This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge. 

Following a series of corporate cyberattacks that American intelligence agencies have blamed on Russian actors, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund (officially the National Wellbeing Fund) has decided to dump all of its dollars and dollar-denominated assets in favor of those denominated in euros, yuan – or simply buying precious metals like gold, which Russia’s central bank has increasingly favored for its own reserves.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov made the announcement Thursday morning at the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“We can make this change rather quickly, within a month,” Siluanov told reporters Thursday.

He explained that the Kremlin is moving to reduce exposure to US assets as President Biden threatens more economic sanctions against Russia following the latest ransomware attacks. The transfer will affect $119 billion in liquid assets, Bloomberg reported, but the sales will largely be executed through the Russian Central bank and its massive reserves, limiting the market impact and reducing visibility on what exactly the sovereign wealth fund will be buying.

“The central bank can make these changes to the Wellbeing Fund without resorting to market operations,” said Sofya Donets, economist at Renaissance Capital in Moscow. “This in some sense a technical thing.”

Jordan Rochester, currency strategist at Nomura International PLC, said, “This is a transfer of euros from the central bank to the wealth fund, we’ll then see the central bank the holder of the USDs and it’s up to them to manage it. No initial market impact.”

The news isn’t a complete surprise: The Bank of Russia, Russia’s central bank, has steadily reduced its dollar holdings over the last few years amid increasing sanctions pressure from the US and Europe. That trend continued through President Trump’s term.

Just a few days ago, we reported that the Russian parliament had just authorized the sovereign wealth fund to buy gold through the central bank. However, the central bank reports its holdings with a six-month lag, making it impossible to determine its current holdings.

Russia’s gold holdings eclipsed its dollar reserves last year despite a halt in gold purchases. This was partly due to an increase in the value of its gold holdings with the rise in gold prices, and partly a function of the central bank’s continued efforts to shed dollar assets.

The wealth fund currently holds 35% of its liquid assets in dollars, worth about $41.5 billion, with the same amount in euros and the rest spread across yuan, gold, yen, and pounds. After this latest change, the fund’s assets will be held 40% in euros, 30% in yuan, 20% in gold, and 5% each in yen and pounds, Siluanov said.

 

The wealth fund holds savings from Russia’s oil revenues above a cutoff price and is used to help offset shortfalls when the market falls below that level. Together with illiquid assets, its total value is $185.9 billion.

A few years ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned that Washington was inadvertently accelerating de-dollarization with its aggressive financial sanctions, which were forcing its geopolitical adversaries to reduce their dependence on the greenback. Just last month, Russia reached a new milestone whereby fewer than 50% of its exports were paid for in dollars.

Dedollarisation is inevitable as the US attempts to assert itself to prevent it's accelerating decline. Thus speeding up the attempts by Russia, China and others to remove themselves from the dollar. https://t.co/TeEO4K974A

— Red Star Radio (@Red_Star_Radio) June 3, 2021

The post Russia’s $186 Billion Sovereign Wealth Fund Dumps All Dollar Assets first appeared on SHTF Plan – When It Hits The Fan, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You.

There are a lot of articles and videos on bugging out and how to do it on foot, by packing into the family minivan, and …

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The post Bug Out Boat: How to Bug Out on a Boat, Types of Boats appeared first on Survival Cache.

This article was originally published by Tyler Durden at ZeroHedge. 

After receiving more than 75,000 individual complaints that its Alex-powered Echo devices were spying on them, Amazon has abandoned its policy that such complaints must be resolved outside the court system via secretive arbitration proceedings, and will instead allow customers to file lawsuits, according to the Wall Street Journal.

In other words, “so sue us.”

The company quietly changed its terms of service to file lawsuits, as the company already faces at least three class-action suits – including one brought May 18 alleging that the company’s Echo devices were recording people without permission.

The retail giant made the change after plaintiffs’ lawyers flooded Amazon with more than 75,000 individual arbitration demands on behalf of Echo users. That move triggered a bill for tens of millions of dollars in filing fees, according to lawyers involved, payable by Amazon under its own policies.

Amazon’s decision to drop its arbitration requirement is the starkest example yet of how companies are responding to plaintiffs’ lawyers pushing the arbitration system to its limits. -WSJ

Arbitration agreements are typically buried in the fine print in order to avoid costly litigation, while many employers use them for adjudicating issues such as discrimination complaints or pay disputes. The right to require arbitration has been repeatedly upheld by the US Supreme Court.

During private arbitration, less evidence is presented and there are no appeals – with companies typically agreeing to pay for initial filing fees ranging between $100 and $2,000. The proceedings are managed by companies that charge an additional fee, while the arbitrators themselves will of course bill for their time.

According to consumer advocates and plaintiffs’ lawyers, arbitration usually makes it financially worthwhile for individuals to pursue claims, while companies say it’s a fair process.

“Companies thought they were getting out of liability altogether,” with arbitration clauses, says Chicago lawyer Travis Lenkner, whose firm filed the majority of the Amazon claims. “Now they’re seeing exactly what they bargained for, and they don’t like it.”

The mass-arbitration filings have forced companies to scramble. Uber Technologies Inc., Lyft Inc., and TurboTax maker Intuit Inc. have all tried to avoid paying filing fees or direct claims back into court after being hit in recent years with thousands of arbitration claims.

Few companies so far seem ready to scrap arbitration outright like Amazon.

Instead, some are requiring employees to speak to a lawyer at the company before filing an arbitration claim. One arbitration provider created a mass-claim protocol that calls for handling a few test cases before the full filing fees come due. -WSJ

Claims against Amazon began pouring in after it was revealed in 2019 that Alexa devices were storing recordings of users without their consent. When consumers filed for class-action lawsuits claiming that the recordings violated consent laws, Amazon was able to successfully argue that the claims belonged in arbitration. In early 2020, Keller Lenkner and other firms filed tens of thousands of individual arbitration demands.

One year later, Amazon’s attorneys notified plaintiffs’ attorneys of their recent change in terms of service – eliminating a 350-word arbitration requirement and replacing it with two sentences that say disputes can be brought in a state or federal court near Amazon’s Washington state headquarters.

Local attorneys are surely buzzing with excitement.

The post “So Sue Us”: Amazon Responds To 75,000 Customers Who Say Alexa Spied On Them first appeared on SHTF Plan – When It Hits The Fan, Don’t Say We Didn’t Warn You.