Glad it's not about the Swift language
A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
41–50 of 496 posts
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#42Russian citizens like me will be hit hardest, as usual. Large institutions and wealthy individuals will find another ways to transfer money. Costs of goods and services will rise.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#43All these sanctions are a bit of the joke when you are dealing with an insane leader in a country without elections and sitting on top of a pile of reserves. And the west is not doing one thing that could actually actually make a difference -- cutting oil and gas export because the west thinks it'll be too expensive for the west. I feel these sanctions are still more of signalling, than actually doing something usefu…
> All these sanctions are a bit of the joke when you are dealing with an insane leader in a country without elections
Russia has elections, but even having an unelected autocrat doesn't mean that governments are immune to popular opinion.
Ask Louis XVI of France or, perhaps more relevantly here, Tsar Nicholas II of all the Russias.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#44quite a few commenters have pointed out SWIFT as a hand of soft power and i think its important to understand the twitter post doesnt mention an important fact:
SWIFT was created in order that Europe may resist Kissingers increasingly capricious hand of soft power as it emerged as a lead sap in an increasingly arbitrary US foreign policy. 40 years ago the US had become effectively drunk on soft-power moves against states it perceived as even remotely objective to US interests. Is your president elect too socialist? you get an aircraft carrier floating in your strait for a year. did you nationalize your oil fields? sanctions mean you cant sell it to anyone. Cuba to this day still enjoys endless sanctions for resisting regime change.
in 2022 sanctions are to international diplomacy as a tantrum is to a toddler. theyre effectively meaningless as most capable, observant countries have managed to sidestep in part or in whole the once dominant US hegemony of finance and trade. even the threat of a blue-water naval presence is an unspeakable taboo as Russia is one of a handful of emerging countries you wouldnt dare send an aircraft carrier to patrol, unless its goal was to secure the ocean floor.
The only meaningful threat SWIFT offers is the ability to assuage short-term market fears among traders that dont fully understand just how inapplicable SWIFT is in this case.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#45I often wonder how money is stored. It can't be just a number on a computer in a bank, right? Otherwise some Russian bank could just increase that number to whatever they like. And say "Look, we own 100 Trillion USD. Now let's go shopping.". So I guess USD needs to be recognized by the US somehow? Could the US simply "void" all USD that are owned by Russia?
They do have physical cash reserves in central banks.
Which could be revoked by printing new money with a new design and giving them only to the friendly parties in replacement of the old ones. It's routinely done (Euro is on its second design) and old banknotes and coins are no more valid after some years (the first series of Euros doesn't have an end of life yet.)
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#46I often wonder how money is stored. It can't be just a number on a computer in a bank, right? Otherwise some Russian bank could just increase that number to whatever they like. And say "Look, we own 100 Trillion USD. Now let's go shopping.". So I guess USD needs to be recognized by the US somehow? Could the US simply "void" all USD that are owned by Russia?
> Russian bank could just increase that number to whatever they like.
Money is an IOU from the bank. So that's what all banks do. But they'll need assets on the right side of their balance sheet.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If they're building a replacement, doesn't that also mean we should use "cut off SWIFT" now, rather than later when it'll be ineffective? The replacement is already functional. In fact, Russia is not the only one having built a replacement to protect against the risk that SWIFT would be sanctioned: Europe has done it too with Instex: https://instex-europe.com/about-us/ SWIFT is a private company; those sanctions ma…
India has UPI and Rupay which is getting adopted by other SEA countries. Nepal is as another addition.
I might be wrong but both of them aren't an equivalent to Swift. Rupay seems to be a card network like Visa and UPI builts on top of IMPS which might be considered an alternative, however IMPS is limited to financial institutions of one country and one currency.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Russia has been building up gold reserves, not crypo reserves 2. It's actually much harder than convincing 51% of miners that Russia is bad. You'll need to get them to agree on a list of addresses to freeze/sanction. Given that bitcoin addresses are pseudonymous, I'd imagine on agreeing on such a list would be politically impossible. Not to mention, how such action would affect trust in the network and the value o…
I doubt the majority of bitcoin miners live in places that care about the western neoliberal agenda.
I doubt they much care about neoliberal agenda in first place. It is all about profit. Or being outside that system.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#49Russian citizens like me will be hit hardest, as usual. Large institutions and wealthy individuals will find another ways to transfer money. Costs of goods and services will rise.
I was watching a mainstream news report (I'll try to find it and edit my comment) where the host and the guest were talking about the impact of economic sanctions. They said it's not intended to stop Russia, but to inflict pain on the citizens, so that they citizens will turn against leadership.
In that moment, it really clicked for me how much normal people are pawns to be used in much larger games. And there apparently is no morality when dealing with pawns, unless it is convenient.
Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters
#50All these sanctions are a bit of the joke when you are dealing with an insane leader in a country without elections and sitting on top of a pile of reserves. And the west is not doing one thing that could actually actually make a difference -- cutting oil and gas export because the west thinks it'll be too expensive for the west. I feel these sanctions are still more of signalling, than actually doing something usefu…
> All these sanctions are a bit of the joke when you are dealing with an insane leader in a country without elections Russia has elections, but even having an unelected autocrat doesn't mean that governments are immune to popular opinion. Ask Louis XVI of France or, perhaps more relevantly here, Tsar Nicholas II of all the Russias.
I know that technically they have elections (I'm a Russian living abroad), they just count in a 'special way' so they get the result they want.
And yes I agree popular uprisings is a possibility. But in the case of Germany in 1930-1940s that didn't quite work.