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Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - Printable Version +- Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora) +-- Forum: Deep Politics Forum (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-1.html) +--- Forum: Money, Banking, Finance, and Insurance (https://deeppoliticsforum.com/fora/forum-7.html) +--- Thread: Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank (/thread-12893.html) Pages:
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Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - David Guyatt - 21-07-2014 This, assuming it is not sabotaged and with Russia and China involved I just don't see that easily happening, is a real game changer, I think. Wave farewell, albeit slowly, to dollar hegemony. For me it will be interesting to see how the City of London adapt to this over the next few years. And the US will suffer most of all, because their Treasury Market is going to suffer a great deal over the next decade or so. Quote:New Development Bank: BRICS bank may be a game changer for emerging countries Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - David Guyatt - 21-07-2014 Quote:. Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - David Guyatt - 21-07-2014 From the Washington Post: Quote: Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - David Guyatt - 21-07-2014 Nice headline this, from The Guardian: Quote:The Brics development bank can release Africa from World Bank tyranny Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - David Guyatt - 21-07-2014 From RT: Quote: Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - David Guyatt - 21-07-2014 From RT Quote:Nobel Prize winning economist praises $100 bn BRICS bank created to counter Western dominance Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - Magda Hassan - 21-07-2014 Note the pentagon table they are sitting at...: ![]() Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - Lauren Johnson - 21-07-2014 from Naked Capitalism: Yves here. I've refrained from saying much about the announcement of the plan to establish a $100 billion development bank by the BRICs nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) because the hype is ahead of the reality. Yes, it is true that the US has been abusing its role as steward of the reserve currency. QE has been a huge bone of contention in all emerging markets, since hot money has flooded in, while the Fed has, in an insult to the collective intelligence of the leaders of these countries, tried claiming that it has nothing to do with the influx. And they are bracing themselves for the tidal retreat when the Fed starts tightening. The US' efforts to use sanctions to punish Russia have also focused the minds of these countries. However, the formation of a development banks falls vastly short of the infrastructure needed for any country's currency (or a basket of currencies) to displace the dollar. This measure doesn't come close to representing a threat. It is at most a statement of intent to get more serious. But setting up any kind of basket takes international cooperation (and not among the BRICs alone) when this group can't even settle their petty differences and agree on candidates for leadership of international agencies. In addition, a reserve currency replacement candidate needs to run consistent trade deficits to get its currency into international circulation. None of these nations are prepared to hurt workers by sending demand offshore to do that. A deep bond market is another requirement, and none of the BRICs have that either. The US could lose reserve currency status through a catastrophe that severely damages its economy, like a massive natural disaster or unforeseen consequences of having its aggressions escalate into a hot war. But the actions the BRICs are taking don't rise to any kind of threat, and unless they take vastly more concerted actions, are unlikely to displace the dollar in the next ten years. An interesting aspect of this talk is the difference of views between Michael Hudson and Leo Panitch. Hudson is bullish on the BRICs plans, Pantich much less so. Bio Michael Hudson is a Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. His two newest books are "The Bubble and Beyond" and "Finance Capitalism and its Discontents," available on Amazon. Leo Panitch is the Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and a distinguished research professor of political science at York University in Toronto. He is the author of many books, the most recent of which include UK Deutscher Memorial Prize winner The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire and In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives. He is also a co-editor of the Socialist Register, whose 2013 volume is entitled The Question of Strategy. Transcript Is the New BRICS Bank a Challenge to US Global Financial Power?PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. Will a new international bank challenge American global financial hegemony? Well, at recent meetings in Brazil, the five BRICS countriesthat's Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africahave created a new international bank called the NDB or New Development Bank, and it's been given $50 billion in initial capital. The BRICS bank works on an equal-share voting basis, with each of the five signatories contributing $10 billion. The capital base is used to finance infrastructure and, quote, sustainable development projects in BRICS countries initially, but other low- and middle-income countries will be able to buy in and apply for funding. BRICS countries have also created a $100 billion contingency reserve arrangement (CRA), meant to provide additional liquidity protection to member countries during balance-of-payments problems and other financial shocks. The CRA, unlike the pool of contributing capital to the BRICS bank, which is equally shared, is being funded 41 percent by China, 18 percent by Brazil, India, and Russia, and 5 percent from South Africa. The new bank is being described as a challenge to the IMF and the World Bank, that is, a challenge to American global financial power. But is it, as Vijay Prashad wrote, neoliberalism with southern characteristics? Now joining us to discuss all of this first of all, in Toronto, is Dr. Leo Panitch. He's the Canada research chair in comparative political economy and a distinguished researcher professor of political science at York University. He's the author of The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. And also joining us is Michael Hudson. Michael, are you in New York? MICHAEL HUDSON, PROF. ECONOMICS, UMKC: Yes, I am. JAY: You're in New York. Michael, joining us from New York, is a distinguished research professor of economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Newest book is two newest books: The Bubble and Beyond and Finance Capitalism and Its Discontents. Thank you both for joining us. LEO PANITCH, PROF. POLITICAL SCIENCE, YORK UNIV.: Glad to be here, Paul. JAY: So, Michael, kick us off. How significant a development is this? HUDSON: I think it's much more significant than any of the press has said. The press treats it almost as if, well, they're very small, and what do these countries have to do. Think of the BRICS as doing on the government level what Occupy Wall Street has been advocating. When they say a new development bank, they don't mean they want to be like the World Bank or the IMF. They want a different kind of development. But also it's not only a development bank, but it's the $100 billion currency scheme. They are trying tothey've been driven into a mutual economic defense alliance by the U.S. sanctions against Russia, by the threats against China, not letting it invest in the U.S. on national security grounds. They've forced other countries really into let us do whatever we want with you, there is no alternative, and we're going to do to you what we did to Ireland and Greece, and that's it. Well, basically what the BRICS are saying in their new bank and their clearing house is, yes, there is an alternative. We don't have to be like neoliberalism. Their critique of the World Bank and the IMF isn't that they're not given big enough quotas; it's they disagree with the whole philosophy of the World Bank and the IMF that is subsidizing economic dependency, food dependency, and basically anti-labor parties that result in budget deficits, that then governments are told, well, in order to finance your foreign debt and your budget deficit, you have to sell off your water, your natural resources, your privatization. The BRICS banks, they're not going to go to the member countries and saying, you have to sell off your water supply and raise prices in order to pay us. JAY: Right. Let me bring Leo in here. So, Leo, what do you make of Michael's take? How significant is all this? PANITCH: Well, I think it's very significant, and it is designed to give these large developing capitalist countries more room for maneuver vis-Ã -vis the American state and the European Central Bank and the IMF and the World Bank. But I think the significance he's attaching to it is remarkably overblown. There's no evidence that their purposes are indeed not to apply conditionality to loans. There's loads of evidence with the nonoperationability of the Bank of the South, which was the bank created in Latin America that the Brazilianswhich have made it nonoperational by insisting it be a very conventional development bank which in fact goes to the markets and therefore is constrained by the markets in terms of interest rates to be charged, etc., conditionalities, as opposed to Bolivia and Venezuela that wanted it to operate on very different, not market principles. The Brazilians don't want that and don't want it for the new bank. And I don't think it's just a matter of the Brazilians. The Chinese don't want it either. There's a much deeper factor why it's not so significant, although it does give them some room for maneuver in their operations. But the main reason is that it's embedded in countries, even with China, that don't have the very, very, veryas Michael knows very welldeep financial markets that is needed for this kind of bank to play that kind of role. JAY: Okay. Leo, hang on one second. That's sort of a second point. Let Michael respond to your first point. Your first point is that this is not something against a neoliberal strategy; this is some independent maneuver of countries that do work within a neoliberal strategy. So what do you make of that? PANITCH: Well, let me just to emphasize that look at who was just elected as the government of India. Look at the extent to which even the Workers Party has been keen to integrate further into global capitalism. Let's look at the way in which China has just begun to remove some of its financial restriction. And let's look at what the ANC now represents. So, sure, they want more room for maneuver, but within the framework of buying into capitalist globalization and being extremely dependent on it. JAY: Okay, Michael, you can respond. HUDSON: Neoliberalism is not simply an economic philosophy. It's interwoven with American foreign policy. Take the case of Ireland when it bailed out the banks a few years ago. Europe was coming to an agreement, and the IMF, with Ireland to write down the debts until Tim Geithner called from the Treasury and said, wait a minute, you can't write down the debts, because American banks have written credit default insurance, and American banks will take a bath because we've be that Ireland will pay; so don't bail it out. So Europe and Ireland both surrendered and said, okay, we're going to follow you. Same thing in Greece. The IMF even got into an argument with the E.U., saying, you can't be that bad against Greece, you can't really force it into so deep a recession. The U.S. got on the phone and said, wait a minute, the American banks have written default insurance. You can't write it down. If you do, we're all going to have to pay through the nose, and we're not going to take the loss. So at issue isn't bank profits or capitalism; it's specifically the United States. And it's the United States that has the veto on the IMF, the United States that has the veto on the World Bank. And basically I think what's motivated the BRICS, these countries together, is they have one thing in common: they're all under attack by the United States economically, and in Russia's case militarily, with sanctions. And so what Russia is trying to do is say, look, right now the United States can make a threat against us. They can say, if you don't do what we want militarily or politically or economically, we can block your currency payments, we can block the banks, and we can strangle you. So what Putin in his press conference for the BRICS said was the state was the distinguishing feature is we're not putting in dollars into these banks, we're putting in our own currencies, and the loans will be made in our own currencies. And the fact is that governments can create as much of their own currency as they want. They don't have to go to the market in principle. Now, what Leo says is absolutely true. If Brazil, which is still run pretty much by the banks, insist in having the banks go to the market, then it will be tied in a knot. But if Russia, China, and the other countries use modern monetary theory and say, okay, our treasuries are going to print the money to develop and we don't need Wall Street, then you'll have a [crosstalk] JAY: Okay, let Leo jump in. Leo, go ahead. PANITCH: Well, Michael, if you were advising them they might, although there would there would be very, very heavy, as you would admit, sacrifices that they then would have to bear. But these are states that reflect their class structures, these are states that like the United States reflect powerful forces within it. And what you're proposing is not something that any of the dominant capitalists in any of these countries, whether, you know, foreign mining companies in South Africa or ambitious Chinese multinationals, want to happen. Moreover, the notion that they're not interested in convertibility into American dollarsI mean those particular domestic capitalists in those countriesis absurd. Sure, Putin can spout off all he wants about the ludicrous notion of the ruble as a international reserve currency with none of the infrastructural capacity to make it such, but this is not a practical alternative. That's not to say it isn't designed to do is you say, to give them some both rhetorical and maybe institutional room for maneuver. But let's not overblow this, for heaven's sake. HUDSON: Okay, it's notthere was no attempt by Russia to make the ruble a convertible currency. What Russia wants to do is to nominate its trade in rubles, just as China's denominating its trade in yuan, so that the United States cannot use its banks to do what they've done in the case of Argentina and say, we can block any payment going through the banking system just like after the Shah was overthrown in Iran, Iran tried to pay its foreign debts, the new regime, and Chase Manhattan acted on behalf of the U.S. government and blocked Iran's payment, forcing it into default, causing a crisis. Now, Iran is an observer member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that's part of the BRICS, and the whole attempt is to make an alternative, is to avoid the dollar. It's not to make the ruble an international currency; it's to get free of the dollar and hence free of the kind of sanctions that the United States has just escalated against Russia today, free of the monetary sanctions, and free of the ability of the U.S. to use the dollarized system as a political solution. PANITCH: I know that's their objective. I don't disagree with you that that's their objective. I think we if we're assessing the significance of this, I think we have to assess the likelihood of this. We have to assess what the most powerful forces inside their own countries wanted this respect, how many eggs they're going to put in this basket, what is the capacity of these countries to operate outside of international financial markets in which the dollarby which we really mean very powerful financial institutions headquartered in the West with the states that represent themof continuing to exist. HUDSON: You're right. This is a dialectic at work, and it's the dialectic between national interests and the vested interests within the country. You're seeing that in the United States right now over the Argentine crisis, where the banks and the Treasury Department and the White House all wanted the Supreme Court to overrule Greece's ruling about the debt defaults. And these class interests are themselves in conflict, and very often, just as American foreign policy has been captured by the neoliberals and neocons, this can hurt many of the most vested interests here, same thing in Russia and China. So it's a whole dialectic [crosstalk] JAY: Michael, I want to just refocus this, 'cause the first part of the argument was whether the strategic objective of this bank is actually anti-neoliberal, 'cause it seems to me there's two different issues here. If they want to have more room for their own sovereign interests within this whole neoliberal financial system, that's one thing. It's another thing to say that they want that, plus they want that to avoid things like structural readjustments and all the various privatizations and attack on Social Security net and lowering wages. I mean, it seemed to me at the beginning you were suggesting they want to go against those kinds of policies, and Leo asked or said there's no evidence of that. So what's the evidence of that? HUDSON: If you read Putin's press conferences that he has given explaining his aimsand they're available on Johnson's Russia List that has both his and Lavrov's, the foreign minister's comments, you see that they've spelled this out exactly, that the neoliberalism is not only privatization, but it's the idea: what's really at issue is are economies going to be planned by Wall Street and financial interests, or are they going to be planned by governments, PANITCH: Come on. HUDSON: with a view towards raising living standards. PANITCH: Michael, no country has privatized more, no ruling class has privatized more than the oligarchy around Putin. They've taken that country's wealth and put it in their back pockets. And even if it is officially still owned by the states, it's in their back pockets. Let's not turn Putin and his cronies into the vanguard of a new socialist society, for heaven's sake. HUDSON: I cannot argue with that, Leo. You're absolutely right. PANITCH: It's very important we not do this. HUDSON: The question is: what's the evidence that there is a break from the neoliberalism? I mean, another break that they've all said is, well, neoliberalism really means the dollar standard and it means lending money in dollars for imports. For instance, one of the things that the BRICS conference said was, we will be lending money in domestic currency. Now, that's very important, because the World Bank doesn't lend money in domestic currency. That means it doesn't lend money for land reform, for agriculture, for all of the expenses that are met domestically for labor to develop agriculture, to develop industry. It only lends dollars, basically to buy U.S. exports of infrastructure, U.S. engineering exportsand European. So making loans in domestic currencies for domestic developmentfor instance, China would love to see Latin America, instead of producing hard cash plantation crops, it would love to see it produce wheat and food. This would have a byproduct: it could feed itself, as Argentina's now doing, and it could export. So a shift [crosstalk] financing to wheat away from other things would be a big change. PANITCH: Again, I don't know what evidence you have that China has not played an enormously massive role in producing export-oriented monocultures in South America. In fact, the Landless People's Movement, whose main theme is that, you know, we have such a massive population, we need a diversified agriculture to feed it, it doesn't target any longer the United States as imposing that upon Brazil, for heaven's sake! Brazil, sure, is looking for room for maneuver in terms of diversifying its exports by concentrating on monocultures, as is Argentina with soy, to be sent to China. I mean, I don't think that one should look at these ruling classes in the Global South with rose-colored glasses, even though we want to be able to recognize the extent to which the American state is indeed the imperial state governing, superintending this global capitalism, and we need to, of course, be critical of it. But that doesn't mean we need to be naive about what these other states are. HUDSON: No, what I said is that the exports that China is trying to developand you're absolutely right; of course it's promoting exports to itselfare different from the kind of development exports the United States wants. Their economies are so asymmetrical, the United States doesn't want food exports, because it wants the world to become dependent on American grain and American agriculture. That's been the basis of American foreign policy since World War II. So just shifting to grain and to foodgrains, as opposed to other cash crops, is something that at least in emergency the countries will be able to feed themselves, which they're not able to do under under the current system. JAY: Okay. Leo, let's dig in a little further just how significant, this. Now, the size of the economies we're talking about are massive. My understanding is South-to-South trade is now larger than North-to-South trade by $2 trillion, and that's about a quarter of global trade. So is the potential here of these countries seeking to build some kind of a more independent financial structure significant? I mean, you said earlier there's a deeper issue here, and I kind of cut you off. What's the deeper significance here? PANITCH: Well, obviously, these are very important developing capitalist countries. Unfortunately, they're developing capitalist countries rather than developing socialist countries. That's what's happened even with the Workers Party in Brazil and the ANC and the South African Communist Party. All the more so it now happened with the right-wing-led India. And it's happening with a vengeance with a Communist Party that is very venally turning its elite into a capitalist class. So it's a developing capitalist country. That's significant historically. It certainly undermines the old notion that capitalism was underdeveloping the Global South. The people used to blame the United States for that. We now see that there's a rapid development, which the United States has encouraged through free-trade and neoliberalism, very much so. That said, it'll be much more difficult to integrate those countries within the American empire than it was to integrate the former imperial countries of Europe and Japan, for reasons that have to do with the lack of military occupation, that have to do with differences in religion, culture, history, language, etc. That's certainly true and it's significant. But the important thing that's going on now that's much, much more significant is the participation of these countries in guaranteeing, in the wake of this crisis through the G20 and through their very active cooperation in this, that the crisis would not lead to the re-imposition of tariff protection, it would not lead to the imposition of and extension of capital controls, all of the things that occurred during the depression in the 1930s when there was a breakdown of capitalist globalization. These countries are opposed to this. Now, insofar as we might see a break from Russia under pressure from the United States, that would take much more the form of a right-wing nationalism led by this Russian oligarchy than it would be something progressive, unfortunately, given the balance of forces in Russia. But the main thing is that these countries are not getting off the capitalist globalization bandwagon. They're looking for more room for maneuver within it. JAY: Okay. So, Michael, if I understand, your main argument isin some ways it's not that different, in some respects, from what Leo was saying. You're not saying they're getting off the whole capitalist bandwagon. What you're saying they're doing is buying themselves a little more room in terms of their foreign policy. HUDSON: There is a very broad range over what they can do. And if you look at what is the most likely of common denominator, it's exactly what Leo said. The common denominator is it's their capitalists against the U.S. capitalists, it's their saying, what can we do to be free of the U.S. banks and Wall Street and the City of London and the financial extractive loans. At least the neoliberal plans today have gone beyond trying to finance infrastructure development. The financial system in the West is almost entirely extractive now, not productive. The capitalist class in the countries that Leo's mentioned want at least some bank to do some productive loans that they can benefit from, rather than having the U.S. come in and grab everything for itself like a privatization on behalf of the U.S. You see this kind of fight going on in Greece right now, where the eurozone said, Greece as to privatize its natural resources to pay the debt. Half the privatization last year was to be the sale of its gas rights. PANITCH: And you know who's buying [crosstalk] HUDSON: Well, it turned out that Gazprom [incompr.] And Europe said, never mind; don't sell them. We don't want Russia. Only us, not Russia. PANITCH: But do you know who's buying the Port of Piraeus, HUDSON: The Chinese. PANITCH: one of the largest and more. China. HUDSON: China. PANITCH: Chinese capitalists. HUDSON: Right. PANITCH: So, I'm sorry, I don't see the world in terms of competition amongst the capitalist classes of the world in the sense you're speaking of. I think there is a very deep integration on the part of the leading capitalists in these countries, including the domestic ones, into globalization. I think that's true of Vale in Brazil. JAY: That's the world's largest iron ore company. PANITCH: That's the world's largest iron ore company, which, sure, is competing with other iron ore companies. But it doesn't see itself as aligned against the American bourgeoisie or the American capitalist class. This is not right. And moreover, I think that these capitalist classes very much want access to the deep financial markets of London and New York. They don't want to leave them; they want to be part of them. They want access to them. Indeed, they've been floating bond us in those marketsdangerously, in terms of volatility. So I thinkand it has to be said the reason they do so is that their financial markets, their bond markets, even the European bond market relative to the London/New York access, remain extremely weak, extremely vulnerable. So it's also a matter of where the deep institutional strength of capitalism is. I would make one other point. I don't think that finance, even Wall Street and Londonthe City of London finance is merely parasitic. I think it facilitates, it underwrites, it's very important in terms of hedging for all of the integrated production that goes on between China and the United States, between South Africa and Europe. This plays a functional role for all these value chains. Of course there's loads of speculation in this, but it means that industry is linked up with this speculation. These aren't separated compartments. And you can't unscramble them. HUDSON: I see that I'm emphasizing the geopolitical much more than you of nobody's talking about Brazil and other countries not interacting with the London and New York money markets. What they don't want to do is to have the U.S. government and U.S. banks act as a threat, a threat against their countries. And of course they're trying to keep theirhave other options apart from being tied into the U.S. as a system of control. They want to break free of U.S. control, basically, and European control is a satellite of the United States. PANITCH: Yeah. But since politics and economics aren't so easily separated, their continuing interest and increased interest in being linked economically and financially means that the American state, given its superintending role of Wall Street and the City of London, will continue to have power vis-Ã -vis them. They would like to, as we've agreed, they'd like to have more room for maneuver in the face of that enormous power of the American Empire, but they are not interested in breaking from it. JAY: Okay, guys, this is a wonderful beginning to a very complicated subject, and we are going to pick this up again. So I'd like to just say to you our viewers, if you have questions you'd like me to ask, 'cause we'll ask both these gentlemen to come back and carry on this discussion, below the video make your comment, or you can just write to contact (at) therealnews (dot) com, or you can go @therealnews on Twitter, send in your questions and comments, and we will pose them to our guests. Leo, Michael, thank you very much for joining us. PANITCH: Glad to be here, Paul. Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - Lauren Johnson - 24-07-2014 from Golem XIV There was recent announcement that the BRICS have agreed to launch a new Development bank with a $100 billion currency pool to aid countries with liquidity shortfalls. The major backer of the bank is China contributing $41 billion. The bank will I have no doubt clear and settle certainly in Yuan and perhaps in Roubles. It will have good working relationships with Hong Kong. Of more interest to me is that it will be headquartered in Shanghai. It seems very clear that the Chinese and their economic allies in India and Russia as well as all the countries who are fellow travellers and variously disgruntled with Washington's high handedness are aiming at increasingly by-passing the dollar. The raft of bilateral agreements to settle in Yuan or Roubles that have been signed between China, Russia, Australia, Iran, various South American countries and the EU all serve notice that the days of the dollar's pre-eminence are now numbered. Of course the reserve status of the dollar is important for how much debt the US can carry. But even if the Yuan and the euro begin to account for a far larger proportion of international settlement this does not eradicate the dollar's importance nor its status. obviously the euro is aiming at being used to settle gas contracts and possibly some oil contracts. If America continues to piss off Iraq's new dictators then they could well decide to settle their contracts in euros or roubles or Yuan. But I think there are two further important step to watch for. One is to do with banks, the other with courts. The other half of the power the dollar gives America is that settlement of contracts in dollars means every nation has large dollar accounts which it uses to settle accounts and pay debts. These accounts are held in the small number of global Custodial banks. I think, from memory there are about 4 majors and they are all American: Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of NY Mellon, State Street. These banks house trillions and are one of the choke points used by international lawyers. When Washington wants to enforce its will on a nation or when American vulture funds want to sue a crippled debtor the Custodial banks are the choke point they use. When Elliott Associates wanted to sue Argentina they did so by taking the Custodial banks that held Argentina's money, to court and got those banks to freeze Argentina's accounts. So the first thing I am waiting for is for the emergence of a non-American, Asian or at least Asian based bank to become a major Custodial bank. The second thing I am looking out for is for that bank to be based NOT in NY. The bank cannot be based in NY because if it was then it would be subject to American law and specifically it would come under the jurisdiction of Wall Street's ( and therefore Washington's) court, which is the Southern District Court of Manhattan. Where you will find the lovely and completely independent Judge Griesa. Griesa is Wall Street's hanging judge. And his last judgement against Argentina and in favour of the Vultures was upheld by the US supreme court. That decision meant that Argentina will now be crippled with copy-cat appeals for payment from bond holders who had previously agreed to accept a lower settlement. More than that the judgement deals a huge blow to sovereignty in general setting a powerful precedent against any idea of sovereigns having the ability to protect themselves in bankruptcy. A protection that the private companies, including vulture funds themselves DO ENJOY. The ruling rules in favour of one strand of international law the strand which greatly favours private capital and ignores the other older strand such as the Calvo doctrine) which gives pre-eminence to sovereign not private rights. America is the home of vulture funds and houses the court that rules in their favour. Those courts ruling over those banks is a major part of the projection of American power abroad. Set up a non-american bank to house those funds, and put it in a non American jurisdiction where American courts and Washington's political power is not served and America will have been dealt an entirely peaceful but crippling blow. So the choice of Shanghai for eth new bank is interesting. There is little attraction in avoiding American political power if you saddle yourself with another equally aggressive power such as China. So what is needed is a place beyond Washington's reach but also not tied to closely to either China or Russia. Who would want a custodial bank subject to courts in Moscow or Beijing? Shanghai is a good place. It is less tied to Chinese banking interests than Hong Kong but still protected from America the way that Singapore, for example, might not be. If you want to cripple American ability to enforce its will on other nations setting up a major Custodial bank outside of Manhattan would be a very good step. The steps taken so far increasingly by-passing the dollar when settling international accounts in favour of euros or Yuan followed by setting up a lending facility for nations in trouble that is not in dollars, avoids dollar accounts in American banks and is not controlled by the IMF are all the necessary steps which lead up to breaking the stranglehold of American custodial banks and the court which rules them. I shall be watching. Game Changer - The New BRICS Development Bank - Paul Rigby - 24-07-2014 Lauren Johnson Wrote:from Golem XIV Spot on & great find! |