Visa, Mastercard block Russian financial institutions after sanctions (opens in new tab)

SWIFT is a Belgian corporation that is not tied to a specific currency. Kicking them out of SWIFT has nothing to do with USD hegimony. China and Russia do have a competing system, it's used by China and Russia.

Moreover, Russias currency and market have been in a downfall for a month, not a week - that its actions _have_ long term consequences is exactly the point.

Now, please remember, there's a whole planet out there, and Russia has a GDP that equals _Italy_ or Benelux - it's just, in the grand scheme of things, not important enough to justify its repeated demands to be able to invade soverign nations without consequences.

Russia is still free to settle its debts through the thing it has: physical goods. SWIFT is a messaging system - not a payment system - they're still free to use faxes and carrier pigeons. The world need not let you participate in modern conveniences if you're just a bully.

All valid points, but...using military force to seize control of another sovereign, democratic nation also undermines the entire economic system.

I don't see this as driven by the US government and as something that will be held against the USD, it is just as much motivated by the Europeans and the Euro. The point of these sanctions is to say - a country is not allowed the benefits of integration with the global economy if they are willing to use military force against it.

I don't agree with the analysis here, through and through.

Russia may buy things from China, but they need to sell energy and goods to Europe. In particular, it is difficult for Russia to send a good chunk of their energy output to China. Energy is a bulk good, and thus sensitive to transport costs.

China and Russia are not liberal economies. A side effect of that is that their own markets do not offer enough liquidity to support an alternative exchange medium. It really is as simple as that. China has advanced in strides, but it will take true liberalization before it can wield economic weapons on a global scale. Its society will need to mature more before that happens, and then it will be a different day.

I'm not going to rah-rah let's beat Russia – or China – those are nationalistic attitudes I won't partake in. At the same time, I really am very negatively against this war, and just as much, I believe the systems should be impartial as they can be. With all that said, your analysis simply does not hold weight, and given the European consensus behind blocking the Russian government from SWIFT, I don't think the legitimacy or effectiveness of that system is significantly compromised either, for all practical purposes.

You mean SPFS and CIPS?

It's not like everyone woke up this week and realized these economic levers exist. Look at Huawei, the EUV blockade, Russia using gas for politics, etc. SWIFT is a relatively weaker lever in that the US is not able to unilaterally impose this, it took EU signing off - and pre-war, this wasn't a very likely outcome.

Assuming dollar hegemony forever without using it as a weapon also isn't very truthful. With the rise of China that you point out and with the decline over long timescales of oil, it's going to wane in importance without more levers like silicon.

50 years ago the dollar had value because of a massive and extremely temporary economic opportunity while the rest of the world played catch up from world wars, civil wars, and imperialism. Now we're closer to a level playing field and America doesn't get to play on easy mode.

Regardless, manufacturing isn't the primary measure for economic strength anyway.

Yep, same thing that happened to British Pound Sterling. The Industrial Revolution and the British Empire made it the global reserve currency; war losses, the dismantling of the Empire, and the decline of British industry handled the mantle to the American Dollar. Nothing truly protects USD from the same forces.

China and Russia won't succeed at launching a competing standard though. Autocracy may promote economic growth at home, but it cannot credibly protect the financial interests of foreigners from its own impulsive and selfish desires. You deposit funds into Russian and Chinese banks at your own risk.

>It is now very clear to every single bank on the planet that the USG is willing to use commercial entities as a weapon against your country.

If you act like North Korea you'll be treated like North Korea.

I mean arguably I'd want a country that cares more about human rights in the world than it's own currency on an open market, without even saying that this is what the US is doing here.

But the US also couldn't act unilaterally in these sanctions so I'm not sure that comes into play so much

I see this "Chinese production + Russian... (I guess just oil) = superior economic system" argument before, but I suspect these people have never opened a history book on Sino-Soviet relations. Because of decades of undermining and backstabbing, the trust between these two societies is pretty close to zero despite "communism". The only thing they really have in common is that they are both autocratic governments, so not exactly beacons of stability and cooperation. So the USD doesn't doesn't have to be the best, just the least worst.

Fifty years ago the US and allies forced Japans arm exactly because the US was not the one-stop-shop for everything and the US had trouble and a massive trade deficit with japan which was experiencing the reverse.

Forced technology transfers, bad monetary policy, quotas for US tech, cars, etc in their domestic market. Japan was forced to take it all as they had no comparable export market to switch to (the USSR and co were a nono, china and such poor), no independent army and foreign policy of their own and all in all no way to resist and was thus very susceptible to a tradewar.

All i'm getting from China is cheap disposable garbage. The rest is made in the West and merely packaged in China, because robots have not been developed enough to put phone in box on their own, and nobody wants to do this job.

The dollar had value now because US taxes must be paid in that currency.

Going by history sanctions do tend to entrench authoritarian rulers. I still think there isn't any choice. He used the "Nuclear" word and now I think Europe's policy will be containment for a very long time.

Edit: added "be"

You misunderstand. A coup by the people on the streets is tremendously unlikely, but the odds of a palace coup grows every day.

The people most hurt by these sanctions are those closest to Putin, the people who have made themselves fabulously wealthy by maintaining close ties to the government. Their quality of life has been most severely impacted by this move.

If that is the case, the west took the right decision. We don't need to fund a country that uses those funds to attack us.

The Russians are keeping Putin in power. If sanctions motivate them to do something about him, good. If they just serve as punishment for supporting that monster, good enough.

> So if all these sanctions are there to frustrate people to create a coup and a revolution - its currently working in the opposite direction.

I do not believe that is the purpose. I think the idea is to make it costly for Putin to go forward. Sadly this is at the cost of the well-being of the russian population.

So, appeasing Putin and giving him everything he wants will make his ratings drop. Sure.

True. That part is beyond what's required by law, right?

  It also promised to contribute a $2 million for humanitarian relief.

How would that be newsworthy?

You bump into problems donating to Meduza.io from Russia. Same for others.

Is there any way I can help?

They seem to accept a lot of forms of payments: https://support.meduza.io/en

All of them don't work for you?

BTW: Putin seems to be able to defend the Ruble for now at the 1 cent mark. This seems quite hight to me and I'd be concerned for how long they can hold this if I'd be holding RUB...

This is what the Fiat system do: war, censorship, cancellation, did, education, more destruction and collateral damage. A great book on the topic is called The Fiat Standard, highly recommended.

I don't agree with many of your statements, but I agree very hard with one thing.

Every country needs to stop letting US tax all the transactions. Not because sanctions - if you act like North Korea you'll be treated like North Korea - but because it's just stupid policy.

China has UnionPay and Russia has MIR. Neither comes close to competing with VISA and MasterCard. The thing is that these cards only work domestically and are literally impossible to pay for things online (unless the payment processor specifically caters to your market). Unless RuPay can be used painlessly internationally, it won't be of much use.

Isn't that the sanction working as intended?

I understand your point, those services might be used by Russians against the war, but they can also be used by Russians who support the war. There's nothing good about any of this, the harm being done to ordinary Russians by sanctions isn't good, or desirable, or even deserved. Nobody in the west wants to be doing this. It is necessary though, unfortunately.

What would be the alternative? Cash or Crypto?

I think this is a naive reading of historic events. The US didn't "open pizza huts" but collaborated vigorously and enthusiastically in the looting of Soviet state assets post-collapse.

This, imho is eerily similar to the mistake of punishing Germany ruthlessly at the end of WWI, which basically created the perfect underlying conditions for Nazis and WWII.

I see downvotes are coming. I am sorry for spamming it here. I just feel desperate to do something.

Literally the first point of the blog you linked to:

> The crypto project has had 13 years to try and find a problem to solve. It has not found one.

You've posted this link under the news article to which crypto has proven to be THE solution (non-censorable, cannot be weaponized).

The other points from the blog post are equally hilarious. You can't shout "It's not money!" and hope that it doesn't become one. If people value it, find use in it enough to accept it, it can be treated as money.