Terence Corcoran:

In Germany, the government closed nuclear power stations and elected to adopt natural gas as a key energy source, claiming it represented "an important bridging technology on the way to greenhouse gas neutrality." A new pipeline from Russia was intended to provide the gas. But then came Vladimir Putin.

Hailed in 2017 (?) by World Economic Forum leader Klaus Schwab as a Young Global Leader, Schwab later introduced Putin to a 2021 WEF audience as the voice of non-confrontation in this new world. "At this moment in history," said Schwab, "where the world has a unique and short window of opportunity to move from an age of confrontation to an age of co-operation, the ability to hear new voices, the voice of the president of the Russian Federation is essential, even and especially in times characterized by differences, disputes and protests."

Putin's WEF speech zoned in not on his Ukraine strategy but on the risks posed by COVID-19 to global stability. He seemed to be blaming the pandemic for rising global tensions. "The coronavirus pandemic has become a major challenge to mankind, and it has accelerated structural changes, the preconditions for which were already in place."

In retrospect, Putin was using the COVID crisis as a scene-setter for his larger ambitions. Russia's moves this week to annex the Ukraine have forced Germany to reverse its approval of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia. Having figuratively imploded nuclear plants, Germany now will have to blow up its new gas pipeline, although nothing is certain. Germany needs the gas; Russia presumably needs the revenues.

In the last two years, mired in climate and pandemic policy, Germany, the United Kingdom and most of Europe have been sliding into an energy and economic crisis, pushed along by the climate NetZero 2050 fantasy of a power system driven by renewables and natural gas. Coal and nuclear plants are being closed, creating energy price chaos â€'� except in China and other coal-dependent nations.

Russian Oligarchs Slam Russian Invasion

So will the massive sanctions placed on Russia during & after The 2022 Ukraine fiasco - enable the dropping of dollar and the fast tracking imposition of CBDC & their own Exchange with Brics type affiliates like Brazil, Cuba, Venezuala, China India & Pakistan - who are still brokering deals for energy with Russia while many others sanction.

Humanity is being played like an old fiddle.

A Coming global asset freeze,
now you know why
Canada froze Protestors accounts
- as a test run

COVID has been replaced:

- The worrysome thing is that if this "war" enables countries singled out as 'enemies' dropping their centrally banked & printed fiat currencies, to adopt a CBDC, a Digital ID program; Universal Basic Income

and then the entire planet may witness the use of geo-politically useful perpetual conflict, instead of disease, as a force multiplier to get to that desired point of total global techno-fascist control...

On Thursday (17th March 2022), the Central Bank of Russia said that it had granted Sberbank a license to issue and exchange digital assets. The move comes just two months after the central bank urged for a complete ban on cryptocurrency trading, mining, and use.

Thursday's statement may present the bank with additional options as it strives to mitigate the impact of Western sanctions.

Sberbank, Russia's biggest retail bank, has disclosed its pullout from European markets, citing the impact of sanctions on Russian-exposed sectors and capital outflows from Europe-based subsidiaries.

Sberbank, a government-run bank, and financial ecosystem Lighthouse were both added to the CBR's register, granting the two companies the power to issue digital financial assets and exchange them on their platforms.

Companies can use Sberbank's platform to create their own digital assets in order to attract market capital, purchase digital assets through the lender's system, or conduct other digital asset transactions, the bank said in a statement Thursday.

'We are only getting started with digital assets,'� Sergey Popov, director of Sberbank's transaction business section, said.

Popov pointed out that companies will be able to make their first transaction on its blockchain platform in a month.

Bitcoinist.com

Not for the first time, China is attempting to buy oil in yuan rather than dollars, and now it may have found a willing seller. Saudi Arabia, which sells a quarter of its exports to China, is considering making these sales in yuan, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The US' economic dominance was built on the petrodollar

The dollar's robust status as a reserve currency owes much to the strength of the US economy. But it also derives from the dollar's ample liquidity, which is partially a result of countries maintaining pools of dollar reserves to buy oil.

That link was forged in the early 1970s, not long after president Richard Nixon decoupled the dollar from gold. In 1974, Washington and Riyadh struck a deal by which Saudi Arabia could buy US treasury bills before they were auctioned. In return, Saudi Arabia would sell its oil in dollars'”not only enlarging the currency's liquidity but also using those dollars to buy US debt and products. The political economist David Spiro, in his book The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony, described how Saudi Arabia convinced other OPEC nations to invoice oil in dollars, rather than in a basket of different currencies.

Quarz.com