a windfall.
| orbifold wrote:
| That is what happened with German assets during World War 1.
| One of the reasons why there are two Merck companies today for
| example.
| ck2 wrote:
| I was thinking last night about how the USA delayed getting
| into a war with the Nazis for two whole years while entire
| countries were taken over. But they even continued to do
| commerce with them.
|
| I don't expect "boots on the ground" because I wouldn't want
| to send anyone to their death even if they are young and
| ignorant so willing to do so.
|
| But hell, the least we can do is make Russia disappear from
| everything else and close down their world. No travel, no
| assets outside of Russia to any other country.
|
| They aren't China, we can do that to Russia. China would be a
| nightmare but not Russia.
|
| They aren't leaving Ukraine ever. Are all the events and
| cancellations just waiting for things to "shake out"? It's
| basically forever. Or at least Putin's lifetime but who know
| who is waiting in the wings.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| If you do that, the issue is: The other side will treat the
| property of every US citizen, company, or state as a fair game
| for appropriation, and if not possible for destruction.
|
| Would you risk seizing private property of a Russian citizen,
| if Russia decides to retaliate by destroying property of a US
| citizen, wherever in the world it may be located?
|
| Let's please not further escalate, it's time for diplomacy.
| Diplomacy means agreement, agreement means compromise. We may
| not be fully satisfied, the other side may also not be
| satisfied, but we'll both claim a diplomatic win for our side
| and go on with life. If the alternative is war and mutual
| destruction, it's the only reasonable way to go.
| ck2 wrote:
| If there are any US assets in Russia they need to be
| removed/leave.
|
| Russia isn't leaving Ukraine and they had no right to go in
| and start killing people.
|
| Diplomacy is before war. Not after a country invades. After
| they invade you have to make sure they not only stop but
| never do it again.
|
| If we aren't willing/able to put boots on the ground then any
| US assets in Russia have to be sacrificed.
|
| If Russia pulls this off without a scratch, next up will be
| North Korea or China because why not? What is the US/Europe
| going to do?
|
| No imports, no exports, no travel, no Olympics, nothing. They
| are a rogue nation acting like a bully and they now have
| isolated themselves until they leave Ukraine.
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| What you describe here is a full blown escalation that
| leads to the WW3 in the end.
|
| Of course there is diplomacy after the war is started and
| during the war. It's the only way to achieve any peace
| barring a total defeat of one side, which didn't happen in
| last 75 years.
|
| Heck, it was diplomacy that allowed US troops to pull out
| of Afghanistan orderly, without diplomacy there would be a
| bunch of dead soldiers.
| honkler wrote:
| look man, if you are so excited about fighting russia,
| please volunteer to fight them. Americans are not your
| pawns.
| kungpao42 wrote:
| We should de-peer the russian ISPs from the internet.
| cellis wrote:
| That would just further isolate working class Russians. A
| dictatorship doesn't need consent of the governed to start a
| war so many Russian people may not approve and now you can't
| even communicate with them. I think this would be incredibly
| short sighted.
| mdaniel wrote:
| Or take the AT&T approach: throttle their link to 14.4k
|
| > it seems you have exceeded your allotted foreign invasions
| this century; we're reducing your bandwidth until your next
| billing cycle
| rcpt wrote:
| Telegram would do ok at 14.4
| x86_64Ubuntu wrote:
| This will just lead to a further balkanization of the internet.
| China and Russia aren't going to sit by and be beholden to
| western tech and financial stacks when they can be cut off at
| any time.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Nowadays dictatorships take that decision themselves. No need
| to impose it on them.
| at-fates-hands wrote:
| There's been a lot of talk if the West does this Putin would
| react by waging an ongoing cyber war against the US. There's been
| plenty of articles about how they've been hacking US
| infrastructure for years now.
|
| I think the fear of a cyber war is stopping them right now.
|
| https://www.wired.com/story/sandworm-cyclops-blink-hacking-t...
|
| _ANY APPEARANCE OF a new tool used by Russia 's notorious,
| disruptive Sandworm hackers will raise the eyebrows of
| cybersecurity professionals braced for high-impact cyberattacks.
| When US and UK agencies warn of one such tool spotted in the wild
| just as Russia prepares a potential mass-scale invasion of
| Ukraine, it's enough to raise alarms._
| oneoff786 wrote:
| That seems unlikely to work. Russia will probably just attack
| because it can and will just deny it even in the face of
| undeniable evidence.
| s_dev wrote:
| Paywall Removed:
| https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economist.com%2Fth...
| andy_ppp wrote:
| I actually pay for the economist, journalism costs money and
| it's not that expensive to sign up. Great app that reads the
| stories to you if you're doing something else.
| manquer wrote:
| Expensive is relative to the person, there are plenty of
| people from developing world here. Even with economist
| discounts and student pricing it could be expensive for
| someone.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| There's no shortage of good news sources...there is a
| shortage of personal budget. And a shortage of time to
| consume all of them.
| belorn wrote:
| The article discuss the benefits and drawback of SWIFT being the
| dominating banking system in the world, and the risk that cutting
| of Russian banks from it would encourage the other banking
| systems to take over. What I find missing from the article is
| that primary intention of wanting to cut off Russian banks from
| SWIFT, ie stopping trade between Russia and other countries. In
| particular, stopping Germany and Italy, the two countries most
| dependent on Russian oil and natural gas.
|
| If the world want to stop countries from trading with Russia,
| have a trade agreement that imposes sanctions to anyone trading
| with Russia and goods that comes from Russia. Right now the oil
| and gas from Russia is just as bloody as blood diamonds.
| dundarious wrote:
| Oil from Saudi Arabia is no less bloody. The Yemen war is
| dragging on for another year, and the civilian toll is
| unbelievable. I don't think the concept of justice is the
| primary motivator here, or at the very least, it's an utterly
| compromised sense of justice.
| sunflowerdeath wrote:
| For me it looks like all of those banking / swift sanctions will
| mostly affect regular russian people and small businesses, who
| will not be able to work with foreign markets. Russian goverment
| will continue to trade oil and gas like nothing happenned, and
| will find way to trade other goods through non-Western countries
| like China. And sanctions regarding high-tech export will take
| many many months to have an effect. Honestly, it looks like
| western countries try to decieve people, that they are actively
| helping to solve this situation, but actually want to leave
| everything as it is.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Part of the power of sanctions are to weaken a leader's power
| over their people. If they lose the mandate to lead, the people
| may revolt and decapitate the leadership causing the issue.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Dropping bombs on poor civilians looks bad, but starving them
| to death with sanctions looks good. It's humane really.
| waffle_maniac wrote:
| It hasn't worked before with Putin but people still believe
| that if the pressure is strong enough he will change. He
| clearly doesn't care and no one is going to take power from
| him.
| select-all wrote:
| From my first-hand experience of being under sanctions, they
| do the opposite.
|
| In 2015 Visa and MasterCard banned all transactions in
| Crimea. It hit hardest the people who were naturally the
| least loyal to Putin - the upper middle class, IT
| professionals, and everyone who relied on receiving
| international payments. I don't know anyone who has changed
| their opinion about Putin to worse as the result, but a lot
| of people, myself included, changed their attitude towards
| West to worse. And even if sanctions will result in the fall
| of the regime eventually, you can be sure they will be
| remembered as a hostile action.
| dundarious wrote:
| It is true that that is the logic, but there are so many
| modern examples to show it is a flawed logic (Cuba, Iraq
| before the 2nd war, Venezuela, etc.). I do wish that policy
| makers were as open about this as they were in the early
| years of the Cold War, that their goal is to inflict massive
| pain on the population and pray for unrest. Instead, nowadays
| it is framed as a direct punishment on the leaders or an
| abstract notion like the enemy nation or their supposed
| ideology.
| sunflowerdeath wrote:
| People fear being jailed, tortured and having their lives
| ruined by its own government much more than any consequences
| of economic sanctions.
| oi2j3oi32 wrote:
| yyyk wrote:
| "Why the West is reluctant to deny Russian banks access to SWIFT"
|
| Because Europe is dependent on Russian gas (thanks to an ill
| thought out denuclearization drive), and both Europe and US
| governments prefer their economic and electoral interests over
| Ukraine or the international order. The rest of the article are
| really silly excuses (Russia is a relatively small economy and
| can't meaningfully hurt the dollar etc.).
| yrgulation wrote:
| Not the whole of europe tho. Its mainly germany.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| We are all connected. In Spain we get no gas from Russia (it
| comes mainly from Algeria), but there are already news that
| we will send gas up north to help Northern European countries
| that may experience outages.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| In the vain hope that it'll prevent at least _some_ of the
| bullshit on this issue, here's actual data on the import
| dependency of European countries from Eurostat:
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| iso1631 wrote:
| Greece gets half its gas from Russia
|
| Any shutdown would increase gas prices worldwide. Just
| because the UK doesn't use Russian gas direct, it does buy
| gas on the open market, when Germany can't buy it for EUR1
| per unit from Russia, they'll pay EUR1.20 from the UK (which
| has 50% domestic production, Norway having most of the rest),
| pushing prices up for the UK and other countries despite not
| using Russian gas direct.
|
| The failure here was the inability to boost nuclear and
| renewable sources in Europe over the last 8 years to reduce
| reliance on Russia.
| sgc wrote:
| The anti-nuclear push in the last few years in Europe has
| been extremely short-sighted, and undoubtedly helped make
| Russia's decision to attack Ukraine easier.
| croes wrote:
| The opposite is true, nuclear energy has lits of problems
| in the long run. Many french reactors are shut down
| because of damages and the US ones have a problem with
| fake parts.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/counterfeit-
| parts-pr...
| atlantas wrote:
| Germany shutting down their most reliable source of clean
| energy, nuclear energy, is an incredible self own. Hopefully
| now they will reverse that and quickly for all our sake.
| riskneutral wrote:
| It is the whole of Europe:
| http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/16/business/eu-gas-
| russia/ind...
| yrgulation wrote:
| Yes and the largest is germany, hence "mainly".
| meragrin_ wrote:
| The largest number they show is for Germany. The coloring
| of others indicate they are more dependent than Germany.
| emteycz wrote:
| No, this is not "dependence". Czechia is darker, but it's
| less dependent on Russian gas than Germany is - thanks to
| the nuclear powerplants.
| number6 wrote:
| Just fill the tanks and then cut off swift: oh we would habe
| paid if only we could...
| Scarblac wrote:
| There has been less gas flowing from Russia to Europe for
| months now, leading to large price spikes. In hindsight
| that was clearly preparation for this war - the tanks are
| the opposite of filled.
| thg wrote:
| Gazprom fulfilled their contractual obligations. Putin
| being responsible for our MBAs gambling on falling prices
| and not making long-term contracts just so he has an
| easier time invading Ukraine? That's stretching it so
| thin that it's utter non-sense.
| phatfish wrote:
| Except they were happy to send gas above the "contractual
| obligations" previous to the ramp up to invading Ukraine.
| This was clearly planned as a way to exert more pressure
| on NATO allies.
|
| It's like falling out with IT support. Suddenly your
| ticket to fix a printer takes 2 days, rather than 5
| minutes because that is the "SLA".
| krisoft wrote:
| And then? Countries exist on a larger timescale than the
| average dine and dasher. How big of a tank this should be
| in your opinion to work?
| number6 wrote:
| I guess we can work something out with the president that
| follows Putin. Maybe the oligarchs overthrow Putin after
| losing their assets.
|
| Or the gas ships from the US will be there in the next
| month. Russia is not the only one who sells gas. Just the
| lowest bidder
| cdiddy2 wrote:
| Italy is also dependent and didn't want to sanction russia in
| this way
| yrgulation wrote:
| Well there will be some damage to eu countries. East europe
| accounts for 15% of all german exports, being the largest
| market, should they start playing the sanctions game as the
| eu seems to enjoy whenever someone is out of line?
| Basically buying russia's gas means financing a potential
| war against nato member states.
| WithinReason wrote:
| I actually wonder if the anti-nuclear sentiment in the EU might
| have been partly Russia's doing, we know how much they like to
| influence other countries' public opinion. Getting Germany to
| turn off its nuclear reactors to rely more heavily on Russian
| gas before an invasion of Ukraine would make a lot of tactical
| sense.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| I think that's veering deep into conspiracy theory territory.
| I know it's been normalized in the past few year but Russia
| isn't actually to blame for everything wrong in every
| country. Do they take advantage of the anti nuclear sentiment
| since they sell gas? Yes. But is there some massive russian
| psyops campaign to push that narrative? No. Russian
| intelligence services can't be incompetent as what happened
| in the UK seems to indicate and yet also be super sneaky all
| powerful, election/narrative/social media controlling
| masterminds at the same time.
| deutschewelle wrote:
| why is it that even in the face of evidence, people still
| give Russia so much benefit of the doubt? Putin has been
| playing chess since the early 2000s and is it so far
| fetched to think creating a dependence on its energy
| resources is definitely in his playbook at achieving its
| goal of attaining power and influence in the region?
|
| I mean my god, have you not been paying attention to the
| migrant crisis, the funneling of Rosneft incentives to far-
| right political parties in Western Europe? It's all just a
| conspiracy to suggest these are successfully weakening the
| EU?
| mardifoufs wrote:
| What? I'm not saying russia didn't pay off far right
| parties or whatever. The comment i was replying to was
| talking about anti nuclear sentiment. Changing public
| opinion to that extant would require a much much more
| involved process than just bribing a few officials.
|
| It's not giving russia the benefit of the doubt, I'm just
| very doubtful that russian intelligence services are so
| competent while being much less well funded and having a
| lot less material reach than their american counterparts.
| Yet, it would be ludicrous to just assume that even the
| CIA could have the means to manipulate the public opinion
| so much that you'd get such a widespread anti nuclear
| sentiment in big country like germany, right? All of that
| without getting detected.
| WithinReason wrote:
| I thought social media manipulation was well known for a
| long time, just one example:
|
| https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/faceboo
| k...
|
| Quote:
|
| As of October 2019, around 15,000 Facebook pages with a
| majority US audience were being run out of Kosovo and
| Macedonia, known bad actors during the 2016 election.
| Collectively, those troll-farm pages--which the report
| treats as a single page for comparison purposes--reached
| 140 million US users monthly and 360 million global users
| weekly. Walmart's page reached the second-largest US
| audience at 100 million. The troll farm pages also combined
| to form:
|
| - the largest Christian American page on Facebook, 20 times
| larger than the next largest--reaching 75 million US users
| monthly, 95% of whom had never followed any of the pages.
|
| - the largest African-American page on Facebook, three
| times larger than the next largest--reaching 30 million US
| users monthly, 85% of whom had never followed any of the
| pages.
|
| - the second-largest Native American page on Facebook,
| reaching 400,000 users monthly, 90% of whom had never
| followed any of the pages.
|
| - the fifth-largest women's page on Facebook, reaching 60
| million US users monthly, 90% of whom had never followed
| any of the pages.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Didn't most of those kosovar/macedonian operated fake
| news farms turn out to be just random private citizens
| from those countries taking advantage of the situation
| instead of a massive Russian-run operation? If russia
| actually ran tons of pages and controlled the narrative
| we would've known by now using the same tools used to
| unmask the balkan troll farms. I'm sure some were
| intelligence operations but do we have proof that those
| really had any big influence on public discourse?
|
| Unless you are saying that russia could do the same in
| the future, which I agree is possible but we would still
| ultimately end up knowning about it. The anti nuclear
| movement in europe is pretty grassroots and the fact is
| that we don't have any proof of substantial russian
| influence on that subject even if everyone is much more
| on the lookout (as your links indicate)
| AYBABTME wrote:
| What are the odds that enough of them would spontaneously
| self organize in an unexpectedly coordinated attack,
| randomly located within the same region, in a long term
| persistent manner... just for fun?
| graphpercolator wrote:
| No idea what you are talking about.
|
| They jumped on electronic warfare as a new type of weapon.
|
| It costs practically nothing to get a huge effect if
| successful.
|
| If I was a country with limited resources compared to the
| US , electronic warfare is getting massive funding because
| of the bang for the buck. There is no conspiracy theory,
| just common sense.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| The anti-nuclear sentiment isn't universal in the EU, France
| is strongly in favor of nuclear power, for example.
|
| Germany is one of the more vocal opponents to nuclear power.
| Reliance on Russian gas started in the 70s, as part of the
| Ostpolitik. It was a deliberate decision during the cold war
| under the theory that trade partners don't wage wars.
|
| The anti-nuclear stance started in the 70s as well (although
| a bit later) as part of the peace movement (building nukes is
| comparably easy when you have all the tech around as a
| byproduct of civilian use. See IAEA) and went in full force
| after Chernobyl blew up (in some parts of Germany wild
| mushrooms and boar are still contaminated today). It took
| until 2000 to bear fruits though because the Green party
| ("anti-nuclear" is their reason d'etre) first came to federal
| power in 1998.
|
| The peace movement leaned left and there has been some
| Russian influence in left circles but it seems unlikely that
| 1970's Russia ran a "abolish nuclear so you buy more gas"
| campaign. If there has been any anti-nuclear campaign on
| their part it was aiming to keep nuclear weapons out of West
| Germany (none of the above surfaced in East Germany).
|
| The 2010/2011 detour in German politics (delaying the nuclear
| turn down by 14 years, then mostly re-reversing the decision
| after Fukushima) is just a minor side note in that (net
| effect: it delayed the exit by ~5 years).
| deutschewelle wrote:
| Here in Germany many small independent journalists were able
| to discover the industrial figures regularly
| interacting/receiving gifts, trips, stock certificates from
| Rosneft executives and oligarchs who are essentially actors
| for Russian government.
|
| but still people seem genuinely shocked and continue to fall
| back on their myopic cold war view of the geopolitical
| european landscape by their mainstream media (without any
| suspicion or question of the narrative) it seems largely the
| result of being separated by the Atlantic ocean and a bulk of
| European countries that the average American cannot name.
|
| Already I can see people from Poland and EU countries
| furiously downvoting and flagging my comments as "Russian
| Propaganda"
|
| None of this is a surprise to us here in Germany, our
| relationship with Russia might be shocking to someone sitting
| in front of FOX or ABC news.
|
| Even more shocking might be how the German elite and the
| working class view the Ukraine situation. To them, Ukraine
| was a source of worry due to its cheap labor wages and
| proximity to Russia would create a competing industrial
| center.
|
| Even more outrageous might be how many in Germany are
| actually in favor of Russia's actions to take Ukraine away
| from EU/NATO.
|
| It's funny to me how people still think EU can last like
| this.
| hope693 wrote:
| Hey, i too am a german and can confirm, that ur comment
| about our politic view is completly wrong. Even former
| kanzlerin Angela Merkel said, that we need to stoo putin
| now. So please stop activly missinforming people
| deutschewelle wrote:
| I see you just created another nick just to pretend to be
| german. Oh this is quite hilarious
| rr808 wrote:
| Still loads of Europeans dont trust the US. 3 months ago
| Russia wasn't that bad and I'd expect most Europeans would
| be as happy to trade with Russia as the USA.
| BasilPH wrote:
| > Even more shocking might be how the German elite and the
| working class view the Ukraine situation. To them, Ukraine
| was a source of worry due to its cheap labor wages and
| proximity to Russia would create a competing industrial
| center.
|
| > Even more outrageous might be how many in Germany are
| actually in favor of Russia's actions to take Ukraine away
| from EU/NATO.
|
| Both of those are very strong claims. What are your
| sources?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Denuclearization might not have helped, but we've been reliant
| on Russian gas a lot longer than the post Fukushima changes...
| dillondoyle wrote:
| Just another reason green energy & climate change can't be
| ignored.
|
| I'm more of a hawk on CCP and Russia
|
| But I'm a mega super hawk when it comes to spending painfully
| NOW to stand a chance against the worst of the worst of climate
| change.
| munificent wrote:
| _> both Europe and US governments prefer their economic and
| electoral interests over Ukraine or the international order._
|
| This is a natural consequence of democracy. By design, leaders
| of a country can't do something their voters don't agree with.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I really hope all of Europe gets serious about reducing their
| fossil fuel consumption now that it's a short term existential
| threat.
| cottager2 wrote:
| It wasn't I'll-thought out. It was an intention decision by the
| chancellor Gerhard Schroder. Immediately after leaving the
| chancellorship, he went to work for Gazprom and oversees Nord
| Stream and Nord Stream 2.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_Schroder
| rr808 wrote:
| USA meanwhile 10% of oil imports are from Russia - more than
| from Saudi.
| https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/pet_move_impcus_a2_nus_ep00_im0...
| chasd00 wrote:
| now that oil is so expensive shouldn't all the fracking wells
| come back online? i thought for sure there was a price
| ceiling on a barrel of oil at around $75. Maybe it happened
| too fast to bring that capacity back online?
| graphpercolator wrote:
| For sure. $100 dollar oil makes a ton of supply profitable.
|
| It just won't be here tomorrow though.
| dghughes wrote:
| And 20% from Canada, it's dirty oil but I bet it could be
| bumped to 30%.
| oh_sigh wrote:
| That's a bit different though.
|
| Germany is mostly importing finished products (natgas) from
| Russia. This is like Russia sending bread to Germany and
| Germany is eating the bread.
|
| Whereas Russia is sending the US unfinished products (crude).
| The US is then refining the crude and selling it to someone
| else. This is like Russia sending wheat to the US, the US
| making bread out of it, and then selling the bread.
|
| It's much easier to stop baking and selling bread than it is
| to stop eating bread (if that is all you're eating).
| arcbyte wrote:
| It's this 75%. Europe needs gas because it's still winter and
| therefore needs the ability to pay Russia for it.
|
| The next biggest reason is probably just keeping arrows in the
| quiver. Why exhaust all sanction options up front and then be
| unable to influence in the future? Keeping the SWIFT sanction
| option keeps the ability to influence Russia in the future.
|
| Lastly, a minor component is all of the CIPS and other reasons
| people bring up.
| lazide wrote:
| Also, politically most of Europe seems to have worked itself
| into a corner where the only politically tenable power source
| that works well regardless of the weather (which is also when
| most of Europe has peak power demands) is unbuildable and
| very expensive (nuclear) or puts them at the mercy of Russia
| and very expensive (nat gas/fossil fuels)
| colechristensen wrote:
| Instead of sanctions, Germany could break ground on fifty
| nuclear power plants tomorrow. _That_ seems like it might
| actually give Russia pause.
| croes wrote:
| And then built them the next 200 years?
|
| Stuttgart 21 is still in construction and the Berlin
| airport took way longer than expected. And these projects
| don't have the same severe consequences if the
| construction is botched.
|
| Not to mention attacks.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Germany is closing their nuclear power plants and
| increasing dependence on gas for "environmental" reasons
| - so this isn't happening.
| 2ion wrote:
| Europe has lost the hands and the knowledge to do that
| due to neglect over 30+ years. In order to be able to do
| such a thing, you need to educate a steady pipeline of
| people to become professionals that can handle the job.
| As for contractors who could actually be available for
| hire to handle this, Korea and Japan come to mind, but
| both are probably booked out well into the foreseeable
| future.
|
| When you build a reactor, you probably don't want "first-
| timers" working on the project for you.
| mr_toad wrote:
| France recently announced they're building 14 new
| reactors. By 2050. It's not a short term solution.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/10/france-to-
| buil...
| elzbardico wrote:
| 50 nuclear plants are neither cheap or fast to be built.
| I don't even know if we have the supply chain in the
| whole world and the technical man power to build 50
| nuclear plants at the same time.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| We didn't have the capacity to produce 300K warplanes in
| 1939 either, but we did it by 1945. It's just excuses for
| those with power to as little as possible.
| colechristensen wrote:
| So? The easy fast solution is what got Europe in the
| position of not being able to meaningfully sanction
| Russia.
|
| Yes, doing something big would require many things.
| Building a bunch of them at the same time would allow you
| to save many of the pitfalls of nuclear construction:
| having to redesign each one from scratch.
|
| You'd build power plant factories, fifty of the same
| plant around the country/continent.
| native_samples wrote:
| Definitely do not. There are only two companies in the
| world with the ability to forge the steel needed for
| reactor hulls, iirc. One is in Japan and has a massive
| backlog of orders. The other? It's Russian.
| thrashh wrote:
| Not to mention Germany had just decided to shut down all
| of their reactors, following Fukushima.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yeah well, doesnt seem to be working too well for them
| with record high energy prices and a geopolitical
| situation where their hands are tied because they need to
| keep importing gas.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| This is a popular view on HN. I have never understood why.
|
| Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of power. A decades
| long propaganda campaign has tried, but failed, to cover
| that up.
|
| Yet this zombie opinion persists in certain political
| bubbles that get their information from fossil fuel
| interests.
|
| And now, when one of those fossil fuel interests invades
| another nation, the prime culprit is... renewable energy?
| And it's used as an excuse to talk about how utterly
| indespendible natural gas is, even though experts want us
| to dump it as fast as possible? Isn't that oddly convenient
| for Putin, who seems really well liked by all the same
| people who tell obvious lies about climate change.
| lazide wrote:
| Wow, that's impressively disconnected from reality.
|
| The reason why Germany and indirectly most of Europe
| hasn't stopped buying gas from Russia is because, despite
| being a massive (the most massive?) solar and renewable
| economy, _those don't work very well during the winter_.
|
| I'm literally pointing out the emperor has no clothes
| which is why they're freezing?
|
| If they were in a climate with better insolation and more
| predictable renewable sources, then they'd probably be
| fine. But they aren't.
|
| If they had adequate storage to deal with peak energy
| demand during minimum insolation, or had another adequate
| source, then they would have cut Russia off years ago.
| But they don't.
|
| They used to, but they have been shutting them down and
| not building replacement capacity.
|
| Instead they're paying out the nose and scrambling
| because they don't have viable options, and resisting the
| political motions they would otherwise do because Russia
| has them over a barrel.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| > The reason why Germany hasn't stopped buying gas from
| Russia is
|
| The reason why Germany hasn't stopped buying gas is
| because there are 12 million gas heaters spread across
| the country, heating 20 million homes (nearly 50% of
| housing).
|
| We currently bring up 150k heat pumps a year (mostly in
| new developments). At that rate it takes some 60-80 years
| to convert all existing gas guzzling real estate over to
| electric heating.
|
| > because, despite being a massive (the most massive?)
| solar and renewable economy, those don't work very well
| during the winter.
|
| Last I checked it's winter and we just broke wind power
| records, multiple times in a row. Wind power has
| approximately the same installed capacity as solar (60GW
| each). But it still doesn't help those gas heaters keep
| people warm.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| There is absolutely no chance you can heat germany on
| solar in the middle of a cold night in winter. None.
|
| According to the analysis, the price of electricity in
| Germany, adjusted for purchasing power, is 45-dollar
| cents (39-euro cents) per kilowatt-hour. This not only
| puts German electricity costs as the 15th highest of all
| the countries included, but it also means Germany has the
| third-highest electricity prices in the EU... The data
| included in the study refers to the second quarter of
| 2021, and so does not take into account the surge in
| prices consumers in Germany are currently facing.
|
| or look here:
|
| https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-
| explained/index.php...
| pgeorgi wrote:
| As mentioned in the other follow-up: Even using gas
| turbines + heat pumps would reduce the required amount of
| gas due to using environmental energy.
|
| And then there's wind (as mentioned: we just broke
| records. In winter. At night.), and water (to some minor
| degree). And theoretically a comeback of nuclear (won't
| happen). Or hydrogen storage. Or fusion, or whatever. The
| good thing about electricity is that it doesn't care
| where it comes from, and there are many different kinds
| of sources.
|
| On the other hand: Natural gas boilers require natural
| gas, and so far we don't have methods to synthesize it
| from electricity - or anything else - at scale. The main
| argument in their favor is that they're installed: a
| pretty important argument though.
| lazide wrote:
| Peak production (broke a new record) != worst case
| production.
|
| When the consequence of not having enough production is
| people literally freezing to death, worse case production
| matters.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| Germany is actually a world leader in making climate
| friendly biogas.
|
| https://www.worldbiogasassociation.org/wp-
| content/uploads/20...
|
| But yeah, big picture, gas is a poor choice for home
| heating, and should be phased out for health, cost and
| carbon reasons.
| lazide wrote:
| Another reason why those gas heaters are still there is
| because even with those wind and solar numbers, it can't
| replace the amount of energy those gas heaters are using
| - and Germany is already charging insane rates for
| electrical power. And those numbers are peak, during good
| conditions. There will be lulls in the wind, clouds, etc.
| coming over and over again.
|
| What then?
| pgeorgi wrote:
| The main reason _this_ house (in Germany) still heats
| with gas is because it's nigh-impossible to book the
| professionals who can install a heat pump and modernize
| the rest of the heating system in a sensible time frame.
|
| As mentioned by another comment: even if we were to send
| all that gas used for heating into gas turbines instead
| and use the generated electricity to operate the heat
| pumps, we'd use less gas (because it's using
| environmental heat energy in addition to the intrinsic
| energy of the gas).
|
| That brings the bonus that we could look into alternative
| power sources (of whatever kind: I'm sure France would be
| more than happy to assist bringing up nuclear reactors
| again, although that's unlikely to happen in Germany for
| a whole bunch of reasons) when gas is difficult to obtain
| because electricity is electricity.
|
| But apparently we don't have a sufficient number of
| people who could do the installation, plus it'd be
| expensive, and even discounting that, I'm not sure if "We
| need 12 million heat pump systems. Next quarter?" is
| something that could _possibly_ work even under normal
| circumstances (nevermind the supply chain issues we're
| currently dealing with globally).
|
| That's why I brought up the 150k installed units per
| year: There's probably room for improvement (I've been
| thinking that there must be a very profitable career in
| heating installations), but even if we can install 600k a
| year, we're still looking at 20 years before we get all
| the old cruft converted.
| lazide wrote:
| Let's say all non-trivial natural gas usage (for
| simplicity) is heating, and due to heat pumps you could
| reduce energy required to 1/3 of the energy currently
| provided by burning natural gas (and at 100% efficiency)
|
| you're still looking at about 4 trillion kWh of energy/yr
| (possibly a month - hard to get good data) that would be
| needed to do that switch.
|
| most of it during winter.
|
| Germany currently produces a little over 500 billion kWh
| of electrical energy a year.
|
| So to replace natural gas for heating in this scenario,
| Germany would need to produce 9x the electrical power it
| currently produces. Most of it during the winter.
|
| And not having enough production would kill people.
|
| It isn't a matter of not having enough heat pumps or
| people to install them, that's just the immediate road
| block if you individually wanted to switch.
|
| It's a fundamental economic issue that would require
| investment on a scale heretofore not considered outside
| of world wars. And maybe not even then.
|
| Right now, we don't even know of a storage technology
| that could even work at that scale, let alone what it
| would cost to do it.
|
| And depending on which way climate changes go, the size
| of storage needs to be potentially arbitrarily large. The
| more uncertainty you have, the larger it needs to be.
|
| Unlike a fossil fuel, we don't have (essentially)
| arbitrarily large reserves we can pull from, it all has
| to be made and stored in advance by the same
| infrastructure that produces your normal production.
| pgeorgi wrote:
| As I wrote: Even turning gas into electricity would
| reduce the amount of gas required. Which might make
| buying from other suppliers more realistic. Or reduce the
| amount of cash sent towards Russian military spending.
| Plus, no matter what is ultimately done, we'd gain
| flexibility.
|
| The "gas boiler in every second home" scheme locks us
| into gas to a degree that even "a natural gas burning
| turbine in every city" wouldn't. But locked in we are.
|
| The push for renewables or the rejection of nuclear power
| plants is orthogonal to why Germany is stuck with Russian
| gas.
| lazide wrote:
| It would trade gas burned with capex - and that capex is
| very, very high, as you'd need to spend more on turbines
| and electrical transmission gear than all of Germany's
| existing electrical grid. Many times over most likely.
| AYBABTME wrote:
| It seems to me that the whole gas debacle between Germany
| and Russia has been foretold for the last 20 years.
| That'd have been a good time to start booking the
| contractor. And I'm really baffled as to why Germany is
| shutting down nuclear power plants _in the midst of all
| this_. Is the public opinion's balance so much in
| disfavour of nuclear vs. peace in Europe?
| pgeorgi wrote:
| The plan to shut down nuclear power plants is from 2000
| and ended a (for German terms) fierce societal debate. It
| was delayed a bit in 2010 (and then un-delayed a smaller
| bit in 2011 following the Fukushima incident), but the
| plan has been in force for 22 years.
|
| By now, even the power plant operators aren't very
| interested in keeping them running for longer because
| they already planned to turn them off and dismantle them.
| Keeping them on for longer means a significant investment
| to them, for unknown benefit as the societal rift will
| inevitably break open again. They might invest (so they
| can continue to operate things safely), delay the
| dismantling (probably also costs money because they
| likely started hiring companies already), only to be told
| a year later to shut things down again (all that money
| for nothing).
|
| An issue in that has been that renewables build-up has
| been all but sabotaged politically in the last years, and
| that storage technology didn't develop as well as
| estimated, making gas necessary as a peak load
| compensation mechanism, "hopefully" temporarily. Gas
| turbine operators are whining for years that they're
| operating at a loss but they're forced to continue to
| operate (getting the loss just about compensated I think)
| to ensure the grid's safety.
|
| Other than _that_, gas is mostly used for heating which
| is a distinct system. As such, any consideration of
| "nuclear vs. gas dependency in Germany" is something that
| seems to be mostly discussed outside Germany: No matter
| how many nuclear power plants we keep up, gas boilers
| just don't run on electricity (except for their
| controller module).
|
| As for booking a contractor 20 years ago: There are
| funding programmes to encourage folks to go for heat pump
| systems and other modernizations. The last electricity
| heating system that was widely deployed in Germany _was_
| horribly inefficient, which is no surprise with
| technology that was already old in the 70s, and the idea
| "electricity for heating is a waste" has stuck. The
| political sabotage that I mentioned extended to not
| really caring about correcting such misconceptions.
| vkou wrote:
| When it comes to dollars and cents, I think the past few
| days have made it clear that Western Europe cares a lot
| less about peace in Eastern Europe than the hopes and
| prayers rhetoric would have you think.
| muttled wrote:
| My theory is that nuclear worked best in Sim City and
| that's where most of us draw our governmental experience
| from.
| emteycz wrote:
| Nuclear works well and economically in many countries
| around the world. You're just acting like everyone with a
| different opinion is an idiot.
| yyyk wrote:
| >Wind and solar are the cheapest sources of power. A
| decades long propaganda campaign has tried, but failed,
| to cover that up.
|
| Even if Wind and Solar could supply 100% of demand
| tomorrow, we cannot convert all uses of oil and gas
| quickly. Renewables may be the future, but they are not
| today. The attempts of some misguided politicians to
| reduce Western extraction* of fossils merely subsidize
| Putin and dictators like him.
|
| * As opposed for attempts to reduce demand and switch
| supply to clean fuels which are useful.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| > " _Decades long_ propaganda campaign "
| lazide wrote:
| And the reality is, even if nameplate capacity is
| sufficient - effective capacity is not often enough it
| would be foolhardy to depend on it during the winter.
|
| Natural Gas has a mind blowing amount of thermal energy,
| and per unit is essentially free compared to anything
| else. 42-45MJ/kg.
|
| Near as I can tell, Germany imported 119 billion cubic
| meters of natural gas in Jan/Feb of last year. A cubic
| meter of natural gas has approximately 38MJ of energy in
| it, so that is around 4.5 x 10^18 joules of energy or 1.2
| x 10^13 kWh. Something like 12 trillion kWh.
|
| About 40% of that was from Russia (near as I can tell).
|
| Natural gas and Electric heating probably have similar
| end efficiencies (taking into account electric
| transmission losses).
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| You seem a really big fan of natural gas.
|
| Have you heard of heat pumps? If you burn the gas in
| electricity plants you can get 3x the efficiency of
| burning gas for heat. So if the heating power of gas is
| that impressive to you, then renewable backed heat pumps
| must be about 10x as impressive.
|
| You can even hook them up to the nuclear plants that you
| were supposedly advocating for before this turned into a
| love letter to natural gas, Russia's biggest export.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Electricity prices would be 50 cents+ if germany
| converted to all electric now and banned gas generation
| of electricity. This is on the order of a few trillion in
| extra cost per year (even assuming amazing efficiencies
| in going electric).
| lazide wrote:
| I'm far from a fan of natural gas - I'm a realist.
|
| Have you run the numbers on capex to switch everyone to
| heat pumps, or looked at available grid capacity required
| if everyone switched?
|
| I'm not saying it's impossible period - I'm saying no one
| is being realistic about the cost or trade offs, and
| seems to be under the delusion that some (most of the
| time) fanciful faceplate capacity number and cheap price
| for one part of the story means everything is solved.
|
| It's time to do the math.
| dv_dt wrote:
| Europe has had plenty of time since the last Russian
| expansion into the Ukraine. A hard future commitment to
| finance renewable technology now would give Russia more
| pause now than sanctions that don't stop SWIFT, or
| temporarily halt of SWIFT. Part of what gives the large
| fiscal buffer to Russia is that they're one of the
| largest fossil fuel producers in the world.
| yyyk wrote:
| I intentionally separated extracting fossils from fossil
| demand reduction. We should definitely reduce fossil
| demand for too many reasons, and investing in renewables
| can help by switching demand.
|
| However, the attempts to reduce fossil extraction don't
| help the climate (the West just imports from some
| dictatorship which doesn't care), and ironically have
| their own negative externality.
| babypuncher wrote:
| The cost of wind and solar skyrockets when you factor in
| the need for energy storage, since neither of those
| sources operate 24/7.
| jdrc wrote:
| What future? after russia invades hungary or poland or ... ?
| EEBio wrote:
| The next is most likely Moldova, as it is not in NATO and
| has a large pro-Russian separatist movement, funded by
| Russia for the last 30 years.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Russia won't invade a NATO country. It's not going to
| happen. Speculating about it does nothing because if that
| actually happened, we would be entering WWIII.
| jdrc wrote:
| I think the fact that SWIFT can't be used now, shows that
| it can never be used, it is not a weapon at all as it is
| thought to be. Even minor cases like the temporary
| blockade of iran had small impact.
| jlcoff wrote:
| axg11 wrote:
| I'm worried this is optimistic but ultimately misguided
| thinking.
|
| Russia is invading Ukraine because Putin knows that the
| consequences of invasion will be small relative to his
| perceived benefits. NATO/"The West" will not risk a
| larger confrontation over Ukraine.
|
| Unfortunately, I think that same conclusion extends to
| the smaller NATO countries. Will the rest of NATO really
| risk a nuclear war if Russia decides to invade one of
| Latvia/Lithuania/Montenegro/Estonia? As recently as last
| year, the US had an anti-NATO President. This could
| happen again in the near future. If it does, Putin will
| be emboldened to continue expanding Russia's sphere of
| influence.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| No, NATO is absolutely the redline and even the smallest
| nato baltic countries usually have allied troops
| stationed there. To think NATO wouldn't defend a member
| state is completely unrealistic and that's one of the
| reasons this entire conflict started. If ukraine joins
| NATO it becomes untouchable, even for putin, hence why
| they were willing to support the donbass rebels and
| escalate to a war now. If putin was just going for the
| easiest target and didn't mind NATO, ukraine is hardly
| the weakest target in the area.
|
| Once you attack a NATO member you are almost
| automatically at war with all the members of the alliance
| and you'll probably have to face already present nato
| troops as soon as the war starts.
| r00fus wrote:
| Would you say this if Trump was still POTUS? I seriously
| wonder if the US didn't support NATO actions whether NATO
| would remain whole.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Yes, because he was still very actively supporting the
| countries bordering russia. He didn't like the structure
| of NATO but that's mostly because he wanted _more_
| involvememt from European countries, not less. I don 't
| think any president would actually back off a nato member
| getting attacked.
| axg11 wrote:
| I understand the theory of what you are saying, NATO as
| an alliance is focused around the "red line". However, in
| practise, will the US/UK/etc risk a nuclear war over
| Montenegro? Even today, with Biden and Boris in command,
| the answer in not clear. With a potential future anti-
| NATO Commander in Chief there is even more doubt.
| boring_twenties wrote:
| The question shouldn't be "will NATO risk war over
| Latvia," but rather "will NATO risk war over NATO."
| Because if the mutual defense pact is not upheld, NATO is
| shown to be utterly worthless.
| arcbyte wrote:
| > Will the rest of NATO really risk a nuclear war if
| Russia decides to invade one of
| Latvia/Lithuania/Montenegro/Estonia?
|
| American here. Yes _. Fuck with us. Please.
|
| _ Biden is our president right now and his temperament
| does seem to be less than what is required.
|
| > As recently as last year, the US had an anti-NATO
| President.
|
| There's a lot fucked up about NATO and its post Soviet
| history, including our recent president. However, it was
| largely neglected and America was bearing the brunt of
| its cost and few of its benefits. Seeking to make it more
| equitable and discouraging Russian energy dependence is
| not the same as being "antiNATO".
| chasd00 wrote:
| i agree, will NATO think Montenegro is worth global
| nuclear war? i'm not sure.
| croes wrote:
| Ill thought denuclearization?
|
| They are expensive and unsafe especially if you think about
| sabotage, not to mention the most recent problem with reactors.
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/counterfeit-parts-pr...
| dundarious wrote:
| One of the reasons that JFK's military advisers were initially
| against the naval blockade of Cuba and in favor of a full
| invasion, is that a blockade is essentially an act of war anyway.
| It is a relatively modern concept to do more than use the
| _threat_ of "blockade" level sanctions without a declaration of
| war (declarations are out of fashion, but a meaningful mutual
| understanding that the parties are at war).
|
| Just like Syria, Yemen, and several other conflicts, the
| situation is horrendous, but from all rational perspectives, I
| don't think Ukraine should precipitate a war between nuclear
| powers. An economic blockade like the SWIFT proposal would
| possibly cross over into war.
| sjsvsnd wrote:
| It is an act of war, but there is a huge material difference
| between invading and blockading.
| dundarious wrote:
| In the Cuba context, the military thinking was that a
| blockade (an act of war) would lead to very quickly to a
| response and hence, open conflict, so why not initiate
| conflict with the strategic benefit of a surprise attack. The
| important part is that they acknowledged that a blockade was
| so severe, that a response was both likely and in a sense
| justified (though the latter is not important if you are
| rational).
|
| Thankfully both leaders at least eventually recognized the
| cost of such a conflict and stopped following the insane
| logic of escalation to annihilation.
|
| I make no equivalence between Putin's invasion and a "SWIFT
| blockade". I'm focusing on the foreseeable outcomes, not any
| sense of what is "justified".
| barbazoo wrote:
| Thanks for the context. Indeed it is easy to demand the most
| drastic measures, but, while that may feel like revenge in the
| short term, it might not be the best step in diplomatic terms.
| Diplomacy must be so frustrating at times to work in.
| dundarious wrote:
| Yes, it's amazing how some of the people I know who are the
| most embedded in the field (working 10 hours a day, 6 days a
| week, reading updates on movements on the ground in all parts
| of the world, casualty lists, diplomatic messages,
| policy/planning papers) are outside of their work, some of
| the most cheerful people. It seems extremely demanding.
| Especially if you're good -- having to disregard most of the
| information and especially commentary designed for public
| consumption.
|
| I think the most stark, but in a way obvious, lesson is that
| we should hold ourselves responsible for the _predictable
| outcomes_ of our actions. It is no good to say "our enemy is
| evil" and do something that we can reasonably predict will
| lead to an "evil" action by "our enemy". (Of course you can't
| always minimize in this way, but it's an important point,
| because there are numerous recent examples where predictable
| outcomes were very bad, but ideology won out).
| ramshanker wrote:
| If the west goes ahead, east will have more systems similar to
| Swift!
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Basically Russia and China have alternatives and the west doesn't
| want to lose Swift's dominance.
| deutschewelle wrote:
| A bit of this but mostly as others pointed out, EU nations
| reliant on Russian gas also happen to hold large sway over
| other members is what is causing reluctance to destroy their
| own economy to serve the interests of US security umbrella.
|
| One EU country went as far as to remove ALL nuclear source of
| energy to increase dependence on Rosneft. In this same country
| many DO NOT WANT another Greece mooching off them and WANT
| putin to take Ukraine out of the picture before other EU
| smaller member states with US backing will demand them in.
|
| Likely some talk took place between Xi and Putin to create a
| barter system, to trade Grain for Oil and vice versa. This
| explains why Putin is totally unphased by threats of Western
| sanctions because he realizes the EU's interest is not aligned
| with NATO/US security goals.
|
| Think about this by supplying cheap Russian gas, they could
| overnight dictate where the next industrial region in Europe
| would form. They could sell to Berlin at several times the
| markup it used to receive while supplying its industrial
| outsourcing in other European countries with cheaper gas to
| force to spread out Germany's production chain.
|
| There's just so many ways to manipulate Europe, its no longer
| clear who holds the ultimate veto power in Europe. Is it the
| nuclear armed and hesitant Western Europe nations or is it the
| nuclear armed and hostile Russia?
|
| Financial sanctions just do not make an impact if a country is
| determined to take its national security concerns known to its
| enemies.
|
| Putin is not only cunning, he is proving to be far more capable
| and adventurous than any other leader in the region. Like in a
| game of poker, fortune favors the bold, or whoever risks more
| stands to gain/lose more.
|
| Kiev will fall in a few weeks and Russia has barely used its
| full capacity, most likely to avoid collateral damage that
| would impact its political objectives: decapitation of the
| central Ukranian authority
| bsd44 wrote:
| Probably for the same reason they didn't exclude Five Eyes from
| SWIFT when they invaded Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and
| Syria and killed over 1,500,000 people in just over twenty
| years...lol nah it's about money. They'd shoot themselves in the
| foot if they did it.
| jaywalk wrote:
| It was much more than just the Five Eyes countries involved in
| those invasions, so there really wasn't anybody of any
| significance left that could have removed them from SWIFT.
| bsd44 wrote:
| That is exactly my point; you don't dig your own grave.
| Sanctions are only affective when it hurts someone else, not
| you. That however proves to be a difficult task in a
| globalised world.
| steve76 wrote:
| tlogan wrote:
| I wonder what will be excuse after Putin invades Latvia, Estonia,
| Lithuania ...
| ecf wrote:
| It's almost like Putin knows the West is incapable of any
| meaningful action.
| WastingMyTime89 wrote:
| Despite the article being clear as most commenters don't read
| them anyway and considering the amount of non sense I have been
| reading on HN concerning SWIFT including in this very thread, I
| think some precisions are needed: - SWIFT is not American. It's a
| cooperative headquartered and was funded in Belgium. - SWIFT is
| lead by a 25 members board of directors. No country can have more
| than two members on the board. - SWIFT is messaging system. It's
| used to pass orders and it archives them. It is not involved in
| own these orders are settled. SWIFT is a telex replacement. -
| SWIFT is useful because banks have automation in place to
| directly process SWIFT formatted messages. It is important
| because banking institutions are slow moving and conservative.
| From a strictly technical point of view, doing what SWIFT does
| outside of SWIFT is extremely easy. It's all IP based and the
| messaging format is standardised. - If you read articles about
| the impact of being disconnected from SWIFT, you will often see
| the case of Iran being used as an exemple. That's garbage. Iran
| was hit by US sanctions threatening repercussions on anyone doing
| business with them using dollars. The figure quoted is not really
| due to them being cast out of the SWIFT network. - CIPS actually
| uses the same exchange format as SWIFT but on a different
| network. It's a good showcase of how easy to do it is.
| hajkrem wrote:
| Why not limit the funds a Russian citizen can place at EU banks?
| It's a signal to all the wealthy that they do not have an easy
| "plan b" once shit hits the fan, and incentives them to create a
| more stable environment.
|
| Also, why not sanction well-known Russia-paid European spies like
| Gerhard Schroder and limit their finances within the EU. The
| Hungarian national TV just aired a pro-russian programme, where
| an "expert" named Georg Spottle put Zelensky and Hitler in
| parallel. Why not sanction these guys first?
| vdsk wrote:
| Russians living in London and Paris are already the most anti-
| Putin/United Russia electorate. We would be hitting at the pro-
| West and westernized Russians, not to mention that we would
| have to carve exceptions all the time for political dissidents
| fleeing Russia. The second main reason is that it would remove
| the need for Putin to impose capital controls since the main
| place these funds would go are western banks. I understand the
| sentiment and why this might sound a good idea, but it would be
| very counterproductive.
| hajkrem wrote:
| Living in London/Paris, earning well (~being affected by the
| sanction), having "anti-Putin opinion" yet doing nothing
| lacks any merit. Who else would do the actual work of
| changing the regime if not the locals?
| vdsk wrote:
| What do you want them to do? Just go rot in Moscow's
| prisons? You clearly over-estimate the level of leverage
| the citizenship has over its government, even in
| democracies. This is not a democracy.
|
| On that note, do you also want to sanction the Syrian
| refugees? They're not personally storming the presidential
| palace over Damascus.
| sAbakumoff wrote:
| Frget about SWIFT. Why does the West not seize the assets of
| Putin's friends and family members? Why don't they cancel the
| citizenship or residence permit for anyone who has something to
| do with Putin and his gang? All these kids, grandkids, nephews,
| etc. of the Russian elite.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Because the west is dependent on Russian oil.
| hiavraham wrote:
| I apologise if I am too direct, but cannot help it, but say,
| that these are extremist ideas. Why should relatives or friends
| be held responsible for actions that are not theirs. In my
| former communist nation, if one person went against party line
| their entire family would be prosecuted. The statements you
| made are unfortunately not hard to find being drawn in the
| minds of many, however, they are a bitter memory for those who
| have lived in times when this kind of thought prevailed. The
| past should serve as a teacher. Unless there is actual proof of
| their wrong-doing they are innocent until proven guilty, and as
| such merit the same treatment as anyone else.
| ksec wrote:
| It is definitely the last one.
|
| >Last, using swift as a weapon against Russia could hurt long-
| term American interests. America holds sway over international
| finance thanks to the dollar's dominance and its pre-eminent role
| in global settlement systems. Further politicising swift would
| give China an incentive to bolster cips, its rival to swift for
| cross-border payments in yuan. It would also help China court any
| country with uneasy relations with America looking for
| alternatives.
|
| I would imagine there are additional politics in play with
| disabling SWIFT. I dont how many countries will need to agree
| before shutting down SWIFT access, if it is at the will of US it
| would be more like a semi-nuclear option.
|
| Although I am already surprised by CIPS, one eighth of
| transaction volume of SWIFT is not "well behind". From many POV
| this already seems like a battle the west are clearly losing.
| giordano-bruno wrote:
| liminal wrote:
| Will sanctions need to broaden to include China or other
| countries supporting Russia?
| ksec wrote:
| They wont, Which is why I said in the last sentence the west
| are clearly losing.
|
| US Food and Agriculture are already beholden to China. From
| corn, soy beans, potatoes to Pork ( Smithfield is owned by
| China ), Tyson has 25-30% of their business in China. If you
| buy Beef or Lamb from AUS you have a 25% chance buying it
| from Chinese Owner. Or To Tech from Intel, AMD, Nvidia, where
| the growth are in E-Sport or PC Gaming in China.
| Manufacturing or assembly where they have a contingency plan
| to Foxconn as ICT or more commonly known as Luxshare. RISC-V
| ( Nearly all Chinese startup getting on RISC-V gets much
| better funding ) and IMG PowerVR, ARM China. YMTC against
| Samsung and Micron on NAND and DRAM, BOE against Samsung and
| LG on OLED. If you exclude Apple and Samsung, the rest of
| Smartphone market are 80% Chinese Brands. Solar Panel is
| partially all Chinese. NBA. ( And English premier league
| which seems to have some following in US, they will be
| targeting F1 soon ). Even Amazon clothing are losing to
| SHEIN. Unless someone make a revolutionary leap in battery
| otherwise the current trajectory would be China winning the
| price / Whr. ( Not even Tabless Battery from Tesla /
| Panasonic ). They are gunning for electric car manufacturing
| and are also the largest customer of Boeing _and_ AirBus. But
| are working on their own JET. The increasing percentage of
| patents on 5G to Video Codec from China. To inside influence
| on tech companies via employees. We have another thread about
| Reddit and Youtube moderation, that happened already in 2019
| during Hong Kong protest. And Tik Tok I mentioned in [1],
| expanding financial services like AliPay and WeChat Pay via
| tourist influence. And all these circulate back to SWIFT and
| US dollar as dominant currency. I could talk about it for
| hours and this list is just for US, there are whole lots of
| other things from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and SEA
| perspective.
|
| For a long time I try not to be blunt but I am sorry I have
| to write this out so clearly. I hope Ukraine is enough of a
| woke up call.
|
| I have been wondering if start up linked to certain political
| agenda will ever get accepted. We cant sit just here and
| watch.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30463767
| bombcar wrote:
| If the EU is unwilling to stop gas shipments from Russia, so
| much more is the USA unwilling to stop shipment of
| _everything_ from China.
| [deleted]
| tut-urut-utut wrote:
| Why would China be willing to stop gas shipments from
| Russia? USA is also not willing to stop oil shipments from
| Russia, although Russia is the third-biggest oil exporters
| to the USA.
|
| Independent states usually don't do anything that would
| harm them directly, they force their colonies and vassals
| to harm both themselves and the enemies. In this case, it's
| the EU harming themselves and Russia with sanctions, while
| the USA and China being relatively unaffected.
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| The EU isn't harming itself it is protecting 70 years of
| peace on the continent that is now threatened by a
| paranoid Russian Czar.
|
| I would argue that this is less of a problem for the US
| than it is for Europe. China is an American problem
| Russia is ours.
| mortehu wrote:
| Isn't it far more important to ensure that they can't use
| dollars, than avoiding giving them more? They already have
| dollar reserves.
|
| If we can make dollars worthless for them, they will have
| given us the gas for free from their perspective.
| eptcyka wrote:
| That's like using high-velocity lead to remove an ingrown
| nail.
| mortehu wrote:
| Many sanctions so far are limiting Russia's ability to
| use money (in exchange for securities, other currencies,
| goods or services). I am only proposing that we proceed
| along the current path.
|
| As an example, denying them imports is reducing the value
| of their dollars.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > Isn't it far more important to ensure that they can't
| use dollars...
|
| It's in America's National Interest to maximize the usage
| of dollar reserves. Denying China the use of dollars
| would have a (relatively small) detrimental direct
| effect, and will set a precedent and likely accelerate
| the popularity of other reserve currencies.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| How do you sanction China when a good chunk of western
| industries rely on Chinese factories? Without a collapse of
| western economies? Maybe the people who outsourced all our
| manufacturing and know how to China should have thought about
| all that...
|
| We're still in the middle of a chip crisis and haven't still
| figured out that relying on the region constitutes a threat
| to our way of life. Are we bringing back all these plants to
| the west? We aren't...
| mountainb wrote:
| Yes, this is the problem with sanctions and blockading
| without actually going to war. The chip crisis will pale
| compared to the steel etc. crisis in magnitude and
| importance.
|
| A severe reduction in size of the global economy is not
| necessarily a "collapse," it's just that -- a severe
| reduction under either direct or indirect war conditions.
| throw_m239339 wrote:
| > A severe reduction in size of the global economy is not
| necessarily a "collapse," it's just that -- a severe
| reduction under either direct or indirect war conditions.
|
| We have crazy levels of inflation right now among other
| economic problems and the FED or the EU central bank are
| running out of instruments to "tamper with". Anything at
| that point could trigger violent unrests across the west.
|
| Whatever the consequences of "sanctions" are, they won't
| be happening in a vacuum.
| cudgy wrote:
| The Fed's tampering is the main reason for the inflation
| and the corner that they have painted the US economy
| into. Raise rates to proper levels to fight the inflation
| they created and risk recession; allow inflation and risk
| eventual revolt.
|
| Which choice will they make? Should they alone have the
| power to make these decisions is the true question.
| mountainb wrote:
| If there isn't peace in Ukraine soon and/or if Taiwan is
| invaded, it's WWIII and a rate hike won't matter and
| frankly the depreciation would be so rapid that it would
| be quickly irrelevant going forward. There would be
| rationing and a centrally planned economy, like in the
| previous world wars. Hopefully there are speedy and
| peaceful resolutions to this so that the worst of our
| problems is inflation.
|
| The government's debt problems are mostly "to itself" --
| the commitments to give free drugs and unlimited surgery
| for old people. Under war conditions obviously those
| commitments will be defaulted on. But then there comes a
| much larger and worse commitment to enormous war
| expenditures, and a far smaller private economy. A couple
| weeks ago it'd be nuts to say all this stuff but
| obviously things have changed now.
| cudgy wrote:
| Unrest in Ukraine alone is not likely to cause a new
| world war. There has been a civil war mainly in eastern
| Ukraine for many years already. Ukraine has historically
| been an unstable area mainly due to its unfortunate
| position between the major powers Germany and Russia.
| Ukraine government is better served to remain neutral and
| avoid provoking the angry bears that exist on each side
| of the country in my humble opinion.
|
| Not sure what you mean by depreciation during war. Some
| things will depreciate like fluffy tech stocks, luxury
| goods makers, and real estate, but other things like
| certain commodities and possibly food will increase in
| value.
| kolanos wrote:
| Inversely, China is highly reliant on the U.S. for
| agriculture, Brazil and Australia for meat, etc. China has
| 1/5th the arable land that the U.S. does, with five times
| the population. You can't eat silicon chips.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| China is nutritionally only reliant on the rest of the
| world for meat. If they reduce meat consumption, they can
| provide nutrition for all of their citizens with their
| arable land alone.
| kolanos wrote:
| China produces cheap manufactured goods. But the U.S. is
| the world's largest producer of cheap agricultural goods.
| In fact, China's largest sources of meat source much of
| their feed from the U.S. The U.S. also pretty much only
| produces soy for export to China, as does Brazil. My
| point is that people thing the global economy would
| collapse if China stopped exporting manufactured goods,
| but China would starve without the rest of the world
| feeding their people.
|
| China may be able to feed its people with its arable
| land, but the reality is that it would be only at a
| sustenance level. This is why China is investing so
| heavily in African agriculture.
| projektfu wrote:
| A little under half of soybean production is exported
| from the US. The rest is used here for oil products,
| protein products and animal feed. Apparently, 90% of our
| cooking oil comes from soybean (usually sold as vegetable
| oil).
|
| https://www.bizvibe.com/blog/agriculture/us-soybean
| LatteLazy wrote:
| The more countries you cut off, the less you hurt them and
| the more you hurt yourself.
|
| If you sanction every country you're effectively sanctioning
| yourself, not that that is what you're suggesting :).
| lisper wrote:
| Sanctions only work when imposed by a stronger country on a
| weaker one. Ecuador, for example, cannot impose sanctions on
| the U.S. For this reason, it is quickly becoming unfeasible
| to impose sanctions on China. Imposing effective sanctions on
| Russia is already hard enough, and Russia's economy is much
| smaller than China's.
| pydry wrote:
| China has hinted before at imposing sanctions on the US.
|
| It's the first country that has been able to make that
| threat credibly in.... ohhh, a long long time.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| They've imposed sanctions on US weapon companies
| recently. Soon once their domestic airplanes are semi-
| competitive with Airbus, they may even sanction Boeing.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| This is what I suspected would happen once the US
| sanctioned Russia.
| lazide wrote:
| That ship sailed awhile ago - as was quite clear during the
| Trump admin, the US can't effectively apply sanctions to
| China, and even moderate trade disagreements didn't
| actually go the way the US wanted it to.
|
| Additionally, if you want to see a crushing economic
| situation, imagine if China started to raise prices during
| already high USD inflation.
| lordnacho wrote:
| But if SWIFT is already in play, everyone already has a reason
| to diversify, and will do so.
|
| You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to
| avoid the thing you're threatening.
|
| Also you can't be hesitating on everything that seems like a
| one-off. Then you really don't have a lot of sticks to shake at
| people.
|
| This whole thing is so embarrassing for the West. We won't let
| Ukraine into NATO, we won't promise not to, we won't send
| troops, we won't send much help at all, we won't sanction all
| Russian nationals (yes it's heavy handed), we won't sanction a
| few thousand top regime officials, we won't sanction just the
| oligarchs, we won't stop them living in the West, we won't even
| stop them sending money home.
| simonh wrote:
| Exactly. Alternatives to swift are already growing and will
| continue to do so. What's more important, protecting Ukraine,
| Taiwan and anywhere else under threat, or slowing down the
| erosion of something already being eroded. Lives matter,
| swift will do just fine without Russia.
|
| This asshole is at war with us. It's about time we went to
| war back. Yes it would be costly, but it would have been a
| lot less costly if we'd done more than wring our hands over
| Crimea. The cost of dithering is going up and up, so what's
| the answer? More dithering?
| qiskit wrote:
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| Just because the US/West is in the lead of the empire
| game at the moment doesn't mean the other empires aren't
| a problem. We aren't the first empire and won't be the
| last. China, in particular, is in a massive expansion
| into Africa. If there was not competition from US/West
| for power, it would be moving much faster and more
| aggressively/violently as it had in the past.
|
| The ideal for the common person would be no empires. If
| that is a fantasy, then the next best thing would be some
| sort of minimally violent stalemate.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > But if SWIFT is already in play, everyone already has a
| reason to diversify, and will do so.
|
| > You can't be making threats and not expect people to try to
| avoid the thing you're threatening.
|
| > Also you can't be hesitating on everything that seems like
| a one-off. Then you really don't have a lot of sticks to
| shake at people.
|
| Exactly. It's possible to be too reluctant to "save" a weapon
| for next time. You can get to the point that you wasted it
| because you let it gather dust until it was ineffective.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > we won't sanction all Russian nationals
|
| It would be nice to see a mass deportation of Russian mafia.
| fsn4dN69ey wrote:
| Why should dual citizens living in other countries suffer,
| especially if they've lived there for decades?
|
| Asking for myself.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Slightly disrupt, in a pretty small way, a few thousand
| people connected to the regime
|
| vs
|
| a bunch of Ukrainian civilians get killed, their homes
| destroyed, thousands of refugees, and troops on both
| sides die and are horribly injured.
|
| No idea if you're connected to the regime, but it would
| be unfortunate to mess up your life in the west. But
| there's a tolerable amount of collateral damage. This
| goes back to hurting yourself to hurt the bad guy, it's
| not a western ideal to harm the innocent, but we might
| end up where it happens and we shouldn't be paralyzed by
| the possibility.
| hkt wrote:
| Not exactly a convincing expression of support for
| people's human rights, especially those of fellow
| citizens with dual nationality. Wouldn't exactly be a
| good look.
|
| A better solution is to clean up the financial sector,
| especially the City of London, and to move to renewables
| ASAP to break the hold of all petrostates on the West.
| throwoutway wrote:
| I figured the sanctions would drive Russia into the arms of
| CIPS
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Yeah, I am sure CIPS won't be used politically.
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I've been saying this for awhile, the US is screwed when the
| dollar loses reserve currency status and kicking Russia out of
| SWIFT accelerates the timeline for that dramatically. The fact
| India hasn't said a word about Russia and Pakistan PM is
| meeting with Putin right now is telling
|
| The US has been outplayed by China so badly it's almost
| laughable, Chess vs Checkers for decades now
| sinyug wrote:
| > India hasn't said a word about Russia
|
| Why should we? When China killed 20 of our soldiers in
| 2020,[1] the whole world prayed for "de-escalation and a
| peaceful resolution." And that is what India will say in the
| Ukraine-Russia conflict.
|
| [1] 2020-2022 China-India skirmishes (https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/2020%E2%80%932022_China%E2%80%...)
| ren_engineer wrote:
| I'm agreeing that it is a wise decision. I put that in
| there because people in this thread are acting like India
| will blindly follow the US against Russia/China with things
| like sanctions. The US is in a weak position right now due
| to a number of dumb foreign policy decisions, going nuclear
| by kicking Russia off SWIFT would have even allies
| questioning SWIFT and cause the US to lose even more
| control over the financial system
|
| India is doing what's in the best interest of their people,
| which is what a government should do
|
| https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-explores-
| setting-u...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Every country in the world has suffered many such slights,
| but somehow we have to and we do cooperate, to our great
| mutual benefit. The slights are used by those who want
| division, in every country (and if they can't think of one,
| they make them up anyway). Why should India sacrifice it's
| larger interests to temporary outrage - never a good idea
| in international or personal relations.
|
| (Also, China didn't attempt to conquer India, attacking
| Delhi, Mumbai; annexing the south, etc. The comparison is
| very exaggerated.)
| sinyug wrote:
| > China didn't attempt to conquer India
|
| China illegally occupies Aksai Chin. Pakistan illegally
| occupies parts of Kashmir. We have fought multiple wars
| with both countries over the last 75 years with very
| little help from outside parties. When the rest of the
| world goes beyond mere words to help restore these
| territories to India, I am sure India will be more than
| happy to move beyond mere words in similar situations.
| HstryrsrBttn wrote:
| temp8964 wrote:
| I don't buy this logic. If China can get dominance, there is no
| reason for it to wait for the SWIFT to ban those bad actors.
| They can start their own system on the side right now.
| ksec wrote:
| >They can start their own system on the side right now.
|
| CIPS is their own system.
| rurp wrote:
| I had the same thought as your last point. Regardless of what
| happens with SWIFT now China will keep pushing hard to reduce
| it's US dependencies and is clearly well on their way.
|
| Keeping your powder dry isn't so useful when it's evaporating
| in front of you.
| gaoshan wrote:
| Reducing dependencies on rivals is a good idea. China is
| doing it because they know what they would do if they hold
| the dependency of a rival (like the US) firmly in hand. The
| US should take very serious heed of this because if we are
| too dependant on China for something critical it will
| eventually come to bite us. The supply troubles caused by the
| pandemic are a tiny foreshadowing of what will happen if we
| ever find ourselves too dependent on something important from
| a country like China.
| mvc wrote:
| How much do you think the GDP of China would be impacted if
| there was nothing left of NATO to buy their wares?
|
| We're all dependent on each other. This retreat into
| isolationism just presents an illusion of non-dependency.
|
| We need to start thinking more collectively
| cudgy wrote:
| This is far too logical for the United States to implement.
| People want cheap stuff and companies want cheap
| manufacturing. It took the great political shock of an
| unstable outsider getting elected as President of the
| United States who was not afraid to counter the globalists
| and a pandemic to alert the citizens of glaring shortages
| of manufacturing capacity to finally bring this issue into
| discussion. However, it appears this realization will not
| be enough to alter course and begin manufacturing more
| products at higher cost in the United States.
|
| What realistic measures beyond tariffs can accomplish a
| shift toward a reduction of US dependency on China? A
| dependency which creates more risk for not only the US but
| the world as a whole due to the obvious potential for
| conflicts that will arise when China uses their
| manufacturing prowess to apply the screws to the many
| nations that depend on it.
| mgkimsal wrote:
| US (and maybe Canada too?) fostering IT infrastructure
| plants in Central America. The whole "huge migrant forces
| leaving Central America for the US" (to the extent that
| it's a factor) could be stemmed with more infrastructure
| jobs there. The IT infrastructure we need to maintain
| independence from larger potential adversaries. Intel and
| others have some chip manufacturing in some Central
| American locations - increase that. Increase chip and
| other IT related manufacturing plants closer to our
| hemisphere. Lift up these economies closer to home -
| reduce shipping/transit costs.
|
| Tax policies that favor more IT manufacturing in Central
| America may already be in place. If not, put in place. If
| there, tweak some levers to increase activity to closer
| to our borders and further away from countries that are
| gaining too much control over strategic resources.
| MR4D wrote:
| China has one dependency they cannot get rid of - Americans
| buy tons of their stuff, and if they get rid of that, China
| has a big problem.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Not just Americans. If all 30 NATO nations threatened to
| halt trade, China would be in a tough position.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| " If all 30 NATO nations threatened to halt trade"
|
| That would be effectivly the same as launching nuclear
| missiles? Mutual destruction economically.
| stickfigure wrote:
| Why do you think that? For the major countries of NATO,
| China is one of many trading partners. China is only
| about 16% of US trade. Would it hurt? Sure. But nowhere
| near as much as having nearly 90% of your major trading
| partners disappear.
|
| NATO coordinated economic action is extremely asymmetric.
| Compare these two lists:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading
| _pa...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_largest_trading
| _pa...
| hodgesrm wrote:
| > That would be effectivly the same as launching nuclear
| missiles? Mutual destruction economically.
|
| No. Nuclear war potentially would kill many millions of
| people. Let's keep matters in perspective.
| bllguo wrote:
| and why would that happen? 1. it's utterly, completely
| out of scope of NATO's purpose 2. Europe does not share
| America's attitude towards China
| AniseAbyss wrote:
| This is the difference between China and Russia.
|
| The CCP is in power because it has promised Chinese
| citizens wealth. China actually really doesn't want to be
| a pariah.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Convincing Americans to stop buy their wares is a huge
| task. Any political group that halts those wares from
| coming in would face huge upheaval. People are much more
| interested in their day to day comfort than something
| halfway across the globe (from a US perspective).
| MR4D wrote:
| I agree completely. However, there are many situations
| where it can be reduced. For instance, I've heard chatter
| about people wondering about Apple's exposure to China[0]
| should China back Russia in the Ukraine conflict. At some
| point, it would be within Apple's best interest to look
| at reducing their dependency on a possible opponent.
|
| [0] - Obviously we can pick any number of company and
| country matchups for this discussion, but China is
| obviously the relevant discussion point to this topic,
| and Apple is a huge American company, so the example is
| much less esoteric than others. I'm not picking on Apple
| here at all.
| baybal2 wrote:
| iWatches might just got sanctioned because of their glass
| comes from Russian company with state links. They chose
| to save on Corning's glass, with dire consequences for
| themselves.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Always nice when a company with 70% margin chooses to
| save a few pennies
| riku_iki wrote:
| > Convincing Americans to stop buy their wares is a huge
| task.
|
| Its actually super easy, you impose 200% tariff, and
| people will start buying from Korea, Indonesia, Brasil
| and India.
| kube-system wrote:
| You would need to do that slowly or you'd really piss off
| voters. And even if you do it slowly, you'll probably
| piss them off enough that they'll vote in someone who
| will erase what you've done.
| riku_iki wrote:
| I think if things will come to 200% tariff, it would mean
| something serious happened already, and voters will be
| enraged/educated to some extent already.
|
| But yes, it is multi-factor optimization (voters,
| economy, geopolitics), though it looks like there is some
| consensus over certain topics between politicians, e.g.
| Biden didn't remove Trump tariffs, and didn't stop
| withdrawal from Afghanistan.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| That's a great way of skyrocketing inflation.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You're skipping the step where all of the US retailers
| must switch to new suppliers at the flip of a switch. How
| long does that take before their current supplies run out
| and customers go else where? Looking at the current
| supply chain conundrum, I'd suggest that would be a
| larger issue than you're giving it credit.
| riku_iki wrote:
| You can do it gradually (2-3 years). Trump already
| imposed 25% tariff on China goods, and nothing dramatic
| happened, and I bet many people switched to goods from
| other countries. One example: I am into electric guitars,
| and almost all manufacturers moved from China because of
| tariff risks.
| johnzim wrote:
| A huge task indeed but perhaps less than people think.
|
| Chinese imports are heavily overrepresented in certain
| sectors (Tech for instance) but the US imports far less
| than most other countries. It's one of the peculiarities
| of the global economy.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| I'm just curious if this is true if you back china into a
| corner. I'd imagine they'd take over taiwan and south
| korea? Is our tech sector really immune from this kind of
| major conflict?
|
| How much flash RAM etc do we produce locally etc?
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Tech is really important. But there is also all the
| little things that you just interact with on daily life.
| Things like cutlery, soap dispensers, and so much more.
| Sure the US could make all this stuff but the country
| deeply relies on the cost imbalance to maintain the
| standard of living they have had for decades. Thats most
| people's entire lives.
|
| I am reminded of this Purism phone that you can buy as a
| US made or China made version.
| https://shop.puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ China: 799$ (now
| 1200$ due to rising supply chain costs) USA: 2000$
|
| I guess we are lucky in that most of our food and
| infrastructure related items seems to be local.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That specific example is not as revealing as it might
| seem, because in addition to a difference in supply
| costs, there's a difference in how much a hypothetical
| person who doesn't care about money but cares about it
| being made in the US will pay _on top_ of supply cost
| differences.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| Yeah I guess you are right, its just that there is not
| many examples I can provide because they just don't exist
| at all. Could Apple with their supply chain experience
| and clout get that 2000$ price down? Yeah probably. But
| it helps to illustrate my main point: The West has
| essentially been cheating by exploiting the purchasing
| power differential for decades and eventually it may
| finally collapse on them.
| whatshisface wrote:
| In an idealized situation, every company in the world
| will all move to a country to make an extra $0.01/unit,
| if they can all make it and make it reliably.
| lumost wrote:
| I suspect that the semi-nuclear option will get pulled sooner
| rather than later. Ultimately we are seeing a world where the
| west is extending financial, economic, societal, and diplomatic
| infrastructure to countries which actively disagree with the
| security, co-operation, and economic principals required for
| those institutions to exist.
|
| This situation is untenable in the long run.
| bostonsre wrote:
| Is it feasible to throttle swift transactions to/from a
| country? Wonder if that could be a middle ground between full
| throughput and complete disconnection..
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I suspect that the semi-nuclear option will get pulled
| sooner rather than later. Ultimately we are seeing a world
| where the west is extending financial, economic, societal,
| and diplomatic infrastructure to countries which actively
| disagree with the security, co-operation, and economic
| principals required for those institutions to exist.
|
| There's another option, which is growing the rules-based
| international order (as it's called). It had been growing for
| decades, and despite a bad few years, it is bigger than ever
| from any perspective other than ~2010 - for example, consider
| it from the perspective of 1985. And growing it is incredibly
| beneficial economically, for security, and for freedom - a
| far better outcome.
|
| The semi-nuclear option only achieves short-term survival; it
| does not build a world for our future.
|
| The main obstacle to growing it is not China and Russia, but
| the far-right nativist, reactionary political movements in
| democracies, especially the Republicans in the US. They
| oppose it (though being reactionaries, have no solution with
| which to replace it).
| EVdotIO wrote:
| That is a scary paragraph you put down there.
| DrBazza wrote:
| It's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeriepieris_circle
|
| Half the world's population lives with a 2500 mile radius
| circle centred over the South China Sea. There's a market.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| I really love maps like this
|
| But how's this related to SWIFT?
| rconti wrote:
| One post up. China, CIPS, strategic interests.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| is proximity to the country that owns a transaction
| processing system relevant in a fully digital world?
|
| Do you see India and Japan (and Vietnam and South Korea,
| all within the circle) joining a system controlled by
| China.
|
| India has its own SWIFT alternative as a matter of fact
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> is proximity to the country that owns a transaction
| processing system relevant in a fully digital world?
|
| Very much yes. Think of two people trading rice between
| china and the Philippians. That rice is not digital. It
| is traveling across a not-digital ocean on a not-digital
| ship. If something goes wrong with a payment they would
| much rather be dealing with someone in the same timezone
| who can address the issue before the non-digital ship
| gets locked down somewhere. When things go very wrong,
| they don't want to be shopping for a European lawfirm to
| help with a matter between two Asian businesses.
| Timezones, language and local understanding still matters
| for realworld trade.
| mohanmcgeek wrote:
| > something goes wrong with a payment they would much
| rather be dealing with someone in the same timezone
|
| These systems are for the banks to transfer between
| them..
|
| If a payment goes wrong, it's still the bank's problem.
| This is opaque to the end user if I understand it
| correctly.
|
| And Going by this logic would the entire world also stop
| using Gmail and start using Alibaba/Tencent's email
| service?
| tempnow987 wrote:
| One nit, many developing countries do pick overseas legal
| systems to resolve commercial disputes because local
| systems are not workable / usable. So you might be in
| india and philippines, but use a london bank for a letter
| of credit and agreements / bills of lading that are
| handled in London
|
| https://www.gov.uk/courts-tribunals/commercial-court
|
| A winning combo is a functioning, fair, nonpolitical
| legal system that works QUICKLY and predictably (fairness
| a bit secondary) and banking / finance so decisions can
| be enforced more easily.
| sremani wrote:
| No, India will not let its financial graph be owned by
| China. US or EU its a different matter -- even then, as
| India becomes stronger economy would carve its own
| platform.
| vasco wrote:
| Countries in the proximity of other countries are more
| likely to have larger trade volumes between them,
| increasing the chances they hold each others currencies
| in reserves and have incentives to use a common payment
| network. This is why geographic proximity is relevant
| even in a fully digital world. At least while a
| significant portion of trade consists of physical goods
| that have to be moved across borders.
| Erwin wrote:
| I love how this widely quoted term originated on reddit. You
| can get something named after you after as a layman, like
| Fermat's Last Theorem, just best avoid coming up with it on a
| reddit account with an obscene name!
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| > how many countries will need to agree before shutting down
| SWIFT access
|
| Its HQ is in Belgium, so technically, this can be a unilateral
| decision by Belgian PM De Croo. In practice, as it was the case
| with Iran, US and EU have to reach political agreement before
| De Croo would budge.
| chasd00 wrote:
| isn't it a private company? If so, it would seem they could
| "de=platform" anyone at any time for any reason.
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| It is a cooperative https://kbopub.economie.fgov.be/kbopub/
| toonondernemingps.htm...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Its HQ is in Belgium, so technically, this can be a
| unilateral decision by Belgian PM De Croo.
|
| How does the Belgian PM have power over it? The United
| Nations is headquartered in New York, but that doesn't give
| anyone in the US unilateral power over it.
| science4sail wrote:
| Presumably the PM could coerce the SWIFT staff to do some
| action (see the fears European countries have about the
| relationship between the US government and its tech
| companies).
| sam_lowry_ wrote:
| This is how it worked for Iran sanctions.
| eunos wrote:
| Huh didn't know that there's new Belgian PM. In my mind the
| Belgian PM is still either di rupio or Charles Michel.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > Further politicising swift would give China an incentive to
| bolster cips
|
| It's not just China, but also crypto. This can already be seen
| with Ukrainians using stablecoins because they don't have
| access to banks.
| rjzzleep wrote:
| A lot of weapons are a lot scarier when you don't know what
| they are and what their impact is. You can't kick the BRICS out
| of SWIFT and expect the world to still take you serious.
|
| Decades of crippling sanctions have also taught China and
| Russia how to bypass altogether with certain countries. Short
| term it will probably sting, but long term its a death sentence
| to SWIFTs position.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Decades of crippling sanctions have also taught China and
| Russia how to bypass altogether with certain countries.
|
| What crippling sanctions have been imposed on China and
| Russia for decades? China's economy in particular has been
| very involved in international trade - probably more than any
| other.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Isn't the fact that the US controls it already a death
| sentence to it as far as Russia and China are concerned?
| dangerlibrary wrote:
| Yes.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| They don't have the power to change it, though China might
| eventually. And they do benefit from it - international
| relations are rational, not so partisan; just because a
| competitor is involved doesn't make it wrong. The rules-
| based, US-led interational order brings enormous benefits
| to China and Russia.
| MR4D wrote:
| Swift won't die until either the US Dollar dies, or the
| government replaces it with something newer.
|
| EDIT:
|
| Technically, the US Government doesn't "control" SWIFT, but
| through banking regulations, their influence is way bigger
| than it looks than their 2 board seats would suggest.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The supremacy of the US dollar is partly held up by SWIFT.
| If most countries move to non-SWIFT payments, the US dollar
| will weaken.
| MR4D wrote:
| The Dollar may indeed weaken, but then Americans will not
| be able to afford to buy as much imported goods from
| other countries, which will hurt those exporters. China
| will probably lose the most.
| MR4D wrote:
| I notice this post got some downvotes. My statement is not
| a political one, it is a practical one.
|
| Anyone who works with SWIFT understands that the system
| exists at the pleasure of the Americans. If the US decides
| to not allow SWIFT, then it will disappear quickly.
| Likewise, the US has the ability to regulate, and does
| regulate, the systems that are used for transferring money.
|
| And to quote from the FFIEC [0], who regulates this stuff
| (well, one of the regulators at least):
| "SWIFT is used to transmit foreign exchange confirmations,
| debit and credit entry confirmations, statements,
| collections, and documentary credits."
|
| That's a ton of US Dollars that aren't going away, so SWIFT
| won't either.
|
| [0] - https://bsaaml.ffiec.gov/manual/RisksAssociatedWithMo
| neyLaun...
| jeswin wrote:
| > You can't kick the BRICS out of SWIFT
|
| Why would you need to kick BRICS out of SWIFT? India is a US
| ally on Quad, South Africa and Brazil aren't allied with
| Russia either. And at this point, no one is talking about
| kicking China out of SWIFT.
| abhishekjha wrote:
| > India is a US ally on Quad
|
| India has a different perspective for what does that
| exactly entail. India has its own UPI and Rupay systems. It
| sure would see SWIFT falling.
| themgt wrote:
| The Quad is threadbare pseudo-alliance specifically
| designed around containing China, period. India has long
| been friendly with Russia and is non-committal on the
| Ukraine situation and is apparently talking about "how to
| establish a rupee payment mechanism for trade with Russia
| to soften the blow of Western sanctions"[1]
|
| It would be wise to assess how much the rest of the world
| is willing to go along with isolating Russia before we go
| in sanction-guns blazing and wind up isolating ourselves
| instead.
|
| [1]
| https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1497162914586898475
| nradov wrote:
| India is only loosely a US ally on issues of mutual
| interest. They also have fairly good relations with Russia
| and don't much care what happens to Ukraine.
| throwaway4good wrote:
| Are you sure that India is an US ally wrt. Russia?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| India has its own interests (of course). During the Cold
| War, India was part of the Non-Aligned Movement, a
| coalition of countries which sought a third path,
| supporting neither side.
|
| https://www.nti.org/education-center/treaties-and-
| regimes/no...
|
| India is far from Ukraine and so doesn't have many
| geopolitical interests at stake, unlike European
| countries and (by very close alliances and relationships)
| the US.
|
| India does have at stake the rules-based international
| order, for which a fundamental rule is respect for
| national sovereignty, and respect for the legitimacy of
| democracies. Sharing borders with Pakistan and China,
| India has a special interest in those.
| mhermher wrote:
| "rules-based international order"
|
| Where are these rules written, do you have a link?
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Does the US follow these rules in terms of action in
| places like Syria (almost certainly CIA providing
| weapons) Libya, Iraq, Vietnam etc? I'm actually kind of
| curious to see how the US measures up on these rules.
|
| I thought the US had an interest in things like regime
| change rather than some of the stability focuses others
| have had.
| mhermher wrote:
| Of course the US follows the rules, by definition.
|
| The "Rules Based International Order" is just a euphemism
| for "Post War US Hegemony". And the rules are "The US
| state department tells you what to do, and you do it".
|
| Anyway, a rules-based international order already exists.
| It's called the UN charter, but that's not what they
| mean.
| parthdesai wrote:
| Well considering US was ready to bomb India and it was a
| Russian submarine that saved India, it makes sense. Also
| don't forget about US supplying arms and aid to Pakistan
| which Pakistan in turn would use to arm Talibans and
| Kashmiri insurgents. On top of that, US was pretty vocal
| about wanting sanctions on India for testing out nuclear
| weapons. Given the history, who would be an ally in that
| case?
| sbmthakur wrote:
| The events of 1971 were preceded by events such as the US
| admitting Pakistan into SEATO (NATO like alliance in
| South East Asia). India had no other alternative but to
| choose USSR back then.
| ROTMetro wrote:
| I'll just leave this right here from the time the USA
| told the USSR a nuclear attack on China is a nuclear
| attack on the USA:
|
| https://www.scmp.com/article/714064/nixon-intervention-
| saved...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > US was ready to bomb India and it was a Russian
| submarine that saved India
|
| ?
|
| > Given the history, who would be an ally in that case?
|
| If such history prevented alliances, there would be none.
| France and Germany are allies. India and the US are
| allies when their interests align - less so regarding
| Ukraine, more so regarding China - which depends
| significantly, but not completely, and especially in the
| long term, on their values (democracy, human rights,
| etc.) aligning.
| sumanthvepa wrote:
| Some historical context is probably needed that most non-
| Indians won't have. During the 1971 war between India and
| Pakistan, the US sent a carrier group from the Seventh
| fleet into the Bay of Bengal as a means to deter Indian
| invasion of what was then East Pakistan. The Soviet Union
| countered this move by sending a nuclear attack submarine
| into the Bay of Bengal to prevent freedom operation for
| the carrier group. The move apparently worked, and the
| carrier group backed off. India defeated Pakistan and
| East Pakistan became what is now the independent nation
| of Bangladesh. Hopefully, I have the historical facts
| right.
|
| As to how the mere presence of a nuclear attack submarine
| can scare off an entire carrier group, I still don't
| understand. But then again I build web apps not
| submarines.
| parthdesai wrote:
| I went back and refreshed my memory. It was two groups of
| cruisers and destroyers and a nuclear submarine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_74
| [deleted]
| klipt wrote:
| Not just a war, also a genocide perpetrated by Pakistan
| against Bangladesh:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_Bangladesh_genocide
|
| > General Yahya Khan is reported to have said "Kill three
| million of them, and the rest will eat out of our hands."
| treis wrote:
| >the US sent a carrier group from the Seventh fleet into
| the Bay of Bengal as a means to deter Indian invasion of
| what was then East Pakistan The Soviet Union countered
| this move by sending a nuclear attack submarine into the
| Bay of Bengal to prevent freedom operation for the
| carrier group.
|
| This isn't accurate. The carrier group was to deter any
| invasion of West Pakistan. India had already invaded East
| Pakistan and that war was already effectively over when
| the US decided to send the fleet. It's true that the US
| tried to dissuade India's intervention and armed
| Pakistan, but they weren't about to bomb India over East
| Pakistan.
|
| The Soviet ships also did not chase away the carrier
| group. They stayed a few weeks after the war ended with
| Pakistan's surrender and India's decision not to invade
| West Pakistan.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| That's fair and there's hardly any evidence to claim US's
| desire to bomb India. However, it was still noted as an
| bullying attempt in India. US was also acting in cohort
| with Pakistan at UN, which was countered by Russian
| votes.
| parthdesai wrote:
| > India and the US are allies when their interests align
| - less so regarding Ukraine, more so regarding China -
| which depends significantly, but not completely, and
| especially in the long term, on their values (democracy,
| human rights, etc.) aligning.
|
| China is probably the only thing India and US agree on,
| especially considering Pakistan has been warming up to
| China now. Regarding the values, when has that stopped US
| ever? Only time US cares about democracy is when they the
| ruler is not friendly to them. US is an ally of - Saudi
| Arabia which is committing a genocide right now and
| actively sells arms to them (there goes your democracy
| and human rights) - Israel, again human rights go out of
| the window when it comes to Gaza occupation
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Of note, the Indian Diaspora in the US is also becoming
| increasingly active in policy shaping and civics within
| the US. Over time, it will be interesting to see how this
| dynamic influences the alignment of US and Indian
| interests [0]
|
| [0] https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-
| interpreter/remarkable-pol...
| sinyug wrote:
| > ?
|
| In 1971, the US actively supported the genocide committed
| in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) by the Pakistani Army.
| When the Indian Army intervened, Nixon sent the 7th Fleet
| that included the USS Enterprise into the Bay of Bengal
| to intimidate India. In response, the USSR sent their own
| flotilla.[1][2][3][4]
|
| [1] 1971 War: How Russia sank Nixon's gunboat diplomacy (
| https://www.rbth.com/articles/2011/12/20/1971_war_how_rus
| sia...)
|
| [2] 1971 War: How the US tried to corner India
| (https://www.rediff.com/news/2006/dec/26claude.htm)
|
| [3] US forces had orders to target Indian Army in 1971
| (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/US-forces-had-
| orde...)
|
| [4] Bangladesh Liberation War - US and USSR (https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Liberation_War#US_a...)
| not2b wrote:
| In the past, India had good relations with the USSR and
| bought weapons from them, but now they are more more tied
| to the US economy than to Russia's. They buy from and
| sell to the US much more than to Russia.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| When it comes to arms, Russia still takes precedence over
| the US for India. Russia is willing to sell their state
| of the art weapons to India and the deals involve
| significant tech transfer which helps in propping up
| local defense industries.
| Paradigma11 wrote:
| I am. Russia is moving towards china and so is moving
| away from india.
| throwrqX wrote:
| Historically India has been closer with USSR/Russia but I
| think in the future this will change. Obviously as other
| posters have noted India has stronger trade ties with
| America now, and there are lots of Indians in America in
| influential positions (like CEOs of big companies). I
| also see a natural coalition with anti-Islamists in
| America and India.
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| Why would people trust CIPS with China in charge of it?
| jatone wrote:
| they wouldn't point is use both then you are reliant on
| neither.
| cudgy wrote:
| Why not? The world trusts China to make their products and
| corporations entrust China with their sensitive intellectual
| property to manufacture goods. Even Charlie Munger and Warren
| Buffet (two conservative investors) trust China enough to
| invest in China. Doesn't seem like a big stretch to trust
| China for money transfers.
| FpUser wrote:
| The end result is multiple payment systems so that the
| countries can do whatever they do without single entity being
| able to shut the valve. And you do not have to trust any
| single one. Consider it free market competition.
| boplicity wrote:
| One reason, and one reason only: Cheap oil.
|
| We're willing to destroy the future of the entire world for cheap
| oil. What's one relatively small country in comparison to that?
|
| The West wants Russia's cheap oil. There's no other explanation.
| anamax wrote:
| Canadian and in-US oil/gas is less expensive (from a US
| perspective) than Russia's. Taking the US off the market also
| makes Russia's oil/gas cheaper for other countries.
|
| However, we're shutting that down.
| rank0 wrote:
| Oil isn't optional. It's the most important commodity in the
| world. Nobodies lifestyle on HN would be possible without it.
|
| It's the natural gas too. Europe needs natural gas for power.
| Is Europe's supposed to deprive its citizens of electricity?
| mtmail wrote:
| The article lists several other explanations.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > There's no other explanation.
|
| ...that you can think of.
| gyre007 wrote:
| The difference b/w SWIFT and CIPS is the recently discussed
| "freedom to transact". In China you're beholden to CCP. If they
| get "tired" you can be cut off and there is nothing you can do
| about. In the west you have somewhat functional legal system you
| can follow up with.
| nine_zeros wrote:
| More than the alternative system, the immediate problem appears
| to be that Europe is so badly dependent on Russian gas that
| cutting off swift will be a suicide for Europe.
|
| Europe needs to move to renewables for residential and industrial
| use ASAP.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Or be more like France: about 70% nuclear generation of
| electricity.
|
| Still dependent on gas pipelines to North Africa, but also
| building out its LNG infrastructure so it can buy from more
| sources.
|
| They're heavily promoting heat pumps for heating, but that also
| comes along with increased A/C use in a country that seems to
| culturally avoid it (in my depressing experience).
| [deleted]
| jborichevskiy wrote:
| Curious to hear about how A/C use is culturally avoided. Is
| it seen as a negative social status signal to have the
| convenience? Or is the environmental impact a consideration?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| iunno, more people than I could imagine there think air
| conditioning makes you sick.
|
| To the point of opening windows on the highway instead of
| turning on the a/c that's there.
|
| My sample is limited, but it's thinking I've never
| encountered in North America.
|
| Having said that, construction usually has excellent
| shutters on windows, so you can block the sun effectively.
| Covered outdoor parking is common at malls in the south.
| Being and staying cool are encouraged, but a/c often isn't.
| mhitza wrote:
| EU reportedly has 40% of it gas imports from Russia. However,
| the European Commission President has already stated that EU is
| prepared for partial disruption of gas flow
| https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-says-it-is-prepared-...
|
| Solidarity towards Ukraine by EU, would be to step up and
| proceed with blocking Russia from the SWIFT system.
|
| The thing is, such a decision would impact EU citizens
| negatively in the short-medium term. And I think that level of
| solidarity is a hard sell, and hard to quickly measure support
| for, within each country's electorate.
|
| The other issue, for Germany, is that removing them from SWIFT
| would be like clearing Russia's billions of debt obligations.
|
| If there was any moment for EU to swallow a hard pill, would be
| now, and cut of gas import, rather than try to get consensus on
| blocking SWIFT access. It's the perfect time to apply that form
| of economical pressure, especially now that we're having a bit
| of early spring weather (though uncertain how long that will
| last).
|
| Not sure about Cyprus, and others opposing the measure, what
| negative implications it would have for them and why they
| decided the way they did.
| vdsk wrote:
| We are in such a bind almost only because the geniuses in
| charge of climate and energy policy in Germany thought it was a
| good idea to close all their nuclear capacity and replace it
| with intermittent renewables. The instability was to be plugged
| with cheap russian gas imports. The solution is not clean wind
| and solar (which will fail when you get less wind and less sun,
| as in last September for example), but nuclear and mass
| electrification of heating systems.
| an9n wrote:
| If the West could swallow it's pride for a while, it could go all
| out for fracking, reopen coal mines and build enormous gas to
| fuel plants etc., and buy itself time to go full carbon neutral.
| But it won't. Why not? Because the eco-zealotry overrides
| Ukrainian lives.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"Because the eco-zealotry overrides Ukrainian lives."
|
| Do not be so dramatic. West never had problems with
| "overriding" human lives. It had killed millions without any
| repercussions.
| pettusftw wrote:
| The following is US centric because that is the only resource
| extraction I'm personally familiar with.
|
| Coal should stay dead. It has no redeeming qualities except
| that the cost is largely in externalizations.
|
| Oil and LNG output is constrained by price. More and more
| shuttered/untapped wells will go online as prices rise and they
| become economically viable. This is already in progress at
| current prices.
|
| I'm not sure what you meant by pride, but we don't need to
| drill/frack protected areas because they're cheaper to get
| resources out of. If protected areas are not what you meant,
| rest assured that unprotected areas will be "gone all out" on
| based on the economic calculus of extraction and there are
| plenty of untapped areas[0].
|
| Price is the better incentive because it's elastic in response
| to demand like that created by embargoes on Russian resources,
| and also incentivizes a move away from fossil fuels by nature
| of its high price. It will be costly to average consumers at an
| already precarious time, but at least it aligns incentives with
| a more sustainable future instead of sacrificing unreplaceable
| ecologies by "going all out" as you describe.
|
| [0] https://www.usgs.gov/centers/central-energy-resources-
| scienc...
| ape4 wrote:
| What if they add a service charge ;)
| baybal2 wrote:
| Counterpoints to the article:
|
| _" SWIFT ban will push Russia into China's hands"_ -- Russia is
| already fully submitting to any Chinese economic terms. The
| swathe of Russian land the size of France was already leased to
| China effectively in perpetuity https://www.asianews.it/news-
| en/Vast-swathes-of-land-beyond-... . Russia sells its natural
| resources to China at unbelievable discount.
|
| _" SWIFT ban will make Russia, and China to develop an
| alternative to SWIFT"_ -- Russia, and China already don't use
| SWIFT for trade in between government companies of each other.
|
| _" SWIFT ban will provoke Russia into all out war"_ -- Russia is
| already waging an all out war.
|
| _" SWIFT ban will make Russia to switch to Chinese Yuan, and end
| the dominance of US dollar"_ - Russia already uses Yuan for trade
| with China, and bunch of other countries.
|
| _" SWIFT ban will make Russia to rely on China economically
| instead of EU"_ -- This is the silliest claim I hear. If EU wants
| to trade with Russia, then don't sanction them. Sanctions are a
| bar on trade, and ability to extract profits.
| bigcat123 wrote:
| DizzyDoo wrote:
| > America has blacklisted big Russian financial institutions,
| preventing its own banks from dealing with them, and imposed
| strict export controls. These measures are much narrower in scope
| than disconnecting Russia from SWIFT, but they cut more deeply.
|
| Is that true? It sounds counter-intuitive to me, someone who uses
| SWIFT payments a lot but isn't at all an economist or super into
| foreign policy, that the US blacklisting a few big Russian
| banking institutions would cut deeper than the immediate and
| total removal from the larger payment network. But if that is
| indeed the case, why not both? The answer the article gives for
| that is "it would hurt the West's investments/position with
| respect to China" which, yes, makes sense, but is that pain worth
| it? A few decades of land wars across the European continent
| would do that too, right?
| steve76 wrote:
| blunte wrote:
| I have absolutely no expertise on this subject, but I think an
| effective approach would be to isolate and financially cripple
| the wealthy people who surround him.
|
| Make them hurt finally; basically make their "wealth" irrelevant
| outside of Russia. Lock down all their assets and ban them from
| entering the country (UK/US/many EU states).
|
| If a large group of powerful, very wealthy people suddenly find
| their luxury life threatened because of the small-man complex of
| one person, they will turn on that person - directly or more
| likely secretly. There must be enough people with enough money to
| collectively carry out a leadership replacement action. Add the
| "will of the people" who also don't want this war, and it should
| be easier to remove the source of the problem than to fight head
| on.
|
| To clarify, cutting the entire country off from SWIFT would be a
| clumsy approach when targeted measures could be taken as I
| suspect above.
| brodouevencode wrote:
| https://archive.is/CHiiI
| TameAntelope wrote:
| I dunno much about this, but I saw a tweet from someone I trust
| that described SWIFT in HVAC terms as the thermostat, and the new
| sanctions like blocking off the ductwork for a specific room;
| more targeted, still painful, and pulling the thermostat wouldn't
| do much more. [0]
|
| [0]
| https://twitter.com/daniel_mcdowell/status/14969850312057036...
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