Global Consequences: Russia Announces Eurasian Union and New Currency Altyn

On multiple prior occasions I have predicted that any sanctions against Russia by the West will only backfire, expediting Russia’s re-orientation to the East and the unavoidable re-molding of the Western financial/economic model.

Russia’s re-orientation and subsequent creation of the independent financial system is what the banksters of Wall Street and London City fear most. This will eventually result in a catastrophe for the US/UK and EU, except for those European countries that succeed in re-orienting their economies to the East. Meanwhile, Russia, China and other countries in the Eurasian space, will benefit tremendously. Read: Ukraine Part 7: Russia’s Geopolitics, USA’s Bluff and EU’s Big Mistake.

The US and EU can be proud: as a result of their aggressively provocative behavior and the double standards galore, they managed to expedite the process by at least ten years.

The Presidents of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus have officially announced that the transition of the semi-formal Customs Union into the formal economic Eurasian Union will be expedited and completed by 2015. The Eurasian Union will adopt a new currency: Altyn (Rus: Алтын). Vladimir Putin announced that Altyn as the new Eurasian currency was originally planned for 2025, but now, due to the US/EU sanctions against Russia, the transition to Altyn may occur within 3-5 years.

Effectively, Russia is sending a signal to its “Western partners,” as Putin so diplomatically calls them, that since Russia’s interests are not being respected by the West, its new pivot is the East. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ll repeat again: driving a wedge between Russia and Western Europe is one of the big geopolitical goals of the USA, and Western Europe is very, very foolish to allow itself to be duped yet again.

The Eurasian Union and Altyn announcements are in addition to the earlier announcement that Russia is developing its own universal payment system after Visa and MasterCard tried to block Russian transactions. The Visa and MC since backtracked, but the damage was already done. Russia may unveil its new sovereign payment system as early as this year. The new Russian system will be linked to the Chinese and Japanese sovereign payment systems, which are currently accepted in 70 countries. This payment system will eventually be used by the Eurasian Union. For more, read: Sanctions Backfire. Goodbye Visa: Russia Will Create Its Own Payment System.

Eventually, the Eurasian Union may also become a military union, countering NATO.

The initiative to create the new currency came from the Kazakh President, Nursultan Nazarbayev. In 2012, Vladimir Putin supported this idea.

Altyn has a very ancient and long-ranging history. What is Altyn?

Altyn means gold. The word is of Turkic origin (not to be confused with Turkish). The Turkic family of languages includes languages spoken by the Siberian peoples, Tatars, Mongols, and of course, Kazakhs.

Russia always was a multi-national country and Turkic languages have been some of the widely spoken in the country. In ancient and medieval times, Russians traded and maintained very extensive relations with Asia and the Middle East. The Silk Road and other important eastern trade routes went through Russia. Medieval Russians routinely spoke Arabic and Turkic languages just as fluently as their native language. Some Turkic words became part of the Russian language. One such word was “denga,” from Turkic “tenge.” The contemporary Russian word for money is “dengi” in plural.

Another such word was “altyn.” From the sheer number of the financially related Turkic words it is clear how important historically was the Russian trade relationship with its Eastern neighbors.

Altyn was the name of the ancient gold coin once used by Russians extensively for trade with Turkic and Arabic neighbors. Later, in medieval times, altyn, or  “altynnik,” became one of the regular Russian coins. In 15th century, altyn equalled six Moscow dengi, or 1/200s of a Moscow ruble. It also equaled three Novgorod dengi, or 1/100s of a Novgorod ruble. “Denga” was also called “kopeika” (kopeika is presently the 1/100s of a ruble). In the ancient times it was also called the arian “kuna.”

The old Russian proverb was: “Had nothing, and all of a sudden, altyn.” Rus: “Не было ни гроша, да вдруг алтын”. This is an equvalent of English: “From rags to riches.” In those days kopeikas and altyns were big money. And only the rich owned rubles. Of course, back then all currency was real gold, silver and bronze. 

In this regard, the meaning of Altyn, “gold,” is very telling.

Through Altyn, Russia/Kazakhstan/Belarus, in short the new Eurasian Union, are sending a signal that they are targeting the gold standard. Along with China also targeting the gold standard through the Yuan, the new Eurasian currency will lead to the demise of the dollar as world reserve currency.

This is where it gets really interesting! Russia is one of the largest producers of gold. Despite that, together with China, Russia is a net importer of gold. Russia officially admits to roughly 1000 tons of gold in reserves. However, the real number is several times higher. China has recently increased its publicly admitted gold reserves from 1000 tons to just under 3000 tons. Again, multiply this by 2, or more. Kazakhstan is never spoken of as a gold powerhouse and they make it a point not to advertize their gold reserves. But in addition to the rich oil and gas deposits, as well as fertile soils, Kazakhstan possesses sizable deposits of gold. It is clear that their gold reserves are substantial.

According to Paul Craig Roberts and other analysts, the US gold reserves have been loaned out to dealers who sold that gold in order to maintain the illusion of lower gold prices, stable dollar and solvent economy; in short, to postpone the demise of the dollar as world reserve currency. Lately, when China started demanding delivery on its futures gold contracts, a large chunk of the US gold reserves had to be delivered to cover obligations and to avoid Comex default. It has been long suspected, and now it’s accepted by most observers, that the Fort Knox is empty. It appears the US gold reserve is all but gone, or at least greatly diminished. There is no way of knowing for certain how little of the publicly announced 8,000 tons of gold is left, since no audits of the US gold reserve are allowed.

I strongly suspect that at least in part, the Cyprus banking debacle was connected to the fact that Russia used Cyprus as its gold clearing house. My conclusion is that several years ago Russia quietly began demanding delivery on its gold futures contracts, just like China lately. And they did it via Cyprus. That was one of the reasons Cyprus banking haven had to be closed down: to make it more difficult for Russia to stockpile gold.

I believe that Russia discovered 5-6 years ago that the US had been dumping naked shorts in the market in order to keep the price of gold down and dollar value artificially up, and that Russia was first to capitalize on that on a massive scale, demanding delivery. If this is the case, then it becomes clear why the West believed that the Cyprus banking haven closure would be a blow to Russia. The official explanation that it was hurting Russian oligarchs didn’t hold water. I discussed why in my earlier piece on Cyprus here.

It appears that the US managed to temporarily slow down the Russian gold purchases. In addition, they leaned on India to slow down the India population’s gold imports. India’s population is considered the world’s largest holder and purchaser of gold. By estimates, Indian households privately hold 25,000 tons of gold.

These two moves bought the US a couple of years. Those who follow gold and silver will recall that crash of the gold and silver markets coincided with the timeframe of the Cyprus banking debacle. India’s ban on gold imports reinforced that.

Here is the problem: Since over the years US spent most of its gold reserves creating an illusion of the solvent dollar, they had to find more gold somewhere else when China started demanding delivery on its gold contracts. To accomplish that, the US had to raid the gold reserves of other counties whose gold it held in trust at the New York Fed. It became impossible to cover up the fact that the gold was gone after Germany demanded part of its gold back. Out of the 1500 tons it has been storing at the NY Fed, Germany demanded only 400 tons back. However, even that partial amount the US couldn’t muster. Germany was told that the delivery had to be made over the course of 7 years, at the rate of 50 tons per year. In the first year, the US was able to deliver only 5 tons, essentially admitting to the world that the US squandered the gold it held in trust for other nations.

The economic and financial system of capitalism and consumer economy is fastly collapsing. In conjunction with that, the re-distribution of power is happening. The energy is progressively shifting from the West to the East. This is a normal cycle. In medieval times the center of the world trade and riches were Asia, Russia and the Middle East. At the same time as Europe was destitute as a result of poor economy and devastating feudal wars; when cities like Paris and London were gloomy and highly undesirable places to be, Russia was called the golden-domed land of a hundred cities. In fact, there were over 240 cities in Russia at the time. At the time when Europe was going through the Dark Ages, the Middle East experienced the Golden Age punctuated with incredible breakthroughs in science, art and medicine. China and India were highly desirable places to be with untold riches, which were a dream of every traveler and merchant.

This cycle is making a full circle; the power is shifting again to the East and away from the West.

Through this entire decade, as well as the two decades that follow, humans will continue experiencing this tectonic revolutionary shift. We are present at the point of a fundamental transformation of the existing world architecture into something completely different. The new centers of power in the East are growing and the old ones in the West are dying. The 20th century capitalism and socialism were two sides of the same coin, meant to always oppose each other. The old capitalist system is now on its death bed. As the USSR socialist system went away with the collapse of the country, the old standoff between the two 20th century rival economic systems was supposed to stop.

Unfortunately, the US and those who are associated with the old system, won’t go away quietly. When the USSR collapsed, it did so quietly. The USA on the other hand, will try to drag whoever they can with them into abyss. It’s not about the socialism vs. capitalism any more. In fact, it never was. It had always been about the control of the world.

The USA empire will continue grasping desperately at straws. They will continue pretending they are still in control. They will make it as difficult as possible for everyone else to transition to the new system through sabotage and by instigating conflict and chaos. We have seen it in Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and elsewhere throughout the globe. We are presently seeing it in Ukraine. This is their modus operandi; they are not capable of admitting their mistakes or going away with dignity. They remind me of the Hollywood movie villains. No wonder Hollywood is so good at portraying villains – they observe them every day in their own country. As a character of the movie Knight and Day, starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, said addressing one such die-hard villain, “Just die already!”

As the US and EU debt burden grows, as economy falters, the US becomes increasingly desperate to slow down the progress of the newly emerging alternative Eurasian model. As I predicted many times before, this can only succeed very short-term and very temporarily. In the long run it cannot succeed. Only in the past year the US suffered some pretty humiliating blows as a result of the NSA/ Snowden scandal and the Syria fiasco. Any USA’s actions to undermine other countries will continue backfiring on themselves.

The creation of the alternative gold-backed and/ or natural-resource-backed currencies and economies, juxtaposed to the worthless Western paper currencies, and removed from the declining and corrupt Western economic system, will continue.

As I have predicted in the beginning of the Ukraine crisis, the decline of the West and the rise of the East is only being expedited by the actions of the US, EU and their Kiev stooges.

Watch my detailed video report on Altyn and Eurasian Union, including rare pictures of the ancient coin called Altyn and interesting history of the Russian currency. Video link.

Follow LADA RAY on youtube for more interesting videos!

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Lada Ray’s recent interview with Time Monk Radio, analysing the events in Ukraine:

The Road to Moscow Goes Through Kiev (Lada’s predictions are in the second half and towards the end)

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Recommended read:

Striking Geopolitical Similarities: Georgian War – Beijing2008 and Ukraine – Sochi2014

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For more read Predictions

Books that take place in Russia: The Earth Shifter and Gold Train

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