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Comment by pomdapi | Hacker News Reader

You didn't actually think they would really hurt the interests of their true patrons - transnational corporations, big industry, high finance ?

This SWIFT ban only really affects the usual IBAN to IBAN transfer of the plebs and SMB's. Large payment processing and gross settlement transfers will just change to accomodating intermediary banks in China within a couple days, and that'll be that. Further fund movement will be done through the Russian-Chinese CIPS.

Never forget EU commissars are not elected officials, they are named by an totally informal group called "Eurogroup", to which supposedly only 15 EU presidents participate. However, as it's not formal, it's completely opaque how they get chosen.

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> Never forget EU commissars are not elected officials, they are named by an totally informal group called "Eurogroup", to which supposedly only 15 EU presidents participate. However, as it's not formal, it's completely opaque how they get chosen.

EU commissars are not directly elected officials, no, but they are also not "named by a totally informal group". 'EU Commissars' (typically called an European Commissioner) are nominated by their member state, one each. The European Parliament then votes on the whole. So they are still under democratic control: through the various chosen governments of the states, and through the EP.

The Eurogroup -- a discussion body for the 19 states that use the Euro as currency -- had nothing to do with the SWIFT ban. (it does have a bunch of issues from a democratic perspective, although it seems like most of the members are just their country's finance minister... which makes sense for a discussion forum about the Euro?).

Mostly agree with what you wrote with the following precisions :

> "named by a totally informal group"

I used the term "informal" from the legal point of view. I'll have a box of cookies of your choice delivered to your home if you can find me the treaty basis, or any other legally formal basis for its existence.

> "EU Commissars"

That was tongue-in-cheek from me, as related to Bolchevik buraucratic komissars - lovers of all things centralized.

> had nothing to do with the SWIFT ban

The Eurogroup didn't have it, correct, but the people it chose did very much so.

Similarly, what's that about waging war, which happened in the same bureaucratic breath yeasterday ? I don't remember J.Borell or Ch.Michel having been chosen as commanders in chief.

> So they are still under democratic control [...] (it does have a bunch of issues from a democratic perspective)

In the end, I'm partly Swiss, so I abhor my democracy being representative with a separation degree larger than n=1, or directly myself.

CIPS is three orders of magnitude smaller than SWIFT. Even for large institutions that reduced network size introduces tons of overhead & risk to their transfers. You don’t just pivot on a dime with bank corridors.

But the other sanctions are an important part of the mix as well. No matter how you receive your payment instructions if your local government has banned the money movement it won’t go through (modulo money laundering & dodgy banks). This is we’re Chinas lack of sanctions might help. But what do you do as a large organization with the money in a Chinese bank now? You still can’t pay for EU goods with it.

The sanction mesh very effectively makes “high finance” for Russian corporations and international corps doing business there slower and more risky. Will it touch the trillion dollars Putin and gang have looted & hidden? Probably not but what could?

If you want to complain about something the carve out for energy financing is the big one. It shows that the EU wasn’t really ready to sacrifice to hurt Russia. Which is understandable in a real politik way.

> if your local government has banned the money movement it won’t go through (modulo money laundering & dodgy banks)

That's my point and OP's : they didn't prevent it, just the messaging through SWIFTnet. TARGET2 and STEP2 still fully work.

Also, you can transfer batches of messages through FTP cronjobs and automated import at night, like it was done 20+ years ago. It just slows settlement from 1-2 days on average to 4-7 business days, depending on the correspondent bank.

Also, you can easily automate use the plenty free MT103 fields for additional routing data ex-SWIFTnet.

It's something which is often done - source : been there, done that, in my youthful days.

> “high finance” for Russian corporations and international corps doing business there slower and more risky.

Yes, anything in regards to transnational money. More expensive, too, but what's that in this inflationary world. A drop in the bucket of Moloch.

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