Extract: In his annual state of the nation address before both houses of parliament, ministers and reporters, Putin said work on making the national currency fully convertible should be completed by July 1, almost six months ahead of the original January 1, 2007 deadline.
The president called for the establishment of a Rouble-denominated oil and natural gas stock exchange in Russia.
"The Rouble must become a more widespread means of international transactions. To this end, we need to open a stock exchange in Russia to trade in oil, gas, and other goods to be paid for in Roubles," he said. Putin said this would be impossible without economic growth of over 7%, which, he said had been achieved in the past three years.
This is the second most significant step in removing the U.S.$ from the throne of sole global reserve and trading currency! Should any more oil producers take this step, it will precede a U.S.$ crisis and create massive potential instability in the globe’s foreign exchanges.
Because this is so important to gold and to you the reader, we are going to turn this into a series of pieces detailing the way forward. Needless to say, these moves are very, very positive for gold. [If Putin keeps his word on the gold front, we should expect Russia to enter the gold market as a buyer soon too?]"
