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by avianlyric 179 days ago
> See thats why one needs a sovereign financial and banking system.

You mean a sovereign financial and banking system like the one currently freezing some $200B of Russian assets? Yeah I think the EU already has one of those.
1 comments
blibble 178 days ago
SWIFT is belgian...
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avianlyric 178 days ago
Last I checked Belgium was a member of the EU. Heck Brussels, generally considered the de-facto “capital” of the EU, is in Belgium.

It’s pretty hard to get more hardcore EU than Belgium.

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disgruntledphd2 176 days ago
You should go to Brussels and say that sometime ;) The EU quarter is quite different from the rest of the city.
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avianlyric 172 days ago
Doesn’t really matter does it? Belgium was a founding member of the EU, and still strongly supports it. There’s a reason why Belgium has been at the centre of the debate around frozen Russian assets, if they really didn’t care, they would just release the funds and wash their hands of the whole affair.
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SanjayMehta 178 days ago
Aren't all SWIFT transactions over a certain amount routed to the US for approval?
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avianlyric 178 days ago
That is not how SWIFT works at all. SWIFT is basically a peer to peer financial network between banks. Any bank can send any amount of money to any other bank, without any kind of approval from the US, provided they have an appropriate common facility. Which could be anything from both banks having accounts at a different common bank, or both banks holding accounts at a common national bank, which allows them to transact directly.
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SanjayMehta 177 days ago
Pretty sure I saw an article describing some approval process. While trying to find it I found references to FATCA, TFTP, and some reporting by the NYT

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/23/washington/23intel.html

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disgruntledphd2 176 days ago
The US can and does sanction entities that facilitate transactions it doesn't like, by cutting them off from the dollar system. That may be the source of your confusion.
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SanjayMehta 175 days ago
No, it was an article by a European economist who was complaining about every transaction above a certain amount getting quietly reviewed in the US, before being released to the onward bank.
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