sullydnl
Ross Kemp's caf ID
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2012
- Messages
- 34,063
Regarding SWIFT, the Financial Times said Russia had been preparing for the eventuality of being removed from SWIFT by looking at alternatives including the Chinese system apparently used by Iran and creating their own backchannel to facilitate the sale of key exports. Apparently this might involve using fax machines in the case of businesses which seems insane.But that also tells you something about how far Putin is willing to go. All of this has been factored in and so it looks abysmally bleak from every side.
Afraid of the consequences, most likely, as that would be close to a declaration of war on their part (but there is legal precedent for it).
Even if they factored it in in advance there's no getting around the huge financial impact it would have. The Chinese system you mention is less that 0.5% the size of SWIFT for example. As an alternative it can only help ameliorate the impact so much when so much of your economy depends on being able to make international transfers on a day to day basis.