now we were talking earlier about the financial squeeze that this is putting on americans and others with the increasing gas prices. obviously the west trying to put a huge financial squeeze on russia. part of that is persuading major companies to pull out of russia and companies such as visa, american express and mastercard have cut ties with banks. so now russian banks are turning to allies in china to help them get around those difficulties. joining us now via skype, rochelle, he's a founding partner of macro advisors llc and a visiting research fellow with the university of san diego school of business. good to have you here, mitch. so the russians are turning to something out of china called unionpay. explain to our viewers what that is and if it is a true replacement for visa, mastercard, et cetera. it's basically the chinese competitor for a visa, mastercard and american express