2022-

2022-03-14 a

[...] Third party oil trades (through Hong Kong maybe?) will also get around any sanctions for Russia and allow them to sell oil while making China a mint in transaction fees.

But the big move for Putin is quite simple (H/T to Luke Gromen for this) which is to offer up its oil at a steep discount to the futures price but only in gold, physical gold. The current ratio of gold to oil is ~17 bbls/oz.

All Putin has to do is begin a global run on physical gold. Oil is the M-zero of global trade. It is the trade on which all of the West’s financialization power is built upon. And that foundation is built on the petrodollar. By directly tying Russia’s marginal barrel produced to the price of gold far below market prices does two things.

First it creates a massive arbitrage opportunity for oil and gold that the market will fill. Second, it follows, it collapses the valuations of all assets priced in paper gold to the price of physical. So, either the price of everything collapses to maintain the fiction of $2000 gold or the price of gold rises to meet the new price.

This forces the West to come clean on just how much gold it actually has, creates a massive short-term run on physical gold and forces a repricing of everyone’s balance sheet.

And, that, my friends is the big weapon Putin is holding in reserve. He can afford to sell his oil at a deeply discounted price. I’m thinking 50 barrels/oz should do it. He forces the world to reprice oil in terms of gold, and then, by extension, rubles rather than the dollar.

This creates positive gold inflow into Russia to create a two-tiered ruble — the long-held dream of Sergei Glazyev — a domestic gold-backed ruble and a global circulating one which floats.

The key to understanding whether things are primed for this is looking not at Europe but at Saudi Arabia. (source)

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