All of these are links to "Russia Insider" website, by ascending date:
Sep 22, 2014
China and Russia strategic partnership:
1. Energy: Russia is China's key supplier of gas and oil.
2. Business and Trade: mutual trade from $90 billion a year to $200 billion by 2020. China will become a major investor in the Russian economy.
3. High Technology and Industry Cooperation: China and Russia cooperations from aircraft development to sharing satellite data.
4. Finance: partners in the new BRICS Bank, replace the US dollar, develop a card payment systems and a SWIFT system for interbank payments.
5. Military: China and Russia General Staffs closely coordinate with each other. Russia has resumed arms and technology sales to China.
6. Political and Diplomatic: China and Russia - joint founders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. They coordinate foreign policy positions and support each other in the UN Security Council.
Sep 26, 2014
Oct 14, 2014
Russia and China, the two strategic Eurasian nations, are moving clearly to ultimately break free of the stranglehold of the Dollar System. On September 10 high-level talks took place between the two countries discussing establishment of an interbank money clearing system independent of the US-controlled SWIFT payments system. If enacted it would represent a major step in being able to defend their economies from Washington’s newly-developed weapon of financial warfare against a country that does not behave just as certain powerful circles want.
On September 10, Russia’s First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov met in Beijing with his Chinese counterparts to discuss setting up a system of interbank international transaction clearing that would replace or could, in event of increased US and EU sanctions, replace the SWIFT interbank payment mechanism. According to Shuvalov after his talks in Beijing he stated to the press, “Yes, we have discussed and we have approved this
idea.”
Source
Nov 12, 2014
Russia intends to have its own international inter-bank system up and running by May 2015. The Central of Russia says it needs to speed up preparations for its version of SWIFT in case of possible ”challenges” from the West.
"Given the challenges, Bank of Russia is creating its own system for transmitting financial messaging... It’s time to hurry up, so in the next few months we will have certain work done. The entire project for transmitting financial messages will be completed in May 2015," said Ramilya Kanafina, deputy head of the national payment system department at the Central Bank of Russia (CBR).
Nov 18, 2014
- Along with their other partners the China-Russia camp is now more significant than the US-EU block
- The West continues to cling to increasingly absurd illusions of global American hegemony
The recent two summits, APEC and G20, have ended up as a disaster for the US and its allies (see
here,
here and
here) while Russia, China and the rest of the BRICS are clearly in control of the situation.
Yet there are still those who believe the western corporate media, which wants to portray Putin and Russia as "weak".
In our age of virtual reality perceptions, such perceptions are clearly molded by exposure to the western corporate media whose brainwashing skills are nothing short of amazing.
But let's look at the facts...
What Obama and his advisors have failed to realize is this: Russia and China (backed by the
BRICS,
SCO,
CSTO,
EEU) are far more powerful than the US/EU block in political, economic and military terms.
As for western leaders, they are simply delusional and they have manifestly fallen into the old trap of believing their own propaganda.
The most ridiculous moment of last week's summit came when Obama, after having failed to achieve any of his objectives against Russia or China, made a speech where he seriously spoke of the importance of "American leadership". It was comical to the point of being embarrassing. On Russian TV the commentators were literally laughing when reporting this.
Putin's message is blunt and clear: Western leaders are driving their Empire into a wall.
The Euro-Atlantic Empire has truly become an "Empire of Illusions" (to use
Chris Hedges expression) where facts matter much less than spin, where the normal way to cope with a challenge is to deny its existence, were self-deception is a way of life.
The writing is on the wall. It has been there for a long while.
The problem is that nobody wants to read it.
Full article:
Nov 19, 2014
Russia today announced that it plans to launch a new payments system so that it will no longer need to use the payments system SWIFT.
From RT:
Russia intends to have its own international inter-bank system up and running by May 2015. The Central of Russia says it needs to speed up preparations for its version of SWIFT in case of possible ”challenges” from the West.
“Given the challenges, Bank of Russia is creating its own system for transmitting financial messaging… It’s time to hurry up, so in the next few months we will have certain work done. The entire project for transmitting financial messages will be completed in May 2015,” said Ramilya Kanafina, deputy head of the national payment system department at the Central Bank of Russia (CBR).
Calls not to use the SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) system in Russian banks began to grow as relations between Russia and the West deteriorated over sanctions. So far, SWIFT says despite pressure from some Western countries to join the anti-Russian sanctions, it has no intention of doing so…
SWIFT, is currently one of Russia’s main connections to the international banking system, and if turned off, could hurt the Russian economy, in the short-term. Globally it transmits orders for transactions worth more than $6 trillion, and involves more than 10,000 financial institutions in 210 countries. According to SWIFT’s statute, the system has national groups of members and users in each country. In Russia it’s ROSSWIFT – the second biggest worldwide SWIFT association after the US.
Full article:
http://russia-insider.com/de/politics_business/2014/11/14/01-32-30pm/russia_launch_new_payments_system_circumvent_swift_network
Nov 20, 2014
Forced to find alternatives, the Russians are building a separate system, which, once linked with similar systems in other countries, will rival SWIFT
The new payments system will be attractive to many countries - as protection against Western bullying
Russia Testing De-Dollarization Payment System
Dec 11, 2014
The pilot program includes 8 banks, launches December 15
However, it seems the rapid drop in the Ruble (and the Yuan in recent days) has escalated the need for this de-dollarized payment system and, as RT reports, Russia’s Rossiya and SMP banks, which fell under Western sanctions, are among the eight lenders that will start testing the country’s new national payment system on December 15.
Full article:
http://russia-insider.com/de/2014/12/11/12-34-49am/isolated_russia_begins_testing_de-dollarization-driven_payment_system
Dec 14, 2014
- Budget was based on higher oil prices, but production is still profitable and expanding
- Extraction companies' expenses are in cheap rubles so their bottom line is the same
Dec 16, 2014
The international financial system is based on the U.S. dollar. The greenback is both the world’s “reserve currency” — the one everyone wants to hold when things go bad — and the principal means of exchange. The vast majority of transactions between companies, countries and people are denominated in dollars.
But even though SWIFT is based in Belgium, and subject to EU law, the U.S. government claims legal authority over all SWIFT transactions denominated in U.S. dollars — even if those dollars never enter a U.S. bank account — because they are ultimately “backstopped” by the Federal Reserve.
A few weeks ago, Russia announced its intention to launch an alternative to SWIFT by May 2015. Russia’s new interbank system would dominate transactions in rubles, with conversion to and from U.S. dollars at either end.
Source
