by Michael Hudson for the Unz Review
As Russia and Asia move to circumvent the stranglehold of an aging, U.S. dominated international financial and legal system with its promise of endless austerity and privatization by foreign investors, the IMF and World Bank double-down by making it more difficult for them to transact business and administer credit.
A nightmare scenario of U.S. geopolitical strategists is coming true: foreign independence from U.S.-centered financial and diplomatic control. China and Russia are investing in neighboring economies on terms that cement Eurasian integration on the basis of financing in their own currencies and favoring their own exports. They also have created the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative military alliance to NATO.[1] And the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) threatens to replace the IMF and World Bank tandem in which the United States holds unique veto power.
More than just a disparity of voting rights in the IMF and World Bank is at stake. At issue is a philosophy of development. U.S. and other foreign investment in infrastructure (or buyouts and takeovers on credit) adds interest rates and other financial charges to the cost structure, while charging prices as high as the market can bear (think of Carlos Slim’s telephone monopoly in Mexico, or the high costs of America’s health care system), and making their profits and monopoly rents tax-exempt by paying them out as interest.
By contrast, government-owned infrastructure provides basic services at low cost, on a subsidized basis, or freely. That is what has made the United States, Germany and other industrial lead nations so competitive over the past few centuries. But this positive role of government is no longer possible under World Bank/IMF policy. The U.S. promotion of neoliberalism and austerity is a major reason propelling China, Russia and other nations out of the U.S. diplomatic and banking orbit.
On December 3, 2015, Prime Minister Putin proposed that Russia “and other Eurasian Economic Union countries should kick-off consultations with members of the SCO and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on a possible economic partnership.”[2] Russia also is seeking to build pipelines to Europe through friendly secular countries instead of Sunni jihadist U.S.-backed countries locked into America’s increasingly confrontational orbit.
Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov points out that when Russia’s 2013 loan to Ukraine was made, at the request of Ukraine’s elected government, Ukraine’s “international reserves were barely enough to cover three months’ imports, and no other creditor was prepared to lend on terms acceptable to Kiev. Yet Russia provided $3 billion of much-needed funding at a 5 per cent interest rate, when Ukraine’s bonds were yielding nearly 12 per cent.”[3]
What especially annoys U.S. financial strategists is that this loan by Russia’s National Wealth Fund was protected by IMF lending practice, which at that time ensured collectability by withholding credit from countries in default of foreign official debts, or at least not bargaining in good faith to pay. To cap matters, the bonds are registered under London’s creditor-oriented rules and courts.
Most worrisome to U.S. strategists is that China and Russia are denominating their trade and investment in their own currencies instead of dollars. After U.S. officials threatened to derange Russia’s banking linkages by cutting it off from the SWIFT interbank clearing system, China accelerated its creation of the alternative China International Payments System (CIPS), and its own credit card system to protect Eurasian economies from the threats made by U.S. unilateralists.
Russia and China are simply doing what the United States has long done: using trade and credit linkages to cement their diplomacy. This tectonic geopolitical shift is a Copernican threat to New Cold War ideology: Instead of the world economy revolving around the United States (the Ptolemaic idea of America as “the indispensible nation”), it may revolve around Eurasia. As long as global financial control remains grounded in Washington at the offices of the IMF and World Bank, such a shift in the center of gravity will be fought with all the power of an American Century (and would-be American Millennium) inquisition.
Any inquisition needs a court system and enforcement vehicles. So does resistance to such a system. That is what today’s global financial, legal and trade maneuvering is all about. And that is why today’s world system is in the process of breaking apart. Differences in economic philosophy call for different institutions.
To U.S. neocons the specter of AIIB government-to-government investment creates fear of nations minting their own money and holding each other’s debt in their international reserves instead of borrowing dollars, paying interest in dollars and subordinating their financial planning to the U.S. Treasury and IMF. Foreign governments would have less need to finance their budget deficits by selling off key infrastructure. And instead of dismantling public spending, a broad Eurasian economic union would do what the United States itself practices, and seek self-sufficiency in banking and monetary policy.
Imagine the following scenario five years from now. China will have spent half a decade building high-speed railroads, ports, power systems and other construction for Asian and African countries, enabling them to grow and export more. These exports will be coming online to repay the infrastructure loans. Also, suppose that Russia has been supplying the oil and gas energy for these projects on credit.
To avert this prospect, suppose an American diplomat makes the following proposal to the leaders of countries in debt to China, Russia and the AIIB: “Now that you’ve got your increased production in place, why repay? We’ll make you rich if you stiff our adversaries and turn back to the West. We and our European allies will support your assigning your nations’ public infrastructure to yourselves and your supporters at insider prices, and then give these assets market value by selling shares in New York and London. Then, you can keep the money and spend it in the West.”
How can China or Russia collect in such a situation? They can sue. But what court in the West will accept their jurisdiction?
That is the kind of scenario U.S. State Department and Treasury officials have been discussing for more than a year. Implementing it became more pressing in light of Ukraine’s $3 billion debt to Russia falling due by December 20, 2015. Ukraine’s U.S.-backed regime has announced its intention to default. To support their position, the IMF has just changed its rules to remove a critical lever on which Russia and other governments have long relied to ensure payment of their loans.
The IMF’s role as enforcer of inter-government debts
When it comes to enforcing nations to pay inter-government debts, the IMF is able to withhold not only its own credit but also that of governments and global bank consortia participating when debtor countries need “stabilization” loans (the neoliberal euphemism for imposing austerity and destabilizing debtor economies, as in Greece this year). Countries that do not privatize their infrastructure and sell it to Western buyers are threatened with sanctions, backed by U.S.-sponsored “regime change” and “democracy promotion” Maidan-style. The Fund’s creditor leverage has been that if a nation is in financial arrears to any government, it cannot qualify for an IMF loan – and hence, for packages involving other governments. That is how the dollarized global financial system has worked for half a century. But until now, the beneficiaries have U.S. and NATO lenders, not been China or Russia.
The focus on a mixed public/private economy sets the AIIB at odds with the Trans-Pacific Partnership’s aim of relinquishing government planning power to the financial and corporate sector, and the neoliberal aim of blocking governments from creating their own money and implementing their own financial, economic and environmental regulation. Chief Nomura economist Richard Koo, explained the logic of viewing the AIIB as a threat to the U.S.-controlled IMF: “If the IMF’s rival is heavily under China’s influence, countries receiving its support will rebuild their economies under what is effectively Chinese guidance, increasing the likelihood they will fall directly or indirectly under that country’s influence.”[4]
This was the setting on December 8, when Chief IMF Spokesman Gerry Rice announced: “The IMF’s Executive Board met today and agreed to change the current policy on non-toleration of arrears to official creditors.” Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov accused the IMF decision of being “hasty and biased.”[5] But it had been discussed all year long, calculating a range of scenarios for a sea change in international law. Anders Aslund, senior fellow at the NATO-oriented Atlantic Council, points out:
The IMF staff started contemplating a rule change in the spring of 2013 because nontraditional creditors, such as China, had started providing developing countries with large loans. One issue was that these loans were issued on conditions out of line with IMF practice. China wasn’t a member of the Paris Club, where loan restructuring is usually discussed, so it was time to update the rules.
The IMF intended to adopt a new policy in the spring of 2016, but the dispute over Russia’s $3 billion loan to Ukraine has accelerated an otherwise slow decision-making process.[6]
The target was not only Russia and its ability to collect on its sovereign loan to Ukraine, but China even more, in its prospective role as creditor to African countries and prospective AIIB borrowers, planning for a New Silk Road to integrate a Eurasian economy independent of U.S. financial and trade control. The Wall Street Journal concurred that the main motive for changing the rules was the threat that China would provide an alternative to IMF lending and its demands for crushing austerity. “IMF-watchers said the fund was originally thinking of ensuring China wouldn’t be able to foil IMF lending to member countries seeking bailouts as Beijing ramped up loans to developing economies around the world.”[7] So U.S. officials walked into the IMF headquarters in Washington with the legal equivalent of suicide vests. Their aim was a last-ditch attempt to block trade and financial agreements organized outside of U.S. control and that of the IMF and World Bank.
The plan is simple enough. Trade follows finance, and the creditor usually calls the tune. That is how the United States has used the Dollar Standard to steer Third World trade and investment since World War II along lines benefiting the U.S. economy. The cement of trade credit and bank lending is the ability of creditors to collect on the international debts being negotiated. That is why the United States and other creditor nations have used the IMF as an intermediary to act as “honest broker” for loan consortia. (“Honest broker” means being subject to U.S. veto power.) To enforce its financial leverage, the IMF has long followed the rule that it will not sponsor any loan agreement or refinancing for governments that are in default of debts owed to other governments. However, as the afore-mentioned Aslund explains, the IMF could easily
change its practice of not lending into [countries in official] arrears … because it is not incorporated into the IMF Articles of Agreement, that is, the IMF statutes. The IMF Executive Board can decide to change this policy with a simple board majority. The IMF has lent to Afghanistan, Georgia, and Iraq in the midst of war, and Russia has no veto right, holding only 2.39 percent of the votes in the IMF. When the IMF has lent to Georgia and Ukraine, the other members of its Executive Board have overruled Russia.[8]
After the rules change, Aslund later noted, “the IMF can continue to give Ukraine loans regardless of what Ukraine does about its credit from Russia, which falls due on December 20.[9]
The IMF rule that no country can borrow if it is in default to a foreign government was created in the post-1945 world. Since then, the U.S. Government, Treasury and/or U.S. bank consortia have been party to nearly every major loan agreement. But inasmuch as Ukraine’s official debt to Russia’s National Wealth Fund was not to the U.S. Government, the IMF announced its rules change simply as a “clarification.” What its rule really meant was that it would not provide credit to countries in arrears to the U.S. government, not that of Russia or China.
It remains up to the IMF board – and in the end, its managing director – whether or not to deem a country creditworthy. The U.S. representative can block any foreign leaders not beholden to the United States. Mikhail Delyagin, Director of the Institute of Globalization Problems, explained the double standard at work: “The Fund will give Kiev a new loan tranche on one condition: that Ukraine should not pay Russia a dollar under its $3 billion debt. … they will oblige Ukraine to pay only to western creditors for political reasons.”[10]
The post-2010 loan packages to Greece are a case in point. The IMF staff saw that Greece could not possibly pay the sums needed to bail out French, German and other foreign banks and bondholders. Many Board members agreed, and have gone public with their whistle blowing. Their protests didn’t matter. President Barack Obama and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner pointed out that U.S. banks had written credit default swaps betting that Greece could pay, and would lose money if there were a debt writedown). Dominique Strauss-Kahn backed the hard line US- European Central Bank position. So did Christine Lagarde in 2015, overriding staff protests.[11]
Regarding Ukraine, IMF executive board member Otaviano Canuto, representing Brazil, noted that the logic that “conditions on IMF lending to a country that fell behind on payments [was to] make sure it kept negotiating in good faith to reach agreement with creditors.”[12] Dropping this condition, he said, would open the door for other countries to insist on a similar waiver and avoid making serious and sincere efforts to reach payment agreement with creditor governments.
A more binding IMF rule is Article I of its 1944-45 founding charter, prohibiting the Fund from lending to a member state engaged in civil war or at war with another member state, or for military purposes in general. But when IMF head Lagarde made the last loan to Ukraine, in spring 2015, she merely expressed a vapid token hope there might be peace. Withholding IMF credit could have been a lever to force peace and adherence to the Minsk agreements, but U.S. diplomatic pressure led that opportunity to be rejected. President Porochenko immediately announced that he would step up the civil war with the Russian-speaking population in the eastern Donbass region.
The most important IMF condition being violated is that continued warfare with the East prevents a realistic prospect of Ukraine paying back new loans. The Donbass is where most Ukrainian exports were made, mainly to Russia. That market is being lost by the junta’s belligerence toward Russia. This should have blocked Ukraine from receiving IMF aid. Aslund himself points to the internal contradiction at work: Ukraine has achieved budget balance because the inflation and steep currency depreciation has drastically eroded its pension costs. But the resulting decline in the purchasing power of pension benefits has led to growing opposition to Ukraine’s post-Maidan junta. So how can the IMF’s austerity budget be followed without a political backlash? “Leading representatives from President Petro Poroshenko’s Bloc are insisting on massive tax cuts, but no more expenditure cuts; that would cause a vast budget deficit that the IMF assesses at 9-10 percent of GDP, that could not possibly be financed.”[13]
By welcoming and financing Ukraine instead of treating as an outcast, the IMF thus is breaking four of its rules: (1) Not to lend to a country that has no visible means to pay back the loan. This breaks the “No More Argentinas” rule, adopted after the IMF’s disastrous 2001 loan. (2) Not to lend to a country that repudiates its debt to official creditors. This goes against the IMF’s role as enforcer for the global creditor cartel. (3) Not to lend to a borrower at war – and indeed, to one that is destroying its export capacity and hence its balance-of-payments ability to pay back the loan. Finally, (4) not to lend to a country that is not likely to carry out the IMF’s austerity “conditionalities,” at least without crushing democratic opposition in a totalitarian manner.
The upshot – and new basic guideline for IMF lending – is to split the world into pro-U.S. economies going neoliberal, and economies maintaining public investment in infrastructure and what used to be viewed as progressive capitalism. Russia and China may lend as much as they want to other governments, but there is no global vehicle to help secure their ability to be paid back under international law. Having refused to roll back its own (and ECB) claims on Greece, the IMF is willing to see countries not on the list approved by U.S. neocons repudiate their official debts to Russia or China. Changing its rules to clear the path for making loans to Ukraine is rightly seen as an escalation of America’s New Cold War against Russia and China.
Timing is everything in such ploys. Georgetown University Law professor and Treasury consultant Anna Gelpern warned that before the “IMF staff and executive board [had] enough time to change the policy on arrears to official creditors,” Russia might use “its notorious debt/GDP clause to accelerate the bonds at any time before December, or simply gum up the process of reforming the IMF’s arrears policy.”[14] According to this clause, if Ukraine’s foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP, Russia’s government would have the right to demand immediate payment. But President Putin, no doubt anticipating the bitter fight to come over its attempts to collect on its loan, refrained from exercising this option. He is playing the long game, bending over backward to behave in a way that cannot be criticized as “odious.”
A more immediate reason deterring the United States from pressing earlier to change IMF rules was the need to use the old set of rules against Greece before changing them for Ukraine. A waiver for Ukraine would have provided a precedent for Greece to ask for a similar waiver on paying the “troika” – the European Central Bank (ECB), EU commission and the IMF itself – for the post-2010 loans that have pushed it into a worse depression than the 1930s. Only after Greece capitulated to eurozone austerity was the path clear for U.S. officials to change the IMF rules to isolate Russia. But their victory has come at the cost of changing the IMF’s rules and those of the global financial system irreversibly. Other countries henceforth may reject conditionalities, as Ukraine has done, as well as asking for write-downs on foreign official debts.
That was the great fear of neoliberal U.S. and Eurozone strategists last summer, after all. The reason for smashing Greece’s economy was to deter Podemos in Spain and similar movements in Italy and Portugal from pursuing national prosperity instead of eurozone austerity. “Imagine the Greek government had insisted that EU institutions accept the same haircut as the country’s private creditors,” Russian finance minister Anton Siluanov asked. “The reaction in European capitals would have been frosty. Yet this is the position now taken by Kiev with respect to Ukraine’s $3 billion eurobond held by Russia.”[15]
The consequences of America’s tactics to make a financial hit on Russia while its balance of payments is down (as a result of collapsing oil and gas prices) go far beyond just the IMF. These tactics are driving other countries to defend their own economies in the legal and political spheres, in ways that are breaking apart the post-1945 global order.
Countering Russia’s ability to collect in Britain’s law courts
Over the past year the U.S. Treasury and State Departments have discussed ploys to block Russia from collecting by suing in the London Court of International Arbitration, under whose rules Russia’s bonds issued to Ukraine are registered. Reviewing the excuses Ukraine might use to avoid paying Russia, Prof. Gelpern noted that it might declare the debt “odious,” made under duress or corruptly. In a paper for the Peterson Institute of International Economics (the banking lobby in Washington) she suggested that Britain should deny Russia the use of its courts as a means of reinforcing the financial, energy and trade sanctions passed after Crimea voted to join Russia as protection against the ethnic cleansing from the Right Sector, Azov Battalion and other paramilitary groups descending on the region.[16]
A kindred ploy might be for Ukraine to countersue Russia for reparations for “invading” it and taking Crimea. Such a claim would seem to have little chance of success (without showing the court to be an arm of NATO politics), but it might delay Russia’ ability to collect by tying the loan up in a long nuisance lawsuit. But the British court would lose credibility if it permits frivolous legal claims (called barratry in English) such as President Poroshenko and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk have threatened.
To claim that Ukraine’s debt to Russia was “odious” or otherwise illegitimate, “President Petro Poroshenko said the money was intended to ensure Yanukovych’s loyalty to Moscow, and called the payment a ‘bribe,’according to an interview with Bloomberg in June this year.”[17] The legal and moral problem with such arguments is that they would apply equally to IMF and U.S. loans. They would open the floodgates for other countries to repudiate debts taken on by dictatorships supported by IMF and U.S. lenders.
As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov noted, the IMF’s change of rules, “designed to suit Ukraine only, could plant a time bomb under all other IMF programs.” The new rules showed the extent to which the IMF is subordinate to U.S. aggressive New Cold Warriors: “since Ukraine is politically important – and it is only important because it is opposed to Russia – the IMF is ready to do for Ukraine everything it has not done for anyone else.”[18]
In a similar vein, Andrei Klimov, deputy chairman of the Committee for International Affairs at the Federation Council (the upper house of Russia’s parliament) accused the United States of playing “the role of the main violin in the IMF while the role of the second violin is played by the European Union, [the] two basic sponsors of the Maidan – the … coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.”[19]
Putin’s counter-strategy and the blowback on U.S.-European relations
Having anticipated that Ukraine would seek excuses to not pay Russia, President Putin refrained from exercising Russia’s right to demand immediate payment when Ukraine’s foreign debt rose above 60 percent of GDP. In November he even offered to defer any payment at all this year, stretching payments out to “$1 billion next year, $1 billion in 2017, and $1 billion in 2018,” if “the United States government, the European Union, or one of the big international financial institutions” guaranteed payment.[20] Based on their assurances “that Ukraine’s solvency will grow,” he added, they should be willing to put their money where their mouth was. If they did not provide guarantees, Putin pointed out, “this means that they do not believe in the Ukrainian economy’s future.”
Implicit was that if the West continued encouraging Ukraine to fight against the East, its government would not be in a position to pay. The Minsk agreement was expiring and Ukraine was receiving new arms support from the United States, Canada and other NATO members to intensify hostilities against Donbass and Crimea.
But the IMF, European Union and United States refused to back up the Fund’s optimistic forecast of Ukraine’s ability to pay in the face of its continued civil war against the East. Foreign Minister Lavrov concluded that, “By having refused to guarantee Ukraine’s debt as part of Russia’s proposal to restructure it, the United States effectively admitted the absence of prospects of restoring its solvency.”[21]
In an exasperated tone, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Russian television: “I have a feeling that they won’t give us the money back because they are crooks … and our Western partners not only refuse to help, but they also make it difficult for us.” Accusing that “the international financial system is unjustly structured,” he nonetheless promised to “go to court. We’ll push for default on the loan and we’ll push for default on all Ukrainian debts,” based on the fact that the loan
was a request from the Ukrainian Government to the Russian Government. If two governments reach an agreement this is obviously a sovereign loan…. Surprisingly, however, international financial organisations started saying that this is not exactly a sovereign loan. This is utter bull. Evidently, it’s just an absolutely brazen, cynical lie. … This seriously erodes trust in IMF decisions. I believe that now there will be a lot of pleas from different borrower states to the IMF to grant them the same terms as Ukraine. How will the IMF possibly refuse them?[22]
And there the matter stands. On December 16, 2015, the IMF’s Executive Board ruled that “the bond should be treated as official debt, rather than a commercial bond.”[23] Forbes quipped: “Russia apparently is not always blowing smoke. Sometimes they’re actually telling it like it is.”[24]
Reflecting the degree of hatred fanned by U.S. diplomacy, U.S.-backed Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalie A. Jaresko expressed an arrogant confidence that the IMF would back the Ukrainian cabinet’s announcement on Friday, December 18, of its intention to default on the debt to Russia falling due two days later. “If we were to repay this bond in full, it would mean we failed to meet the terms of the I.M.F. and the obligations we made under our restructuring.”[25]
Adding his own bluster, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk announced his intention to tie up Russia’s claim for payment by filing a multibillion-dollar counter claim “over Russia’s occupation of Crimea and intervention in east Ukraine.” To cap matters, he added that “several hundred million dollars of debt owed by two state enterprises to Russian banks would also not be paid.”[26] This makes trade between Ukraine and Russia impossible to continue. Evidently Ukraine’s authorities had received assurance from IMF and U.S. officials that no real “good faith” bargaining would be required to gain ongoing support. Ukraine’s Parliament did not even find it necessary to enact the new tax code and budget conditionalities that the IMF loan had demanded.
The world is now at war financially, and all that seems to matter is whether, as U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put matters, “you are for us or against us.” As President Putin remarked at the 70th session of the UN General Assembly regarding America’s support of Al Qaeda, Al Nusra and other allegedly “moderate” ISIS allies in Syria: “I cannot help asking those who have caused this situation: Do you realize now what you have done? … I am afraid the question will hang in the air, because policies based on self-confidence and belief in one’s exceptionality and impunity have never been abandoned.”[27]
The blowback
America’s unilateralist geopolitics are tearing up the world’s economic linkages that were put in place in the heady days after World War II, when Europe and other countries were so disillusioned that they believed the United States was acting out of idealism rather than national self-interest. Today the question is how long Western Europe will be willing to forego its trade and investment interests by accepting U.S.-sponsored sanctions against Russia, Iran and other economies. Germany, Italy and France already are feeling the strains.
The oil and pipeline war designed to bypass Russian energy exports is flooding Europe with refugees, as well as spreading terrorism. Although the leading issue in America’s Republican presidential debate on December 15, 2015, was safety from Islamic jihadists no candidate thought to explain the source of this terrorism in America’s alliance with Wahabist Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and hence with Al Qaeda and ISIS/Daish as a means of destabilizing secular regimes in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and earlier in Afghanistan. Going back to the original sin of CIA hubris – overthrowing the secular Iranian Prime Minister leader Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953 – U.S. foreign policy has been based on the assumption that secular regimes tend to be nationalist and resist privatization and neoliberal austerity.
Based on this assumption, U.S. Cold Warriors have aligned themselves against democratic regimes seeking to promote their own prosperity and resist neoliberalism in favor of maintaining their own traditional mixed public/private economies. That is the back-story of the U.S. fight to control the rest of the world. Tearing apart the IMF’s rules is only the most recent chapter. Arena by arena, the core values of what used to be American and European social democratic ideology are being uprooted by the tactics being used to hurt Russia, China and their prospective Eurasian allies.
The Enlightenment’s ideals of secular democracy and the rule of international law applied equally to all nations, classical free market theory (of markets free from unearned income and rent extraction by special interests), and public investment in infrastructure to hold down the cost of living and doing business, are all to be sacrificed to a militant U.S. unilateralism. Putting their “indispensible nation” above the rule of law and parity of national interests (the 1648 Westphalia treaty, not to mention the Geneva Convention and Nuremburg laws), U.S. neocons proclaim that America’s destiny is to prevent foreign secular democracy from acting in ways other than submission to U.S. diplomacy, and behind it, the special U.S. financial and corporate interests that control American foreign policy.
This is not how the Enlightenment was supposed to turn out. Industrial capitalism a century ago was expected to evolve into an economy of abundance worldwide. Instead, we have American Pentagon capitalism, financial bubbles deteriorating into a polarized rentier economy, and a resurgence of old-fashioned imperialism. If and when a break comes, it will not be marginal but a seismic geopolitical shift.
The Dollar Bloc’s Financial Curtain
By treating Ukraine’s repudiation of its official debt to Russia’s National Wealth Fund as the new norm, the IMF has blessed its default. President Putin and foreign minister Lavrov have said that they will sue in British courts. The open question is whether any court exisst in the West not under the thumb of U.S. veto?
America’s New Cold War maneuvering has shown that the two Bretton Woods institutions are unreformable. It is easier to create new institutions such as the AIIB an Shanghai Cooperation Organization than to retrofit the IMF and World Bank, NATO and behind it, the dollar standard, all burdened with the legacy of their vested interests.
U.S. geostrategists evidently thought that excluding Russia, China and other Eurasian countries from the U.S.-based financial and trade system would isolate them in a similar economic box to Cuba, Iran and other sanctioned adversaries. The idea was to force countries to choose between being impoverished by such exclusion, or acquiescing in U.S. neoliberal drives to financialize their economies under U.S. control.
What is lacking here is the idea of critical mass. The United States may arm-twist Europe to impose trade and financial sanctions on Russia, and may use the IMF and World Bank to exclude countries not under U.S. hegemony from participating in dollarized global trade and finance. But this diplomatic action is producing an equal and opposite reaction. That is the Newtonian law of geopolitics. It is propelling other countries to survive by avoiding demands to impose austerity on their government budgets and labor, by creating their own international financial organization as an alternative to the IMF, and by juxtaposing their own “aid” lending to that of the U.S.-centered World Bank.
This blowback requires an international court to handle disputes free from the U.S. arm-twisting. The Eurasian Economic Union accordingly has created its own court to adjudicate disputes. This may provide an alternative to Judge Griesa’s New York federal kangaroo court ruling in favor of vulture funds derailing Argentina’s debt settlements and excluding that country from world financial markets.
The more nakedly self-serving U.S. policy is – from backing radical fundamentalist outgrowths of Al Qaeda throughout the Near East to right-wing nationalists in Ukraine and the Baltics – the greater the pressure will grow for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, AIIB and related institutions to break free of the post-1945 Bretton Woods system run by the U.S. State, Defense and Treasury Departments and their NATO superstructure of coercive military bases. As Paul Craig Roberts recently summarized the dynamic, we are back with George Orwell’s 1984 global fracture between Oceanea (the United States, Britain and its northern European NATO allies as the sea and air power) vs. Eurasia as the consolidated land power.
Michael Hudson is author of Killing the Host, Professor of Economics at Peking University and also Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City.
[1] The SCO was created in 2001 in Shanghai by the leaders of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan are scheduled to join, along with Iran, Afghanistan and Belarus as observers, and other east and Central Asian countries as “dialogue partners.”
[2] “Putin Seeks Alliance to Rival TPP,” RT.com (December 04 2015),
https://www.rt.com/business/324747-putin-tpp-bloc-russia/. The Eurasian Economic Union was created in 2014 by Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, soon joined by Kyrgyzstan and Armenia. ASEAN was formed in 1967, originally by Indonesia, Malaysia the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. It subsequently has been expanded. China and the AIIB are reaching out to replace World Bank. The U.S. refused to join the AIIB, opposing it from the outset.
[3] Anton Siluanov, “Russia wants fair rules on sovereign debt,” Financial Times, December 10, 2015.
[4] Richard Koo, “EU refuses to acknowledge mistakes made in Greek bailout,” Nomura, July 14, 2015.
[5] Ian Talley, “IMF Tweaks Lending Rules in Boost for Ukraine,” Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2015.
[6] Anders Aslund, “The IMF Outfoxes Putin: Policy Change Means Ukraine Can Receive More Loans,” Atlantic Council, December 8, 2015. On Johnson’s Russia List, December 9, 2015, #13. Aslund was a major defender of neoliberal shock treatment and austerity in Russia, and has held up Latvian austerity as a success story rather than a disaster.
[7] Ian Talley, op. cit.
[8] Anders Åslund, “Ukraine Must Not Pay Russia Back,” Atlantic Council, November 2, 2015 (from Johnson’s Russia List, November 3, 2015, #50).
[9] Anders Aslund, “The IMF Outfoxes Putin,” op. cit.
[10] Quoted in Tamara Zamyantina, “IMF’s dilemma: to help or not to help Ukraine, if Kiev defaults,” TASS, translated on Johnson’s Russia List, December 9, 2015, #9.
[11] I provide a narrative of the Greek disaster in Killing the Host (2015).
[12] Reuters, “IMF rule change keeps Ukraine support; Russia complains,” December 8, 2015. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-crisis-imf-idUSKBN0TR28Q20151208#r8em59ZOcIPIkqaD.97
[13] Anders Aslund, “The IMF Outfoxes Putin,” op. cit.
[14] Anna Gelpern, “Russia’s Bond: It’s Official! (… and Private … and Anything Else It Wants to Be …),” Credit Slips, April 17, 2015. http://www.creditslips.org/creditslips/2015/04/russias-ukraine-bond-its-official-and-private-and-anything-else-it-wants-to-be-.html
[15] Anton Siluanov, “Russia wants fair rules on sovereign debt,” Financial Times, December 10, 2015. He added: “Russia’s financing was not made for commercial gain. Just as America and Britain regularly do, it provided assistance to a country whose policies it supported. The US is now supporting the current Ukrainian government through its USAID guarantee programme.”
[16] John Helmer, “IMF Makes Ukraine War-Fighting Loan, Allows US to Fund Military Operations Against Russia, May Repay Gazprom Bill,” Naked Capitalism, March 16, 2015 (from his site Dances with Bears).
[17] “Ukraine Rebuffs Putin’s Offer to Restructure Russian Debt,” Moscow Times, November 20, 2015, from Johnson’s Russia List, November 20, 2015, #32.
[18] “Lavrov: U.S. admits lack of prospects of restoring Ukrainian solvency,” Interfax, November 7, 2015, translated on Johnson’s Russia List, December 7, 2015, #38.
[19] Quoted by Tamara Zamyantina, “IMF’s dilemma,” op. cit. [fn 8].
[20] Vladimir Putin, “Responses to journalists’ questions following the G20 summit,” Kremlin.ru, November 16, 2015. From Johnson’s Russia List, November 17, 2015, #7.
[21] “Lavrov: U.S. admits lack of prospects of restoring Ukrainian solvency,” November 7, 2015, translated on Johnson’s Russia List, December 7, 2015, #38.
[22] “In Conversation with Dmitry Medvedev: Interview with five television channels,” Government.ru, December 9, 2015, from Johnson’s Russia List, December 10, 2015, #2
[23] Andrew Mayeda, “IMF Says Ukraine Bond Owned by Russia Is Official Sovereign Debt,” Bloomberg, December 17, 2015.
[24] Kenneth Rapoza, “IMF Says Russia Right About Ukraine $3 Billion Loan,” Forbes.com, December 16, 2015. The article added: “the Russian government confirmed to Euroclear, at the request of the Ukrainian authorities at the time, that the Eurobond was fully owned by the Russian government.”
[25] Andrew E. Kramer, “ Ukraine Halts Repayments on $3.5 Billion It Owes Russia,” The New York Times, December 19, 2015.
[26] Roman Olearchyk, “Ukraine tensions with Russia mount after debt moratorium,” Financial Times, December 19, 2015.
[27] “Violence instead of democracy: Putin slams ‘policies of exceptionalism and impunity’ in UN speech,” www.rt.com, September 29, 2015. From Johnson’s Russia List, September 29, 2015, #2.
This is a bit off this topic but here is a very informative interview with regards to the empires military industrial complex and its motivations for war, etc.
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-12-20/americas-ship-sinking-former-bush-official-exposes-unfixable-corruption-inside-estab
In short then the IMF is an extension of the US war machine.
The US Full Spectrum Dominance Imperial project requires US domination of EVERY country and multi-national institution on the planet, forever, because, heck, they’re just so ‘Exceptional’. The totalitarian drive to control EVERYTHING will be the Real Evil Empire’s undoing, but there is a non-trivial risk that they will destroy humanity either in the process of attempting to crush all resistance, or in a fit of vengeful pique as they fail.
I agree with your observation. I don’t think the Russians and Chinese strategically operate in the same manner as the West. The reality is the Western financial system is busted and will more than likely collapse of its own accord. The US corrupted the intent of the international financial institutions as soon as they were set up after WW2. The real ‘up yours’ moment was disconnecting the Dollar from gold in the early 70’s.
Well, is this another example of how one of those spotless, philanthropic Western institutions for The Betterment Of Everybody Based Upon Justice, Peace, And Freedom suddenly goes rotten just like that? Can’t be. Evil slanders.
Been corrupt for decades…best to hope is the US collapses without taking us all with it.
Excellent Michael!
A real tour de force to summarize the essential dynamics behind the movement of pieces on the Grand Chessboard.
” The IMF Changes Its Rules to Isolate China and Russia”
The IMF trying to isolate China and Russia is like trying to empty the ocean with a spoon.
Prime Minister Putin?
In #Syria under Assad, we had free education & healthcare system for 40 years, something Democrats have been trying to do in US for 300 yrs
In #Libya under Ghaddifi, we had free education & healthcare system for 40 years, something Democrats have been trying to do in US for 300 yrs
In #Iraq under Saddam, we had free education & healthcare system for 40 years, something Democrats have been trying to do in US for 300 yrs
Syria #Latakia Northern #Hama control #map #NabalMurr #Zuwayk #Kernaz #Morek #Maan Dec. 19 …
http://edmaps.com/Syria_Battle_for_Northern_Hama_Latakia_December_19.png
These T90’s really seems to be making a difference even if the 4th armored group only have 10 of them and unlike what people are saying that they are not distinguishable.. They do stand out! No videos of action scenes yet but they were used to capture an al queda strong hold that withstood multiple assaults for the last 2 years. Being the hub of arms distribution, they threw everything to stop the SAA from taking it and cutting off supplies to vast areas to the south.
Syrian army backed by Russian air strikes capture rebel stronghold
You take away all the extras and they do look somewhat like a T72 but you can not mistake one when you see it.
https://twitter.com/IvanSidorenko1/status/678847132858638336
HD pic of T90 tanks and its goodies..
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/T-90A_-_Engineering_Technologies_2012_-01.jpg
photo of an early-model T-90 in Syria http://www.vestnik-rm.ru/news-4-14470.htm
Upgraded T72 also have some protection. But not RPG proof..
upgraded #SAA T-72s w ТШУ-1-7М “Shtora-1” (“Curtain”).
https://twitter.com/lennutrajektoor/status/678848093379497984
SAA advancing towards Deir Hafer also adds pressure on #IS threatening to cut them off from east #Aleppo
Only 7KM from pincer movement and encirclement..
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwebcache.googleusercontent.com%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dcache%3ABV60_UpmW_wJ%3Aanna-news.info%2Fnode%2F45251%2B%26cd%3D2%26hl%3Dpl%26ct%3Dclnk%26gl%3Dde
A Special Relationship: The United States is teaming up w Al Qaeda, again by Andrew Cockburn http://harp.rs/1fz1218
“Arena by arena, the core values of what used to be American and European social democratic ideology are being uprooted by the tactics being used to hurt Russia, China and their prospective Eurasian allies.”
Yes, that’s a fairly accurate assessment. What needs to be clarified somewhat is that the indicated social democratic ideology never has caused Western imperialism any problems; just the opposite. The core values of Western social democracy were very aptly demonstrated recently in Greece. Like: ‘ We want EU, NATO, IMF, but we don’t want any austerity or Third World mass immigration. Our First World way of life is non-negotiable’. And this is something which adds tremendous significance to the quote at the top. What we experience today is neoliberalism’s ever faster descent into rot, decay, and lawless fascist reaction all along the line. In the West, it’s slowly but surely sinking in among the 99% that they can kiss their sweet core values of global imperialist apartheid good-bye. This is something which the populist Right is capitalizing upon immensely.
Nussiminen, in my opinion ‘social democracy’ was always a lie. A way to defang socialist movements and make them subservient to the real rulers of all capitalist states-the oligarchs who own the economy. Once the USSR disappeared, they were ‘surplus to requirements’, so went the way of New Labour under Blair, to become indistinguishable from the parties of the Right, where it matters, in total subservience to Free Market Fundamentalist capitalism, the USA and its masters in Israel and the ludicrous hypocrite cant of ‘Western Moral Values’. Here in Australia we had quite a decent Government under ‘social democrat’ Gough Whitlam, but once the Labour Party voted the anti-Vietnam War leader Jim Cairns as Deputy PM, the US set out to, and did, destroy it, using a long-term intelligence ‘asset’ John Kerr and that perennial Evil, the Murdoch press, to do the dirty work and the propaganda for it.
“Surplus to requirements” — right on the money there, Mulga. And as you also pointed out, the decisive event was the destruction of the USSR. As the West now goes totally fascist, its silly “Left/Right” theatrics will finally be dispensed with for good. Today, Social Democracy has no role of its own to play; not even as ‘the moderate wing of Fascism’.
A tour de force by Hudson, and more evidence of the west’s hubris and internal rot.
All indicators appear to show a planet awakening to the vile policies of the US neo-cons and Russia’s Putin as the new sheriff in town…
Seems to a TU22 bomber fired missiles on a SAA base.. A setup? Who has operational TU22’s except Russia? Maybe why they are stumped.. If Russia did not do it then it was a setup by the US. And doing something like this is criminal… setting up someone else for a murder you committed..
Coalition Air Attack on the Saeqa Army Base including flight path of US planes..
Aircraft of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition almost certainly did deliberately attack the Saeqa military camp near Deir Ezzour the night of December 6, killing four Syrian army soldiers and wounding 13 others.
The Significance of this Area
Saeqa base is (apparently) the northern base shown here in orange, just outside Ayash. The pink-shaded area here is government-held, with the gray ISIS/Daesh-held. Blue = oil fields. Ignore the goof up at the bottom.
Note just this one oil field (el-Mashash, see below) is still government-held. For many miles on all sides and miles on the other side of the nearby Iraq border, is Daesh gray.
http://acloserlookonsyria.shoutwiki.com/wiki/Airstrike_on_Saeqa_military_camp_near_Deir_ez-Zor
See overall situation map, small form – the pink spot right of center. This is the last little island of “regime control” – outer Deir Ezzor, Ayash, and a small swathe of land including two army bases and the one government-held oil field in the whole region. the last slight roadblock speedbump between Mosul and Raqah. This is Syria holding on by its fingers to its last and shrinking island in a sea of Deashbags. Someone with jets stomped on those fingers.
Below is the area in detail.
Who has a potential, logical motive to remove more territory from Syria’s government control and balkanize the place, and has openly lobbied for just that? The US-led coalition side is the one with a strong possible motive to hit this base, obviously. That’s why Russia’s doing it must’ve been a mistake. They have zero motive.
4 US-led coalition jets flew north from the Bukamal area at the Iraq border (after flying from or through Iraq?). Two of them behaved like the US says its acknowledged jets acted – they hit targets about 55 km southeast of Ayash, which is all ISIS turf. (no US details on flight directions yet to compare)
The other two – nationality to be announced, but coalition member state(s) – peeled off a bit to the west and blasted the Saeqa base.
Both sides claim good evidence against the other, but neither has come out with any more of it. My guess is this: the Syrians and Russians finished the munition inspection are are now stumped over how to break the news that it was apparently a Russian-made jet that hit the base. Now they’re left with proposing a “conspiracy theory” that the coalition somehow (Kiev?) acquired a TU-22 or a few of them (probably not a dozen), and used that to implicate Russia.
And that can’t be done on accident, but as part of a deliberate plan to stomp on Syria’s fingers in this delicate location – and blame Russia for it (with Iranian and Iraqi airspace complicity at least built into the story).
But the alternative the coalition offers makes virtually no real-world sense. So, if my hunch is true, Moscow and Damascus should come on out with it. And maybe they will, but they want a well-assembled case first. Will it be more days? Weeks? Months? Decades/forever?
http://libyancivilwar.blogspot.in/2015/12/attack-on-saeqa-airbase.html
Well so which is it? Some say it was the US coalition. Some say it was an accident by Russia? There seems to be no consensus agreement. On the second link (that thinks Russia did it) one of the comments had something interesting on that:
“CL,
Do you follow the air strike reports on airwars? The report for Dec 6-7 has some insight.
http://airwars.org/daily-reports-dec15/
“Near Dayr Ar Zawr, four strikes struck four ISIL oil well-heads.”
Dayr Ar Zawr is an alternative spelling of Deir Ezzor. The use of “Near” has to mean they are referring to the city, not the province, otherwise they would say “in Dayr Ar Zawr.”
Here’s the headline summary for the report that date:
December 6th-7th 2015
Iraq 11 strikes (5,707-5,717)
Syria 9 strikes (3,004-3,012)
Confirmed actions: US, Canada
3 ‘friendly forces’ alleged killed at Al Ayyash, Syria
3 civilians reported killed at Dayr ez Zawr, Syria
The last two lines are in red and were added days after the other part and the description. Canadian jet jocks hit the wrong target? Definitely admission that coalition were flying well N of where they told the press. ”
That seems to say it might be Canadian planes that did the bombing?
The last Syrian oil well is under government control there.. All the others are under IS control.. It could not have been a mistake.. Unless a syrian traitor passed on the coordinates to the Russians.. It could happen.. Over a dozen Iranian IRGC generals have been assassinated of the 100 or so total Iranians killed so far.. Syrian traitors handed Aleppo over to the terrorists.. Helped Turkey move terrorists into idlb as well.. many traitors that the US pays off to do this. As the missiles are programmed.. The Russian bomber crew would have no idea what is at the locations. But the timing and story dont match.. Can Canadian bombers use Ukrainian made missiles which are similar to the Russian missiles? I think we are not hearing anything because of these 2 conditions.. Either a traitor or Ukraine supplied missiles both don’t look kindly on the situation towards Russia..
Canadian pilot conducted #aistrike that killed 9 #Iraqi soldiers near #Fallujah
https://t.co/8oK3nuFDes
Just hours after reported dead, a Syrian female commando unpredictably returns from death
https://twitter.com/zen_adra/status/679030658447106048
These guys supposedly had disarmed and left..
when Russian AirForce hits The militants in #Homs for the first time #RuAF
https://twitter.com/KhaledgAlkhateb/status/678971417480847361
The insane fools who control the IMF will only succeed in bringing their own house down more quickly.
Yes, now countries will start to stiff the IMF itself, if the AIIB becomes a credible alterative source of loans. The IMF can thank itself for “legalizing” the practice of defaulting on loans.
Thank you very much Michael.
This is by far the most profound and focused analysis of the motivations of the hegemon behind these moves and their strategic implications. Worth reading more than once without rushing it.
I fully agree with Michael that the last actions of the IMF with regard the Ukrofreaks lead the way to a tectonic geopolitical shift. The year 2016 promises to be full of memorable events.
Balls of Steel.. Playing chicken with TOW missile..
FSA TOW missile.. v/s Hezbolla shows the finger… Looks like the same Toyota’s they took off the terrorists yesterday.. (Thanks USA state department..)
Most amazing action video I seen… Who ever the driver was he is very well trained and a veteran of many hard battles.. See how cool he is driving towards the guy who fired the missile at the end..
This is NOT a DRILL… 1 Second and you are dead..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBN7molgq1c
Another Hezbollah soldier firing RPG’s multiple times while bullets hits all around him in Khan-Toman towns in Aleppo ..
Just amazing to see these guys with nerves of steel and such discipline under fire . No wonder Israel is afraid of them.
http://www.syriareport.net/ldf-lead-another-successful-operation-in-aleppo/
Video .. https://twitter.com/Hamosh84/status/678585260079251456
NATO confirms 6 foreign soldiers killed in a suicide attack near Bagram airbase, N of Kabul,
https://twitter.com/IraqiSecurity/status/678924861562085376
Hamas traitors questioning why Kuntar was in Syria. A druze Lebanese who did 30 years jail for Palestine
SYRIAN BATTLE MAP #ALEPPO
https://twitter.com/petejohn10/status/678934765966258176
“This video is no longer available because the YouTube account associated with this video has been terminated.”
Wonder why . .
Hmmm interesting.. You need to see the video, the pics dont tell the tale..
The guy was so cool just sitting there in the toyota pickup they took from the terrorists a day earlier while the TOW missile was approaching, if he moves early the tow can be re-targeted so until the last second he just sits there and then less than second before it hits, he drives a few feet and the missile misses him.. then he drives around and looks straight at the guy who fired the missile.. The timing and coolness ,how he moved.. that dont come out in just pics.. Most incredible action scene I seen ever and this is real life not the movies.
It also shows that even when the terrorists say they have not been driven out, why are they firing at their own position otherwise, The missile was fired from the grain silos into the town.. Both of which fell yesterday..
pics only…
Incredible – Watch this badass dodge a Malyutka 9M14 ATGM in Khan Tuman, Aleppo.
https://twitter.com/green_lemonnn/status/678900887704764416
What it comes down to is quite simply that the USG – and its related institutions of finance and military etc – is a criminal enterprise, a cancer on society sucking the resources of its host dry, while killing it.
The Project for the New American Century will NOT last the whole of the 21st; those evil, arrogant neocon morons are accelerating the demise of its host and money making ability.
The IMF is a good example of how American rhetoric about the “rule of law” is pure propaganda.
Whenever the “rules” (in this case, finance) no longer suit them, the Americans simply change the rules!
This IMF case also demonstrates why the Americans were so eager to “regime change” Dominque Strauss-Kahn in favor of their lackey, Christine Lagarde, using the pretext of a sex scandal.
Such is the arrogance and chutzpah of the Anglo Zionist Empire.
It is Jewish Zionist ( this is a subset of Jews not all) Marxism.
Starbucks and Amazon pay next to no tax in American vassals. Who decides?
This is centralised planning. How does the small coffee shop compete?
Who decides the US government? Campaign funds have till now (according to Chomsky who said every leader since Reagan is a marketing invention). This is centralised determination of executive.
There is a monopoly over peoples psychology using political correctness. How can you claim freedom of speech when any one who tries to speak their mind is shouted down or jeered? The allowable discourses are all centrally controlled right down to the comedians who are allowed on the BBC.
There is centralisation of school syllabus via the national curiculum and no child left behind. Centralised planners decide how and what they think.
Drugs have to go through many loops before they can be sold ( creating a barrier to entry) whereas any manufacturer can add from thousands of pretty much unstudied chemicals to food in US. This is again centralised.
The centralisation of money and attempted centralisation of force via gun control does need revisiting.
The centralised ownership of mass media also.
This Khazarian mafia is an absolute nightmare for the host population that it tries to control through unethical technical methods.
The replace of Christianity with centralised dechristianised materialism.
It tried to subvert Russia and China but these countries instinctively know Marxism is not the solution.
After the French Regional elections, Here Comes the State Repression!
I have brought to the attention of our community at “The Saker” of the strong showing of the anti-NATO, and pro-Russia and pro-Syria, Patriotic French “National Front” led by Marine Le Pen. In last week’s election, the National Front, ably led by Marine Le Pen, became the largest political party in France, and gained more votes than either of the 2 other Zionist American puppet political parties, who share state power.
1. During this election, Marine Le Pen was already under government indictment for ‘racism.’
2. Only after the election, were the charges thrown out of court, as being admitted to be “baseless.”
3. Now, after the elections, and with the Zionist French Socialist and Republican Parties reeling from their poor showing (they only avoided electoral defeat by combining their votes in key province elections in order to avoid defeat to the National Front), – comes the triggered. and not unexpected government repression against the National Front leaders.
http://www.france24.com/en/20151221-france-national-front-le-pen-campaign-funds-allegations
I could have written the script myself. In America, the government produces the same frivolous charges in order to defeat opposition political parties and opponents that they wish to weaken for future elections. Importantly, the strong possibility of the National Front, and its leader, Marine Le Pen, winning the National elections in 2017, makes a certainty the Zionist American puppet French Government will spare no effort to sabotage the largest political opposition force in Europe.
Charges are being brought against both Marine Le Pen, and her father, the founder of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
4. It is irrelevant, whether or not one supports the politics of the father, or the daughter, or of Dieudonné. or Alain Soral (and his “Equality and Reconciliation” movement), or even if one opposes them, they are all being criminally repressed by the imperialist French puppet State. The French Republic was wounded after the defeat of the Gaullists, and it will be destroyed by the anti-democratic actions French Zionist puppets.
Most of the State repression is by way of legal and financial charges being made against the feisty French Opposition. The destruction of the French Republic will be the price the French people will pay, for the rigging of the 2017 National election by way of directed state repression against Jean-Marie, and Marine Le Pen, and, Dieudonné, and Alain Soral.
5. Morally, the French Government’s convenient -legal with economic and prison penalties- attacks on their well-known opponents, resembles, internationally, the imperialist sanctions and economic decisions to disrespect debts owed to Russia, method of weakening their opponents.
[in America, we paid the same price (loss of our Republic), for the Coup d’etat in Dallas, and the subsequent state murders of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin L. King, and Malcolm X]. After 1963, all our elections were rigged – in advance of the voting.
* The Key point is:
6. There is some reason the Zionist American Oligarchs – who own and control puppet France, find it necessary to repress the Le Pens and their other opposition. Apparently, they do not trust Marine Le Pen, or her political party to reliably follow their directions for serving their Uni-Polar New World Order.
7. Therefore, the Le Pens, including Marine Le Pen, and all the others, deserve our solidarity.
For the Democratic Republics!
Turk goods transiting Russia to Europe markets possibly re-tagged with fake country of origin tags to prevent interdiction at Russia customs.
European retailers worried about ‘Made in Turkey’ tags amid Russian embargo
European-based apparel retailers such as Zara, H&M and Mango are reportedly seeking ways to remove the “Made in Turkey” tags on their export products in order to sidestep customs restrictions recently imposed by Russia on Turkish goods, the media have said.
Due to its relatively low labor costs, Turkey has been home to the manufacturing and assembly plants of large international industrial groups. However, big foreign retailers are, these days, concerned that their export products with “Made in Turkey” labels will face rejection at Russian customs.
http://www.todayszaman.com/business_european-retailers-worried-about-made-in-turkey-tags-amid-russian-embargo_407561.html
Interesting that the Europeans who are always whining about the law are trying to “break the law” to get their goods into Russia.If there goods are “Made in Turkey” ,then they are made in Turkey. Faking tags is a criminal offense. A few of their plant managers seized and brought to Russia on fraud charges should solve that problem. The more I hear about “European values” these days the more I begin to despise the EU.
Excellent article by Hudson as always.
What Hudson often fails to mention is that that money has a true nature: money is law. He alludes to it, but doesn’t come out and say it. This lack of diagnosis means that Russia and China, by exactly copying Western System, may eventually fall prey, as has the west.
In other words, Financial Capitalism in West won over industrial capitalism: Creditors won over debtors, as can be seen by ratio of Debt Instruments to their related “credit as money” formation.
(Not all debt instruments are used to hypothecate new credit, some are just claims on existing credit; I consider this yet another aspect of usury.)
Debts have grown to many multiples of actual Credit; the two twins of debt/credit are unable to be mirrors and hence cannot cancel out evenly.
Here is statement by Hudson that shows the Law nature of money:
“Any inquisition needs a court system and enforcement vehicles. So does resistance to such a system. That is what today’s global financial, legal and trade maneuvering is all about. And that is why today’s world system is in the process of breaking apart. Differences in economic philosophy call for different institutions.”
Legal tender pays for debts “public and private.” When IMF changes the law, they are in breach of contract.
Hudson also says:
“Russia also is seeking to build pipelines to Europe through friendly secular countries instead of Sunni jihadist U.S.-backed countries locked into America’s increasingly confrontational orbit.”
This action by Russia threatens the Petrdollar standard, thus making dollars less desirable. Today’s dollars are hypothecated into existence at private banks, usually by putting something fungible on double entry ledger e.g. homes, land, and also OIL.
In other words, today’s dollars are “Credit” and all credit has a debt instrument that recalls it in its accounting period. When it is recalled, said credit vanishes from existence. What came from nothing returns to nothing.
Hudson:
“After U.S. officials threatened to derange Russia’s banking linkages by cutting it off from the SWIFT interbank clearing system, China accelerated its creation of the alternative China International Payments System (CIPS), and its own credit card system to protect Eurasian economies from the threats made by U.S. unilateralists.”
Credit as money is bank money, and hence it originates on a banker ledger. Ledgers must balance, and to find this balance are complex channels, such as reserve loops, exchange rate mechanisms, and clearing systems. A debt instrument/ credit money system must have channels of flow to allow credit to swim home to its debt instrument.
U.S. Neocons are Zionists. Hudson may not be able to say it, but I can. Private credit money schemes can be traced by to 700 unlicensed Sephardim, who moved to Amsterdam after Vasco de Gama’s Southern route broke the East/West Gold/Silver caravan exchange rate gambit. Metal money and spices started moving by Portuguese ships instead of by overland donkey caravans. Sephardic and later Ashkenazi’s followed their usurious money trade to Amsterdam, where the Portuguese unloaded their ships. There, stock market Capital and Credit schemes came to fruition, mostly invented by 700 unlicensed Sephardim.
If countries want to trade with each other, they should use a legal accounting scheme, such as a bancor. Post Bretton Wood up until 1971, the international trade system used Gold to settle imbalance. That system worked reasonably well and was a period of prosperity.
This idea of China and Russia holding each other’s debt instruments to then populate money supplies with their credit is unnecessary.
A true sovereign system has its money flux in relation to goods and services – not some abstraction like debt instruments. In other words, the debt system that Russia and China are creating is not scientific and may (unless changed) lead to bad outputs.
I didn’t know where to put this, but it is important to keep up on the propaganda and who is doing it and the low deceitful tactics they use.
German TV Pays Actors to say they were “Russian Soldiers” in Ukraine
http://macedoniaonline.eu/content/view/28601/53/