Category Archives: Russia

Roubini’s Odd Reasoning

Debt, Economy, EU, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Media, Political Economy, Russia

“The cable commentariat is a cog in the sprawling American comitatus. They all feed off Rome.” In this context, it’s hard not to notice just how hard the commentariat is working to create the illusion that America’s economic situation is better than Europe’s, and is the fault of Europe.

Not if you ask Vladimir Putin, who seems to have a reasonable grasp of matters monetary. In July of 2011, “Putin raged over the second plague of quantitative easing, QE2, unleashed by the Federal Reserve Bank, lambasting the Unites States for acting ‘as if they were ‘hooligans’ because they ‘flood’ the entire world with dollars … They start the money printing presses and throw dollars throughout the world in order to solve their immediate responsibilities. They say monopolies are bad but only if they are foreign – their monopolies are perfect. So they use their monopoly to print money until the whole world is flooded.’

This once-avowed communist congratulated his fellow Russians for not being like the Americans: ‘Good for us that we do not print reserve money.'”

In “One Nation Under Inflation,” I observed that “America’s debt-to-GDP ratio is larger than the European Union’s.”

I was wrong.

The US debt “is greater than the combined debt of the entire Eurozone and the U.K.”

At 15.6 trillion dollars of government debt, everyone should know by now that, from the fact that the US keeps loaning billions for bailouts to Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund—it doesn’t follow that we are richer. Or that we have this money. We aren’t and we don’t.

Alas, according to the “logic” of Keynesian macroeconomics, solvency is not a precondition for prosperity.

Adding to the confusion is economist Nouriel Roubini. When asked by RT whether he thought “the US has the risk of seeing the same situation as in the Eurozone, Roubini said something curious:

For now I don’t think there will be a fiscal crisis in the US. Their deficit and debt are large and rising in part because the US can print money to finance its deficit, something the Europeans and their banks are unwilling to do, in part because the US dollar is still a reserve currency, so the foreign demand of China and the rest of emerging markets is financing the large US fiscal and current account deficits. Now, no country should be complacent. Over time, if the US were not to deal with their fiscal problems, if it’s not going to deal with its still low competitiveness, eventually we could see a fiscal train wreck, a sudden stop of capital. And then financial turmoil could happen in the US. Whatever is the result of the election next year, whoever is going to be a president, starting a plan to build a fiscal discipline, a fiscal consolidation, is part of what the US has to do in order to avoid the risk of something bad happening. This can happen later in the US than in other countries, but it can happen eventually.

Is he suggesting that US counterfeiting operations and reserve-currency status are magic amulets against economic realities?

Surely running the printing presses and gulling other governments to buy our worthless bonds serves only to mask the inevitable reality?

Gladiators in the Emperor’s Colosseum: Memorial Weekend Message

Homeland Security, Middle East, Military, Neoconservatism, Propaganda, Russia, The State, War

It is customary, on Memorial Day weekend, to thank uniformed men for their sacrifice. I thank the likes of Sheriffs Paul Babeu (Pinal County, Arizona), and Joe Arpaio (Maricopa County, Arizona) of this nation, who stand on this country’s soil and defend their countrymen from the detritus of mankind.

My sympathies go out to Americans who fight phantoms in far-flung destinations. I’m sorry they’ve been snookered into living, dying and killing for a lie. But it’s inappropriate for me to honor that lie, or those who give their lives for it, and take the lives of others in America’s many recreational wars. I mourn for them, as I have from day one, but I can’t honor them.

I am sorry for those who’ve enlisted thinking they’d fight for their countrymen and were subjected to one backdoor draft after another in the cause of illegal, unjust wars. My heart hurts for you, but I won’t worship at Moloch’s feet just to lessen that sense of loss and disillusionment.

I honor those sad, sad draftees to Vietnam and to WW II. The first valiant batch had no option; the same goes for the last, which fought a just war. I grew up in Israel, so I honor those men who stopped Arab armies from overrunning our homes. In 1973, we came especially close to annihilation.

“What I learned growing up in a war-torn region is that a brave nation fights because it must; a cowardly one fights because it can.”

It is appropriate on this Memorial Day, to watch a documentary RT put together: “Fallujah, a Lost Generation?”

In 2004, Fallujah in Iraq became the theater of a major showdown between the American soldiers and the Iraqi insurgents. But even though the sounds of this harsh battle have died down a long time ago the consequences are only showing now. And they are of the toxic kind. Babies are born with malformations, kids are affected with leukemia and cancer has multiplied tenfold. The situation reminds the one of 1945 post atomic Hiroshima.
Meanwhile, in the USA, the marines who took part in the battle are developing strange diseases.
What really happened in Fallujah?
Which weapons were used? White phosphorus? Depleted uranium?
Has a generation of Iraqis been sacrificed?

America’s military men are penned like gladiators—condemned criminals, slaves and wild animals—in the Colosseum, destined to murder or die for the benefit of the craven Emperor and his comitatus.

Keeping Them Dishonest

Foreign Policy, Middle East, Neoconservatism, Russia, Terrorism

Anderson Cooper is reporting from the Syria-Turkish border (or maybe the bathhouse). Cooper has allowed a brief segment in which The Rebels (our side, of course) are arresting and coercing other Syrians to join their cause, at the point of a gun.

As usual, “Keeping them Honest Cooper” (that’s his slogan) is soliciting the bellicose advice of the Arab neoconservatives. The local chalabies, if you will. (Chalaby was the Iraqi who agitated on American tv for American intervention in Iraq, and fed the New York Times’ birdbrain Judith Miller, now perching at FoxNews, with the “intelligence” she presented to the public.)

Fouad A. Ajami, if I recall, once even called for a Marshal Plan for the Arab countries. Some of the Arab neoconservatives were once close to Bush, and keep reinventing themselves as perfectly legitimate (because not Jewish) agitators for US intervention in the Middle east.

In any case, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters on Monday something that “Keeping them Dishonest Cooper” failed to: “weapons continue to flow to [Syria’s] militant opposition.”

Car bombs were not the norm in Syria; now they are. “At least 55 people have been killed and 372 others injured by two powerful blasts in the Syrian capital on Thursday morning,” reports RT.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov does not rule out the possibility of outside forces being involved in masterminding the Damascus attacks. [Qatar and Saudi Arabia, for sure, and, in all likelihood, the US] “At least some of our partners are doing some practical things aimed at exploding the situation [in Syria] both in a direct and indirect sense of the word. I mean the explosions you have mentioned,” Lavrov commented on the blasts during a press conference in Beijing.
Qatar and Saudi Arabia have admitted that they support Syrian opposition financially. It is believed that Turkey is turning a blind eye on armed groups using Syrian refugee camps on Turkish territory near the border to rest and regroup before moving into Syria.

Just where Anderson is.

Assange Makes Lamestream Run for Cover

libertarianism, Media, Neoconservatism, Political Philosophy, Propaganda, Russia, Socialism, The State

It is no contest: RT leads the way with gritty broadcasting. RT does what a broadcaster should do; challenge the powers that be and probe every aspect of the story. Yes, the angle pursued is more often left-libertarian than paleo, but RT is also less statist than American mainstream media. (And they happen to feature my own paleolibertarian column, which takes courage too.)

As the talented Gayane Chichakyan has noted, Julian Assange’s new RT program is making the American mainstream nuttier than normal. Chichakyan has editorialized about mainstream’s protest against letting Assange loose on air—Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, Glenn Beck, Ed Schultz (who recommended death to Assange); all were apoplectic. (On The Other Channels, we’re accustomed to the wilderness of women reporters—Don Lemon, Anderson Cooper, Erin Burnett, Tamron Toots Hall, etc.)

Gayane hinted that the malfunctioning media’s objection to more of a variety in opinion seems to have at its goal the further closing of the already atherosclerotic American mind.

In any event, Assange is sure shaking things up, starting with an interview with Hezbollah leader Sayyid Nasrallah.

Next Assange refereed repartee between David Horowitz, whom he described as “a radical right-wing Zionist,” and “Slavoj Zizek, a Slovenian sociologist, philosopher and former anti-communist dissident, who turned communist.” (Yes, “Saying ‘I’m a Socialist’ = Saying ‘I’m a Massive idiot.'”)

I was disappointed that Mr. Horowitz was described as of the “radical right wing.” He himself would cop to neoconservatism.