But if these paragraphs are “saying it all”, what exactly are they saying?

In my (high octane speculative) opinion   they’re saying two things, one negative, and the other, positive. The negative one is obvious: most countries are just plain fed up with Washington dictating their economic, international trading, and foreign policies, and using the big stick of international financial clearing and the concomitant ability to block financial transactions between American allies, and America’s “sanctioned states.” As I’ve pointed out before, and pointed out again in this article, the sanctions regime has hit Germany hard, since some of its largest trading partners are precisely Iran and Russia. Those sanctions, as I also blogged about years ago, forced Russia to take the steps to create its own system of clearing, and to demand that American credit card companies actually physically base their operations in that country. Additionally, the reader might recall that Japan extended to Russia the use of its own widely used system in the western Pacific basin. In other words, you can add Japan quietly to that list of countries fed up with the Anglosphere’s “heavy hand.”

The psotive side of this is that I suspect these reactions to the sanctions regime have been deliberately used (and perhaps, contrived… we’ll get back to that in a moment) to create the “excuse” needed to build out alternative the international clearing systems that will be needed to the effort to build rail and road links between Europe and Asia. While this has been typically associated with the emergence of the Shanghai Accords nations, or BRICS bloc, and with China’s “one belt one road” initiative, it should be stressed that this is not a “China only” proposition. Russia fully intends to expand its infrastructure through Siberia, building trunk lines to support growing agriculture and energy demands, and, as the recent Japanese “test run” on the Trans-Siberian demonstrates (at least, demonstrates in my high octane speculation), Russia intends for an eventual high speed rail system to be built along the route, and notably, it is Japan, not China, doing the test runs, and if anyone has experience – long experience – building high speed rail, it’s the Japanese. To make all this work, there will have to be a clearing system from Europe to Asia.

Note what we have: calls for a European alternative to SWIFT, an already-in-place Russian system and invitations to join it, and Japanese willingness to allow the Russians to use their existing system in the western Pacific. Prediction? Watch for Europe/Germany to build their system, to integrate it or allow cross-communications with the Russian system, and for tighter Russian – Japanese coordination for clearing systems at the other end.