This will mark the first step towards the end of US hegemony ...

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2014/5/20/russia-china-bankdeal.html

This will be moved to a different forum soon...


But very interesting! Not that it's surprising that Russia is looking away from the West but that the dollar has for once been undermined.

The USA escalates the conflict with Russia over their eastern NATO expansion in the Ukraine.
China feels also threatend by USAs shift towards the eastern hemisphere to contain China.
Its only natural that they will overcome their animosities and start cooperating more, as together they will stand stronger against the USA and its european lapdogs.

when reading the title i first thought of sth more wl-related :D

Well, there's always Mexico's big oil reserves...

Frack the world!

Timi - i guess you're not the only one.. but the issues of some are not that important to the whole community so it did not fit..

From the title I assumed Myhand was continuing the Voodoo storyline or something.

I read the article and came no closer to understanding exactly what the change was. Which of the two countries currencies will they be pricing their deals in? Which is being set up as the new alternative reserve currency? What useless reporting, i hate 'the news' so much.

I can only assume its the ruble.

They're not setting an alternative up, although the Chinese would love to make the Yen the worlds currency.

What they have done is come to an arrangement to accept each others currency in the $100 billion worth of trade they carry out with each other:

"Russia and China took a small step toward undercutting the domination of the U.S. dollar as the international reserve currency on Tuesday when Russia’s second biggest financial institution, VTB, signed a deal with the Bank of China to bypass the dollar and pay each other in domestic currencies.

Currently the dollar is pre-dominant in all countries foreign trade. This makes it the biggest currency in circulation and requires all countries to hold dollars in their reserves. Which in turn protects the value of the dollar - as everyone needs it, it is more resilient to price fluctuations and the entire world has a forced interest in not allowing it to fail. Which in turn makes it far easier for America to raise money on the international markets. Dollars are seen as a far more reliable investment than say Rubles, Won or Euros.

thanks for the reply. So when it comes time for prices to be decided on, how do they decide which currency to use? It seems trivial but when 100 billion is moving around then the currency chosen makes a difference, and both of them want their own to be used. Will they flip a coin? Taking the sentence you quoted literally then it seems that if the product being bought is russian then the chinese pay in rubles and if the product being bought is chinese they use yuan? What kinds of deals does this apply to and how is it enforced. If non govt controlled buyers want to be using dollars to pay then do they have that option?

Is it simply that when money is moved from the VTB to the bank of china or vice versa then that money is ruble/yuan? Wouldnt it have always been? Do all banks usually pay using dollars as default? Even when neither of them have customers who want dollars? is that what 'reserve currency' means?

Edited 8/8/2014 02:05:47

Edited 8/9/2014 04:41:43

There's always those people doubting that China and Russia are allies, especially Americans. This article kind of makes the point that although China and Russia may not be as close in foreign relations as the US and UK, they definitely are allies under any conditions of U.S. aggression upon their interests.

Russia and China are both in SCO.

As long as usa dont get nuke, im happy with change.

waaaait, are you putting USA as the bad guys? SERIOUSLY? fine, that country ain't perfect, the part where it funded anti-democratic coups in central America sucked....but that was like 40 years ago, and USA is unarguably a democratic country, albeit with a retarded election system(who cares only 48% of the population voted for me? I'm president! yay!), and yet, it's fair elections, not rigged or anything, and it's citizens are among the richest in the world.


let's see the other two options:
Russia, the home of enlightenment, pacifism, human rights, wealth of the middle and lower class.
except none of those, and the opposite of them, too.
homophobic, treats any defiance by killing people, unarguably a dictatorship that violates all sort of human rights, didn't have a fair election...eh...EVER, even before putin came along.
supports every goddamn dictator in the world, Asad, Qaddafi, Mubarak , every random african dictator(i.e, all of Africa minus south africa), all people who do a very good job runing the lives of their subordinates
GOOD JOB RUSSIA, YOU ARE SURELY BETTER THAN USA

China: supports Russia, 'nuff said

yeah, I'll stick with USA

although, if European union is going to try to take over the world, I'm all up for that, that'll be awesome

... and China's communist! Also, vote is based on electoral system. Which is fk'd up system.

Choombi, again, the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.

You have this illusion of knowledge in abundance. You have absolutely no clue of what is going on in the world.
The USA has in history supported more dictators than Russia and continues to do so. Get your facts right.

I could provide you with some lectures of Noam Chomsky again, but i am sure you wont even look at them.


I recommend "The war on democracy" a prize winning documentation by John Pilger instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuRTBoalIKs


Some recent examples of dictators, terrorist groups or autoritarian regimes supported by the USA in the middle east alone:

The Taliban, sponsored by the USA in order to defeat and kill Ahmed Shah Massoud a pro democratic force in Afghanistan.
Al Qaida groups (among them ISIS), sponsored by the USA in order to overthrow Assad in Syria.
The Saud family, ruthless dictatorship in Saudi Arabia.
The Egyptian military, sponsored by the USA to keep Egypt under US influence.
Reza Pahlavi, sponsored by the USA in order to overthrow the democraticly elected government of Iran.
Sadam Hussein, sponsored by the USA in order to control the oil of Iraq and wage a war against Iran.
The UAE, dictatorship.
Kuwait, dictatorship.
Bahrain, dictatorship.
Yemen, dictatorship.

And of course Israel, which is a matter of its own.

And again this is not a full list.

Frack the world!

hahaha

I had a much more wordy, arguably more centrist argument all written out, but then I realized, myhand, that you have not provided any example of any other worldly significant country, democracy or otherwise, that has any better foreign policy or economic procedures than the United States. The USA is certainly not the perfect country that so many ignorant Americans think it is, but there are certain choices that any global superpower must make that piss off some and are celebrated by others. I do, however, agree with your argument that the US has had dreadful foreign relations with the Middle Eastern countries since the 1950's and '60's. It's just so hard to overlook all of the things that the US actually doesn't do wrong.

I'd simply like to ask you to provide a couple of at least somewhat less biased media sources, because Pilger is two steps below Oliver Stone, and Chomsky makes the two of them look like goose-stepping fascists.