Tag Archives: Geopolitics

Australia to adopt tougher sanctions against Russia over Ukraine

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“Australia will escalate its sanctions against Russia, with the government barring arms exports to the country and denying Russian state-owned banks new access to the Australian capital market.  Tony Abbott told parliament on Monday that Australia would follow the European Union in adopting tougher sanctions against Russia, accusing Moscow of ‘deliberately and now openly violating Ukrainian sovereignty’.  The new sanctions will ban arms exports to Russia, bar Russian state-owned banks from further access to the Australian capital market and rule out oil and gas exports to the country.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/01/australia-to-adopt-tougher-sanctions-against-russia-over-ukraine

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Defence companies get boost from growing fears of conflict

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“Defence and aerospace shares have surged as the risk of conflict in the Middle East and Ukraine ratchets up and City analysts identified how companies in the sector are likely to benefit from growing geopolitical tensions.  They also suggested that spending on the military could also increase in some of BAE’s most main important markets.  ‘Looking beyond 2015, we think that the defence outlook has stabilised and could grow again in some critical countries to BAE – US, UK, Sweden, Australia, Saudi Arabia,’ they said. David Cameron and Barack Obama will call for NATO allies to increase defence spending at the security organisation’s summit in Wales which starts on Thursday.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/defence/11068001/Defence-companies-get-boost-from-growing-fears-of-conflict.html

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NATO: The Broken Promise Has Backfired–Ukraine

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“In 1989, James Baker III, who had been Reagan’s Chief of Staff, and who was now Bush’s Secretary of State, sat down with Gorbachev. He made a promise: if the USSR took apart the Warsaw Pact, NATO would not move one inch closer to the USSR. In 1991, the USSR was officially dissolved. A new Russian state replaced it — much smaller.  Clinton broke the promise in 1996. NATO has moved steadily eastward, bringing in mini-states that the U.S. government does not need to defend. NATO should have been dissolved no later than 1992.  We are now trying to bring Ukraine into NATO. That has gone too far for Putin, as well as the eastern Ukraine.”

http://teapartyeconomist.com/2014/08/05/nato-broken-promise-backfired-ukraine/

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ISIS: Made in Washington, Riyadh – and Tel Aviv

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“ISIS didn’t just arise out of the earth like some Islamist variation on the fabled Myrmidons: they needed money, weapons, logistics, propaganda facilities, and international connections to reach the relatively high level of organization and lethality they seem to have achieved in such a short period of time. Where did they get these assets?  None of this is any secret: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the rest of the oil-rich Gulf states have been backing them all the way. Prince Bandar al-Sultan, until recently the head of the Kingdom’s intelligence agency – and still the chief of its National Security Council – has been among their biggest backers.”

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2014/08/24/isis-made-in-washington-riyadh-and-tel-aviv/

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Russia seeks safe haven in gold, away from dollar and euro

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“‘Due to the worsening geopolitical situation, the Central Bank actively redistributed foreign exchange reserves, replacing US Treasury bonds with gold,’ Alfa Bank’s chief economist, Natalya Orlova, told Kommersant.  Instead of buying euros and dollars, Russia’s Central Bank is eyeing the Chinese yuan and the Japanese yen.  Boosting currency swaps and bilateral payments with China and other strategic trade partners will continue to bypass the US dollar. Last week, Russia’s and China’s central banks have agreed to increase currency swaps.  Holding more of these currencies is a logical move for Russia, which has high trade volumes with both China and Japan.”

http://rt.com/business/180588-russia-central-bank-gold/

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Gold: No Longer a Safe-Haven Asset?

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“Russia, Mexico, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Serbia, Greece, and Ecuador all reported higher gold reserves for June. Contrary to mainstream expectations, almost no central bank liquidated their gold holdings—just the opposite, in fact.  Take a look at the recent buying habits of central banks:  In the first quarter of this year, central banks bought 122.4 tonnes (3.9 million ounces), a pace that that puts them on track to surpass the record 2013 purchases of 409 tonnes (13.1 million ounces). In dollar terms, central banks invested $22.2 billion in gold from January 2013 through March 2014. And this excludes all Chinese data.”

http://www.hardassetsalliance.com/investing-news/newsletter/gold-no-longer-a-safe-haven-asset

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Russia launches China UnionPay credit card

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“Forget Visa and MasterCard. After the two American credit system payment companies froze accounts without notice in March, Russia has been looking for an alternative in China UnionPay.  China UnionPay plans to have 2 million cards in Russia in the next three years.  Instead of seeing the small Visa and MasterCard logo on credits cards, ATMs, and retail outlets, Russians will start to see the three words ‘China. Union. Pay.’  China UnionPay first emerged in 2002 on the domestic Chinese market as an alternative to Visa and MasterCard, but quickly expanded internationally, and now is already number one in terms of quantity of cards in the world.”

http://rt.com/business/180696-china-russia-union-pay/

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Natural Gas Opportunities for MLP Investors

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“The gains in US production were primarily a function of the pairing of hydraulic fracturing with horizontal drilling, which turned a huge volume of natural gas resources into natural gas reserves for the first time. To understand why there is a rush to build LNG export terminals in the US, note that the shale gas boom has depressed natural gas prices in the US. This has helped create enormous price differentials with LNG prices in Europe and Southeast Asia.  In 2013 Japan was the fifth largest natural gas consumer in the world despite paying over $12 per million BTUs more than the spot price in the US. This has created a big incentive to ship US natural gas to markets in northeast Asia and Europe.”

http://www.investingdaily.com/20804/natural-gas-opportunities-for-mlp-investors-2/?cigx=d.kac,stid.55116,sid.818868,lid.7,mid.46730

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Pittsburgh airport to host fracking sites starting this month

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“The floundering Pittsburgh International Airport is expected to soon begin earning nearly a quarter of its annual operating budget by letting a local energy company conduct fracking operations deep under the once booming air traffic hub.  On Monday, the New York Times reported first that the airport in southwestern Pennsylvania cut a deal with Consol Energy that will let the oil and gas company begin drilling next month to extract resources from beneath PIT by way of fracking, or hydraulic fracturing.  Earlier this year, Alleghany County, PA is reportedly expected to gain upwards of $500 million during the next two decades by letting Consol drill as many as 60 wells on 8,800 acres of airport property.”

http://rt.com/usa/179828-fracking-pittsburgh-airport-consol/

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Canada launches mission to map, claim North Pole

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“After a decade of surveying the country’s eastern and far north seabeds and gathering supporting evidence, Canada filed a UN application in December seeking to vastly expand its Atlantic sea boundary and signaled intentions to claim the North Pole.  Russian President Vladimir Putin followed suit by ordering his country’s military to step up its presence in the Arctic, amid competing claims by countries that also include Norway and Denmark.  Russia and Canada have overlapping claims to both the North Pole as well as large swathes of the Arctic that the US Geological Survey thinks could hold 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and up to 30 percent of its hidden natural gas reserves.”

http://phys.org/news/2014-08-canada-mission-north-pole.html

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