Russian Gas Mega-Pipeline To China Goes Online As Putin & Xi Hail Closer Ties

Late Monday Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin jointly launched the major unprecedented cooperative project that had been years in the making called the 'Power of Siberia' gas pipeline.

The China-Russia east-route pipeline is now providing China with Russian natural gas, which according to Chinese state media is expected to reach 5 billion cubic meters in 2020 and increase to 38 billion cubic meters annually from 2024.

Crucially, S&P Global Platts estimates that total sales through the pipeline is projected to meet nearly 10% of China's entire gas supply by 2022, ensuring vital energy security as Beijing continues to feel the pressure and uncertainty of the trade war with Washington. 

The ceremony to officially bring the pipeline online was held as a video call between Xi and Putin was underway. Xi told Putin: "The East-route natural gas pipeline is a landmark project of China-Russia energy cooperation and a paradigm of deep convergence of both countries' interests and win-win cooperation."

The deal had been cemented in May 2014 when Russian gas giant Gazprom signed a 30-year contract with China National Petroleum Corp, after which the pipeline agreements were signed with both leaders present in Shanghai in later 2014.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller announced to both leaders that the pipeline had been opened via video link. "Gas is flowing to the gas transmission system of the People's Republic of China," he said.

A 30-year deal was signed by Putin and Xi in 2014, and while a final figure has not been announced, it is believed to be worth more than $400 billion. — CNN

Gazprom will oversee operation of the mammoth pipeline which runs more than 8,100 kilometers (5,000 miles) across the two countries.


Read the entire article

Putin Sets The Table To Leave The Dollar Behind

This is twice that Russian President Putin has said on the global stage the Federal Reserve Note no longer deserves the status and privilege of “world reserve currency” that allows unlimited printing of the currency.

The first time he made mention he actually said that it was a threat to Russia’s national security.

In a speech at the International Economic Forum, in St. Petersburg, Russia, “Russian Davos”, President Putin reaffirmed his position regarding the Federal Reserve Note and it’s international role. For the record, we see the abuse of the Federal Reserve and the Federal Reserve Note, U.S. dollar, in similar light as President Putin. The current status of “world reserve currency” should not be allowed in this day and time. The absolute abuse of power, excessive power granted and the ability to shackle entire nations through the use of a currency that is not even their own should have never been allowed but it is way past time for this system to be dissolved.

In a speech at a plenary session, Mr Putin accused Washington of seeking to “extend its jurisdiction to the whole world.”

“But this model not only contradicts the logic of normal international communication. The main thing is, it does not serve the interests of the future.”

Read the entire article

Huawei Signs Contract To Build 5G Network In Russia

In a sign that Huawei is increasingly reliant on adversaries of NATO and the West to bolster its grip om global 5G dominance as Washington conspires to run it out of the west, the Guardian reports that the Chinese telecoms giant has struck a deal with an unlikely ally, Russian Telecoms giant MTS, to develop a 5G network in Russia over the coming year.

According to the Guardian, the agreement was signed on the sidelines of a meeting between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian president Vladimir Putin in Moscow, on the sidelines of a critical annual Russian economics forum.

The deal will see “the development of 5G technologies and the pilot launch of fifth-generation networks in 2019-2020." MTS said in a statement on Wednesday.

In a statement, Huawei’s Chairman Guo Ping said he was "very happy" with the agreement "in an area of strategic importance like 5G."

During the meeting in Moscow, Putin repeatedly praised Xi as a "close friend," noting that they had met nearly 30 times over the past six years. The trip is Xi’s eighth to Russia since 2012.

Read the entire article

Russian Central Bank Eyes Gold-Backed Crypto

First there was Tether; a controversial dollar-backed cryptocurrency by crypto exchange firm, Bitfinex. Then came Petro, the industry’s first oil-backed crypto issued by the Venezuelan government last year. And now we might be about to see the first gold-backed cryptocurrency—by a central bank, no less. According to Russian news agency, TASS, Russia’s central bank, the Bank of Russia will consider issuing gold-backed cryptocurrencies - a rather strange move considering how cryptocurrencies are generally anathema to central banks.

Shot in the arm

But before crypto bugs can start doing a round of high fives, the head of the Bank of Russia, Elvira Nabiullina, has revealed that the cryptocurrencies are not meant for retail use but rather for conducting big mutual settlements for entities with global jurisdictions.

In other words, only the heavyweights will get to lay their hands on them. Further, she says that she still believes that it’s better for countries to develop international settlement systems such as the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) framework that use their own national currencies noting the said framework has demonstrated good dynamics.

Finally, she admonishes that the latest twist should not be interpreted to mean that the bank supports a scenario where cryptocurrencies eventually replace fiat in the monetary system.

Read the entire article

China And Russia: Whoopin' Uncle Sam At His Own Game

Country A builds factories and plants, it employees zillions of people who manufacture things, it launches massive infrastructure programs, paves millions of miles of highways and roads, opens new sea lanes, vastly expands its high-speed rail network, and pumps profits back into productive operations that turbo-charge its economy and bolster its stature among the nations of the world.

Country B has the finest military in the world, it has more than 800 bases scattered across the planet, and spends more on weapons systems and war-making than all the other nations combined. Country B has gutted its industrial core, hollowed out its factory base, allowed its vital infrastructure to crumble, outsourced millions of jobs, off-shored thousands of businesses, plunged the center of the country into permanent recession, delivered control of its economy to the Central Bank, and recycled 96 percent of its corporate and financial profits into a stock buyback scam that sucks critical capital out of the economy and into the pockets of corrupt Wall Street plutocrats whose voracious greed is pushing the world towards another catastrophic meltdown.

Which of these two countries is going to lead the world into the future? Which of these two countries offers a path to security and prosperity that doesn’t involve black sites, extraordinary rendition, extrajudicial assassinations, color-coded revolutions, waterboarding, strategic disinformation, false-flag provocations, regime change and perennial war?

Read the entire article

Are Russian Bonds Toxic Waste Or Golden Eggs?

One man’s toxic waste is another man’s golden goose.  A new round of economic sanctions imposed on Russia last month by the U.S. is creating havoc in investment circles.  A recent article by Ben Aris at Russia Insider describes Russian debt assets as ‘toxic waste again.’

That doesn’t mean these Russian debt assets actually are bad investments, just that those who currently hold them have to get rid of them because the rules have changed.

And they are no longer legally allowed to own them.

Because of that what were one minute the darling of the investment world instantly turned into garbage, selling if anyone can find a buyer at discounts even Crazy Eddie would blanche at.

All the previous sanctions imposed on Russian companies had only affected new securities – listings of new shares or bonds. Existing securities were unaffected.

Not now. The Specially Designated Nationals And Blocked Persons List (SDN List) released on April 6 not only sanctions those listed, it bans any investor with US exposure (European banks with US branches count) from doing any business with the sanctioned names. Investors were supposed sell all their stocks, bonds and debt within 30 days – i.e. before May 7.

This has sent the market for Russian securities into the floor.

Read the entire article

Petro-Yuan Is The Newest Weapon For The China-Russia-Iran Anti-USD Alliance

After 25 years of dreams, planning, rumors and testing, the Chinese petro-yuan is now official. Right now, almost all global oil trade is conducted in US dollars, using two benchmark varieties of crude, West Texas Intermediate and North Sea Brent, as the industry standards. It is no accident that these two benchmarks are based on imperial crude, American and British, and the irony of this is surely not lost on Baba Beijing (China’s leadership).

China is not selling oil, so the petro-yuan is a futures purchase contract denominated in renminbi for the country to import the stuff. As the world’s biggest importer of hydrocarbons, Baba Beijing has long felt that pricing all its millions of tons of imports should be in its national currency. Why should China pay for Russian natural gas or Venezuelan crude in Western empire’s currency of global financial control, Uncle Sam’s greenback?

Opinions outside China range from being non-plussed, to claiming it is the most important news in modern financial history, but you would have to search far and wide in Eurangloland (NATO, EU, Israel, Australia and New Zealand) and its heavily censored and suppressed media, to see for yourself. Outside the obligatory statement of fact in financial outlets like the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Reuters and Bloomberg, silence from the West’s mainstream media is deafening, as this screenshot below shows, when searching the topic. Only one mainstream article showed up on page #1 of the web search and that was CNBC from 2017. Even just looking for “petro-yuan” gives identical results. It’s a Western media black hole.

The West’s censorship and suppression of news that reports the truth about China, Russia and Iran is lethally effective. Hitler called it the Big Lie. Eurangloland learned from a master.

Read the entire article

Russia Is Hoarding Gold At The Fastest Pace In 12 Years

Russia is adding gold to its reserves at the fastest pace in 12 years ...and dumping US Treasuries at the fastest pace since 2011.

The Central Bank of Russia (CBR) has been increasing its holdings of gold every month since March 2015. The country is currently the sixth-largest gold owner after the United States, Germany, Italy, France and China.

According to the CBR, gold reserves spiked to $455.2 billion between March 2 and 9 hitting a historic high not seen since September 2014.

“Our international reserves increased by $2.9 billion or 0.6 percent in a single week, mainly on the strength of positive re-evaluation,” said the regulator.

In January, RT notes  that Russia surpassed China, which reportedly held 1,843 tons of the precious metal at that time. Over the last 15 years, Moscow and Beijing have been aggressively accumulating gold reserves to reduce their dependence on the US dollar.

According to World Gold Council data, last year the CBR became a world leader in stockpiling gold.

The bank has more than doubled the pace of its gold purchases, statistics showed. It has been increasing Russia’s gold reserves to meet the goal set by President Vladimir Putin to make it less vulnerable to geopolitical risks. The Russian gold cache has increased by more than 500 percent since 2000.

Read the entire article

Russia And China Lay Economic Foundation Based On Golden Rule

One of the many themes we support at The Daily Coin is the constant progress happening across the emerging markets, especially the nations involved the Eastern economic alliances like BRICS, BRI, SCO, EAEU and the like. These nations under the direction of China or Russia or a combination are laying the groundwork to be the driving force of the 21st Century and beyond.

We also continually report on gold moving from Western vaults to all points East. Most recently we discussed Kazakhstan and the importance of this nation both from a geographical position as well as natural resources like gold, rare earths and a wide variety of other elements within the borders of this growing nation.

Gold always has our attention as the rules/laws surrounding gold have not changed. While most people, especially in the West, have forgotten these rules that does not mean they have changed or been overturned.

One law that has stood the test of time is the golden rule – he who has the gold makes the rules. We also like the fact that JPMorgan, the man not the bank, stated in a congressional hearing that “gold is money and everything else is credit”. These two rules/laws working in conjunction with one another make for a formidable alliance. When you have natural rules/laws working together and nations begin forming alliances using these rules/laws as a foundation the rest of the world should take notice, but alias the Western world is more focused on “russia did it” than what Russia is actually doing.

“We (the Central Bank of the Russian Federation and the People’s Bank of China) discussed gold trading. The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) are major economies with large reserves of gold and an impressive volume of production and consumption of the precious metal. In China, gold is traded in Shanghai, and in Russia in Moscow. Our idea is to create a link between these cities so as to intensify gold trading between our markets.” Source

Read the entire article

Oil Producers Turning To Crypto To Solve Sanctions Problems

Last week, Venezuela announced it would develop a national cryptocurrency backed by its oil reserves, the Petro.  Now there is a report that Russia is considering the same thing.  Iran will likely follow suit.

As of right now this is just a rumor, but it makes some sense.  So, let’s treat this rumor as fact for the sake of argument and see where it leads us.

The U.S. continues to sanction and threaten all of these countries for daring to challenge the global status quo.  There is no denying this.  And so much of what we see in the geopolitical headlines are knock-on effects of this challenge.

The Geopolitical “Why”

From the Middle East to North Korea, the Dutch changing their laws to block Nordstream 2 to the Saudis breaking off relations with Qatar, everything you read about in the news is a move on the geopolitical “Go” board.

Because at the heart of this is the petrodollar. Contrary to what many believe, the petrodollar is not the source of the U.S. dollar’s power around the world, but rather the U.S.’s main fulcrum by which to keep competition out of the markets.

Read the entire article

China Launches Yuan-Ruble Payment System

The monetary regimes of China and Russia, two of the world's most resource-rich nations, are drawing closer with every passing day.

In the latest push for convergence, China has established a payment versus payment (PVP) system for Chinese yuan and Russian ruble transactions in a move to reduce risks and improve the efficiency of its foreign exchange transactions. The PVP system for yuan and ruble transactions, designed to streamline commerce and curency transactions between the two nations, was launched on Monday after receiving approval from China’s central bank, according to a statement by the country’s foreign exchange trading system.

It marks the first time a PVP system has been established for trading the yuan and foreign currencies, said the statement, which was posted on Wednesday on the website of the China Foreign Exchange Trade System (CFETS). PVP systems allow simultaneous settlement of transactions in two different currencies.

According to CFETS, the system would reduce settlement risk as well as the risk of transactions taking place in different time zones, and improve foreign exchange market efficiency. Of course, if the two countries had a blockchain-based settlement system, they would already have all this and much more.

CFETS said it plans to introduce PVP systems for yuan transactions with other currencies based on China’s Belt and Road initiative, and complying with the process of renminbi internationalization. Russia, however, is a top priority: the world's biggest oil producer recently became the largest source of oil for China, the world’s top energy consumer.

Read the entire article

De-Dollarization & Disintermediation - Russian Mobile Phone Operator Issues First Blockchain-Backed Bond

Russian Mobile phone operator, Megafon, issued RUB500 million in zero-coupon blockchain-based bonds recently. This was purely a proof of concept issuance.

But, it speaks to the bigger picture of bypassing traditional book runners, i.e. the major banks, for selling securities to investors. No longer does Goldman Sachs, Standard Charted, HSBC and Deutsche Bank have a stranglehold on how capital is raised for emerging markets.

Moreover, it will prove just how much of an advantage the blockchain has over these older and much more expensive business models. 

This reduces the cost of a bond issuance to practically nothing, beyond the needed legal work. 

These bonds can and will be sold without the need for the middle man to take a huge cut.

The blockchain is changing everything.

This news also puts paid the news from a couple of months back that the National Settlement Depository is moving, via the WAVES platform, to token-ize as much of the Russian economy as it can. This is your first example of their integrating with the Moscow Exchange to trade securities via the blockchain.

Read the entire article