Russia Pulling/Pulled $$ Out of West??

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Hey, you gotta give your oligarchs inside info so they'll still support you.
Which makes one wonder a bit - this is the second time. Cyprus? How'd they know then?
 
There are reports that Nazi Soviet Russian troops have entered Austria Czechoslovakia Ukraine proper now. Not that Chamberlain Laval barry will do anything more other than wag his finger. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
 
"So the bottom line is that Russia, thinking a few steps ahead, already has withdrawn the bulk of its assets from the West, and why not." Zero Hedge

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) said:
[Vladimir] Putin is playing chess and I think we [Barack Obama etal] are playing marbles, ...

"While Obama squeezes a steelie and gets down on his knees in the dirt hoping to knock a cat’s eye out of a circle he drew with his finger, Putin sits in the castle hovering his queen directly in front of America’s 'king.' Remember this is for ‘keepsies’ and …. checkmate." Putin playing for keeps

**********

"And so while the Russian response is already known, we wonder just how true is the inverse: just how prepared is the west, and especially Europe, to exist in a world in which a third of Germany's gas is suddenly cut off?" Zero Hedge

Results:

Angela Merkle out

Karl-Theodor von- und zu-Guttenberg in.
 
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Here in N.D. the oil companies are burning off nat gas by they 1,000's cause we have no where left to store it here. If only there was a way to get it to people who could/would use it, and just think if that method involved creating lots of jobs too. Nah, more crazy talk.
 
Problem with getting our natgas to Europe is, tankers are hella more expensive than pipelines. In response to OP, it seems the Russian central bank was taking possession of the US Treasuries it owned and was storing at the Fed. If sanctions happen (a snowball's chance in Rio of that), the Russkies can launder those Treasuries through Belarus, any of the ex-Soviet 'stans that are part of the CIS, or China.

There won't be any sanctions by the EU, because Merkel is Putin's poodle. She's been threatened before about having the oil cut off to Germany, and promptly rolled over.
 
By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The Telegraph, London
Friday, March 14, 2014

Somebody is a selling a fistful of US Treasuries. It could be Russia, China, Turkey, South Africa, or Indonesia, or all frantically selling bonds at the same time for different reasons.

We don't yet know. All we know is that the US Federal Reserve's custody holdings on behalf of foreign central banks plunged by $106 billion in the week ending March 12, the biggest one-week drop on record.

Russia's central bank is undoubtedly liquidating reserves at a breakneck pace to prevent a collapse of the rouble, as foreign companies scramble to get all their spare cash out of Russian accounts before the G7 guillotine comes down on the Putin clan next week. It is certainly trying to remove its assets beyond the jurisdiction of the US authorities -- though that will not be easy. The Securities and Exchange Commission takes no prisoners. In the end, the world is more frightened of US regulators than it is of Putin's tanks or his polonium. Soft power can trump hard power.

One investor told me that clients in Russia are literally loading up cars with computers, machinery, and anything that will fit, and rushing them out of the country for fear that assets will nationalised. Whatever happens, nobody will forget this in a hurry.
Yet the latest financial ructions go beyond Russia; they reek of stress in the international system. "Countries are intervening all over the place to defend their currencies, (which means they are tightening). Their central banks built up huge war chests of reserves for a rainy day, and now it is raining," said David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC.

Indeed it is. The international order is unravelling. Russia is of course smashing the post-Cold War order by seizing Ukraine and blowing up the global architecture of nuclear non-proliferation. Let us not forget that Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons -- the world's third biggest arsenal at the time -- in exchange for a guarantee by the great powers in 1994 that its territorial integrity would be upheld. Russia was one of the signatories.

China is laying claim to large parts of the East China and South China Seas, and has established an air-identification control zone over the Japanese-controlled Senkaku islands.

China and Japan are one blow -- or misjudgment -- away from outright military conflict. The battle on the Pacific Rim is ultimately even more dangerous than the West's clash with Russia over Ukraine.

Whether or not the wheels really are falling off the Chinese economy remains to be seen, but the discussion has crept into the market. You can smell the beginnings of fear.

"The global situation is extremely serious," Lars Christensen from Danske Bank. "Russia is committing economic suicide, there is a massive corruption scandal in Turkey, and capital outflows from China threaten to have huge ramifications."

"If the US dollar were to strengthen drastically at this point, we would go straight into a global recession."

That is indeed the risk. Let us hope the Fed can pull its head out of its closed-economy macro model for once and take a look at the world before it tightens again next week. Tread very carefully, Madame Chairman.
 
I don't think they're selling, they're just taking possession of their Treasuries that they've bought, and are storing at the Fed. The 10-year Treasury was at 2.68% this morning. If Russia or anyone else was dumping, the yields would be going through the roof.

There's a lot of reporters out there confusing "withdrawing from the Fed's custody holdings" with "dumping on the market." It isn't the same thing. It's like taking physical possession of your bullion that you've been storing in an allocated account.
 
Exactly right CE. And, since those treasuries are readily fungible [at least for now] China or Russia could be using them to finance some of those famous acquisitions in Africa or the ME. Eventually, those treasuries will be redeemed, and that's when the fun starts. It's all good when they simply change hands over a deal, but the trouble comes knocking when some entity or the other demands cash from the treasury on a redemption.

If there is a cascade of redemptions, it's time to bug out.
 
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