Guardian: Russia could be excluded from the Swift global bank payments system

[inanna]

02:54

A report from the Reuters news agency suggests it is looking more likely that Russia could be excluded from the Swift global bank payments system – a step that some countries had been reluctant to take:

Germany and Italy softened their opposition against kicking Russia out of the world’s main international payments network, US and European officials said. Doing so would hit Russian trade and make it harder for Russian companies to do business.

Italy, which had been reluctant to take that step, on Friday said it would not veto proposals to ban Russia and pledged to continue working in unison with its EU partners. Germany, which has the EU’s biggest trade flows with Russia, is also open to banning Russia from Swift, but must calculate the consequences for its economy, said its finance minister, Christian Lindner.

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https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2022/feb/25/russia-ukraine-invasion-latest-news-live-updates-russian-war-vladimir-putin-explosions-bombing-invades-kyiv

[roamer65]

1. Just fucking do it.

Quit farting around!

Hit them HARD.

[SheltieLover]

3. Agreed!

[roamer65]

5. ...

[CentralMass]

4. Yes, ample reason has been given.

[maryellen99]

2. Putin will launch nukes if that happens

He think that is the equivalent of an act of war a la the US launching ICBM’s. They need to be cut off.

[SoonerPride]

7. No he won't.

He will not launch nuclear weapons.

[uponit7771]

10. +1, he'd have to have someone with him to do so also. I don't think they'd follow that order

[PortTack]

6. Hopefully soon!

[lastlib]

8. The problem with it is this:

There are alternatives to SWIFT. Simple text messages, telphone/fax, e-mail....CLIPS (the Chinese counterpart to SWIFT). Most of them will allow Russia to do business in rubles, thus propping up their currency (SWIFT transactions are done in USD, so Russia has to exchange rubles for dollars to do business thru SWIFT. I'd rather not go into explaining why that hurts their currency, it's convoluted.) Long story short, they evade the sanction by channeling money thru other systems, and thereby boost their currency, and also give that Chinese CLIPS program a boost. Might be better that we keep them on SWIFT, where we can watch 'em.....

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. US + EU commit to removing selected Russian banks from Swift

Link to tweet