Crocodile Tears.

Or decommunization of 404 about which Vladimir Putin spoke on February 24. The aerospace community is in tears (not entirely fake) about the fate of the massive AN-225 Mria, the largest cargo plane in history, which was destroyed during the battle for Gostomel airfield, which also happened to be the Antonov Design Bureau's airfield. Here is one of the pilots of Antonov blames the management of the "company" for the demise of a giant. 

Well, it is all fine and dandy but the whole thing should be looked at in precisely the framework of decommunization of Ukraine, to which the whole Novosibirsk based Antonov Design Bureau was, same as Crimea in 1954, simply given by powers that be, to then Soviet Republic of Ukraine, and design bureau has been transferred to Kiev in 1952. 

It is worth mentioning that 404 has zero relation both to Antonov corporation which for all intents and purposes was dead for a number of years and before 2014 was kept afloat only by Russia's contracts (since 2014 Antonov produced a whopping... 2 (two) aircraft). So, aerospace industry which Ukraine inherited from the USSR in 1991 was successfully killed. So was AN-225 which was a product of a massive Soviet aerospace cooperation and the giant has been produced to primarily carry Soviet shuttle Buran on its back.
 

Obviously, 404 couldn't have possibly recreate anything like this, let alone design something similar, not to mention more advanced. The result is symbolic:

And it fits perfectly with the fate of modern Ukrainian statehood whose whole idea is based on one single metaphysical pillar: Ukraine is not Russia. And Russians, overwhelming majority of them, agree. The moment Ukraine was removed from the economic organism of itself dying Soviet Union she placed herself firmly on the path to agrarian future and third worlddom. Simple as that. In this respect, the fate of AN-225 was both expected and inevitable, because the aircraft manufactured in 1985 was not only obsolete but maintaining its aging, 37 year old, air frame has become an ordeal, especially in a country which itself became economically unsustainable even in basic fields, forget advanced aerospace industry. The 404's aerospace was fully decommunized, finally.

Yes, the efforts to preserve this remarkable achievement by the Soviet Union should have been undertaken and AN-225 could have found a place in some aerospace museum, but Kiev would choke from the idea of transferring it to Moscow. Well, now they shed crocodile tears. Hey, the nature came into balance in Ukraine--third world Neo-Nazi satrapies do not have aerospace industries. They simply cannot afford them. There is one bright spot for Russia though in all that: with the events of the last three weeks Russia can immediately start manufacturing (she has ALL competencies and plant) modernized AN-124 Ruslan, held up due to copyright issues, before new huge Ilyushin transport aircraft Slon gets out of R&D phase and onto the assembly lines. As the famous proverb goes: those born to crawl, cannot fly. And this wisdom holds true. They wasted the whole country away, too late to cry for the aircraft, however outstanding Mria (Dream in Ukrainian) was. 

No Shit, Pardon My French.

It seems that self-evident things take time for a modern crop of Western economists to dawn. 

The author of 'Planet Ponzi' and blogs at PlanetPonzi.com talks to Max Keiser about the euphoria in the markets. He says that he is very bullish about commodities, which are the ‘real assets.’  “The commodities’ space is not up nearly as much in a bubble as everything else,” says Feierstein. According to the banker, who worked on Wall Street in the 1980s, commodities are “a real value” while “you can actually exchange them for something that somebody needs.” Feierstein says that in the next decade paper money, fiat currency is going to lose its luster. “US dollar hegemony will end in the next decade,” he says, as part of his “big prediction.” The analyst explains how right now fiat currency, particularly the US dollar, is overvalued.

No way! Actual things are "real assets". How could this be? I always thought that commercial and combat aircraft were growing on the trees, and that gas, oil, nuclear and other types of energy were appearing out of nothing due to quantum instability of the vacuum not as the result of human labor, creativity, education  and, often, sacrifice. Wait a minute, Wall Street is on-line with me... what do you say? Ahh, phew, now I can sleep calmly--it is all BS, real assets are papers produced on the Wall Street and TV, Radio and Internet entertainment. Facebook, too, with Twitter and other social networks being a real deal. Virtual economy, you know, like the insurance or real estate speculation and their "paper" derivatives--that is the real deal. Not mining, computing, processing, manufacturing technologies. Nah, indeed, cannot be right. Facebook stock, on the other hand... You get me being sardonic here, I hope.  

In related news, about US Dollar: everything what made US Dollar at some point of time a desired (and reserve) currency--America's immense manufacturing capacity and an illusion of global military power--are all gone. Long time ago. Since 2000s it was a mythology of US military power which served as a foundation of US Dollars' reserve currency status, meaning that anyone without nuclear weapons, who would decide to use anything but USD in its trade would get thrashed by US military might. Like Libya. Remove military power aura from USD and suddenly things begin to look rather shaky. As I continue to say ad nauseam (I know, I sound as a parrot)--Eurasia, which is a main, by a gigantic margin, global production and consumer market, increasingly understands that she will be protected. Militarily. It is not one day process, of course, but it is fully in motion and once Eurasia is protected, the need for US Dollar will evaporate, in fact, it is already evaporating. Iran's strikes on US bases in Iraq is yet another tick in the last minutes of US Dollar's existence as a reserve currency. Indeed, what is a currency if it is not defended or, as is the case of Pax Americana, cannot be forcefully imposed? Not much really. Facebook's "capitalization" may be in hundreds of billions of US Dollars, but it takes merely a couple salvos of cruise missiles to make it zero. 

Gazprom's capitalization maybe down (due to mostly PR manipulations), but its real WORTH is orders of magnitude more than that of the few buildings with computers and routers of Facebook. People WILL survive without Facebook, in fact another iteration of a platform for exhibitionism and reports on bowel movements and Botox injections will emerge immediately, but without gas and heating, production will stop and people will begin to die from cold. Obviously, Gazprom, as is Rosatom, among many, are defended by actual military power, which CAN and WILL defend them in particular, and Russia in general. I can go on forever with those analogies, but, I guess, you got my drift. Five years ago, yes, I repeat it again, and, no, not for self-praise, I stated that American criminal coup in Ukraine was the start of the count-down to US demise. I based my, as it turned out correct, conclusion only on things which  "are the real assets", ranging from real economy and manufacturing capacity, real resources and real military power, not some ethereal BS of electronic transactions in imagination and air. So, I have a bit of disagreement with Mr. Feierstein--we are down to few years (less than decade) before the whole thing becomes irrelevant and, as much as I hate all those silly predictions, the amount of time left for US Dollar as premier global currency depends not even on successful completion of China's massive BRI project, with China's economy already dwarfing that of the US. No, this will depend on a progress of National Projects of Russia of which we will see first results by 2024. Why? Because of Russian culture and its ability to generate civilization models from which anyone can draw most attractive features. But here we are entering the issue of metaphysics, granted supported by Russia's massive "commodities", increasing manufacturing capacity and state-of-the-art military machine.