Escobar: Will A BRICS Bretton Woods Take Place In Kazan?
- Escobar: Will A BRICS Bretton Woods Take Place In Kazan?
by Pepe Escobar, https://www.zerohedge.com/
With less than a month before the crucial BRICS annual summit in Kazan under the Russian presidency, serious informed discussions are raging in Moscow and other Eurasian capitals on what should be at the table in the de-dollarization and alternative payment system front.
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Earlier this month Andrey Mikhailishin, head of the task force on financial services of the BRICS Business Council, detailed the list of top projects under consideration. They include:
- A common unit of account – as in The Unit, whose contours were first revealed exclusively by Sputnik.
- A platform for multilateral settlements and payments in BRICS digital currencies, connecting the financial markets of BRICS members: that’s BRICS Bridge, which bears similarities with the Bank of International Settlements-linked MBridge, already in effect. That will complement intrabank systems already in action, as in Russia’s SPFS and Iran’s CPAM settling financial transactions – and 60% of their trade – in their own currencies.
- A blockchain-based payment system that entirely bypasses the US dollar: BRICS Pay. Arguably 159 participants may be ready to adopt this sanction-evading, similar-to-SWIFT mechanism right away.
- A settlement depository (Clear).
- An insurance system.
- And crucially a BRICS rating agency, independent from the Western giants.
What’s at stake is the extremely complex design of a brand-new financial system – decentralized and using digital technology. BRICS Clear, for instance, will be using blockchain to record securities and exchange them.
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As for The Unit, the value of the common unit of account is pegged by 40% to gold and by 60% to a basket of BRICS member’s national currencies. The BRICS Business Council considers The Unit a “convenient and universal” instrument, since a unit can be converted into any national currency.
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