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A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

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Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#91

Post by hef19898 »

daenz wrote: post #70
lesuorac wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's how war (hard diplomacy) works as well. World leaders don't get into an octagon and duke it out to see who controls what territory. They send normal people (soldiers) to go acquire it for them. Occasionally the soldiers capture/kill a world leader but usually they reach some kind of (conditional/unconditional) agreement before that point. But the soldiers are not world leaders themselves anyways.

Soldiers are fair game to me, because they often choose to participate. Normal working people are just trying to survive, and destroying their lives in the hopes of influencing their country's leadership is on a different level. I get that it's war and war isn't fair, but my point is that war clearly reveals the underlying classes of people and how they're treated.

Ukraine is under general mobilization now. So no choice whatsoever. Even in volunteer armies one cannot ignore social economic pressure. Usualy the low grunt, those that do the killing and dying, are just poor bastards. On both sides. I read a comment not long ago: Simple soldiers on both sides have more in common with each other than their leadership. That very much true. Are aoldiers, and other combatants legitimate targets? Yes. Does it make their losses and casualties any less tragic? No.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#92

Post by andrepd »

optimalsolver wrote: post #84

How many people complaining about the weaksauce sanctions proposed against Russia would be prepared to deal with the effects of more stringent measures? I'm thinking especially of people in Europe castigating politicians for not wanting to clamp down hard on the Russian energy sector. The way I see it, the europols are in a no-win situation. If they go easy on Russia and keep the gas and oil flowing, they look like w…

> Of course, they probably wouldn't be in this position if they hadn't taken energy strategy advice from Greta Thunberg, but that's neither here nor there.

What the fuck? I'm pretty positive that the energy strategy of major western powers was not radically revamped in two years on the advice of a teenager. If anything, they're in this position because they pursued an opposite strategy to what ecologists advocate: reduce dependency on fossil fuels including Russian natural gas, and invest massively in renewables + nuclear to bridge the gap.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#93

Post by aluminum96 »

nimbius wrote: post #44

quite 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 st…

> in 2022 sanctions are ... effectively meaningless as most capable, observant countries have managed to sidestep in part or in whole the once dominant US hegemony

This is only true to the extent that the US unilaterally imposes sanctions. The proposed sanctions involving SWIFT are multilateral, with the support of the entire EU. That's around double the economic power of the US alone, and roughly half of the entire world's GDP. Being sanctioned by half of the global economy (more, if Asian democracies participate) is very punishing indeed.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#94

Post by mupuff1234 »

netsharc wrote: post #66
mupuff1234 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High price of oil is good for Russia only if they have buyers. And yes, in the short term it will hurt us but in the longer term you are disarming the influence of a bad actor with the added benefit of incentivizing cleaner energy and perhaps more efficient means of transportation.

Seems like China is fine with taking the oil. And China knows the world won't seriously sanction it...

Yes, but then China can easily squeeze them on the price (being the single big buyer)

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#95

Post by parkingrift »

nimbius wrote: post #44

quite 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 st…

Everything you've said is true except that this would be a joint effort between US, Europe, and likely others.

This same situation happened with Iran and it torpedoed their economy.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#96

Post by sega_sai »

rozab wrote: post #89
sega_sai wrote: post #37

All 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…

The energy/heating situation in Europe is very tenuous. In the UK most everyone has gas central heating, and energy bills are skyrocketing. This is the most pressing domestic issue in the country right now, far above covid. Johnson is attempting to gain some popularity by putting on a tough face, but there is no chance he can survive if energy prices rise any further. Here a staggering number of people die every wint…

I absolutely agree (I live in the UK), but in the end it's a question of money I believe. Somebody has to bear the cost of more expensive fuel/gas. I am sure if UK wanted it could have subsidised those costs till the next winter. I don't know how expensive that would be, but I doubt it's astronomical. On a balance of costs between squeezing Russia more or saving that money they (and Europe it seems) decided to save the money and go for measures like prohibiting Aeroflot flights or throwing Russia out of Eurovision.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#97

Post by ido »

KrishnaShripad wrote: post #67
daenz wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 appare…

> They said it's not intended to stop Russia, but to inflict pain on the citizens, so that they citizens will turn against leadership. Which country has it ever worked out on? Cuba? Venezuela? North Korea? None of them have turned on their dictators. Rather, they are living life in misery. What is worse is they have been not just cut off monetarily from the rest of the World, the dictators have made sure to censor al…

South Africa[0]?

"Economic sanctions against South Africa placed a significant pressure on the government that helped to end apartheid."

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_during...

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#98

Post by grozzle »

pmontra wrote: post #45
can16358p wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.)

A notable anecdote is the Northern Bank robbery of 2004, when (presumably IRA) robbers stole 26 million UK pounds from the biggest Belfast branch of the Northern Bank, which, like other private banks in Northern Ireland and Scotland, issued its own banknotes. They held a manager's family at gunpoint during the action.

This total sum seemed to be far beyond the robbers' actual intentions, and the Northern Bank quickly issued a new banknote design, offering free exchanges for anyone with the old one.

Of course the robbed money had serial numbers, so it's now generally believed the IRA just burned most of the stolen cash.

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#99

Post by buu700 »

andrepd wrote: post #92
optimalsolver wrote: post #84

How many people complaining about the weaksauce sanctions proposed against Russia would be prepared to deal with the effects of more stringent measures? I'm thinking especially of people in Europe castigating politicians for not wanting to clamp down hard on the Russian energy sector. The way I see it, the europols are in a no-win situation. If they go easy on Russia and keep the gas and oil flowing, they look like w…

> Of course, they probably wouldn't be in this position if they hadn't taken energy strategy advice from Greta Thunberg, but that's neither here nor there. What the fuck? I'm pretty positive that the energy strategy of major western powers was not radically revamped in two years on the advice of a teenager. If anything, they're in this position because they pursued an opposite strategy to what ecologists advocate: re…

I think what they were referring to was Germany prematurely decommissioning nuclear plants only to start replacing them with coal and (more importantly) Nord Stream 2, which I never understood either.

I can't comment on whether Greta Thunberg had anything to do with that, but I do see in a recent article that she appears to be anti-nuclear: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/21/eu-in-row-over...

Re: A quick breakdown of what SWIFT is and why it matters

#100

Post by tintor »

snovv_crash wrote: post #90
mohanmcgeek wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Bit what if they didn't, and just changed some numbers in their database?

Then you have inflation, and rise of prices.
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