Well, Sure...

It is not some funny papers issued by the Wall Street. 

India's intake of Russian crude oil has soared 50-fold since April and, to date, makes up a tenth of the subcontinent's imported oil, the Economic Times reported today, citing a senior government official. Some 40 percent of the total Russian oil imports are going into private refineries, the report noted. Earlier this month, data showed India's imports of Russian crude over the first quarter of this year alone were five times higher than all the Russian crude India imported in 2021.

What do you expect? Of course, between the food and the IOU from some drunk bum, most normal people will chose food--it is real, it is vital for survival and it might be even delicious. IOU? Unless one is on the paper-eating diet. In related news:

Germany is considering expropriating the German section of the Russia-led Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project, cutting it off from the rest of the pipeline, and using the part on German territory for connecting to LNG supply that will come from Baltic Sea ports, German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Friday. The plan will likely escalate the gas row between Germany and Russia, Der Spiegel comments on the information, for which it didn’t cite sources.

Germany is free to do whatever she deems necessary, it is not going to change anything because German economy is dying and nothing can prevent it from doing so, especially now that the last iota of the even neutral attitude towards Germany (as a country, not individual Germans) is gone from Russia, and it is all for the better. Germany is the enemy of Russia and it is a very positive development--I repeat it not for the first time--that all illusions about some Russian-German "alliance" are gone. As is true for most of Europe. And this too, is for the better.

Evidently It Struck The Nerve...

 ... with RT and they did the write-up on Douglas Macgregor's opinion in his yesterday's interview: 

Russia has largely achieved its objective of neutralizing the Ukrainian military, but Western governments mistakenly believe the deliberate progress designed to avoid civilian casualties reflects weakness and are funneling weapons to prolong the fighting, a former top Pentagon adviser has said. Russian President Vladimir Putin has given strict orders from the outset to avoid civilian casualties and extensive property damage, retired US Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor told the Grayzone in an extensive interview on Tuesday. This has slowed the Russians’ advance “to the point where it has given false hope both to the Ukrainians … but seized on by people in the West, to try and convince the world that a defeat is in progress, when in fact the opposite is the case,” Macgregor said. “The war, for all intents and purposes, has been decided,” the retired colonel said. “The entire operation from day one was focused on the destruction of Ukrainian forces. That’s largely complete.”

As anyone knows who reads this blog and my books--victory is defined by achieving political objectives of the war. Political objectives of the war in Ukraine are removal of criminal regime in Kiev and establishing Ukraine as fully neutral nation. This main political objective is subdivided into two major military-political objectives which are:

1. Demilitarization of Ukraine, meaning destruction of Ukraine's Armed Forces and her military-industrial complex;

2. Denazification.  

The first objective is largely met and transitioning of the combined arms operation into the counter-insurgency and police operation is in progress. The second one is only partially met by means of physical annihilation of military arm of the Ukrainian Neo-Nazism, the police and state security work on that is largely ahead and it is a combination of operative, paramilitary, detective, media and social measures which are being implemented. But in the midst of this constant tactical "analysis" masturbation in the Western media based solely on Ukie propaganda and fakes, with BBC finally being thrown out of Russia today (long overdue), real huge developments in the larger world outside should not be forgotten. In fact, they are even more important than what is happening now in 404.  

The US, after being told to go and pound the sand by Chinese, is now applying its pressure on India. Well...get a load of this. As Times of India reports: 

India is preparing to buy heavily discounted crude oil from its long-time ally Russia. The idea is to minimise domestic macroeconomic risks arising out of the Ukraine-Russia war. The country meets 85% of its crude oil requirements through imports. However, only 1% (nearly 45,000 barrels a day in 2021) of its total crude oil imports come from Russia. While this may not be much, a discount on Russian crude will surely lower India’s import bill, The Times of India reported today (March 16).

While initial amount of crude is not large, one should not forget that Russia is called ally of India by India and the original article in the Times of India is very specific in terms of ongoing consultations between Russia and India on setting up a Rupee--Ruble payments mechanism and results will be announced soon (several days). The United States if not understands, at least senses, a grave danger for the US status, grossly exaggerated from the inception, of a global power but promises to accelerate, already in progress, of process of cutting the US economy to size. Its REAL size. 

Evidently Pakistan also is in a full blown mode of "give it to me, baby" in terms of Russia-Pakistan gas pipe-line:

ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Finance and Revenues Shaukat Tarin on Wednesday said that Pakistan and Russia have broadly agreed to establish the North-South Gas Pipeline Project with an estimated cost of approximately $3 billion. ...“Yes, we have broadly agreed for establishing this multi-billion gas pipeline project with Russia and now future virtual talks were expected to finalise the shareholders agreement and execution of this project,” Federal Minister for Finance Shaukat Tarin said when The News inquired from him about the finalization of North-South Gas Pipeline Project here on Wednesday. He said that the cost of this project was estimated at around $3 billion but it would be firmed up after the conclusion of upcoming virtual parleys between the two sides.

So, as you can see, huge physical economy and military superpowerdom of Russia buy her a lot of goodies and ensure that those goodies will not be snatched by the declining West headed by the US. For Western "experts", such as Germany's Economic Minister Robert Habeck, who holds Doctorate IN philosophy (with zero engineering background) and is a fanatical Grune, or Lindsey Graham with Ted Cruz (both attorneys)--Russia does have all necessary competencies, technological expertise and industry to completely on her own to build just about anything. Here is one of those plants.  But then again, in the world where Russia loses war in Ukraine, by means of annihilating VSU and surrounding key cities, anything is possible in regards to Russia. That is why even those people who try to stay objective and mean no ill to Russia, even those people sometimes fail to grasp what modern Russia is economically, technologically and scientifically. 

Make no mistake, Russia has her own problems, no doubt about it, but those are the problems of the superpower--the fact that US so called "elites" try to avoid admitting because it will discount immediately the actual weight of the United States and, most importantly, will illuminate utter corruption of the America's political, military and economic institutions. I know this pain, and I know how cognitive dissonance between perceived "greatness" and rather unimpressive realty can exacerbate mental problems, especially among very provincial in their outlook US "elitists". This is what US "elites" are going through right now. Some, like fanatical neocons, are ready to unleash WW III, others try to convince themselves that the United States is the "greatest nation in history" still, or that Russian military technology is still not as good as American, or this or that, but one cannot escape the reckoning. It is not coming--it is IN progress as I type this. Reality is a bitch, and it inevitably bites and it hurts like hell, believe me, I know.     

This Is How Real Geopolitics Works.

Here are today's quotes for oil. 

For people even remotely acquainted with energy issues and Cold War 2.0 (I suck at the former and have a clue on the latter) it shouldn't be a surprise to recall that Russia, a producer of Urals brand of crude, has (and had for a long time) her budget calculated with the base price of barrel of her crude of around $40. A year ago, ever-wrong Bloomberg--so, you see my conundrum here, it is near to impossible to find competent and objective observers of Russia in the US, so I have to get whatever I can--noted when reporting on Russia's balanced budget: 

So far this year, the figure was actually under $42 as the government raised taxes but was slow to release planned spending, according to Kirill Tremasov, a former Economics Ministry official and now director of analysis at Loko-Invest in Moscow. For the first seven months of the year, the government reported a surplus of 3.4% of gross domestic product, double the full-year target.

That was August 2019. Something tells me that these were not sanctions Putin was preparing Russia for--Russia lives under sanctions non-stop pretty much all her modern history, so there was very little strategic change in the way sanctions apply--slightly more, slightly less, who cares. My point is completely different here--feel free to browse my writing in this blog this year leading and during this whole oil prices snafu. As was stated--Russia did anticipate an implosion of oil prices and was ready for it way-way before the shit hit the fan, and that means Covid-19 too. And that, once one sees Russia de facto reaching today her very comfortable crude prices, while keeping US shale oil, and Saudis, under her thumb, tells about, pardon my pathos here, superb strategic planning and forecasting at Russia's top political level. 

Of course, strategic planning is like that Electronic Countermeasure Thingy--that is if you have enough power to do so (hint: nobody has)--you can drown in noise pretty much a whole frequency spectrum in which combat electronics worked, works or will work. That will be not only modern iteration of Lope De Vega's (or if one wishes ancient Greek's fable) famous play of The Dog in the Manger, where one doesn't use whatever is at his disposal but also doesn't allow this whatever to be used by others. It is stupid, it is extremely energy consuming and in the end you suppress your own capabilities. But, of course, there is another way and this one goes way beyond Electronic Warfare, where modern ECM and ECCM systems detect, identify and counter almost instantaneously any kind of threat in a narrow frequency band. This applies to pretty much everything in life and is known, of course, as OODA loop. Ah those Observe and Orient truisms, when Colonel Boyd was writing about it he, of course, meant that whoever does this OO routine is observing and orienting oneself within reality. This art, however, as I preach for years, has been lost in the US for a long time now, while in other quarters this art transitioned as an organic part into the fully blown establishment dealing with this Observing and Orienting. No, it is not just intelligence alone, albeit it is part of it, very important at that, it is a whole complex of state and even private institutions who look dramatically different from the inside than all of the US think tankdom which is designed for merely one purpose: through providing sinecures for all kinds of characters from US military-political-intelligence and even business top to push all kinds of political agendas by means of "research" which, depending on who finances it, may, often does, arrive to mutually exclusive conclusions.  Iraq's WMD, you know, cough-cough....

I vividly recall triumphalist declarations in all kinds of US compost media ranging from said Bloomberg to NYT, to all kinds of neoliberal globalist rags, on how Russia is about to go broke and Putin is going to lose his grip on power and how riots are about to break out in Russia, so you get the gist of this narrative, another false one in a long-long record of US media and "analysts" who do not seem to be able to get a grip. At that time, however, few paid attention to a rather calm and nonchalant predictions of Russia's energy minister Novak that things will come back to normal for Russia (and this normal is around $40 per barrel) really soon. Well, looks like Novak and this ever "losing popularity" Putin knew better. I will go out an a limb here and even propose such a ridiculous (not really) idea that Russians knew the essence of the game very-very early. Sometime early last year, I guess. And here is the point, yes, there is Moscow Stock Exchange, but it is primarily for as bunch which stole things in 1990s and nobody really gives a flying fvck, including Russia's government, about what is going on at Moscow's Stock Exchange. Feel the difference with the Western World? Yep, it is all about reality. And reality is such that Russian "liberda", which is a pretencious copy of American moneyed class, lost it big time. 

Make no mistake, most of them are losers by definition and they exist only because Russians are civilized people and decided that they indeed reached the limit on revolutions. But get this: 

This is today exchange rates for Ruble and this is in a stark contradiction to all those domestic and foreign "experts" who predicted Russia's demise with all that follows, like Ruble to USD as 200 to 1. For people, who have never been trained in real analysis and in a development of information into knowledge, the fact that, even with the start of oil wars and then "attack" of Covid-19, there was no rush of Russians buying foreign currencies, such as was the case in every modern Russia's crisis since 1990s, should have been the most important observation. But no, who observes anything when one can create own unicorns-run universe and orient oneself in it, instead of facing hard cold reality of a serious geopolitics which is formed by cold reality of power-balance which rests on the foundation of the sound economic theory. Even in 2007 the United States had a chance to change the world. It failed to do so because, as history shows, it can not learn even from own brilliant men and women. But I repeat myself. In conclusion, I increasingly begin to arrive to the point of view expressed by Karen Shakhnazarov that the whole "oil war" thing was conceived not by Saudis alone, but with the US blessing. We all know the result, don't we. It was forecast and anticipated in Russia.

That Is Everything You Need To Know.

And it is in the announcement of Russia's Central Bank: 

Russia’s sovereign wealth fund has enough reserves to cover budget deficit for years, even if oil prices stay between $25 and $30 per barrel, the Finance Ministry announced amid a dramatic oil market crash.Despite Monday being a public holiday in Russia, both the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank were quick to react to the overnight drop in oil prices of nearly 30 percent. The former said that the Russian National Wealth Fund has $150 billion (more than 10 trillion rubles) worth of liquid assets from additional oil and gas revenues, which is enough to offset a possible shortfall from falling crude prices for 6-10 years.

So, if anyone thinks that this whole FUBAR with "markets" (quotation marks are deliberate) is about Saudi Arabia and Russia feuding, they better check the reality. It is way more than that. KSA in this situation is just one of the players and not the biggest ones at that. But most important are these conclusions which must be made and which, most likely, will not be made in the West but we will try:

1. This crisis shows what a house of cards this whole "global economy" is, because markets, as a place where REAL price on commodity is fixed, are a figment of imagination of all kinds of white board "analysts" who still believe in a false gospel of laissez-faire. Modern "markets" are speculation and political pressure machines which have zero in common with actual economic reality on the ground and as such cannot exist anymore in present form. In other words: system of trade imposed by the United States is pretty much done and we see it disintegrating in a front of our eyes;

2. It also shows what a Potemkin Village whole modern US economy is, when economic development is assessed in terms of the stock price and capitalization most of which are driven by stock buybacks and credit infusion. So much for Trump's "achievements" in economy. 

3. We are yet to establish the algorithm of Coronavirus panic being spread globally--it will take some time to figure out the REAL drivers behind this, most likely, grossly exaggerated danger--but it is already clear that the so called US economic sputtering was ongoing long time before any Coronavirus was ever discovered. 

In other words, the crisis is systemic and it cannot be fixed by monetary or any other present so called "market" means precisely because those markets as imagined by theorists do not exist. In general, we are at the precipice of a gigantic geopolitical shift which, indeed, will remove Petrodollar as a viable financial instrument through, first, completely defanging OPEC and then, or, rather, simultaneously deflating the bubble of the US speculative economy. This is my off the calf take on all that. Enjoy the spectacle. Expect more violence.

It Is Down Right Funny.

Daniel Larison referenced Donald Trump's letter to Erdogan. It is amusing, to put it mildly, but that's Trump for ya. He is a former NYC real estate hustler and a man not gifted with complex thinking. Trump warns Erdogan: to not “be a tough guy! Don’t be a fool!

Yet, for all Trump's crude "diplomacy" or, rather, lack thereof, not to mention lack of any common state-level courtesy, no one in the US has any reason or justification for complains about "Turmp's failed foreign policy", as Daniel Larison complains, because US foreign policy as a whole is an exhibit A of a failure, miserable at that. In fact, while Trump's shenanigans are amusing, to say the least, it was Clinton, then W, and then, Obama's catastrophic (I stress it) failures in diplomacy, foreign policy that is, which, way before Trump even considered himself a candidate for POTUS position, provided enough impetus for world powers to start rearranging the world away from American vision. 

Let's face it, Trump is merely a culmination of the process of completed degradation of American state institutions among which so called diplomacy, intelligence and military institutions are the most affected. In general, a normally functional state would have disintegrated in shame should it have had such "top" diplomats as war criminal Madeleine Albright, psychotic Samantha Power, or clueless Nikki Haley, not to mention such down right stupid people as Michael McFaul, but not in the United States--this is a category of public which passes in the US under the moniker of "diplomats" and whose "expertise" still remains in demand. The problem with the US "diplomacy" is in a simple fact that as of today it is completely corrupted, doesn't have what in other nations goes under the title of national diplomatic schools, which formed over centuries, and have, as it is the case with MGIMO in Russia, special highly prestigious learning institutions which actually prepare diplomats. Some US Ivy League degree mill's "degrees" in International Relations are not worth the paper they are printed on--the list of US so called "diplomats" in the last 25+ years provides and overwhelming body of empirical evidence that those graduates are not quality diplomatic material, to put it mildly. If they were, we would have people of scale of James Baker or Jack Matlock present or emerging in the US top diplomatic (and national security) echelon--no one of this scale is there, zero. Revisionists they have aplenty, true top level diplomats and foreign policy experts--zero. 

But then again, this problem cannot be viewed in separation from overall dramatic decline, say of US humanities education, total rot and corruption of media and, in general, must be attributed to a completely formed and well pronounced demand for dishonest, corrupt and down right evil people for the US "elites".  People with honor integrity and real competence need not apply, only scoundrels are needed. The edifice of normality, virtue and public service is just that--an edifice and it is crumbling. One may say what this has anything to do, with say, such news as today Putin's proposition for Duma to revoke recognition of commission within framework of Geneva Convention (in Russian).  The explanation to this proposition clearly states that since 1991 (rings a bell?) this commission has abdicated its functions on establishments of facts of armed conflicts and, in fact, doesn't work, not to mention has not a single Russian representative. Of course, events in Yugoslavia, Libya, support for bearded children in Syria (you know--jihadists) and other terrorist groups testifies to an absolute uselessness of this organization. As many stated for a long time--the West in general, and US in particular, are not agreement-capable and the number of moral freaks and downright imbeciles in its "elites" grows exponentially. Relying on West's international institutions, such as this commission, is a waste of time and resources. 

No, really. Who in their own mind would negotiate in good faith anything with, now defunct, Bolton, still active Pompeo or Merkel? Or Macron, for that matter. These are people who value only power and nothing more. So, in this case, Trump is just a cruder, less sophisticated version of any top level Western bureaucrat. This is not to mention this teeny-weeny fact of American gerontocracy. Today the United States is run by people who are down right ancient. Apart from DJT, who is 73 years old, one of the darlings of the election mill, before he suffered a heart attack, Bernie Sanders is 78 years old, Elizabeth Warren is not exactly a spring chicken herself at 70, being merely a year younger than HRC, increasingly demented Joe Biden is 76 years old, while Nancy Pelosi, who increasingly reminds of a walking mummy (with the same mental abilities) will hit 80 next year. Anyone recalls this? The average age was 70 in 1982, when Brezhnev died at the age of 76. 

There is one crucial difference though between early 1980s Politburo and present American political class. For all their mistakes, shortcomings and inadequacies those Soviet old men remembered first hand and did all they could to avoid a war. Modern American political class has no grasp of a war. It also lacks any awareness of the outside world and this, combined with a steady decline of cognitive abilities, is what serves as an accelerator to current American decline due to systemic flaws and mutually-exclusive trends in its political life. In this case, Trump's crude and militant letter must not be viewed in separation from the US "diplomacy".  This class, bar some very few exceptions, completely lacks any awareness of the actual US dramatically diminished position in the world. So, pardon my cynicism, everything goes in accordance to "plan" and Trump's letter to Erdogan is just another evidence of increasingly impotent US foreign policy. Same goes for the internal one as well.  But, I guess, we all know now where Erdogan will "seek counsel".