Journalism has been reduced to reporting information instead of news.; recently our Fred published a link to a Reuters news story about the Swiss Bank BCP withdrawing from Iranian trade finance. The Reuters reporter simply filed this “information” [as news] without any explanation of its huge significance for trade with Iran as  BCP is one of the very few banks, if not THE bank financing European trade with Iran specificallly the Iranian oil business vital to the Mollafia rulers of the Republic of Murder and Mayhem. Once again it shows the power of smart sanctions when applied in spirit and in practice.

BCP is one of the very few European banks without a US presence  or footprint in MBAspeak  (save for some small German banks, but insignificant compared to BCP as they could not arrange the [large] Euro/Dollar conversion to bypass Uncle Sam) who was financing the oil trade, and all commodity trades between Europe and Iran, in short providing the much needed trade finance. The European commercial institutions’ need to access US financial markets preventing them from opppsoing US sanctions, has been covered in my earlier blogs.  The BCP announcement is a perfect example of the devastating immediately palpable effect of smart sanctions on trade.

Smart sanctions work, now you have got to it, stick to it.