The brand new story below from Zero Hedge warns us that JPMorgan may have just supercharged the ‘new’ cold war while sending Russia into a frenzy due to an ‘illegal and absurd’ payment block by ‘hostile’ JPMorgan. A Before it’s News reader shares that at least Russia is going to the heart of the problem! Terming Russia’s present mood as ‘furious’, we learn that Russia WILL ‘retaliate’ and as the story clearly points out: As Ukraine found out last month, you don’t want to get Russia angry. Video reports also below.
We reported that “Monetary Blockade Of Russia Begins: JPMorgan Blocks Russian Money Transfer “Under Pretext” Of Sanctions.” This morning the story has finally blown up to front page status, which it deserves, where it currently graces the FT with “Russian threat to retaliate over JPMorgan block.” And unlike previous responses to Russian sanctions by the West, which were largely taken as a joke by the Russian establishment, this time Russia is furious: according to Bloomberg, the Russian foreign ministry described the JPM decision as “illegal and absurd.” And as Ukraine found out last month, you don’t want Russia angry.
The biggest U.S. bank thwarted a remittance from the Russian embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan, to Sogaz Insurance Group “under the pretext of anti-Russian sanctions imposed by the United States,” the ministry said yesterday in a statement on its website. Sogaz lists OAO Bank Rossiya, a St. Petersburg-based lender facing U.S. sanctions over the Ukrainian crisis, as a strategic partner on its website.
Interfering with the transaction was an “absolutely unacceptable, illegal and absurd decision,” Alexander Lukashevich, a ministry spokesman, said in the statement.
U.S. President Barack Obama announced the action against Bank Rossiya last month as part of a broadening of sanctions that targeted government officials and allies of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose associates own Rossiya. The embassy’s transaction was for less than $5,000 dollars, a person with knowledge of the dispute said, asking not to be identified because such transfers aren’t public.
Did JPMorgan just move the second Cold War into semi-hot status? Very possibly