Putin is acting on his threats

For the past five years, we have warned that Vladimir Putin intended to remove the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. He understands what the Chinese have shared (from a February 2011 article in Quishi, the official Journal of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party):

The fact that the U.S. dollar is the world’s reserve currency makes the U.S. a financial superpower . . .Therefore, for China to challenge the position of the U.S. dollar, it needs to take a path of internationalization and directly confront the U.S. dollar.

Putin has been scheming to get China and others to join him in unseating the dollar, thus ending perhaps America’s greatest strategic advantage as a superpower. Everything else is somewhat of a subterfuge. This is the real focus. The amazing thing is how little attention has been given to this truly systemic threat. Take a look at this Blog post as a reminder:

Putin’s Direct Threat: We Are Ready to Crash the Dollar (from Voice of Russia)

Russia strives to exclude the dollar from energy trading

Russian press reports that the country’s Ministry of Finance is ready to greenlight a plan to radically increase the role of the Russian ruble in export operations while reducing the share of dollar-denominated transactions. Governmental sources believe that the Russian banking sector is “ready to handle the increased number of ruble-denominated transactions”.

According to the Prime news agency, on April 24th the government organized a special meeting dedicated to finding a solution for getting rid of the US dollar in Russian export operations. Top level experts from the energy sector, banks and governmental agencies were summoned and a number of measures were proposed as a response for American sanctions against Russia.