www.zerohedge.com
BY CAPITALIST EXPLOITS
Can you do this: removing Russia’s central bank and a number of other commercial banks from the SWIFT payment messaging system. That’s what just happened.
This is the weaponization of money on this scale we’ve never seen before.
Why do I say this?
Because the second-order effects are that the whole world sees this. Pray tell, what China thinks of this now? I’ll tell you what. They will make it a priority to NOT need the US dollar going forward. They were already well on that path, but expect this to ramp up significantly now. Particularly before they invade Taiwan. I don’t want to sound bombastic, but this is a turning point in monetary history. When the US left American soldiers stranded in Afghanistan and rescinded all its promises to Afghans, it effectively told the rest of the world that it couldn’t be trusted as a military ally. I wrote about it at the time and suggested that they were waving a giant flag showing weakness. Now I’m not the first person to say I don’t think the US should have been poking about in all these far flung corners of the earth in the first instance. I’m just pointing out that there would be consequences. And here we are.
