Rusija je poslednjih nedelja ispunjavala svoje ugovorne obaveze o snabdevanju gasom, ali je odbila da isporuči dodatne količine za popunu skladišta u Evropi, izjavio je visoki predstavnik Evropske unije za spoljnu politiku Žosep Borel.
„Poslednjih nedelja, uprkos tome što se Rusija strogo pridržava svojih ugovornih obaveza, ruska državna kompanija Gasprom odbila je da izvrši dodatne isporuke za popunu evropskih skladišta, što je dodatno povećalo previranja na tržištu“, napisao je Borelj u svom blogu, uoči sastanka Saveta za energetiku EU-SAD, koji će biti održan sutra, prenosi Sputnjik.
Šef evropske diplomatije naveo je da su cene gasa u Evropskoj uniji šest do deset puta više nego pre godinu dana.
„Cene energenata porasle su zbog globalnih problema sa ponudom i potražnjom. Cene gasa u Evropskoj uniji su šest do deset puta više nego pre godinu dana, što stvara veći pritisak na cene električne energije zbog načina na koji se one određuju na tržištu u Evropi“, objasnio je Borelj.
On je istakao da su teškoće sa isporukama gasa u Evropi izazvane "krizom u odnosima sa Rusijom“.
"Energetika je oduvek bila jedno od najvažnijih geopolitičkih pitanja, a s obzirom na visoke cene i poteškoće u isporukama gasa izazvanih krizom u odnosima sa Rusijom, ova tema je na vrhu našeg dnevnog reda“, napisao je Borelj.
On je ukazao da je neophodno raditi na kratkoročnim izazovima, pridržavajući se pritom dugoročnog cilja prelaska ka nultim emisijama, i dodao da će Savet za energetiku EU-SAD u Vašingtonu ojačati transatlantsku saradnju na tom frontu.
The New Cold War
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Re: The New Cold War
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Re: The New Cold War
Sergei Lavrov has a reputation for biting sarcasm - and it has emerged the veteran Russian foreign minister tripped up his UK counterpart Liz Truss with a question when they met behind closed doors today.
Truss was pressing for Russia to pull its troops back from Ukraine's borders and Lavrov was arguing that they were on their own national territory, Russia's Kommersant newspaper reports.
"You do recognise Russia's sovereignty over the Rostov and Voronezh regions?" Lavrov asked, referring to two Russian regions.
After a brief pause, the paper says, Truss replied: "Great Britain will never recognise Russia's sovereignty over those regions."
"Great Britain's Ambassador to the RF [Russian Federation], Deborah Bronnert, had to step in, delicately explaining to Ms Truss that the two regions [Rostov and Voronezh] are indeed Russian," Kommersant writes.
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And Will's father stood up, stuffed his pipe with tobacco, rummaged his pockets for matches, brought out a battered harmonica, a penknife, a cigarette lighter that wouldn't work, and a memo pad he had always meant to write some great thoughts down on but never got around to, and lined up these weapons for a pygmy war that could be lost before it even started
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Re: The New Cold War
Respectfully, just for a brief moment, you might happen to want to consider the fact that...
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Re: The New Cold War
War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.
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Re: The New Cold War
China's top offshore oil and gas producer CNOOC Ltd. is preparing to exit its operations in Britain, Canada, and the United States, because of concerns in Beijing the assets could become subject to Western sanctions. #OOTThttps://t.co/QTssLVRLIb
— CN Wire (@Sino_Market) April 13, 2022
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Re: The New Cold War
China scrambles for cover from West's financial weapons
Spooked by sanctions on Russia, Beijing looks to build on its own international payments system
CISSY ZHOU, Nikkei staff writer
APRIL 13, 2022 06:15 JST
HONG KONG -- The Western-led freeze on half of Russia's gold and foreign exchange reserves after its invasion of Ukraine came as a shock to Moscow -- and an unwelcome surprise to Beijing. The move underscored a brutal truth for China, the world's largest holder of foreign reserves: One day, its international assets could be a tempting target, too.
Despite previous U.S. sanctions on dozens of Chinese corporations including Huawei and ZTE, Chinese policy advisers never believed Washington would go so far as to weaponize the entire world's financial system.
However, that thinking has changed. In the space of a month the United States went from seizing $7 billion from the Taliban regime in Afghanistan central bank reserves to sanctioning Russia and freezing -- according to the country's Finance Ministry -- around $300 billion of its $640 billion in gold and forex reserves.
As of January, China was holding just over $1 trillion of its roughly $3 trillion worth of foreign reserves in U.S. Treasurys, according to the U.S. Department of the Treasury. More than half of China's reserves are denominated in dollars, according to the latest data published by the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), which put the figure at 59% as of 2016. The wisdom of this arrangement is now the subject of much internal debate in China, and efforts to sanction-proof its financial system could have far-reaching effects on the global economy.
"We are shocked," Yu Yongding, a prominent economist and former adviser to the People's Bank of China, told Nikkei Asia, referring to the freezing of Russia's reserves. "We never expected that the U.S. would freeze a country's foreign currency reserves one day. And this action has fundamentally undermined national credibility in the international monetary system.
"Now the question is, if the U.S. stops playing by rules, what can China do to guarantee the safety of its foreign assets? We do not have an answer yet, but we have to think very hard."
When the West reacted to Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine by deciding to cut off seven Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system for international payments -- a move generally considered to be the "nuclear option" among financial sanctions -- China was "a little bit surprised," although it had anticipated the possibility, former Chinese officials and government advisers told Nikkei.
China thought Russia accounting for 2% of global trade would have made the West more cautious about sanctions. Combined with the freezing of Russian reserves, the decision proved that Washington was willing to weaponize the global financial order in the name of geopolitics. China, clearly, would need to prepare a Plan B.
"Sanctions on Russia are a textbook example for China," said He Weiwen, a former Chinese diplomat to the U.S., currently a senior fellow at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a Beijing-based think tank. "If the U.S. intends to impose devastating sanctions on China, this may be the way. So we must be prepared."
The debate over an alternative to the U.S.-led dollar-based financial order had already begun in 2012 when Iranian banks were disconnected from SWIFT. Then came the threat of SWIFT sanctions on Russia in 2014 following its conquest of Crimea and part of eastern Ukraine.
China's closest brush with being disconnected from the global financial system came in 2020 when Beijing imposed a draconian national security law on Hong Kong, and Chinese banks were urged to switch away from SWIFT. While no Chinese banks were sanctioned as a result, the discussion has lingered about what China could do if it were to be booted out.
So far, alternatives are scarce. In 2015, China launched its own Cross-border Interbank Payment System (CIPS), which it said was to boost the global use of the yuan. The policy tool was widely viewed as an alternative to replace the SWIFT patchwork.
However, CIPS has advanced slowly, mainly due to Beijing's capital control economic model, which has resulted in a yuan that lacks full convertibility and is incompatible with CIPS' stated goal of internationalizing the currency.
Now, as geopolitical tensions rapidly intensify, Chinese experts are urging Beijing to diversify its dollar-denominated assets, accelerate yuan internationalization and the application of the digital yuan in cross-border payments, as well as endeavor to dismantle the dollar-centered financial hegemony in the long run.
- Spoiler:
Founded in 1973 to replace telex, SWIFT, or the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is crucial for international trade and finance because it enables individuals and companies in one country to route payments and transfers to counterparts in another. It is overseen by the G-10 central banks as well as the European Central Bank.
It is rare for SWIFT to block banks or financial institutions, but if the European Union imposes sanctions on a particular entity or country, SWIFT is obliged to comply as its lead overseer is the National Bank of Belgium. The SWIFT ban on Iran in 2012 was unprecedented, and when the option was put on the table to cut off Russia from SWIFT in 2014, then-Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said such a move would be tantamount to "a declaration of war."
"Cutting SWIFT is a bit like cutting the Wi-Fi, but you can always activate 4G to get access to the internet," Andre Casterman, a former managing director of SWIFT, told Nikkei. "There are other options than SWIFT. You can go back to telex, but when you process thousands of payments every day, it's impossible, because telex is not automated and the counterparties may not accept telex anymore."
Banks cut off from SWIFT could agree on a bilateral way to exchange instructions, but the cost would be huge as they would have to reinvent the wheel with each counterparty by re-agreeing to everything, from the rate of exchange to security issues to the format, Casterman said. The cost would be higher still if a country desires similar arrangements with multiple countries, added Casterman, now the founder and managing director of Casterman Advisory.
Sanctioned Russian entities can still use CIPS to clear sales and purchases in China. However, if such a company would like to buy, say, 1,000 iPhones from the U.S., it still would have trouble doing so because the Chinese bank would need to use SWIFT to pay the U.S. counterparty. This would reveal the identity of the Russian entity buying the iPhones, said Victor Shih, an associate professor at the School of Global Policy and Strategy at the University of California, San Diego.
"Of course, one way around this is to have a third party company in China conduct the purchase," Shih said. "This likely is happening, but if a Chinese company is conducting billions of dollars in purchases on behalf of Russian entities, its identity will soon be uncovered."
He Weiwen of CCG believes Chinese banks would not provide financial services to Russia for arms purchases. But products with civilian and military purposes present a problem. If the West were to interpret a deal for dual-use products as having military implications, secondary sanctions could be slapped on some Chinese banks.
SWIFT now links more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries. It does not hold assets or settle transactions itself but serves as a secure and trusted communications medium for financial transactions. The key with SWIFT is that once you are connected to it, you gain access to all the other banks in the network.
Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow with the Economics Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Nikkei that severing all of a country's banks from SWIFT would be like a "tactical nuclear weapon."
"The most extreme action would be designating major banks and prohibiting transactions with them. And the really big [move] would be going after the central bank. That would be an act in effect to prevent them from accessing ... any foreign currency," DiPippo said. "If you're talking about the nuclear option, it would be strange to me if the U.S. or its allies had a set of sanctions that consisted of only SWIFT but nothing else. SWIFT is part of the package. It's not the package."
If the West were to sanction more countries, the world would be divided into those who are on SWIFT and those who are not, as those seeking to avoid U.S. clearing would agree to pay in other currencies and drive the internationalization of another currency, like the yuan, experts said.
"I don't think we're going to see a model similar to SWIFT emerging, as the SWIFT method of having a network that is only messaging is in my view a bit outdated, but large countries like China, Russia will invite the sanctioned countries to connect to their own systems," former SWIFT director Casterman said.
CIPS: China's sanction-proofing tool
It was back in 2012 that China started preparing for what some officials believe may be an eventual showdown with the West. One month after Iran was excluded from SWIFT over Tehran's disputed nuclear program, Beijing announced plans to develop CIPS in the name of "promoting the internationalization of renminbi (the yuan's official name)."
Three and a half years later, following a snippet of triumphal music on a cloudy and cool autumn morning, four Chinese officials, including since ousted securities chief Liu Shiyu, pressed a large crystal ball at a ceremony in Shanghai to officially launch the system.
CIPS allows offshore banks to communicate with onshore banks to access the yuan market and to settle. It is also meant to foster greater use of the yuan among countries involved in the Belt and Road Initiative.
But a huge drawback of CIPS is that settlements are dominated by the yuan, though it supports some settlements in Hong Kong dollars. This is the fundamental reason why CIPS is not widely used. The yuan is not fully convertible, so it is unattractive as an asset compared to the dollar, euro and yen.
One prerequisite for the global adoption of the yuan may be the full liberalization of the capital account, and nobody in China seriously believes China should or would take this step in the foreseeable future due to the risks it would pose to Beijing's current economic model.
Despite the yuan having grown in stature during the past decade, its share of global payments is far behind that of the dollar and euro, which were used for a combined 76.6% of global payments in February. The yuan was used in 2.2% of such transactions, making it the fifth-ranked currency, according to SWIFT data.
"The ultimate issue is not what messaging service you're using, it is what currencies you're using to settle up transactions and what currency conversion risk you take, and whether those need to go through the U.S. dollar," said Brian O'Toole, a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council and a former senior adviser to the director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control.
"At the end of the day," O'Toole continued, "if you can't use the currency you're getting and you can't convert out of it very easily, or you lose a ton of money doing that conversion because somebody's got to take currency risk, then it is almost pointless."
To make CIPS a sufficient alternative to SWIFT, China would have to allow more offshore direct participation, which would probably mean losing some control over the yuan in how it is used offshore, DiPippo from CSIS said.
Unlike SWIFT, CIPS participants are divided into direct participants, who hold special accounts and can directly send and receive messages through the platform, and indirect participants, who have indirect access to the services and must exchange information with direct participants via SWIFT.
By the end of March, CIPS had 76 direct participants. They were mostly Chinese banks and their overseas branches. Also included were several foreign banks' Chinese branches and Hong Kong's Central Moneymarkets Unit, the debt securities clearing and settlement system owned by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.
Although the use of CIPS has steadily increased over the years, its 14,150 daily transactions as of March, which is minuscule compared to SWIFT's daily average of more than 40 million transaction messages.
The CIPS figure represents an 18% increase from a year earlier.
Chinese officials have said CIPS should focus on the internationalization of the yuan first, after which it could be extended to other currencies and become a Chinese financial gateway for multicurrency clearing.
For foreign currency payment and clearing, China has the China Foreign Exchange Payment System, which allows domestic financial institutions to clear foreign currencies through the central bank, a process conducted entirely within China without being monitored by the currency-issuing countries.
Is CIPS enough?
Witnessing the destructive effect of sanctions on the Russian economy, Chinese experts have discussed all potential countermeasures to mitigate potential sanctions by the West.
In a seminar in Beijing in March, Guo Li, vice dean of Peking University Law School, said that to counter financial sanctions, particularly from the U.S., China should establish special banks or use the barter system for sanctions-related businesses in the short term, promote CIPS and the digital yuan in the medium term, and endeavor to dismantle the dollar-centered financial hegemony in the long term.
A former senior official at China's central bank told Nikkei that dedicated lines for cross-border payments and receipts among the mainland, Hong Kong and Macao could be an option, too, to prevent the exposure of international transactions to the U.S.
"Meanwhile, Chinese directors at SWIFT could even align with other directors to push for SWIFT's corporate governance reform to limit the U.S.'s long-arm jurisdiction," said the official, who asked not to be named as he is not authorized to discuss the topic.
For years, leading economist Yu Yongding has advocated for a floating exchange rate regime, a cautious approach to capital account liberalization, the diversification of foreign exchange reserves, market-driven yuan internationalization and more balanced trade with the U.S. to respond to potential U.S. financial sanctions.
China in 2018 began yuan-dominated trading of crude oil futures contracts in Shanghai. This effort to acquire pricing power and broaden the usage of the yuan internationally marked the first time foreign traders were permitted to participate in China's commodities futures market.
According to recent reports, Saudi Arabia is now considering oil sales to China that would be transacted in yuan. China buys more than 25% of Saudi Arabia's oil exports. If it paid in yuan and Saudi Arabia were to recycle the yuan proceeds into Chinese government bonds, the transactions would potentially give rise to a petroyuan trade, giving the yuan a significant boost and perhaps prompting other countries to follow suit, analysts from the Australian and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) said in a note.
Such a move could also boost the yuan's rising share of global forex reserves. The yuan accounted for 2.8% of global reserves in the fourth quarter last year, slightly higher than in the third quarter, according to the International Monetary Fund.
Last year, China's central bank set up a joint venture with SWIFT in Beijing -- CIPS being one of the shareholders -- to promote the internalization of the yuan and the development of the nation's digital currency.
"We should actively extend CIPS to SWIFT member units with the help of SWIFT to establish a global yuan clearing and settlement system. After that, even if SWIFT cuts off the connection with China in extreme cases, it will not be difficult to form an alternative messaging service network," said Wang Yongli, a former vice president with the Bank of China and a former SWIFT board member, in a commentary after the joint venture was established.
Last month, Anatoly Aksakov, head of the financial committee of Russia's lower house of parliament, said Russia and China are working to connect the Russian and Chinese financial messaging systems.
The People's Bank of China (PBOC) did not respond to a Nikkei inquiry for comment on these plans.
For years now China's digital yuan, a digital version of cash backed by the central bank, and cryptocurrencies have been touted as tools to weaken SWIFT.
"The e-yuan will make cross-border payments cheaper and more efficient, so in this sense it is likely to be superior to the existing system of correspondent banking and CIPS," said Diana Choyleva, chief economist at Enodo Economics, which focuses on China.
The impact the e-yuan is likely to have is that, if used in countries China wants to incorporate into its sphere of influence, the PBOC would have so much visibility and control that Beijing might then consider allowing the yuan to flow freely under the capital account as well, currently a major obstacle to yuan internationalization, Choyleva added.
But some experts say the e-yuan might not work unless it is made interoperable with other central bank digital currencies to allow for trading that doesn't touch the dollar. Otherwise the problem of the yuan not being a fully convertible currency would remain unsolved.
Wondered CSIS' DiPippo, "Even if there are cross-border uses, why would you expect banks in two or three countries to want to trade a non-interest-bearing digital cash version to transact with each other when they cannot actually store large amounts of it?"
He went on, "In theory, crypto can be leveraged for illicit purposes such as evading sanctions, but in practice, technological barriers, market structures, and limited liquidity will make it difficult to evade sanctions at scale using crypto."
Others have made similar points. Former senior U.S. Treasury official Mark Sobel, now the U.S. chair of the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, said Russia might seek to tap into CIPS to bypass SWIFT and U.S. sanctions, but the scope for doing so is limited.
"The dollar is the world's dominant currency," he said, "underpinned by strong properties and network effects, and there is little effective alternative to the dollar's centrality now and for the foreseeable future," Sobel said.
"The general consensus now is that CIPS cannot solve the problem at all in the absence of SWIFT, and China will not risk suffering sanctions by helping Russia out," said Shi Yinhong, an adviser to China's State Council and a professor at Beijing's Renmin University of China.
China's forex reserves at risk?
Testifying before the House Committee on Financial Services on April 6, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said President Joe Biden's administration would be prepared to use all its sanctions against China if it attacks Taiwan.
"I believe we've shown we can impose significant pain on aggressive countries, as evidenced by sanctions against Russia," Yellen said. "I think you should not doubt our ability and resolve to do the same in other situations."
DiPippo said if China attacks Taiwan, not only might Chinese banks be cut off from SWIFT but the PBOC could also be targeted.
"In the event of a Taiwan scenario, which is not certain, but it's very possible that there will be actual military engagement with the U.S., in which case we would be all in, because if it got to that point, I would imagine the U.S. political system and any other combatant nations would have no political will to continue to transact with China," DiPippo said.
If Russia-style sanctions were imposed on China at some future date, would the U.S. dare to freeze China's $3.21 trillion of foreign currency reserves? Most of the reserves are deposited in the U.S. and Europe, former Bank of China Vice President Wang Yongli said in a recent article.
"Is China really in need of a substantial adjustment and compression of its foreign exchange reserves, and can it do so?" Wang wondered. "This issue is exceedingly crucial and sensitive in the current international environment, and it must be carefully examined."
Wang also refuted some recent arguments that China could sell its U.S. bonds or stockpile gold. He pointed out that it would be difficult to instantly drum up buyers for trillions of dollars worth of bonds, even at a discounted price. As for gold, he said a rush to buy trillions of dollars of the metal would risk huge losses. In addition, he said, purchased gold can still be frozen or confiscated if not immediately shipped away.
"More importantly," Wang said in his article, "the cost of using domestic gold for international payment is far higher than the cost of using sovereign currency -- it is not a feasible option, and it can only be used as a last resort after being excluded from the West's monetary system."
But China in recent years has been slowly diversifying its forex reserves and buying up gold to hedge against dollar dominance, according to SAFE data. The latest figure disclosed by China for the composition of its dollar reserve assets is 59%, in 2016, lower than the then international average of over 65%. The Chinese holdings of U.S. debt have remained steady, more or less. China held $1.06 trillion of U.S. debt as of January, making it the second largest holder, after Japan.
In adapting to the threat of having its foreign exchange reserves frozen, the PBOC is likely to shift more of its portfolio into unconventional alternatives such as emerging market sovereign debt and real assets, said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics, in a recent note. Williams added that as long as the PBOC wants to continue managing the exchange rate, then the largest share of its assets will have to remain in Western markets.
"Unconventional alternatives are risky," O'Toole from the Atlantic Council said, "and there's a reason for the PBOC to hold a substantial amount of 'easy to access' U.S. foreign exchange for a long time rather than invest it elsewhere. China fundamentally needs that money, for example, to bail out all these real estate companies. China needs to make sure that they are keeping a buffer."
O'Toole also said the U.S. would be very cautious about freezing the PBOC's forex reserves, lest it impairs its own economic growth by essentially cutting off trade with China.
Even if China's foreign reserves are not at immediate risk, the global financial landscape seems set to become more volatile. Sanctioned countries may choose to side with their own bloc for trading and investment -- Russia has already called on the BRICS group of emerging economies to extend the use of national currencies and integrate payment systems. The Indian government is also reportedly considering a proposal to use Russia's SPFS, Russia's SWIFT replica launched in 2014, to allow for financial transactions in oil and military equipment.
The question remains: If the West continues to impose financial sanctions on the nondemocratic world, will a dual-track system in global finance emerge?
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- Post n°259
Re: The New Cold War
what can China do to guarantee the safety of its foreign assets?
Play by the rules
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- Post n°261
Re: The New Cold War
Pa ne kao - vidi sta su im uradili, a sve samo zato sto su hteli da osvoje susednu zemlju...
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Re: The New Cold War
Kojoj su inace vec bili otkinuli dva parceta teritorije i sustinski im se nista nije desilo
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Re: The New Cold War
to nije potpuno tačno, ako kina misli da je tajvan njen, to onda nije susedna zemlja
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- Post n°264
Re: The New Cold War
sa druge strane niko nije zamrzavao sredstva usa kada su napadali razne zemlje širom sveta
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Re: The New Cold War
Talason wrote:sa druge strane niko nije zamrzavao sredstva usa kada su napadali razne zemlje širom sveta
То је то златно правило, а они сматрају да је злато код њих.
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cousin for roasting the rakija
И кажем себи у сну, еј бре коњу па ти ни немаш озвучење, имаш оне две кутијице око монитора, видећеш кад се пробудиш...
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Re: The New Cold War
oj oj oj
kada snime film sa klunijem kako odnosi poluge zlata iz iraqa to je holivud
kada gologuzija iz centralne azijato odnosi masino za makijato - to je ratni zlocin
kada snime film sa klunijem kako odnosi poluge zlata iz iraqa to je holivud
kada gologuzija iz centralne azijato odnosi masino za makijato - to je ratni zlocin
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- Post n°267
Re: The New Cold War
Talason wrote:to nije potpuno tačno, ako kina misli da je tajvan njen, to onda nije susedna zemlja
Dobro, to jeste drugacije od ovoga
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- Post n°268
Re: The New Cold War
Talason wrote:sa druge strane niko nije zamrzavao sredstva usa kada su napadali razne zemlje širom sveta
Pa nije ni Rusiji kad su napadali Ukrajinu prosli put, dvaput
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- Post n°270
Re: The New Cold War
demokracki!!!
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#FreeFacu
Дакле, волео бих да се ЈСД Партизан угаси, али не и да сви (или било који) гробар умре.
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- Post n°271
Re: The New Cold War
beatakeshi wrote:Aman, kakvi su to argumenti?!
Simetrični
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- Post n°272
Re: The New Cold War
Mór Thököly wrote:beatakeshi wrote:Aman, kakvi su to argumenti?!
Simetrični
Јао објасни де Америма то о метричности.
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И кажем себи у сну, еј бре коњу па ти ни немаш озвучење, имаш оне две кутијице око монитора, видећеш кад се пробудиш...
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- Post n°273
Re: The New Cold War
https://www.ft.com/content/b437fd60-7817-490e-b456-eb7ef1565f13
It’s time for a new Bretton Woods
Free and fair global markets require shared values
Rana Foroohar 7 HOURS AGO
Janet Yellen, the US Treasury secretary, did something important and, for the most part, underreported last week. She relinked trade to values.
In an address at the Atlantic Council in Washington, the secretary called for a new Bretton Woods framework and a revamp of the IMF and World Bank institutions, both of which are holding their annual meetings this week.
She also made clear that Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine and China’s failure to join the US and more than 30 other nations in sanctions on Russia was a pivot point for the global economy.
In the future, US trade policy would no longer involve merely leaving markets to their own devices, but rather would uphold certain principles — from national sovereignty and a rules-based order to security and labour rights. As she put it, America’s objective should be not just “free but secure trade”.
Countries shouldn’t be allowed to use their “market position in key raw materials, technologies or products to have the power to disrupt our economy or exercise unwanted geopolitical leverage”. That was clearly a nod to Russian petropolitics but could just as easily cover Taiwanese chip manufacturing or China’s hoarding of rare earth minerals or, during the pandemic, personal protection equipment.
Yellen coined a new word for this post-neoliberal era: “friend-shoring”. The US would now favour “the friend-shoring of supply chains to a large number of trusted countries” that share “a set of norms and values about how to operate in the global economy”. It would also seek to create principles-based alliances in areas like digital services and technology regulation, similar to last year’s global tax deal (which she spearheaded).
This isn’t America Alone or even America First. But it does acknowledge the existence of a political economy in which free trade can only really be free if countries are operating with shared values, and an even playing field.
That’s both different — and, in some crucial ways, not — from the neoliberal era that is passing. The term “neoliberalism” was first used in 1938, at the Walter Lippmann Colloquium in Paris, a gathering of economists, sociologists, journalists and businesspeople who wanted to find a way to protect global capitalism from fascism and socialism.
It was a moment that chimed with our own in many ways. Europe had been pulled apart by the first world war. A decade of easy monetary policy up to 1929 had been unable to paper over major political and economic changes that had created huge rifts in societies. Labour markets and family structures were changing. A pandemic, inflation, then economic depression, deflation and trade wars had left the continent economically wrecked.
Neoliberals wanted to fix these issues by connecting global markets. They believed that if capital and trade were connected via a series of institutions that could float over individual nation states, the world would be less likely to descend into anarchy.
For a long time, this idea worked, in part because the balance between national interests and the global economy didn’t get too far out of whack. Even during the Reagan-Thatcher era in the 1980s, there was still a sense that global trade in particular needed to serve the national interest. As US president, Ronald Reagan may have been a free-trader but he used tariffs against Japan and also supported industrial policy (as did, and do, most other Asian and many European nations).
In the US, that began to shift during the Clinton administration, which orchestrated a series of free-trade deals culminating in the entry of China into the World Trade Organization in 2001, in the hope that the country would become freer as it got richer. That, of course, didn’t happen. And now, finally, leaders everywhere are acknowledging the reality of the “one world, two systems” problem.
Yellen says she hopes that “we don’t end up with a bipolar system”, particularly given how much China itself has benefited from the neoliberal system. “But real problems have emerged,” she acknowledges. “China relies in many ways on state-owned enterprises and engages in practices that I think unfairly damage our national security interests.” Multinational supply chains, “while having become very efficient and excellent at reducing business costs, have not been resilient”. Both issues, she says, must be addressed.
Today’s crossroads is not unlike the one that faced the neoliberal thinkers who crafted the original Bretton Woods system. They started not with an idea of laissez-faire markets operating for their own sake, but rather with a very human problem — how to patch together a war-torn world to make a safer, more cohesive society, one in which freedom, liberty and prosperity would be guaranteed. Markets couldn’t do it alone. New rules were needed.
That’s just where we are now. One may argue, as I would, that a pendulum shift is overdue. Global capitalism has, over the past 20 years in particular, simply run a bit too far ahead of the domestic concerns in some individual nation states. Countries with wildly different political, economic and even moral frameworks have not all played by the same global rules. Under those circumstances, fair and free markets begin to break down.
The process of crafting a new Bretton Woods has only just begun. But starting with the values that liberal democracies want to uphold is a good place.
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Join date : 2014-12-01
- Post n°275
Re: The New Cold War
Jbt najvece kapitalisticke zemlje kukaju kako drugi iskoriscavaju njihov sistem na nefer nacin, pa suzu cu pustiti