you want our stuff, you pay us in the coin we want

Good luck finding all those pennies. Perhaps the Russians will make a deal to have the Euros pay in yuan. Probably easier to convert anyway. Another nail in the USD as the "petrol dollar" and maybe the "reserve currency"...



Kremlin Threatens To Halt Supplies As G7 Ministers Reject "Unacceptable" Demand To Pay For Gas In Rubles


AND finally, Paul Craig Roberts endorses Russia’s policy: “the West has no right to complain”

https://sputniknews.com/20220328/pe...g-russian-gas-for-rubles-1094263776.html




Russia will not supply gas for free if the EU refuses to pay in rubles, said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on 28 March in response to resistance demonstrated by Western countries obliged by Moscow to use rubles in the energy trade with Russia.

"The sanctioning countries that have breached all their contracts with Russia have no right to complain that Russia breaches one in return", says Dr Paul Craig Roberts, US economist and ex-assistant secretary of the treasury under Ronald Reagan.

"If the countries refuse to pay, Putin should immediately turn off the energy. Indeed, he should have done so before launching his military operation in Donbass. It is nonsensical for Russia to keep alive the economies of countries that are sending weapons to Ukrainian Nazis to kill Russians".

Russian President Vladimir Putin on 23 March ordered the Russian Central Bank and the government to work out the means for ruble payments for Russian natural gas exports by nations designated as "unfriendly" by Moscow. The list of foreign states that committed "unfriendly actions", including sanctions and seizure of assets, against the Russian Federation, Russian legal entities, and individuals was made by the government earlier this month.

The Russian president explained that after Western countries had "frozen" Russian dollar and euro assets, it became clear that "supplying our goods to the European Union and the United States and receiving payment in dollars, euros, and a number of other currencies does not make any sense to us".
[.]

Dr Roberts hailed the Kremlin's decision to switch to ruble payments, asking in his blog: "Is Russia going for the petro-ruble?" According to the economist, Moscow could apparently be pursuing two goals: first, forcing Russia's energy customers to bypass the sanctions; second, ruble payments support the value of the ruble and frustrate the sanctioning countries' hope of causing its value to collapse.
However, "payment in rubles should be the policy regardless of sanctions", according to Dr Roberts.[.]

could get very interesting....

The influence of the USA fading fast; good or bad?

Or we could supply our own energy with enough to export,,and tell Russia to go pound their rubles.Oh wait,,Trump already did that,,and this administration over turned all that.

Was going to put that down but UpstateNY beat me to it, lots of things could be a whole lot different right now if Demo's had not messed with elections and gotten away with it !!!

Obviously, those in power don't want to end this and aren't actually trying to stop Russia. We could provide all the oil the EU needs and make Russia the 3rd world. We could stop imports from China and make China the third world again. But we won't.

Sounds like all the countries buying energy from Russia need to go green since that's working so well here.

We were headed that way, throw Iran in too, but........

We cant stop imports from China. We no longer have the facilities to produce the stuff we buy from them. Leather, cotton cloth and garments, medicine, steel, and other manufactured goods. Some of the buildings still exist but in such poor shape they need rebuilt.

The skilled labor needed to produce that stuff no longer exists here. People would have to be trained. Welfare ended so all the deadbeats need a job. There will be riots when those checks are shut off and lawsuits filed till they figure out they have to show up everyday, on time, then work, to get paid. It will take years to build back what we gave away and bring back the American work ethic.

Plus, you can't force children to work for twenty cents an hour here.

The sad thing is there are lots of depleted natural gas reserves throughout Europe that if they allowed fracking would be very productive . Russia has spent billions financing the environmental groups that lobby for policies that limit EU production of NG from fracking

Also, you can’t force adults to work for $20/ hour.

Fracking is probably the single largest threat to Russian influence in Europe. Every time anybody has ever ask Putin about fracking he goes off on an angry rant about how horrible it is .

Depends.... do we want to continue to be a world power or return to the old policy of isolationism? Both have their pros and cons

Thats a word liberals use to make people think giving away our manufacturing ability and our involvement in foreign politics are good ideas. That involvement in and funding of the U.N. is a good thing. The U.S. has never been isolated.

There are reports that the Russian central bank is working on tying the Ruble to Gold.

Yes, I've heard that as well but no one is willing to say it out loud if true. The Russian Federation does have one of the largest holdings of gold (their word) in the world. Considering that they have the largest country by area TWICE over next in line Canada, I wouldn't be surprised.

Meanwhile, out of Oil Prices. com:

Deadline For Rubles For Gas Scheme Approaches
By Charles Kennedy - Mar 28, 2022, 11:30 AM CDT

Russian President Vladimir Putin has instructed Gazprom, the central bank of Russia, and the Russian government to come up with a report by the end of March on how to change the payment for Russian gas to rubles for customers who are part of Putin’s so-called “unfriendly” countries list.

“The Russian government together with the Bank of Russia and Gazprom PJSC should implement a set of measures on changing the currency of payment for natural gas supplies to the countries of the European Union and other states that imposed restrictive measures against the citizens of the Russian Federation and Russian legal entities, to the Russian ruble,” according to a Kremlin document cited by Russian news agency TASS.

Putin has also ordered the Russian government to approve a move on changing Gazprom’s current contracts to reflect the change in the currency to the Russian ruble. This should be done “with supply volumes, prices and price formation principles stipulated by contracts maintained” by March 31, TASS reported.

Last week, Putin said that Russia would start charging the countries it considers “hostile” in rubles for its natural gas.

“I have taken a decision to switch to ruble payments for our natural gas supplies to the so-called hostile states, stop using the compromised currencies in such transactions,” Putin said.

Related: Rationing Looms As Diesel Crisis Goes Global

The Russian President—whose list of “hostile” states includes the United States, all EU member states, Switzerland, Canada, Norway, South Korea, Japan, and many others—has ordered the Bank of Russia, the central bank, to develop a system for payments in rubles within a week.

Commenting on Putin’s rubles-for-Russian-gas plan, the EU and leaders of the biggest economies in Europe said that changing the currency of the payments would be a breach of contract and that Europe would not be blackmailed into buying gas with rubles.

“There are fixed contracts everywhere, with the currency in which the deliveries are to be paid being part of these contracts... in most cases it says euros or dollars,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said last week. Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Draghi noted that “This is basically a breach of contract, this is important to understand.”

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said that “We will not allow our sanctions to be circumvented. The time when energy could be used to blackmail us is over.”

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com

let them be without....I believe that poland cancelled oil from russia today...

putin is going to stay in ukraine, I guarantee you that.

the way things are going we are looking at another great (er) depression in the next few years...all these sanctions and 'green energy' just helps that go forward.

jmo, ymmv

When I see American democrats, American republicans and Europeans all holding hands with Ukraine and singing Kumbaya, it makes me VERY nervous. I feel many conservatives are finally taking the bait. Hook, line and sinker.

Russia and china have been actively adding gold.

Unfettered money printing and artificially low interest rates have consequences.

Everyone thinks russia is done for....those folks may be in for a surprise. Now they say that russia lied about where they would attack recently..... do they think russia is stupid? Of course they will mislead the opposition.

The drums to war keep beating as our country goes down the tubes..

Yes Sir Marty, I agree with you 100%.

This country’s free and blessed ride is about to come to the train station IMO.
I say sadly, deservingly so. We export to the entire world every form of vile and filth imaginable. From celebrating thugs, to disgracing law and order, to pornography. Now we as a nation are destroying and exploiting our own children and making their very biology a political theater. We as a nation cannot even discern whether it is right or wrong to a kill a baby in its mommas womb, or the difference between a man or a woman!

Not only do we embrace it here within our government and society, but worse we export it to the world as we are the enlightened ones. So very very tragic.

But, we must go to war with Russia because Putin is bad!

It is a very tragic thing, chancey. I agree with what you said 100%.

This 100%


Losts of great replies on this thread.

Steven 49er- I can't lay my hands on the source off the top of my head but it was in a book where they were talking about how much gold major countries had over time in the past couple of decades. It was the Chinese thing that I remembered standing out. They would just periodically announce what they were holding and it almost always surprised people who watch such things up close. If the Chinese numbers could be believed (big if), they had been aggressively acquiring more gold. While the US and Western governments were actively pursuing an all fiat-based monetary system and only had a slight interest in having gold in reserve, both the Chinese and Russians were actively building up their strategic reserve of gold even while participating in the fiat realm .