Return to the Pentagon

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In my 2011 book, Currency Wars, I gave a detailed description of the first-ever financial war game sponsored by the Department of Defense.

This financial war game took place in 2009 at the top-secret Applied Physics Laboratory located about twenty miles north of Washington, D.C. in the Maryland countryside.

Unlike typical war games, the “rules of engagement” for this financial exercise did not permit the use of any kinetic weapons such as bombs, missiles or drones.

The only weapons allowed were financial instrument including stocks, bonds, currencies, commodities and derivatives.

Russia Claims to be Ready for SWIFT Cutoff

 

U.S. And Its Allies Are Considering The Move To Ensure Russia Complies To UN Sanctions On North Korea.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich reportedly told state-run media his country’s banking system is fully prepared to “survive” if the U.S. and its Western allies cut off access to the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication.

Russia To Cut Dependence On U.S. Dollar, Payment Systems

 

Quoted by Reuters, Ryabkov said that “we will of course intensify work related to import substitution, reduction of dependence on U.S. payment systems, on the dollar as a settling currency and so on. It is becoming a vital need.” The reason for that is that “the US is using its dominating role in the monetary and financial system to impose pressure on foreign business, including Russian companies.”

EU “Sounds Alarm” Over New US Sanctions On Russia; Germany Threatens Retaliation

Late on Friday, Congressional negotiators reached a deal to advance a bill that would punish Russia for its interference in the 2016 election and restrict the president’s power to remove sanctions on Moscow, according to the WSJ. The measure, if signed into law, will also give Congress veto powers to block any easing of Russian sanctions by the president. And while it remained unclear if President Donald Trump would sign the bill if it reaches his desk, which is now likely, the loudest complaint about the bill to date has emerged noe from the Oval Office, but from Brussels, after the EU once again urged (and warned, and threatened) US lawmakers to coordinate their anti-Russia actions with European partners, or else.

The Antichrist’s Cashless Utopia: War on Cash in 2016

(TRUNEWS) The push for a cashless society has begun to gain steam around the globe, with nearly every major nation taking strides to adopt digital currencies, centrally governed cash controls and incentivize cashless transactions.

A Bloomberg Op-Ed published on January 31^st called for the end of paper currencies, touting that “cash had a pretty good run for 4,000 years or so,” but was “dirty, dangerous, unwieldy and expensive, antiquated and so very analog.”

Now though each of these reasons all have some merit of truth behind them, such as paper currency serving as a vector for disease, incentivizing physical robberies, and complicating P2P long distance transactions, the existence of physical legal tender has an equal set of priceless characteristics.

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In the Book of Revelation, God forewarned his people through the Apostle John, that during the Tribulation period the global system will be dictatorially ruled by a single political authority, known as the antichrist. In Chapter 13 verses 16-17 the antichrist’s control over the economy is described as absolute: “He also forced everyone, small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on his right hand or on his forehead, so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of his name.” Cashless technology and centralized restrictions of transactions fit this warning.

Death knell for cash: Limitless tap and pay mobile payments to be widely available by 2017

The rollout of limitless mobile transactions means that people will be widely able to tap and pay for high-value items, such as laptops and cameras – and even a new car.

Payments linked to mobile phones, through services such as Apple Pay, have an extra layer of security and aren’t subject to the contactless limits currently imposed on cards.

MasterCard is at war in Canada, and it’s not against who you’d expect

As ex advisor to Ronald Reagan, Martin Armstrong, says: The current goal for major institutions and governments is to eliminate cash. This is how you keep bankruns from happening, plus you’re able to track down every single transaction. It’s an all-out assault on your freedom.

 

TORONTO — In Canada, the biggest rival MasterCard Inc. is working to obliterate, according to its local president Brian Lang, isn’t Visa Inc., American Express Co., Interac Association or Bitcoin dealers. It’s cold, hard cash.

“The benefit of Interac and Visa for me is that we’re competing towards the same goal of a digitally enabled country,” Lang said in a recent telephone interview. “I actually appreciate that (Interac) is advertising right now not to pay with cash and that there’s a much better way, that you can tap or pop in your card.”

Russia’s National System of Payment Cards, American Express agree on Mir co-badged card

Free economic leverage to Moscow has just been given away. Sanctions will now be that much more ineffective with AMEX having over 100 million cards circulating globally.

 

MOSCOW, July 20. /TASS/. Russia’s National System of Payment Cards (NSPC) has struck an agreement with the international payment system American Express on issuing co-badged card Mir, NSPC said in a press release on Monday.

Sanctioned Russian banks begin testing national payment system next week

“What sanctions?” is how Russia laughs off Western punitive measures while creating its own alternative system. Much like the attack on Russian oil and gas, the West is shooting itself in the foot here as well. Iran and the sanctions against it in the previous 10 years have also been a prime example of plans backfiring. Iran, a third world economy, has no bottom — and plenty of other needy customers such as China who would be more than welcome to take Persian oil.

 

“The pilot project involves SMP Bank and Rossiya Bank, those for which the story is very critical and important. These are quite large banks,” the head of the Russian National payment system (NPS) Vladimir Komlev said in an interview with Rossiya 24 TV.

The move comes as a part of Russia’s ambitious initiative to move away from the Western dominance of its financial markets. Last month the Russian Central Bank said it would have its own international inter-bank payment system, an alternative to the global SWIFT network up and running by May 2015.

Russia’s National System of Payment Cards (NSPC) starts operations in mid-December; eight Russian banks sanctioned by the West will be the first to make use of the new electronic funds transfer service.

MOSCOW, December 8 (Sputnik) – Russia’s National System of Payment Cards (NSPC), which has been created to rival existing international operations such as Visa and Mastercard, will start test operations in mid-December, Russia’s business newspaper “Vedomosti” reported on Monday.

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Russia’s National Card Payment System is Alternative to Western Counterparts – Medvedev

GORKI (Moscow Region), June 18 (RIA Novosti) – Russia’s national card payment system is not being created to counteract foreign counterparts, but as a reasonable alternative to them, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said Wednesday.

“The national card payment system should give consumers more opportunities to choose, and in fact, most importantly, the idea is not to struggle against foreign systems, this is wrong and in fact a violation of competitive principles. This is a kind of a reasonable alternative to foreign systems, including the famous and most popular ones like Visa and MasterCard,” Medvedev said at a meeting on establishing the national card payment system.

U.S. Sanctions Push Putin Toward His Dream of A New Financial System

Although Monday’s sanctions will hurt Russia in the short term, they will also force Putin to step up his efforts to weaken U.S. influence over the global economy, which so far has been “little more than wishful thinking because of the difficult reforms it would require”

A little over a year ago, in early March 2013, the Russian state energy czar Igor Sechin made his American debut at an oil summit in Houston, Texas, reportedly accompanied by armed guards equipped with a K-9 unit. The speech he gave that day at the СERAWeek conference, an annual gathering of energy titans from around the world, was part of a pit stop for Sechin. He was on his way to a more high profile event, the funeral of his old friend Hugo Chavez, the truculently anti-American President of oil-rich Venezuela. But since he was passing through the Western hemisphere anyway, Sechin clearly felt it was worthwhile to court some American investors. “I call for us to work together,” he told the audience that day, according to Russia’s Vedomosti daily, “to drive our business for mutual benefit.”