We’ve also seen Germany not only re-militarizing, but also boosting its relations with Japan. There are some terrifying echoes of of World War Two.
But you mentioned something that I want to analyze a little bit more, which is the strength of the Russian ruble. I talked about the concept of financial shock-and-awe that was waged on Russia. And President Biden said, “the Russian ruble has become rubble,” he joked. He said the Russian ruble has become rubble.
Well, that’s actually not at all what happened. This is the value of the dollar to Russian rubles, right now [showing a graph]. Russian rubles are at 69 to the dollar. A few days ago, it was at 64, or 65 to the dollar, which is actually better than it was even before the Russian war in Ukraine, which began in February 24th.
And it did spike, and there was a peak here, at which it was dued to 139 to the dollar, about half the value it has now. But in the months leading up to the Russian military intervention, in November and December, it was around 75 to the dollar.
So the ruble has actually strengthened despite these sanctions. And here’s a report from Reuters from five days ago, that was May 4th: the “Rouble leaps to over 2-year high vs dollar, euro as EU ups sanctions.” So the ruble is doing quite well.

本杰明·诺顿：
我们还看到德国不仅重新军事化，而且还加强了与日本的关系。世界回荡着可怕的、第二次世界大战的回声。
但你提到了一些我想再分析一下的东西，那就是俄罗斯卢布的强势。我谈到了对俄罗斯实施金融震慑的概念。拜登总统开玩笑说，“俄罗斯卢布（Ruble）已经变成了瓦砾（rubble）。”他说，俄罗斯卢布已经成为瓦砾。
但，事实并非如此。这是目前美元对俄罗斯卢布的汇率(展示图表)。俄罗斯卢布是1美元兑69卢布。几天前，1美元兑64卢布，或者65卢布，这实际上比2月24日俄乌战争爆发前还要好。它确实出现了峰值，在这里，它贬值到139:1美元，大约是现在的一半。但在俄罗斯军事干预前的11月和12月，1美元兑75卢布左右。因此，尽管有这些制裁，卢布实际上还是走强了。这是5月4日路透社的一篇报道：“随着欧盟加大制裁力度，卢布对美元和欧元的汇率升至两年多来的高点。”所以卢布表现很好。

And you talked about the Russian mechanism to force Europe to buy energy exports from Russia in the Russian ruble. And this graphic here, for people watching, it’s in Russian, but really it just shows this mechanism in which a European firm that wants to buy gas from Russia’s state owned gas giant Gazprom, it has to send the money in euros to the Gazprombank, which is the obviously the bank that works with Gazprom, and then it puts it in a special account in euros, and then that is sold in the Moscow exchange for Russian rubles.
And then those rubles are put in another special account, called a K account, that belongs to that European firm. It has two accounts, two special accounts with Gazprombank, one in euros, one in rubles. And then this special ruble account sends that money to Gazprom. And then once the money reaches Gazprom, that’s when Russia considers that the payment officially went through.

你谈到了俄罗斯的机制，迫使欧洲用卢布从俄罗斯购买能源。这里的图表，给大家看一下（文字版略），是俄文的，但实际上它只是展示了一个欧洲公司想从俄罗斯国有天然气巨头——俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司购买天然气的机制。它必须把钱以欧元存入俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司的银行，很明显，这家银行与俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司合作，然后把钱存入一个欧元账户，然后在莫斯科交易所以俄罗斯卢布出售。
然后这些卢布被存入另一个特殊账户，称为K账户，属于那个欧洲公司的。它在俄罗斯天然气工业银行有两个账户，两个特别账户，一个欧元账户，一个卢布账户。然后这个特殊的卢布账户把钱送到俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司。一旦这笔钱到了俄罗斯天然气工业股份公司手里，俄罗斯就认为这笔钱正式过手了。

So this is the mechanism by which Russia is getting paid in rubles. And much of Europe claimed at first that they would not do so, but eventually they gave in. So that’s an incredible development.
And related to that, what I wanted to ask you about, is I think another reason that the Russian ruble has strengthened and stabilized is not only because Russia continues to maintain constant exports of energy to Europe and other parts of the world.

这就是俄罗斯获得卢布的机制。许多欧洲国家一开始声称他们不会这么做，但最终他们让步了。这是一个令人难以置信的发展。
与此相关，我想问你的是，我认为俄罗斯卢布走强和稳定的另一个原因不仅是因为俄罗斯继续保持对欧洲和世界其他地区的能源出口，还包括中央银行的政策。其中一项政策是俄罗斯央行基本上将卢布与黄金挂钩，我认为这是一个非常有趣和历史性的发展。

And we saw that from the beginning of April until the end of June, the Bank of Russia says that it’s going to buy gold at a fixed price of 5000 rubles per gram of gold. And then the question is whether or not in July, when this policy ends, if it’s going to continue, and if the ruble will basically become fixed, it become pegged to gold like the U.S. dollar was up until 1971.
So you don’t think it will be? So talk about this policy. Do you think that that the gold standard is going to come back? Or apparently you don’t think so.
MICHAEL HUDSON: No, Russia is not going on on the gold standard. What it is doing is investing, its foreign exchange in the only way that is not grabbable. It’s investing it in gold; it’s putting gold in its reserves.
It is not setting its exchange rate according to the price of gold, but it is buying gold with what it has been getting.
I want to go back to your talk about rubble. You talked about, “from ruble to rubble,” what President Biden said.
There have been a lot of pictures of rubble in the news for the last few days. For instance, there are talks of, here’s a Ukrainian picture, and look at this picture of a Russian tank, we shot it down, it’s rubble. Turns out it’s a Ukrainian tank, that they just say it was the Russian tank we shot down.

我们看到，从四月初到六月底，俄罗斯银行表示，它将以每克5000卢布的固定价格购买黄金。那么问题是，这项政策是否会继续，如果卢布基本上是固定的，它是否会像美元在1971年之前那样与黄金挂钩？
所以你觉得它不会?谈谈这个政策吧。你认为金本位会回归吗？或者显然，你不这么认为。
迈克尔·哈德森：
不，俄罗斯不会实行金本位。它所做的是投资，投资黄金——这是外汇唯一一种不可被抢夺的方式。它把黄金作为储备。它不是根据黄金价格来设定汇率，而是用它所获得的、购买的黄金来设定的。
我想回到你说的“瓦砾”这个话题上。你谈到了拜登总统所说的“从卢布到瓦砾”。 在过去的几天里，新闻中有很多关于瓦砾的图片。例如，有传言说，这是一张乌克兰的照片，看看这张俄罗斯坦克的照片，我们把它摧毁了，这是一片瓦砾。结果是一辆乌克兰坦克，他们说那是我们击落的俄罗斯坦克。

So basically, they’re taking their own destruction, and they’re saying that, while they’re being destroyed, they’re saying, no, this is a picture of Russia being destroyed, Russian assets, not Ukrainian assets being destroyed.
Well, the similar thing is with the Russian ruble. America says, look, we’ve isolated the the ruble. Well, what has happened? If you isolate the ruble and you say we’re not going to export anything more to Russia, so it’s not going to be able to spend any of its rubles on buying American or European products.
Well, meanwhile, Russia can continue to earn rubles from Germany and Europe, and it can continue to earn foreign exchange from other countries that it’s selling its agriculture to at rising prices, its oil and gas at rising prices, too. So obviously, the balance of payments is going way up.
And they believe that what is in store is a new monetary system that is an alternative to the dollar IMF system.
And in this system other countries will hold their reserves in each other’s currencies. In other words, Russia will hold Indian rupees and Chinese yuan. China will hold rupees and Russian rubles.

所以基本上，他们是在自我破坏，他们说，当他们的军事设备被毁的时候，他们说，不，这是俄罗斯的被摧毁的画面，是俄罗斯的资产，而不是乌克兰的资产。俄罗斯卢布也是如此。美国说，看，我们孤立了卢布。结果发生了什么? 如果你孤立卢布，你说我们不再向俄罗斯出口任何东西，果真如此俄罗斯就没有能力用它的卢布购买美国或欧洲产品了。
与此同时，俄罗斯可以继续从德国和欧洲赚取卢布，也可以继续从其他国家赚取外汇，以不断上涨的价格向这些国家出售农产品，石油和天然气。很明显，国际收支正在上升。
他们相信，即将到来的是一种新的货币体系，可以替代美元货币基金组织体系。
在这个体系中，其他国家将以对方的货币持有其外汇储备。换句话说，俄罗斯将持有印度卢比和中国人民币。中国将持有印度卢比和俄罗斯卢布。

There will be the equivalent of what Keynes thought of as something like artificial special drawing rights that the banks will be able to create to help fund governments to undertake capital investment.
But for settlements settling balance of payments deficits among countries, once they don’t have enough foreign exchange to make a swap, they will use gold as the means of settlement, because gold is a pure asset. It’s not a liability.
Any foreign currency basically is held in a foreign country that has the power to do what America did to Russia and just grab it all, and say, we’re just wiping it all out.
It’s as if you have a bank account, and the bank says, we’ve just emptied out your account to give it to one of our friends, and you don’t have it anymore. You can’t do that if gold is held in your own country.
Venezuela made the problem of keeping its gold in England, trusting England, saying that, even if there is war, they’ll never interrupt gold and finance. And England just grabbed Venezuela’s gold.
So, obviously, countries are not going to leave their gold in other countries. Even little Germany has asked America to begin sending back the gold that it has in the Federal Reserve Bank of America because it’s worried that what if it ever buys Russian gas again? America will grab all of Germany’s gold, grab all the German money, and it’ll be like World War One all over again.

这将出现凯恩斯所认为的、类似于人为特别提款权的东西，银行能够创造这种东西，以资助政府进行资本投资。但对于国际收支逆差的结算，一旦他们没有足够的外汇进行互换，他们就会使用黄金作为结算手段，因为黄金是一种纯资产。它不是负债。
任何外汇基本上都是由外国持有的，这个国家有能力像美国对俄罗斯做的那样攫取所有的外汇，然后说，我们只是把它们全部没收。这就像你有一个银行账户，银行说，我们刚刚把你账户里的钱全部取走并给了我们的一个朋友，你的没了。
如果黄金在你自己的国家，你就无法做到这一点。
委内瑞拉把它的黄金存放在英国，信任英国，说即使有战争，他们也不会中断黄金和金融。结果英格兰抢了委内瑞拉的黄金。所以，很明显，一个国家不会把他们的黄金留在其他国家。甚至连小小的德国都要求美国把它存放在美国联邦储备银行的黄金寄回来，因为它担心如果它再次购买俄罗斯的天然气会遭遇不测。届时美国将攫取德国所有的黄金，攫取德国所有的货币，就像第一次世界大战再次爆发。

So this act that America did of grabbing Russian money, Afghanistan’s foreign reserves it grabbed, this is telling all the other countries, pull all your money out of dollars. What are they going to put it in? There’s not that much they can put it in that it is absolutely safe.
So gold is a flight to safety today, because it’s one of the things that all of the world realizes as having an international value for settling balance of payments deficits, that is independent of world politics.
So that’s the explanation. Russia is not going on gold. It’s going on an independent standard from the United States with gold as an element of its foreign reserve, just as it’s holding Chinese yuan and Indian rupees.
It’s not going on the rupee standard. It’s not going on the yuan standard. And it’s not going on the gold standard. But these are elements of its foreign reserves.

美国攫取了俄罗斯的钱，阿富汗的外汇储备，这一行为是在告诉其他国家，把你所有的钱都从美元中转出来。所以今天黄金是一种避险工具，因为它是全世界都意识到的一种用来解决国际收支赤字的、具有全球价值的东西，这是独立于世界政治的。
这就是原因——俄罗斯不是要回归黄金。它将以独立于美国的标准，将黄金作为其外汇储备的一部分，就像它持有人民币和卢比一样。卢比不会回归金本位，人民币不会回归金本位，这些都是俄罗斯外汇储备的组成部分。

BENJAMIN NORTON: I have a question for you. It’s kind of a more technical question that I’ve always wondered. And I’ve tried to do research on this, because there’s not much information.
So we know that that the U.S. and European unx have frozen over $300 billion from Russia’s central bank foreign exchange reserves. And of course they did this after doing the same to Iran, to Venezuela, to Afghanistan, which is now threatening a famine in Afghanistan that could kill more people than died in the 20-year NATO-U.S. military occupation of Afghanistan, which is another topic that really needs to get more coverage.
And I should add, by the way, that the US and the EU, they’ve frozen nearly half of Russia’s central bank’s foreign exchange reserves, and are now saying they’re not going to give it back. So they stole it. I mean, they stole half of its reserves.
My question is, what is the mechanism by which they effectively freeze and steal those reserves?

本杰明。诺顿:我有个问题想问您。这是一个我一直想知道的、更专业的问题。我试着在这方面做研究，因为这方面没有太多的信息。我们知道美国和欧盟已经冻结了俄罗斯中央银行3000亿美元的外汇储备。当然，这是他们在对伊朗、委内瑞拉、阿富汗做了同样的事情之后。现在阿富汗面临着饥荒的威胁，可能会造成比北约和美国20年的战争中死亡人数还要多的人。对阿富汗的军事占领，这是另一个需要更多报道的话题。
顺便说一下，我应该补充一点，美国和欧盟，他们冻结了俄罗斯央行近一半的外汇储备，现在他们说他们不会归还这些储备，所以它们就是偷了。我是说，它们偷了它一半的储备。我的问题是，他们有效冻结和窃取这些储备的机制是什么?

Because my understanding is that there is of course a physical element of those reserves, which you’re talking about, which is gold. But not all of the $640 billion in Russia’s central bank reserves is physical currency, right? A lot of it is just computerized? It’s number in computers and bank accounts.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Every country needs to manage its exchange rates, and there’s always like an up-and-down and a zigzag in the flow of payments for imports and exports, investment, capital movements, debt service, all of that.
So countries want to stabilize their exchange rate. How do they do that? Well, most of the big exchange markets are in New York and in London. So countries would leave their money in correspondent banks. Like when Iran, at the time under the shah, kept that foreign reserve in the Chase Manhattan Bank. So when Iran, after the revolution and Khomeini came in, and Iran wanted to pay interest on the foreign debt that the shah had run up, they told Chase, please, here’s our bondholders, please pay them.
Well Chase was told by the Treasury, don’t pay them, just take the money and hold it. So Chase said, we put a freeze on your account. And so Iran defaulted, and then Chase and the State Department said, oh, Iran defaulted, it missed the payment. Now, all the money that it’s due for foreign debt has to be paid all at once. And Chase paid all of the bondholders off. No more money in the account. It was all emptied out.

因为我的理解是，这些储备中当然有实物元素，也就是您所说的黄金。但俄罗斯央行的6400亿美元储备并不都是实物货币，对吧? 很多都是计算机化的?它是计算机和银行账户中的数字。
迈克尔·哈德森:
每个国家都需要管理其汇率，而进出口、投资、资本流动、债务偿还等方面的支付流总是会有上下起伏和波折。因此，各国希望稳定汇率。他们是怎么做到的?大部分的大型交易所都在纽约和伦敦。因此，各国将把资金放在代理银行。就像伊朗在国王统治时期，把外汇储备存在大通曼哈顿银行。所以当伊朗，在革命之后，霍梅尼上台，伊朗想要支付国王所欠外债的利息，他们告诉大通，这是我们的债券持有人，请偿付它们。
大通被财政部告知，不要付钱给他们，自己拿着。所以大通说，我们冻结了你的账户。于是伊朗违约了，大通和国务院说，啊天啊，伊朗违约了，它没付款。现在，所有到期的外债都必须一次性付清。大通偿还了所有债券持有人。账户里没有钱了，里面都空了。

Suppose you had an account in Chase Manhattan. And they said, ok, now you’ve done something really bad, you put Michael Hudson on the show. We’re going to grab your account. We’re going to give it to Mr. Guaidó, because he needs the money in Venezuela because the people still are not voting for him. So all of a sudden, you won’t have money in your account. It’ll go to Mr. Guaidó’s account.
Well, that’s what happened with Russia. They took the money. They grabbed the money from Russia’s account. And they said, half the money we’re going to give to, I think, to the 9/11 people, because we all know that it was Russia that bombed the World Trade Center on 9/11.
And we’re going to give it to all sorts of other people who suffered all over the world. It’s all Russia’s fault.

假设你在大通曼哈顿有一个账户。他们说，好吧，现在你做了一些非常糟糕的事情，你让迈克尔·哈德森上节目。我们要抢走你的客户。我们将把它给瓜伊多先生，因为他在委内瑞拉需要钱，因为人们仍然没有投票给他。突然之间，你的账户里就没有钱了。它会转到瓜伊多先生的账户。
这就是发生在俄罗斯身上的事。它们拿走了钱，它们从俄罗斯账户上攫取了钱。然后它们说，其中的一半我们会给911民众，因为我们都知道是俄罗斯在911事件中炸毁了世贸中心。我们要把它送给世界各地遭受苦难的人们。这都是俄罗斯的错。

BENJAMIN NORTON: But Professor Hudson, when you say that they seized Russia’s assets, you mean the assets held by the Russian central bank in foreign bank accounts?
MICHAEL HUDSON: Yes, yes.
BENJAMIN NORTON: And these are not physical assets, these are numbers in a computer, right?
MICHAEL HUDSON: In Venezuela’s case, Venezuela had used some of its oil company earnings to buy oil stations and refining companies and the United States actually grabbed the ownership of the gas stations and the refineries and distribution system that Venezuela had in America.
BENJAMIN NORTON: It’s called Citgo.
MICHAEL HUDSON: Citgo, yeah. Russia doesn’t really have any capital investments in the United States. It did have bank accounts, and that was all that the United States could grab.

本杰明·诺顿:
但是哈德森教授，您说他们没收了俄罗斯的资产，您是指俄罗斯中央银行在外国银行账户里的资产吗?
迈克尔·哈德森:
是的，是的。
本杰明·诺顿:
这些不是实物资产，而是电脑里的数字，对吧?
迈克尔·哈德森:
在委内瑞拉的例子中，委内瑞拉用石油公司的部分收入购买了加油站和炼油公司，而美国实际上掌握了委内瑞拉在美国拥有的加油站、炼油厂和分销系统的所有权。
本杰明·诺顿:
这公司叫美国雪铁戈。
迈克尔·哈德森:
雪铁戈，是的。俄罗斯在美国没有任何资本投资。但它确实有银行账户，这是美国能攫取的全部。