It Is Getting Boring...

... in its sheer triviality and stupidity akin to "disclosing" a fact of human mortality to a 60 year old mortician.  

Regulators closed troubled Silicon Valley Bank after deposit outflows and a failed capital raise plunged the country's 16th largest bank into crisis, roiling the larger lending industry. It became the largest bank to fail since Seattle's Washington Mutual during the height of the 2008 financial crisis and, behind Washington Mutual, the second largest bank failure in U.S. history. It is also the first bank to fail since 2020. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged the industry turmoil Friday, saying there are "a few" banks the department is closely watching. 

Don't worry, they will come up with yet another definition of "industry turmoil" and, probably, will define it as a Type A supernova in the vicinity of the Solar System, at which point it wouldn't matter how it all ends, or possibly as Moon falling to Earth. In both cases that would still serve only one purpose--to cover up a complete bankruptcy of the Dollar-based financial system and of the US finances being nothing more than an elaborate Ponzi scheme, concocted by people who never produced anything in their lives but quarterly reports and Power Point presentations.  

The desperation is palpable, but there is no happy ending here--all Ponzi schemes collapse because they run out of empty air to sell. Here is one of the exhibits of the Wall Street types' "skills". 

Former Goldman Sachs banker Roger Ng was sentenced by a US court to ten years in prison on Thursday for his role in embezzling billions of dollars from Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund. The verdict follows Ng’s initial conviction back in April last year, when he was found guilty of helping Tim Leissner, his former boss at Goldman Sachs, drain money from the fund. Goldman Sachs helped 1MDB, a fund set up in 2009 to finance development projects in Malaysia, raise $6.5 billion through bond sales back in 2012 and 2013. According to US prosecutors, some $4.5 billion of these funds were diverted by Ng and his co-conspirators in the process. They were then used for bribes to government officials, purchases of high-end real estate and other luxury items. According to the Department of Justice, some of the money even went to finance the 2013 Leonardo DiCaprio film ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’, which is itself a story of defrauding and money laundering.

The time is running out for many in Washington, and when stealing and BSing is the only type of degree one needs to get to the corridors of powers, what would one expect as a result? And BSing is in progress as I type it--on an industrial scale.  

The Pentagon's plan for scaling up production of the shells over the next two years marks a breakthrough in the effort to quench Ukraine's thirst for weapons. But the conflict has laid bare deep-seated problems that the United States must surmount to effectively manufacture the arms required not just to aid its allies but also for America's self-defense should conflict erupt with Russia, China or another major power. Despite boasting the world's largest military budget - more than $800 billion a year - and its most sophisticated defense industry, the United States has long struggled to efficiently develop and produce the weapons that have enabled U.S. forces to outpace their peers technologically. Those challenges take on new importance as conventional conflict returns to Europe and Washington contemplates the possibility of its own great-power fight.

As I already stated--you cannot explain to an average WaPo or NYT bottom feeder or some Congress dweller what real war economy is and why the US finds itself in a classic vicious circle of diminishing returns. It is a combination of factors, among which technological and warfare ignorance of the US "elites" is one of the most important. Just yesterday, Russia ran out of missiles and high-precision weapons... again, if you know what I mean. 

Russia’s overnight missile attack on Thursday showered Ukraine with an array of missiles, in one of Moscow’s biggest aerial assaults for months. Nearly half a million people are without power in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, following the latest barrage of strikes, according to the regional governor. And there are concerns about how effectively Ukraine can stand up to such bombardments. “They’re sending a very strong signal to everyone in Ukraine, and to perhaps some of our refugees outside of Ukraine, that life is very far from returning to normal despite the fact that over recent weeks there was more quiet,” Alexander Rodnyansky, an economic adviser to Zelensky, told CNN.

These things are so beyond the experiences of Western decision makers, be them civilian or military, that it is impossible to explain it to them--they simply have no intellectual faculty and education for grasping this. Which brings us to this, now notorious, Daily Mail piece when discovering:    

As British supermarkets ration eggs and an array of fruit and vegetables amid shortages provoked in large part by the Ukraine war, no such hardships afflict Vladimir Putin's citizens. The pictures were taken at a food hall, two superstores and a corner shop in Perm, a city with a population the size of Birmingham in the Ural mountains, a 24-hour drive from Moscow. The images suggest the West's much-vaunted sanctions on Russia, imposed to punish President Putin for his invasion, are not having a deep bite. What's more, the scenes are a reversal of 40 years ago, when many of us watched pitiful TV footage of Russians under the Communist regime queuing for staples such as bread and eggs. Now it's Britain's turn to suffer. Supermarkets here are rationing tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and lettuces as UK farmers struggle with higher energy costs which stop them using hothouses in winter to grow them. Soft fruit, including raspberries, are also hard to find in the shops.

Again, I repeat, you cannot explain why and how it works to an average Western "master of discourse"--many of them still believe that their post-WW II economic recovery was some kind a miracle of American benevolence and financial trickstery of Bretton Woods. It was way more complex than that, and if not for the events on the Eastern Front in 1941-44 even Bretton Woods System wouldn't have been possible--now try to explain this to Blinken or BoJo with Sunak. So, it is getting boring listening (and reading) about combined West discovering basic truths of life, based on not elaborate BS but on objective economic, social and military laws in whose study and application West failed miserably. But even exceptionalists and neocons are forced to admit through their teeth:

The growing presence of Russian submarines off the coast of the United States has sparked Cold War comparisons from military observers and a retired NATO admiral. The Russian military has undergone a sweeping modernization drive after it was forced to abandon many new ships following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Russian navy now commands one of the most diverse submarine fleets in the world, with an estimated 58 vessels. Some of them are capable of carrying ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, which Moscow considers key to its strategic deterrent. Russian President Vladimir Putin has been set on expanding Russia's underwater capabilities. Over the past several years, Moscow has been producing a series of submarines that have the capability to reach the most critical targets in the U.S. or continental Europe.

Yep, that is called deterrence. Hey, at least in terms of diversity Russian Navy does well, wink, wink;) Did anyone ask how non-stop sanctioned Russia managed to come up with this "diverse" extremely advanced fleet?