All right, Alexander, let's talk about the latest sanctions against Russia, which are really sanctions, U.S. sanctions against Russia, which are really sanctions against China.

But the sanctions did knock out the U.S. euro trading in the Moscow Stock Exchange.

That was interesting.

But I don't think it will be affecting Russia too much. I think they've kind of shrunked it off already. Within 24 hours, they've

shrunked it off. And China was very angry about these sanctions because obviously China understands

that the real purpose of these sanctions

announced by Yellen are mostly directed towards China. Yelan seems to have some sort of beef

with China. I don't know if it's personal or what's going on there, but Yelan is definitely

taking the lead in going after

China.

Anyway, what are your thoughts on these latest US sanctions?

I think an incredibly important line has now been crossed.

I don't think people understand this very well at all, but let's just unpack it.

Let's deal, first of all, with the least important

part of the story, the one that's attracting most attention in the international media, but which is

not, in my opinion, remotely the most important part of this story. First of all, the United

States has sanctioned the Moscow Stock Exchange and its financial exchange desk.

Now, Russia is very unusual, was very unusual, in that the way in which you exchanged money in Russia,

the banks exchanged money in Russia, they exchange rou money in Russia. They, you know, they exchange

rubles for dollars or rubles for whatever. It was done through an exchange, you know, a central

registry operated by the Moscow Stock Exchange. Now, there's a historic reason for this,

which is that back in the 90s,

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