Dear friends,
Here is the latest installment of my quarterly conversations with Catherine Austin Fitts.
This one was recorded on July the 28th.
You can listen to the interview on the original Solari Report page:
https://home.solari.com/the-emerging-multipolar-world-with-saker/
or just click here:
Cheers,
The Saker
US Sanctions don’t work.
Fitch: Russia ‘Copes Well’ With New US Sanctions, Economy Resilient to Shocks.
“Fitch Ratings has affirmed Russia’s Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) at ‘BBB-‘ with a Positive Outlook,” Fitch said in a press release. “The Positive Outlook reflects continued progress in strengthening the economic policy framework underpinned by a more flexible exchange rate, a strong commitment to inflation- targeting and a prudent fiscal strategy.”
https://sptnkne.ws/jt4W
I may be old, but I thought one thing that everyone agreed upon was that unilateral sanctions don’t work and can’t possibly work.
There is one case where sanctions are said to have worked. That was in ending apartied in South African. But they only began to work at the very end when the sanctions did become pretty much world wide. For a long time, the sanctions were more like the current BDS campaign against Israeli apartied in that South Africa was able to work around them. It was only when the sanctions became world wide that they really had an effect.
These current sanctions are very different because its an essentially gangster attempt by Washington to strongarm the rest of the world into sanctions. Since Washington is waging unrestricted economic warfare against both Russia and China, these latest threats about dealing with Iran have little impact in those countries.
Since sanctions have to be world-wide and nearly comprehensive to have any real impact, sanctions that don’t include major players like Russia and China don’t seem likely to work.
And I suspect Europe will be quietly going around sanctions when they can. Its tough at first, but given time it can be done. The US can threaten Total and Renault with sanctions if they don’t stop doing business. But, if some money and investment quietly moves to a new company with a new name and the government is willing to nod and wink and pretend there’s not a connection to the big companies, then they can do business with Iran. The US can sanction and try to shut down these shell companies, but then they become the test case for whether the Europeans can really enforce their “Blocking Law”. And if they can successfully do that, then the test case has worked with little risk and the big companies can come flowing back in.
Or a French company can make a deal with a Chinese company where its the Chinese company doing business officially in Iran. There are all sorts of options. Its hard to convert an existing big company deal to such options, about all they can do is sell out and remove their money. But given time new options can appear.
Nevertheless I ´m pretty much worried about current sanctions on Venezuela.
Unable to figure out how they could escape.
There will be a bloodshed and I don´t know what in hell more.
I am an unashamed Catherine Austin Fitts groupie. But in this interview, well done Saker! I see again, the Americans would so much like to be acknowledged as good. The ordinary folks out there are confused with what the Neocons in the name of the Americans have done, and what they believe of themselves. They truly believe they are such good people! We see it with CAF. She is almost begging .. what can we do? What should we do? What should we do to live up of what we believe … We are Good! Dammit!
Saker Quote of the Year! “Its not patriotic to be delusional”.
We see it in that the American oligarchs and their minions have to lie so frequently and so massively to the American people. That tells me that they know, with their massive surveilence tools, that the American people would be very upset if they knew the truth about what has been done in their name.
While their constant lies and assualts on anything related to the truth can be depressing, it is at least reassuring that they feel they must do this.
The one thing the American elites know is that they can not let the American people realize the truth.
In her introduction to this interview, Catherine Austin Fitts says “… Russia is unloading its portfolio of US Treasury securities …” (see https://home.solari.com/the-emerging-multipolar-world-with-saker/ ).
A mighty intriguing question:
(1) is that really so – or
(2) Did Russia Just Move Its Treasury Holdings Offshore? (https://blogs.wsj.com/moneybeat/2014/03/14/did-russia-just-dump-its-treasury-holdings/ ) – while the cheerful claim “(1)” is merely for public consumption? (Presumably, “… Russia would be able to buy or sell its portfolio if the U.S. and its European allies impose economic sanctions …”.)
Just as in many other things we read, we do not have direct access to actual facts, do we…….
Selling currently held US Treasury bonds now could just simply be a smart financial move.
Bonds that pay a low interest rate decline in value when the newer bonds have a higher interest rate. Would you buy a bond that pays 3% interest for the same price as a bond that pays 6% interest? No, which is why the seller has to reduce the asking price of that 3% bond in order to get someone to buy it when the new bonds are at the higher rate.
If you hold the bond until maturity, ie hold a 10-year bond for 10 years, then you get paid the printed interest rate. But bonds are also traded on markets, so if you want to sell off bonds before maturity, its better to do it now before the value drops with higher interest rates.
The US Federal Reserve has shown a firm intention to continue its rise of interest rates into next year. Which means its highly likely that US Treasury bonds will have higher interest rates next year. So, if you hold currently issued US Treasury bonds, now is the best price you are likely to get for selling them.
Countries like China have so many bonds that they have to be careful selling them in order to avoid crashing the market and thus undermining their own assets. But Russia didn’t have so very much in US Treasuries, so they could simply decide to get rid of them now while the getting rid of was good.
Considering that both gold and oil are likely to go up if Trump-MBS start their war with Iran, it could just be that Russia’s financial managers saw better opportunites than letting their money sit in bonds that will decline in market value.
Another possibility is that a lot of the Russian-held US Treasuries have been pledged as collateral for loans, so are “off the books” of Russia now.
Better to have the collateral collapse to less than the loan value than not pledge that collateral and have its value collapse, with no further recourse or other options.
At least after pledging it as collateral you then have the option of either repaying the loan…..or forfeiting the depressed collateral, arguing that it was accepted at full face value collateral and so should be counted as such, perhaps??.
In the case of dramatic devaluation of the pledged security, who is the least moral, the debaser of the treasuries or the defaulting borrower, hedging against the possible devaluation of those suspect federal debt instruments by pledging them as collateral for other value immediately received and put to work??
Is there a transcript?
Wish also for transcript…don’t have access to interviews otherwise….there used to be a transcript
Likewise, I’m a reader and less of a video watcher, so I also humbly request a transcript when its possible. But I also know that can be a lot of work, so I understand if they aren’t around, and I’m thankful when they are.
I am also a long-time CAF fan. Years ago I saw a series she did on drugs and money laundering for a different site, and I was very impressed. It really opened the eyes to the power illegal money can have in an society.
Just in time. I was wondering when you would talk to CAF again. CAF last Daniel Liszt interview was… well… sobering. The rot in the world is so endemic and has been going on for so long, it’s hard to look beyond it.
And then, on or around 1:10:40, Catherine Austin Fitts (whom I respect, conditioning and all) talked about Russia as “The Soviets”. Saker talked about Russia all along as a power on its own merit, the US dealing with Russia… but even C.A.F. can’t move past faulty history.
That told me everything I ever needed to know. It is so engrained in American brains, Russia will never be Russia. Russia will forever be “the Soviets”. Humanity is really on a more precarious course than I ever thought.
God help us all.
She was HUD Secretary when G.H.W. Bush was president. Chalk it up to her spending time in US govt circles. Old habits are hard to break. I suppose it’s an idiom that roughly translates as: those guys on the other side of the planet who also have the capacity to end humanity as we know it.
And don’t forget Putin was head of the KGB if we ignore the inconvenient fact that the KGB had been disbanded.
Wiki suggests he was head of the FSB for 3 months.
Excellent interview. I would raise one objection however, the Saker’s comment concerning Israel’s attack on Lebanon in 2006 having been pointless – it absolutely was not pointless but a direct reaction to the failing US occupation of Iraq – which in turn was supposed to be a springboard for an attack on Iran. Israel’s assault on Lebanon was intended to eliminate Hezbollah, to provide a defense of the rear (Mediterranean) as a support for an eventual US attack on Iran. Due to the failure of the occupation of Iraq however, it was already obvious by late 2004 that the US was not going to be able to use Iraq as a base from which to invade Iran. The attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon at that point for Israel became a practical necessity, which the Hariri assassination in 2005 was a direct preparation for, whereby Syrian forces were compelled to withdraw from Lebanon as a consequence. I would ask the Saker to consider this detail & perhaps comment in some forum, or here if appropriate.
Israel’s assault on Lebanon was intended to eliminate Hezbollah, to provide a defense of the rear (Mediterranean) as a support for an eventual US attack on Iran.
In order to achieve this goal the Israelis would have had to march north of the Litani river into Beirut or even to the Bekaa valley. That was never considered. Their real motive was a “show of force” of the “my red button is bigger than yours” and that just makes no sense whatsoever. Only a delusional sense of racial superiority could bring the Israelis to think that they could “teach Hezbollah a lesson”. It went the other way around, of course.
The Saker
Absolutely, but they couldn’t march north of the Litani because they (IDF) got massacred in the border region – much to their shock & dismay. It is interesting to recall what Sheikh Hassan Nassrallah had to say about Hezbollah’s victory in this short war – it may no longer be on You Tube unfortunately following the deletion of a selection of his speeches – but he described the victory as a “miracle.” This was not exaggeration or hyperbole on his part, as he concluded this after describing in some detail why it was that by all factors considered, Hezbollah should not logically have won the victory that they (fortunately [my sentiment]) actually did. Whatever one’s point of view however, I for one – could be wrong – believe this was much more than a show of force but a last ditch desperate & stupid attempt to wipe Hezbollah out. And, the defeat Israel suffered had a very direct impact on the scale & nasty nature of the war that was later unleashed against Syria, which I think has been unprecedented in its savage brutality.
The Saker is correct. The US needs new political faces. However, will they appear ? Will the neocons permit them to appear ? I think not.
The current US two-party system is as closed as the old Soviet one-party system.
In the US, you have to have the backing of one of the two corporate/deep-state parties. Generally, outsiders are not welcome to these spots. Running as a ‘3rd party’ is almost hopeless. The only time it really comes close to working is when a billionaire runs. And then, note that Trump thought it was better to self-finance his own campaign within one of the corporate parties instead of running as a 3rd party.
The corporate media is what controls this system. Only the official two-party corporate candidates get any coverage in the media. Thus, anyone running from outside is simply not heard. About the only way anyone is ‘heard’ in this free-speach democracy is to buy advertising time. Which of course takes money. To run for US Congress takes a minimum of a couple of million dollars. More if the system decides you are a threat and piles on in an effort to stop you. Otherwise, the corporate media only covers the two-party candidates, and official TV ‘debates’ are also restricted to the two-party candidates. The Green Party candidate is led away in handcuffs when she dares to show up at a Presidential debate site.
So, if you like talking to 5 or 10 people at a time at rallies and pot-luck dinners while your corporate opponents are spending millions of dollars to reach people on TV and radio and now social media advertisiing, you are welcome to run for office in the land of the free. But unless you are personally an oligarch or have the backing of one or more oligarchs, don’t expect to win or even for anyone to know you were even running.
The thing is that the political and management people would have to be almost an incredible to have the system budge at all.
Even the better minds in the universities shied completely way of public service and realizing how corrupt the institutions were….even the college and graduate that was mostly wasting their time with lies.
as long as “the rules of the game” are not changed from top to bottom all will remain the same:without an abrupt second american revolution the whole world is doomed.to make this clear to the masses is impossible even if they get it:they are powerless in the present configuration.
I thought that China dumping US Treasuries wouldn’t matter too much because they have something like a trillion dollars in US bonds…..but that pales in significance to the 20+ trillion dollars in bonds outstanding.
Of course if Trump really favors transparency, he could call off the hounds attacking Snowden and Assange.
If you want an example of Trump’s honesty take as an example his response to Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly who feigned disbelief that Trump would talk to Putin saying “but Putin’s a killer. Trump’s response was “well there are a lot of killers. We’re not so innocent.” No other American politician would be so candid.
seems like spam about freedom of speech should be cafe … herb
OT, sorry.
Please repost your comment about ‘freedom of press’ in the cafe …. long post removed … mod
The Russians win the pennant! The Russians win the pennant!
Oops, That should be “The Russians win the Cold War 2! The Russians win the Cold War 2!”
That was a great interview, Saker. You hit the ball out of the park on many levels.
The neo-tards made the mistake of not realizing that culture is supposed to facilitate individual development not inhibit it. Neoconism and Zionism will be 2 more scamster/garbage ideologies going into the dustbin of history.
Saker and CAF appeared to agree that the collective West’s refusal to “look into the mirror” and confront or even acknowledge that 9/11 was an “inside job” is a key, ongoing catalyst for the Emprie’s collapse (if I understand them correctly). That makes me wonder whether an information dump on 9/11 (or any of the many other covert ops) represents an potential asymmetrical point of leverage. But then I also wonder why Assange doesn’t simply at this point come out and admit that Seth Rich was his source, if indeed that is the case.
What is the probability, now that the three-headed monster that is the West’s Dark State is in full-on self-attack mode, will provoke an opportunity to start war with Rus? For that matter, what did the Brits and Israelis hope to achieve this past spring by drawing the US into direct warfare with Rus in the Eastern Med?
Also, did I note a bit of doubt from Saker on CAF’s case for $21 trillion missing?
Question for @ The Saker: (in ref to 41:00-43:00′ approx)
If indeed the “(Western/US) Elite” know 9/11 was an inside job, or whatever version other than the official narrative that may be, to what extent can we justify the silence and complicity of non-western aligned forces and Governments, who could draw advantage from exposing this lie? ie Putin/Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela or even China, why are we not hearing any Governmental backed or indeed unofficial challenges to the 9/11 official narrative, the Bin Laden / Al Qaeda plot etc. Ahmadinejad and Chavez are the only examples i can think of, other than that really nothing. I would have thought Putin could have leveraged on this?
I see a number of possibilities:
1) MAD, ie if they go nuclear on the dirt they have on us, we go nuclear on the dirt we have on them. (For example w Putin, the alleged FSB role in bombing apartment blocks which helped launch the second Chechen war, or any other potential, true or not, compromising narrative)
2) a larger conspiracy that transcends individuals and governments, and the game of politics and gov’t aligned warfare is the public consumption version of the grand chess game
3) a lack of hard evidence and the fear of public skepticism to new truths are not worth the wrath of challenging the empire to its (rotten) core
Would make for an interesting editorial sometime
I don’t think this is one of Catherine Fitt’s (C F) best interview. Saker asked, what has Trump done since his inauguration to further transparency. C F initially said, I’ll have to think on that and then said oh I can think of a couple of examples = then she rambled about something else. It seems to me that C F has not given up on Trump. Saker makes it clear that his hope that Trump would resist the real Powers That Be was dashed fairly early. Mine was when the VP was Pence and confirmed with his cabinet choices. She didn’t say but I think she tends to believe some of this missing 21 trillion dollars went to dark advanced space technology. Saker thinks the US has lost it previous lead in advanced technology. Back in Eisenhower’s administration the US got bang for its buck but it’s no longer true.
I overall agreed with the substance of the interview – The people really in charge of the US Empire are incompetent and delusional. My worry is that if the “outs” can’t bring Trump down they will crash the economy so as to keep Trump from being re-elected. He will then start a war to stay in office.