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Three Other Writers With Thoughts On Ukraine
Today I will point to three other writers with current thoughts around the war in Ukraine.
Yelensis of Awful Avalanche has fun with the current news from Kiev:
Ukraine War Day #145: Zelensky Surrounded By Traitors And Spies
The big news coming out of the Ukraine this past weekend: Zelensky has fired his Prosecutor-General Irina Venediktova, and also the head of the SBU (Security Agency, successor to Soviet KGB), a man named Ivan Bakanov. Both of whom used to be tight members of Zelensky’s inner circle, especially the latter.
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I love the way Zel just casually tossed that out, about Ukie security forces routinely chatting with Russian military intelligence. Russophile blogosphere having a field day, natch! Maria Zakharova trolled Zelensky on Twitter, calling these dismissals “effective de-Nazification” on Zelensky’s part. Other bloggers have compared Zelensky to Stalin, in his paranoia starting to turn against his inner circle. However, to me it doesn’t even seem like paranoia, I think these Ukrainian agencies probably are riddled with Russian spies. Ukrainian government officials are so corrupt, they would do literally anything for money.
With some 35,000 people on staff the SBU is as big as the FBI but controls a 90% smaller population. Next to internal security it is also tasked with fighting economic crimes. It is brutal, utterly corrupt and filled with Russian spies and has been so since the Ukraine became on independent nation. The only correct but dangerous move would be to dissolve it.
With Zel’s inner circle falling apart the clock for his own demise is only ticking faster.
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Yves Smith is not impressed with the Ukraine’s ‘success’ in the war.
Russia’s Campaign in Ukraine: Nearing an Inflection Point?
She reviews the current situation and suggest how the war will continue:
Speculation among Western sources that read Russian or have good Russian contacts (see the Larry Johnson-Andrei Martyanov-Alexander Mercouris roundtable, hosted by Gonzalo Lira, as an example) is that Russia will pause after it has secured Donbass and will deliver its conditions for a peace to Ukraine. These are certain to be unacceptable since the bare minimum ask will be conceding the loss of Donbass and Crimea (and let us not forget neutrality and denazification too). The West of course will flatly reject it. That’s fine by Russia since it would not trust any deal with Ukraine or the West as far as it could throw it.
The point of this offer at the point of securing the first objective of the Special Military Operation is to play to China, India, the global South, and secondarily to the more cautious and war-averse members of the Russian citizenry, that Russia going beyond the narrowest implementation of the SMO was not due to Russia wanting to take more territory, but being forced to do so to achieve its additional goals of demilitarization and denazificaition. If Ukraine and its allies won’t do so voluntarily, Russia will by force.
It was actually the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić, who has good relations with Russia and was surely told to transmit this message, who said that Russia will make a peace offer and that the west will likely reject it:
“I know what awaits us. As soon as Vladimir Putin finishes business in Sieversk, Bakhmut and Soledar, and then on the second line Sloviansk – Kramatorsk – Avdeevka, his proposal will follow. If they don’t accept it, and they don’t intend to, we will go to hell,” Russian news service Izvestia quotes the Serbian leader as saying on July 14.
So Russia will continue. Yves Smith concludes:
My belief is still that Russia will give priority to taking Odessa unless there are logistical considerations that argue against that. The Ukraine military is so close to collapse that Russian forces going to Odessa sooner rather than later is a real possibility. It’s the psychologically most important target for the Russian people, and economically more valuable than Kiev. The West would recognize that Russia getting control of what was Ukraine’s entire Black Sea coast as an enormous loss.
I suspect what Russia decides to do with or about Ukraine to the west of the Dnieper is event dependent. However, the West has decided to tie itself even more tightly to the Ukraine albatross. I had said to Lambert that it was not impossible for Russia to have decisively won (as in taken Odessa) by sometime in October, but even with the Western forces clearly unable to rout Russia, that Europe and the US would keep its citizens cold and hungry this winter just to spite Russia.
West of the Dnieper lies Kryvyi_Rih the mineral wealth of which was developed under Russian and then Soviet control. It has always had a symbiotic relationships with the heavy industry in the Donbas region. It is probably even more valuable than Odessa.
Except for the last 30 some years Kryvyi Rih had been under Russian control since 1775. It is about 100 kilometer north-east of Nikolayev and only 40 kilometer from the current frontline. This map may reflect the Russian thinking of a future borderline in southern Ukraine.
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The last point Smith makes is important. Yes, the ‘west’ is likely to continue its suicidal sanctions even when Russia stops the war and offers peace. It is U.S. pressure on the Europeans that will keep the sanctions going.
On February 7, before the war started, Michael Hudson pointed out that the real target of the U.S. instigation of a war in Ukraine is Germany:
The threat to U.S. dominance is that China, Russia and Mackinder’s Eurasian World Island heartland are offering better trade and investment opportunities than are available from the United States with its increasingly desperate demand for sacrifices from its NATO and other allies.
The most glaring example is the U.S. drive to block Germany from authorizing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to obtain Russian gas for the coming cold weather. Angela Merkel agreed with Donald Trump to spend $1 billion building a new LNG port to become more dependent on highly priced U.S. LNG. (The plan was cancelled after the U.S. and German elections changed both leaders.) But Germany has no other way of heating many of its houses and office buildings (or supplying its fertilizer companies) than with Russian gas.
The only way left for U.S. diplomats to block European purchases is to goad Russia into a military response and then claim that avenging this response outweighs any purely national economic interest. As hawkish Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, explained in a State Department press briefing on January 27: “If Russia invades Ukraine one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” The problem is to create a suitably offensive incident and depict Russia as the aggressor.
The current German government is more or less under U.S. control. I will need to be changed before the sanction nonsense can stop. A ‘winter of discontent’ (see below) will probably do that.
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At Larry Johnson’s site Helmholtz Smith looks at the sanction disaster the ‘west’ has caused for itself and explains why Russia has no inventive to change its current way:
OPERATION Z – DON’T INTERRUPT
One of Napoleon’s observations is that you should never interrupt your enemies when they are making a mistake. Russians know this, not least because they were careful not to interrupt Napoleon himself in 1812. Putin and his team have had plenty of opportunities to meet NATO’s leaders, observe them, negotiate with them and assess them. It’s unlikely they’re very impressed. But when they started their “special military operation” in Ukraine they could never have dreamed how self-destructive NATO would be.
What mistakes? First, the West has not shot itself in the foot with its economic sanctions – Hungary’s Viktor Orban is right when he observes that it has put a slug into its lungs. One can still limp along with a broken foot, but a shot to the lungs is pretty serious. Second, who in Moscow could have imagined that NATO would shovel its ammunition and weapons stockpiles into the Ukrainian black hole in the expectation that if they can get the latest wonderwaffe to General Steiner they’ll be in Moscow by Christmas.
A good reason for Moscow to take it slowly – let the mistakes develop, compound and metastasize. It’s happening by itself. Naturally, inevitably, logically. No outside effort required. An unexpected bonus.
Don’t interrupt.
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Even The Economist has noticed – Europe’s winter of discontent. (Still thinks that it’s Putin that put the double-tap into the lung though. But it is The Economist which has done its bit to bring us to this point.)
Why would Moscow want this to end any time soon? Time is working and the enemy is making lots of mistakes.
Don’t interrupt.
Rough draft on a Ukraine article I was cobbleing together.
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Wanna know how bad things are in Ukraine?
Just a few pertinent activities in Ukraine:
Hunter Biden owns a company, a biological company that hires scientists to bring to Ukraine a dozen of the most deadly pathogens the US Government has in its inventory. These bio weapons laboratories collect ethnicly “Russian” blood samples by paying the local poor folks for it. Hunter Biden has his scientists trying to concoct a deadly pathogen that expressly targets ethnicly Russian DNA.
As a side gig, he is giving worms to migratory birds so the birds shit the eggs onto Russian grain crops as they migrate, the eggs turning to worms that destroy the crop.
And their doing a lot of other things, like ones involving “cord blood” and whatnot that maybe kinda nasty and I don’t wanna talk about.
The US Government is working with Hunter Bidens bio weapons companies, and this has been confirmed by the White House Press Secretary, probably because the documented evidence of this is irrefutable.
Hunter Biden himself has no interest in any of this, he’s just a regular guy who wants to sow his oats with the help of plenty of Columbian Marching Powder. Hunter has them bio labs because some one told him to, and helps him. Who is doing that is unlikely to be the real top dog in the big picture.
Them bio labs, there are 46 of them. Local deaths have been attributed to some of them.
And then there is Zelenski announcing that if NATO will not send troops Ukraine will build a bomb. Ukraine built bombs for the Soviets, has the fissionable material and could build a bomb in weeks not months or years, until that Russian Army lunge towards Kiev took the bomb fuel away.
And then theirs the US Nuke missiles that were to be placed in Ukraine that give a “first strike” ability that reduces the Russian retaliatory strike decision making time to about 5 seconds.
It is for more than “democracy” the already financially stressed Western Europe and US governments are throwing money and weapons at Ukraine like it’s going out of style.
And as for them Rooskies
Putin is duty bound to have this war, he tried to avoid it, delay it as long as possible, when any rational National leader would have done something a long time ago. The Russians are doing so badly in Ukraine because Putin sat on his hands for too long.
But never the less, Russia is Russia and half of Ukraine is Russia, and there is no chance that Russia loses in the Russian half of Ukraine. The only question is, how many Ukrainians and Russians have to suffer.
What’s the bottom line for Russia and NATO
Russia:
After Soviet days, Russia had no money for its military. Then Russia adopted Western styled defense industry that was rather small. But today Russia has nationalized all the weapons manufacturing, and Russia has huge money reserves to pour into it. Laws passed, the missile and bullet builders are required by law to work 3 shifts 24/7 and now those arms productions are intended to outstrip Western arms production 100 to 1. And these are the new stuff like drones and electronic warfare systems for a type of war never fought before. But the bottom line for Russia is, this doesn’t cost anything, because it’s paid for by the higher energy revenue. The Russian currency is the best preforming currency this year. Heck, even the Saudis are paying Russia and importing 100,000 + barrels of Russian crude a day, something that seems totally ludicrous, but it’s true.
NATO:
NATO nations would like to get Russian resources and the money paid for them sit in an account, denominatedin USD, preferably in their friends name, forever, and never benefit the locals. Breaking Russia up into smaller sections, and even having the sections fight amongst themselves is optimal.
Every NATO nation is bankrupt, in debt, and the interest on their debt is compounding exponentially. Printing more money is the only logical thing to do, as opposed to reducing expenses. If NATO Nations want Western Polish Ukraine to win over Russia in Eastern Russian Ukraine, their gonna need a bigger force, and that ain’t cheep. I don’t think those governments can print enough money to both sustain their current overspending, and match the 100 to 1 ratio the Rooskies are aiming at, to anything like parody. And while 80% of the world pays no attention to the sanctions NATO nations have on Russia, the NATO nations, because of their sanctions they squirm so to themselves get around, now must pay a 50% premium on all the sweet Rooskie resources. India is making a killing importing Rooskie crude, refining to fuel and selling to US at a 50% mark up, but them Rooskies still sold their oil at about what it would be without any sanctions. Remember that 80% of the world that pays no mind to the sanctions? They have ramped up efforts to use things other than the US Dollar to do trade amongst themselves. Back in the 1990’s 80% of all international trade was with US Dollars as half of those transactions. Today the Dollar is down to 56% and falling fast. The more Dollars they don’t use, the more find their way back to the US and cause more inflation. Might I mention to those non US folks still holding Dollars, last one out is a rotten egg.
NATO/Dollar/Euro nations want to get Russian resources under their control to be sold for Dollars/Euros only and soke up all that inflation. The way things are supposed to work is, the US Government writes “bond” on a paper, sells it to the folks who own the Federal Reserve Banks for dollars in an account, uses account to buy titanium from Russia, Russia holds the dollars in an account as “foreign reserves” and that account accumulates but doesn’t get spent. The US can make a jet fighter with the titanium, and has real stuff, the Russian get nothing but digits in an unspendable account. Russia had 600 Billion, but sold some off down to 300 Billion that is now “frozen” just like a dozen other nations who now have unspendable “frozen” foreign reserves. And you can be sure the 3 Trillian in foreign reserves held by Japan and China will not be allowed to be spent in do time. Every Dollar held as a countries “reserves” is a dollars worth of real world stuff handed over, the Dollar paid for it put into an account, never to get spent. When you add all the “reserves”, and think about all the real world stuff they were traded for, that’s a lot of stuff handed over! And, if the West doesn’t inflate their arse off, before those that can, who traded their stuff for Dollars, decide to trade their Dollars back into stuff again. Do you know how much “foreign reserves” the US has? About negative 10 Trillian.
Posted by: Carl | Jul 18 2022 17:02 utc | 6
Summary of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation on the progress of a special military operation on the territory of Ukraine (18072022)
High-precision air-launched missiles in the village of Konstantinovka of the Donetsk People’s Republic hit the temporary deployment point of mercenaries of the so-called Ukrainian “foreign legion”. Up to 250 foreign fighters, seven armored vehicles, as well as 12 special vehicles were destroyed.
As a result of a strike with high-precision long-range air-based weapons at the temporary deployment point of the battalion of the 118th Brigade of the Territorial Defense of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the village of Vitovo, Cherkasy region, up to 60 nationalists, two multiple rocket launcher combat vehicles and four artillery pieces were destroyed.
In the area of the Udachnoye railway station of the Donetsk People’s Republic, more than 10 Ukrainian installations of multiple rocket launchers “Grad”, as well as eight units of armored vehicles, were destroyed by a strike at the place of unloading echelons with military equipment.
Also, in the area of the settlement of New Donbass of the Donetsk People’s Republic, as a result of a rocket artillery strike on the AFU field airfield, two Ukrainian Mi-8 helicopters located there were destroyed and two more helicopters received significant damage.
As part of the counter-battery struggle, two batteries of multiple launch rocket systems “Hurricane” in the Predtechino area, three platoons of MLRS “Grad”, 14 artillery platoons of howitzers “Hyacinth-B” and D-30 guns in the areas of the settlements of Seversk, Verkhnekamenskoye, Serebryanka, Dronovka and Zvanovka of the Donetsk People’s Republic were hit.
Operational-tactical and army aviation, rocket troops and artillery hit 14 control points during the day, including the 28th mechanized Brigade in the area of Nikolaev, the 60th Infantry Brigade in the area of Novoaleksandrovka, Zaporozhye region and the 15th battalion of the 58th Motorized Infantry Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the village of Pokrovskoye, Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as manpower and military equipment of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 286 districts.
Destroyed: a Buk-M1 self-propelled firing installation in the Kramatorsk area of the Donetsk People’s Republic, three warehouses with rocket and artillery weapons and a fuel depot in the Novoaleksandrovka area of the Zaporozhye region.
Six Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down by Russian air defense means during the day in the areas of the settlements of Peschanoe, Chervonyi Oskol, Liptsy, Kharkiv region, Korsun, Donetsk People’s Republic and Novokamenka, Kherson region. Two shells of the Hurricane multiple launch rocket system were also intercepted in the area of the settlement of Stakhanov of the Luhansk People’s Republic.
In total, since the beginning of the special military operation, 257 aircraft, 142 helicopters, 1564 unmanned aerial vehicles, 356 anti-aircraft missile systems, 4099 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 759 multiple rocket launchers, 3157 field artillery and mortars, as well as 4392 units of special military vehicles have been destroyed.
Posted by: Summary18072022 | Jul 18 2022 18:22 utc | 32
A fourth writer ought to be added to the mix. Alastair Crooke’s latest at SCF is now out, “Reading the Runes of War”, which wasn’t foreshadowed by his Al-Mayadeen column as I thought it might.
Many barflies anticipated what Crooke writes in his opening:
Of course, the conflict, to all intents, is settled – though is far from over. It is clear that Russia will prevail in the military war – and the political war too – by which is meant that whatever emerges in Ukraine after the military action is complete will be dictated by Moscow on its terms.
Plainly, on the one hand, the regime in Kiev would collapse were it to have terms dictated to it by Moscow. And, on the other hand, the entire western agenda behind the Maidan coup d’état in 2014 would implode, too. (This is why an off-ramp, short of a Ukrainian rout, is next to impossible.)
This moment thus marks a crucial point of inflection. One American choice might be to end the conflict – and there are many voices calling for a deal, or a ceasefire, with the understandably humane intent of ending the pointless slaughter of Ukrainian young men sent to ‘the front’ to defend indefensible positions, only to be cynically killed for no military gain, merely to keep the war going.
Though rational, the argument for an off-ramp misses the bigger geopolitical point: The West is so heavily invested in its fantastical narrative of imminent Russian collapse and humiliation that it finds itself ‘stuck fast’. It cannot move forward for fear that NATO might not be up to the task of confronting Russian forces (Putin has made the point that Russia had not even begun to use its full force). And yet, to cut a deal, to move back, would be to lose face.
And ‘losing face’ roughly translates to the liberal west losing.
The West thus has made itself hostage to its unrestrained triumphalism, posing as info-war. It chose this unrestrained jingoism. Biden advisers however, reading the runes of the war – of relentless Russian gains – have begun to scent another foreign policy débacle fast heading their way.
They see events, far from reaffirming the ‘rules-based Order’, rather the stark laying bare before the world of the limits to U.S. power – giving front of stage to not just a resurgent Russia, but one carrying a revolutionary message for the rest of the world (albeit a fact to which the West has yet to awaken). [My Emphasis]
And it’s the coming debacle that becomes the essay’s focus. And a big part of Crooke’s examination of that debacle rests of Dr. Hudson’s historical political-economy research and analysis of the current situation, which we’ve been discussing here for months/years. After a long paraphrasal of Dr. Hudson’s thesis, Crooke concludes:
“Here is the point: Adam Smith economics plus individualism is ingrained in the western zeitgeist. It will not change. However, President Putin’s new policy of cleansing the Augean Stables of ‘predatory western capital’ and the example set by Russia of its metamophose toward a largely self-supporting economy, immune to dollar hegemony, is music to the ears of the Global South and to much of the Rest of the World.
“Taken together with Russia and China’s lead in challenging the West’s ‘right’ to set rules; to monopolise the means (the dollar) as the basis for settling inter-state trade; and with BRICS and SCO steadily acquiring ‘bottom’, Putin’s speeches reveal their revolutionary agenda.” [My Emphasis]
Thank you Mr. Crooke for seconding what I’ve been commenting about for the last several years.
Yet there remains a big problem: How to keep the current conflict from going beyond Ukraine, which has also been an ongoing topic at our bar. Crooke anticipates that issue as he closes his essay:
One aspect remains: How to bring about a ‘revolutionary’ metamorphosis, without incurring war with the West. The U.S. and Europe are stuck. They are unable to renew themselves, as the structural political and economic contradictions have locked their paradigm solid. How then to ‘unstick’ the situation, short of war?
The key, paradoxically, may lie with Russia and China’s deep understanding of the flaws to the western economic model. The West is in need of Catharsis to ‘unstick itself’. Catharsis can be defined as the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed, emotions attached to beliefs.
To avoid military catharsis, it seems that the Russian and Chinese leadership – understanding the flaws to the western economic model – must then visit the West with an economic catharsis.
For those who can’t get SCF, I’ve provided the most important parts of Crooke’s essay, although it will hopefully be mirrored somewhere.
Posted by: karlof1 | Jul 18 2022 18:32 utc | 34
Borell’s idea from a month ago.
Posted by: rk | Jul 18 2022 19:19 utc | 55
The end of unanmnity in de European Council? Oh, right. (the several consituencies of the Council of the European already adopted simple majority in most instance.)
yeah, I spotted that brilliant PR launch 4 May 2022
Draghi calls for EU treaties change amid ‘ideal’ and ‘pragmatic’ federalism
Speaking before European lawmakers in Strasbourg on Tuesday (3 May), Draghi said that both the COVID pandemic and the war in Ukraine forced EU institutions to take on UNPRECEDENTED levels of responsibility.
[…]
For this reason, he called for a change in the EU treaties for an effective [“]decision-making mechanism[“] to get over the principle of unanimity, “which leads to a logic of intergovernmental decision,” and move towards decisions taken based on a qualified majority.
The [“]integration process[“] would benefit from this new mechanism, according to Draghi. “To fully integrate countries that have [“]European aspirations[“] is not a threat to the European project. This is part of its implementation,” he said.
Italy’s prime minister said the country is in favour of “opening up of accession negotiations with Albania and the Republic of North Macedonia”, boosting negotiations “with Serbia and Montenegro” and “supporting the legitimate expectations of Kosovo, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.”
Comical celebrity council endorsements–eg. Macron, Michel, and Madame EC vdL– followed suit. For instance,
Germany pushes to tie together enlargement and EU reform
OpEd | Without qualified majority voting EU enlargement has no future
Naturally, I, too, presumed the PR supporting um pragmatic “democracy” was to handicap any veto of EU applicants rushing for NATO shelter. But this thing–e pluribus wot wot– has a life of its own. The EP immediately endorsed the ideer, going so far as to threaten invoke a supra-national EU “constitution” (that does not exist) and a threat to sue the European Council, if that flank of the Consillium “ignores” its call for “a Convention”.
MEPs could sue EU leaders if they ignore call for treaty reform
MEPs backed a resolution earlier this month demanding that EU leaders agree to amend the treaties through a Convention. According to its treaty obligations, the European Council must now vote with a simple majority on whether it wants to examine it.
“On 9 August [the EU] Parliament can formally call on the Council to act. On 9 October, [it] should sue the Council in the Court of Justice [ECJ] for failure to act on its resolution” former liberal MEP Andrew Duff, one of the leading experts on EU treaty and constitutional reform, told EURACTIV.
possibly referring to TITLE VI, FINAL PROVISIONS, pp 29, Article 47, Article 48 § 1-7
However, a meeting of EU general affairs [Council in the Council of the European Union] on Tuesday (21 June), and the draft conclusions of this week’s [European Council] summit on Thursday [and] Friday do not mention the Convention or the prospect of opening up the treaties.
some ironing to come …
The current and full-fledged iteration of the EU treaties dates [waaaaaaaay] back to 2009 [worldwide financial panic, GDIV], several years after a round of aggressive eastward expansion that saw 12 new members join.
The treaties are essentially the EU’s constitution, [“]sketching out[“] the bloc’s institutions, [“]clarifying the breakdown[“] of powers between the [European Council and Council of the] and EU members [27 states + NEW! Croatia and 4 EFTA “partners”] and [“]outlining[“] how decisions are made. Since the EU’s founding in the 1950s, they have been revised several times as [“]the body[“] morphs and grows….
The SMO will likely be done by the time this story gets agenda space.
Posted by: sln2002 | Jul 18 2022 20:14 utc | 78
Germany is turning out to be the weakest point in the EU at the moment, but this is partly due to the financial situation it finds itself in vs the Euro.
The article below goes a long way into it, but one of the salient points is that through “tricky finger” accounting by the ECB, it has been supporting the vast debt overhangs of the PIGS through TARGET2. If they cannot repay the Bundesbank is Bankrupt several times over. If there is not enough gas to continue the “virtuous” industrial base in Germany and the savings, then the rest of the EU will be naked to the cold winds of financial realism. We will all freeze together.
Germany is relying on getting it’s hands on Russian assets, as are most of the EU countries, to cover their massive debts. (The US might want to take over the EU first, as the Euro will be the first to fall, but it won’t help the finalé).
This is one way Germany’s national savings are being redistributed to the PIGS. At end-May, Germany’s Bundesbank was “owed” €1,160bn.
At the same time, the greatest debtors, Italy, Spain, Greece, and Portugal have combined TARGET2 debts of €1,255bn. But the most rapid deterioration for its size is in Greece’s negative balance, more than tripling from €25.7bn at end-2019 to €106bn in April. Spain’s deficit is also increasing at a worrying pace, up from €392.4bn to €505bn, and Italy’s from €439.4bn to €597bn.
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Along with Luxembourg, Germany is the biggest loser in the arrangement. Germany’s equity ownership in the ECB is 21.44% of its capital.[i] If TARGET2 collapsed, the Bundesbank would lose over a trillion euros owed to it by the others and the ECB itself, and pay up to €387bn of the net losses, based on current imbalances. It would wipe out the Bundesbank’s own balance sheet many times over.
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The sheer scale of a TARGET2 failure makes a resolution appear impossible. Current imbalances over the whole system total €1.736 trillion. As mentioned above, according to the capital keys, in a systemic failure the Bundesbank’s net TARGET2 assets of €1.160 trillion would be replaced by liabilities up to €387bn, the rest of the losses being spread around the other national banks in the EU
It is probably not necessary to read all of the article, and the author is a “Goldbug”, so his solution after the collapse of the Euro and Germany would be the restart of a Gold backed Deutschmark.
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/the-collapsing-euro-and-its-implications.
Note that the “Ex-Bundesbank Chief Wiedeman” went to great lengths to flush out the truth of the system, and then resigned, or was resigned.
“… the Target issue hit political headlines when the new President of the German Bundesbank, Jens Weidmann, voiced his concerns over the Bundesbank’s target claims in a letter to ECB president Mario Draghi. In the letter Weidmann not only demanded higher credit rating criteria for collateral submitted against refinancing loans, but also called for collateralisation of the Bundesbank’s soaring Target claims. Weidmann wrote his Target letter after several months of silence on the part of the Bundesbank, during which it conducted extensive internal analysis of the Target issue. This letter marked a departure by Weidmann from the Bundesbank’s earlier position that Target balances represent irrelevant balances and a normal by-product of money creation in the European currency system.”
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So Weidmann, who has since resigned from the Bundesbank, knew precisely the danger described in this article, wanting better quality collateral standards to prevent the dumping of non-performing loans into the TARGET2 system. There must be a strong suspicion that he was powerless to change things, forcing him to resign on this vital issue.
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The question is when, not if.
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Putin has said that; “They don’t want to buy our gas? They want to burn wood? We have vast forests in Siberia that they could buy”
Posted by: Stonebird | Jul 18 2022 20:25 utc | 82
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