Tin Foil Hats, Economic Reality and the Total Perspective Vortex

[bushi]

good man! But I was first - check the post times

Great summary in your topic, PMBug! I think I might have found my version of "mainstream media" , thanks to you!

[PMBug]

Post #34 - Iran & India agree to trade oil partially in Rupees
Post #37 - Iran seeks oil trade with India (partially?) in Yen
Post #38 - EU officials agree to freeze Iranian assets and ban trade in gold and silver

From the take with a grain of salt file:

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, debkafile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively. Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran's oil exports.

The vast sums involved in these transactions are expected, furthermore, to boost the price of gold and depress the value of the dollar on world markets.

Iran's second largest customer after China, India purchases around $12 billion a year's worth of Iranian crude, or about 12 percent of its consumption. Delhi is to execute its transactions, according to our sources, through two state-owned banks: the Calcutta-based UCO Bank, whose board of directors is made up of Indian government and Reserve Bank of India representatives; and Halk Bankasi (Peoples Bank), Turkey's seventh largest bank which is owned by the government.

An Indian delegation visited Tehran last week to discuss payment options in view of the new sanctions. The two sides were reported to have agreed that payment for the oil purchased would be partly in yen and partly in rupees. The switch to gold was kept dark.

India thus joins China in opting out of the US-led European sanctions against Iran's international oil and financial business. ...

http://www.debka.com/article/21673/

More discussed here: http://www.pmbug.com/forum/f4/india-...ay-follow-476/

[PMBug]

China and the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday signed a currency swap agreement worth 35 billion yuan ($5.54 billion), the People's Bank of China said, adding that the deal was effective for three years and would boost two-way trade and investment.

The agreement signed in Dubai was announced while Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao tours the Middle East, including the Emirates, and is the latest in a string of arrangements to facilitate greater use of China's yuan in international trade.

The PBOC announced the deal on its website (www.pbc.gov.cn) and said it was worth 20 billion dirhams, the UAE's currency.

In the first 11 months of 2011, trade between China and the UAE grew to $32.0 billion in value, a rise of 38.2 per cent on the same period in 2010, according to Chinese customs data. Chinese exports to the UAE, worth $24.3 billion, dominated that trade.

The UAE is a relatively modest exporter of crude to China. In the first 11 months of 2011, it shipped 6.4 million tonnes of crude to China, a rise of 26 per cent on the same period in 2010.

China has signed a series of currency swap agreements in recent years with key trading partners in a bid to boost the use of the yuan for the direct settlement of international trade. Other countries that have signed such deals recently include Thailand and South Korea.

Beijing's long-term ambition is to unseat the dollar as the dominant unit of international settlement for cross-border trade in goods and services, especially now that China is the world's single largest exporting nation and the second largest importer.
...

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsCont...wap--PBOC.aspx

[PMBug]

Update on Venezuela's gold:

Venezuelan officials completed a two-month process of repatriating 160 tons of the country's gold holdings Monday, by welcoming home the final shipment of the precious metal from Europe.

Declaring the process a "mission accomplished," government officials and state news crews met the 14-ton load at a Caracas area airport and heralded the televised event as a boost to national sovereignty.
...

http://gata.org/node/10941

[PMBug]

Follow up from post #16:

...
The State Bank of Vietnam is keeping a close eye on developments at the national gold market. In order to control the flight from the dong and the outflow of capital from the country, last year the central bank set limits on gold trading and significantly reduced the number of licensed refiners officially allowed to produce gold bars. From November 2011 onwards all companies wishing to continue their operations had to hold a minimum of 500 billion dong in funds and a market share of 25%. These requirements have forced many smaller producers out of business.

In an interview published at the end of January on the State Bank of Vietnam's website, governor Nguyen Van Binh states that the right to private ownership of gold will be upheld, but that the Bank is looking at ways of "mobilising" privately held gold. An increasing number of market observers have been long worrying that Vietnam might be heading towards total prohibition of private gold ownership. ...

So far, as a direct result of the government's attempts at limiting the national gold trade, gold prices at the black market have continued to increase in relation to the official price fix and the external value of the dong. Recently the country's banks raised the interest on gold deposits. Analysts take this as an evidence that the central bank is trying to control the gold circulating in Vietnam through commercial banks.

http://www.goldmoney.com/gold-resear...gulations.html

The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers - YouTube

The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers - YouTube

[PMBug]

...
Few are looking at dollar utilization falling in international contracting and settlement. That is a key element of 2012. The US dollar has enjoyed demand from settlement and contracting which it is now losing daily. Gold is gaining utilization as a competitive currency.

Enormous utilization was the blessing the dollar had when it was the reserve currency of choice. Utilization and settlement is falling fast as the dollar now is the reserve currency by default.

Very few have ever tried to quantify this serendipitous demand for the dollar. Allow me to assure you dollar utilization for these purposes is huge and extremely important to dollar valuation.

2012 is the year the dollar falls as a result of a significant drop in dollar contract and settlement utilization. Imagine the demand for gold as the dollar closes below the antiquated measure of .7200 on the redundant USDX. When this occurs you will be looking back at $2111 from higher levels.

Please keep in mind that this is not a dress rehearsal but rather the real thing. There is no practical means to handle the problems at hand. We are at the dead end of the road the can has been kicked down.
...

http://www.jsmineset.com/2012/02/28/...ess-rehearsal/

[PMBug]

China expanded a trial of yuan settlement for exports to all companies qualified for foreign trade from a list of designated participants, the nation’s central bank said on its website yesterday.

The change is aimed at promoting trade and the Chinese currency’s cross-border use, the People’s Bank of China said, citing a combined directive with the ministries of finance and commerce, the customs and taxation bureaus and the China Banking Regulatory Commission. A circular on the new policy attached to the announcement is dated Feb. 3.

Premier Wen Jiabao is encouraging the wider use of the yuan in international trade and investment to curb reliance on the U.S. dollar while maintaining some controls on funds flowing in and out of China. Officials have said they want to gradually achieve the yuan’s full convertibility under the capital account by 2015.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...companies.html

[PMBug]

Recorded here for posterity:

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday that he saw no risk to the U.S. dollar from China's efforts to encourage other emerging market economies to use the yuan more in international trade.

"What you're seeing China do is gradually dismantle what were a comprehensive set of very, very tight controls on the ability of countries to use their (the Chinese) currency," Geithner told an event at the Dallas Regional Chamber.

"Over time that will mean — and this is a good thing for the United States — more use of that currency and it will mean the currency will have to reflect market forces ... So, I see no risk to the dollar in those reforms," he said.

China is planning to extend renminbi-denominated loans to its fellow BRICS countries — a grouping that includes China, Russia, South Africa, Brazil and India — in an attempt to boost trade between the leading emerging market nations and promote the use of the yuan, according to the Financial Times.

Geithner said he was skeptical the yuan, or renminbi, would soon become a world currency.

"I don't think so. I don't know, maybe in some long time after we're all gone, it would be possible," Geithner said after he toured a railcar facility here.
...

http://www.cnbc.com/id/46674158

Bwahahaha... Anyone feel reassured by Timmy's statements?

[PMBug]

Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said policy makers should avoid unilateral devaluations to boost economic competitiveness, website Emerging Markets reported.

Meade, who is serving as head of the Group of 20 nations, said relying on short-term devaluations will do less to help countries boost growth in the aftermath of the European debt crisis than policies to increase domestic demand, consumption and investment, Emerging Markets said.
...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...kets-says.html

A possible ally in Hugo Salinas Price's campaign to get Mexico to legalize silver as currency?

[PMBug]

India has failed to reduce its purchases of Iranian oil, and if it doesn’t do so, President Barack Obama may be forced to impose sanctions on one of Asia’s most important nations, Obama administration officials said yesterday.

A decision to levy penalties under a new U.S. law restricting payments for Iranian oil could come as early as June 28, according to several U.S. officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.

“Given the level of trade, and in particular oil, between Iran and India, targeting an Indian entity that facilitates Iran’s access to the international financial market should be top of mind for the U.S. Treasury,” Avi Jorisch, a former Treasury Department official who is now a Washington-based consultant on deterring illicit finance, said in an interview.

The U.S. law, which targets oil payments made through Iran’s central bank, applies to any country that doesn’t make a “significant” reduction in its Iranian crude oil purchases during the first half of this year. If India fails to cut Iranian imports sufficiently, Obama may be compelled to bar access to the U.S. banking system for any Indian bank processing oil payments through Iran’s central bank, the U.S. officials said.
...

More: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...l-imports.html

[PMBug]

Following up on the Iranian oil story, the USA has gone full retard:

The United State has threatened to impose sanctions against India if the South Asian country fails to reduce its purchase of crude oil from the Islamic Republic.

“If India fails to cut Iranian imports sufficiently, Obama may be compelled to bar access to the U.S. banking system for any Indian bank processing oil payments through Iran’s central bank,” Bloomberg quoted a US official as saying, on condition of anonymity, on Thursday.
...
This comes as India has repeatedly insisted that it will continue to purchase crude oil from the Islamic Republic.

Indian Oil Minister Jaipal Reddy said on February 27, that New Delhi “has cordial relations with Iran and continues to import oil from them.”

In January, Iranian crude exports to India rose to 550,000 barrels a day, up 37.5 percent from December 2011.

India, the world's fourth-largest petroleum consumer, is Iran's second largest oil customer after China and purchases around USD 12 billion worth of Iranian crude every year, about 12 percent of its consumption.

Observers believe that India will press on with its plan to increase trade ties with the Islamic Republic despite fresh Western sanctions.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/231994.html

The Obama administration wants China, India and 10 other nations to present plans detailing how they will curtail Iranian oil imports, saying past cuts aren’t enough to win them an exclusion from new U.S. sanctions.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this week granted Japan and European Union countries six-month, renewable exemptions from the measures that take effect June 28, crediting them with “significantly reducing” imports from the Persian Gulf nation.

While China and India, the two biggest buyers of Iran’s crude, have made cuts in recent months and years, they were not granted exemptions. The distinction is that the EU and Japan offered assurances they will go beyond past reductions and continue to curb purchases from the world’s fourth biggest producer, U.S. officials say.

“What we are looking for is for countries to come to us and tell us if they believe that they should be in that category that deserves an exemption, what are the kinds of significant reductions that they are willing to pursue,” said Carlos Pascual, the State Department’s special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs.
...
If a country doesn’t prove it’s making the necessary reductions by the end of June, any institution in that nation that settles petroleum trades through Iran’s central bank will be cut off from the U.S. banking system.
...
“China has been importing Iranian crude through normal channels based on our own needs for economic development,” Hong Lei, a foreign ministry spokesman, said at a media briefing yesterday, when asked if the Asian country was considering import cuts from Iran. “China has always been against unilateral sanctions, based on domestic laws, imposed by any one country on another. We especially do not accept unilateral sanctions that are forcibly imposed on a third-party country.”

Sanctions have made it increasingly difficult to insure, ship and pay for Iranian oil. India has used a Turkish bank to route payments to Iran, dealt in currencies such as the rupee and yen, and asked Iran to secure its own ship insurance.

Efforts to arrange barter deals to pay for Iranian oil may be perceived by some in Washington as a means to skirt sanctions, one U.S. envoy said. India and Iran are considering bartering commodities and other products for crude through a rupee account with state-run UCO Bank (UCO), said two people with knowledge of the matter.

“Despite whatever the Indians say about decreasing Iranian oil imports, there are other ways they can continue to get it, through Iraq and Afghanistan, for example,” Barbara Slavin, a senior fellow on Iran at the Atlantic Council, a research institute in Washington, said in an interview. “India has such energy needs, they can’t comply with these sanctions.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...ctions-1-.html

It may just be me, but I don't think economic sanctions against China and India are going to work out too well. Well, it's not just me...

...
"If a country doesn’t prove it’s making the necessary reductions by the end of June, any institution in that nation that settles petroleum trades through Iran’s central bank will be cut off from the U.S. banking system."

This is terribly ill advised and poorly timed. It smells like a threat of selective lockout via the Swift system.

At a time when the US dollar is sundering as the major international settlement mechanism this is the last thing that dollar managers should consider. Whoever came up with this idea has no appreciation of two points – the weakness of the Western financial system and whatever weapon of war will be used in kind.

The major financial weakness in the US is the level of the US dollar due to sundering use in international contract settlement, the clear and present trend of substituting both the Yuan and Euro as international settlement currencies, and the lack of true economic buyers in the US long bond market.

History will record this decision at this time as a major factor in the final move to financial unwind in the West.
...

http://www.jsmineset.com/2012/03/23/...the-us-dollar/

[PMBug]

Brics’ move to unseat US dollar as trade currency

South Africa will this week take some initial steps to unseat the US dollar as the preferred worldwide currency for trade and investment in emerging economies.

Thus, the nation is expected to become party to endorsing the Chinese currency, the renminbi, as the currency of trade in emerging markets.

This means getting a renminbi-denominated bank account, in addition to a dollar account, could be an advantage for African businesses that seek to do business in the emerging markets.

The move is set to challenge the supremacy of the US dollar. This, experts say, is the latest salvo in the greatest worldwide currency war since the 1930s.
...
Africa’s largest bank, Standard Bank, says in a research document: “We expect at least $100 billion (about R768 billion) in Sino-African trade – more than the total bilateral trade between China and Africa in 2010 – to be settled in the renminbi by 2015.”

The bank anticipates that the use of the renminbi will lower transaction costs in Africa, thus lowering the barriers to doing business.

It also says that the Chinese will be more successful in transacting in renminbi in Africa than anywhere else because most currencies are weak and somewhat localised.

Not only will the US dollar be challenged, but also the entire international financial regime – led by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – which has been dominant since the end of World War II.
...

http://www.citypress.co.za/Business/...rency-20120324

[PMBug]

A lot of smoke coming from the BRICs...

India’s proposal to set up a bank of the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) will top the agenda at the summit of the group in New Delhi Mar. 28.

India believes a joint bank would be in line with the growing economic power of the five-nation group. The bank could firm up the position of BRICS as a powerful player in global decision-making.

"The BRICS bank does not need much capital for a start," Alexander Appokin, senior expert at the Moscow- based Centre for Macroeconomic Analysis and Forecasting tells IPS. "What is more important is that the BRICS development bank presents a unique opportunity for indirect investment of central bank foreign reserves inside the countries."

A BRICS bank could for example issue convertible debt, which would arguably be top-rated and can be bought by central banks of all BRICS countries. BRICS countries would thus have a vessel for investment risk-sharing.

"China will be the biggest beneficiary of that," says Appokin. "Moreover, infrastructure investment mostly needs not just long-term financing but external monitoring for more transparency and efficiency increases. Here, a BRICS development bank could offer some advice for successful implementation of regional projects."

But, he cautions, "development structures like a BRICS bank are effective only in case they are given independence in project financing decisions from the governments, or at least room to operate in long- term development framework."

Yuhua Xiao, assistant professor at the Institute for African Studies in the Zhejiang Normal University (ZNU) in China says the idea of setting up a development bank for financing projects in these countries is a sign of the growing self-assertiveness and of independence or interdependence of emerging economies.
...

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107115

A replacement/bypass for the SWIFT system (America's financial weapon of economic sanction armageddon)?

[PMBug]

Jim Sinclair summed up the situation eloquently I think...

...
We’ve already seen that Iran has been basically shut out of the SWIFT system and the SWIFT system is what this is all about. The SWIFT system doesn’t take any money for the money that goes through it. The SWIFT system is like the old telephone company. What it does is charge for the use of its communication.

Believe me the SWIFT system works for the West. It’s located in Belgium and you would think the US had no power on it. It’s never discussed as being a US arm, but it is a US weapon.

But we’ve already taken Iran and put a big X on it....

You’ve got to see now you’ve got this visual in front of you of a battlefield. You’ve got Wall Street firing by lighting off something that looks like a cruise missile, but it’s got SWIFT written on the side.

We tell India to cooperate or suffer the consequences. The statement was made, almost as it was at the beginning of the Iraq war, that if you’re not with us, you’re against us. If you’re not with us, you’re not in the SWIFT system. If your not with us, we’ll shut down your economy.

Now that hasn’t gone over too well with our friends, if we have any. Our friends have been saying, ‘This simply can’t be tolerated. You can’t shut down our economy.’ So we said, ‘Okay, we won’t shut down your economy, but we’ll do it selectively.’ India has said, ‘No way.’ China, ‘No way.’

What we’ve done is we’ve started barter dealing, around the world, in an enormous amount. China has been importing Iranian crude and other Asian countries are doing exactly the same thing. But in truth, over in Asia this hasn’t gone over so well.

You are starting to actually choose economic sides. You see the cruise missile coming over, with SWIFT written on the side, heading straight down into Iran. You see five or six more coming, one says China, one says India and the other three says selectively.

You are beginning to force barter transactions and degrade the system of currency exchange. You are saying to countries around the world, in today’s economic system, today’s world run by bankers and their associates, if we go to war, we’re going to war economically.

If we going to war economically, we have to have to be able to barter. There’s only one thing in the world you can barter with, that’s in a modest size. It can go by air transport and represent a huge amount of money to pay for oil, it’s called gold.
...

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldne..._Reacting.html

[PMBug]

KWN is on fire this morning...

... Another development that’s been happening in recent days is swaps are being made. China and Australia just recently completed a $31 billion swap of their currencies. To me that’s tantamount to barter. These countries have essentially pre-positioned their currencies, probably because they are worried about being cutoff from international transfers.

Jim Sinclair has pointed out what is taking place with the SWIFT system. I would just like to add that SWIFT has now become a weapon in the currency wars and as Sinclair correctly stated, unfortunately the United States is now threatening other countries. We are saying if they do not do what we want, we will cut them off from SWIFT, which will effectively shut down their economy.

We have already seen this with Iran, so India and Iran were trying to do an oil for gold swap. Evidently we’ve warned the Indians because we’re not happy about that. So SWIFT is being used to threaten our trading partners and allies....

As we now know, South Africa is actively trying to participate in dethroning the dollar as the reserve currency. If you look at the pattern of what is happening, these are like mini earthquakes all over the world.

When you add these seismic events together, it suggests that something may be imminent, perhaps in the next month or two. Saudi Arabia is suddenly sending 22 million barrels to the United States. Why did they do that?

Are they trying to get paid for it before there is some sort of eruption in the Middle-East? Is the US stockpiling oil ahead of war? There are military assets being positioned all over the Middle-East, on all sides. So something is building and these countries are taking action ahead of that for self preservation which is understandable.
...

http://kingworldnews.com/kingworldne...ad_of_War.html

[PMBug]

More from Sinclair on the SWIFT issue:

Brazil, Russia, India China and South Africa are meeting next week because of the use of SWIFT as a weapon of war. Expect the formation of a competitive SWIFT system in three blocks. ...
...
2012 is the year that the US dollar will suffer from a significant drop in utilization as the international settlement currency. The utilization of the SWIFT system as a means of making war is the singular greatest mistake dollar managers have ever made.

Phil, that might have seemed logical to you, but you fail to focus on the consequences now in motion soon to isolate the dollar in a three currency block (Yuan/Euro/Dollar) losing at least 1/2 of its previous strength from the international settlement mechanism provided. It is too late now to rethink the use of the SWIFT system as a weapon of war. The cat is out of the bag and the damage is done.
...

http://www.jsmineset.com/2012/03/25/...-is-behind-us/

...
SWIFT has never expelled an institution in its 39-year history and in 2010 it processed 2 million messages for 19 Iranian member banks and 25 financial institutions. This is a vastly significant change in tactics and the repercussions are still unknown. Governments have long used the financial system as a method of tracking and blocking payment flow for targeted individuals and companies, but now it has been escalated to the nation-state level via the modern telecommunications network.

Mark Dubowitz is a sanctions specialist in Washington D.C. who advised U.S. lawmakers on the recent SWIFT legislation. He said the decision could limit the ability of Iran’s banks “to move billions of dollars in financial transactions and put immense pressure on Iran’s leaders to reconsider their policies” and that it underscores “the growing political isolation of Iran as it becomes the first country to be expelled from what is the financial equivalent of the United Nations.”

Highlighting and exposing the structural importance of centralized financial institutions that sit at the very top of the payments pyramid will hasten the trend to more decentralized and regional payment structures. Moreover, a single worldwide financial structure with near-absolute authority will begin to be seen as a vulnerability to many nations because they cannot always be expected to comply with U.S. and European Union directives. Now that the precedent has been set for evicting a country’s financial institutions from the prevailing global payments network, all nations will be rightly suspicious of that powerful weapon.
...

http://www.jsmineset.com/2012/03/28/...ws-today-1144/

[PMBug]

On that BRICs bank/meeting:

Defending the move by BRICS nations to set up a bank, China said developing world had been left with few options but wants the Governments to allocate the initial seed money.

If Beijing had its way, after leaders of the five countries approve the pacts for local currency trade and the bank on Thursday, the idea could be forwarded to other emerging countries at the forthcoming G-20 summit in Mexico. This is an idea that India and Brazil had also suggested at the G-20 Finance Ministers' meeting.

China expects a broad consensus to emerge at the BRICS Ministerial meeting on Wednesday, a day before the summit proper and its Foreign Ministry official Li Kexin is hoping that India - as chairperson of BRICS till the next summit and draft-country for the action plan - will be able to draw up a realistic timetable of follow up meetings to make it a reality.

Explaining the need for Government money in the initial capitalisation of the Bank, BRICS specialist at the influential Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Li Zhongmin said this would ensure good credit ratings from Moody’s and Standard & Poor which in turn would enable the bank to raise finance at lower interest rates.

“BRICS countries have been left with few other options. One avenue is utilisation of foreign exchange reserves, which all BRICS countries have in ample quantity, for infrastructure development in BRICS and other developing countries. But routing foreign exchange reserves through multilateral financial institutions such as the IBRD, ADB and IMF will not give these countries enough say over utilisation because their voting power still remains small.

In Beijing, his senior Song Hong touched on two aspects – the inability of multilateral banks to finance huge infrastructure projects world-wide as “they are short of money in trying to save the Eurozone and Japan’’ and extending the concept of BRICS banks to include other countries. “On the BRICS bank, there is some different opinion from the Indian side. They want to go further and set up a South-South Bank. This is a very interesting proposal,’’ he told visiting Indian journalists last week.

Speaking at the inauguration of the Chinese Press Centre, the only one set up so far, Mr. Li said the other option would be to establish a bank. Even the host country is yet to set up a media centre but this could be because bulk of the Foreign Ministry’s media team was with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Seoul for the Nuclear Security Summit.

China, Mr. Li said, wanted internationalisation of local currency. This could be done by cross border currency swaps or using the local currency for settlement and foreign direct investment. “This is quite possible. It needs to be realised that any one country cannot move currency globally, BRICS must act together. They should focus on the real economy which is their strength and not the financial market which any way accounts for a very miniscule percentage of their GDP, ‘’ he counselled.

http://www.thehindu.com/news/article3251603.ece

Even as New Delhi prepares for the arrival of BRICS Heads of States towards the later part of the week, media and experts across the world continue to debate the relevance, capacity and cohesiveness of the grouping. The common refrain in the western press is that it is a ‘motley crew' with little in common and therefore with little capability to create institutions and multilateral platforms of substance. Well, they may be in for a surprise. In fact, BRICS may also surprise itself.
...
The second announcement that has people most interested is on the much discussed “BRICS Bank” or the “South-South Bank” that many consider to be an Indian proposal for creating an institution that can serve the development needs and aspirations of the emerging and developing world. This proposal saw much debate (some heated) at the recent BRICS Academic Forum and surely was a key issue for deliberations at the recently concluded BRICS Finance Ministers Meeting. There are many complex and some contested issues that need to be discussed and thought through, but due to the growing support for such an institution among BRICS it is almost certain that the leaders will, at the very least, announce a working group to study the feasibility and operational modalities of such a multilateral bank. Whether they are bold enough to suggest a time line for its establishment remains to be seen but in the opinion of many, it is an idea whose time has come.
...

More: http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article3248200.ece

[PMBug]

I'm not sure what to make of this, but it appears that Goldman Sachs has a keen interest in the BRICS summit happening in India presently:

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) (GS) directors converge on India this week for their first meeting in the nation, where economic growth is headed for a three-year-low and the pace of reforms has disappointed the firm’s analysts.

Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein is leading a three-day meeting in Mumbai and New Delhi, India’s business and government capitals. The gathering completes trips by the New York-based firm’s board to all of the so-called BRIC nations -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- whose rapid economic expansion has made them a priority for investment.
...
Blankfein, 57, and the rest of the board will host dinners for government officials and heads of the nation’s biggest conglomerates, including Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries Ltd. and India’s richest man, a person with knowledge of the event said, declining to be named as the matter is confidential. Tata Group Chairman Ratan Tata, Tata Sons Ltd. Deputy Chairman Cyrus Mistry and Kumar Mangalam Birla, who controls Hindalco Industries Ltd. (HNDL), are on the guest-list for an event in Mumbai tonight, the person said.
...

http://www.businessweek.com/news/201...ses-bric-cycle

BRICS nations sign pacts to promote trade in local currency

In an initiative to promote trade in local currencies, the BRICS nations on Thursday signed two agreements to provide line of credit to business community and decided to examine the possibility of setting up a development bank on lines of multilateral lending agencies.

The agreements were signed by officials of five countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- at the fourth BRICS summit in New Delhi.

"The agreements signed today by development banks of BRICS countries will boost trade by offering credit in our local currency," Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a media statement after the meeting.

The Master Agreement on Extending Credit Facility in Local Currency and the Multilateral Letter of Credit Confirmation Facility Agreement are being perceived as a step towards replacing the dollar as the main unit of trade between them.
...

http://www.hindustantimes.com/busine...e1-832496.aspx

[PMBug]

Brazil (the 'B' in BRICS) is fully engaged in the currency wars:

Brazilian Trade and Industry Minister Fernando Pimentel ...

Brazil accuses rich countries of causing a "monetary tsunami" by engaging in expansionist policies such as low interest rates and bond-buying programs.

The policies are designed to stimulate the troubled U.S. and European economies, but have also unleashed a wave of global liquidity that has poured into emerging markets like Brazil, driving up their currencies and making their economies less competitive abroad.

Pimentel said that the five emerging markets that make up the BRICS, a disparate group that often struggles to find common ground on a wide array of issues, "have more or less the same vision on this matter."

"I think there's going to be a mention of this (in the communique), for sure," Pimentel said.

A united front among the BRICS is unlikely to persuade rich nations to change their monetary policies. But it could give Brazil and other countries critical political cover to seek palliative action by raising their tariffs or pursuing change at global bodies like the WTO. Brazil is spearheading a discussion on currencies this week at the Geneva-based body.
...

More: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...82R15120120328

[swissaustrian]