This is one of my most favorite paintings of that date:
It encapsulates pretty much what happened at that day in 1941. 27 million Soviet people (most of them civilians) lives and four years later the verdict was announced. But nations and states do not live in a human time-frame, their time is slower and today we are ending the last chapter of the tragedy which started in 1914 and it could be either the end of all this, meaning human civilization, or a new beginning. Even for decomposing and degenerate West. This is what I talked today about:
I guess Putin announcing this should send (It did, most likely) a shock to the "system".
I never bothered myself with the look at the "stock market" and "capitalization". I always follow weapons' development and machine building complex, because they, and what they entail, are the ONLY real indicators of power. In related news, S-500s are being deployed. S-550 is next.
I recall this term being used often when describing Ronald Reagan. I am not sure he had a "vision", but he certainly understood that the world was becoming a very dangerous place for the United States. Lucky for him, he had a total narcissist and fool to deal with and we all know the result. But here is an interesting nexus. Here, Vladimir Putin (just in case CNBC alters or omits important parts) talks to CNBC's own Hadley Gamble (in Russian with English being heard). At around 6 minutes into interview he asks if the United States understand that by imposing sanctions, they kill US dollar? This issue has been discussed on this blog not for once and it seems that US powers that be do not grasp this simple fact. Recall "Russia's economy is in tatters" by Obama. And it becomes quite clear that it is impossible to communicate to the US "economic elites" how real economy works. Then, of course, one has to deal with US policy makers, and at this point we have to accept the fact that they lack this "vision thing".
Here is an interesting insight which Andrey Raevsky (The Saker) published on his site and I think it gives a good feel why those people in D.C. do not understand what vision is. The piece is by Thorsten J. Pattberg.
It is a concise but extremely focused piece. It is about America's political culture which completely precludes any morality and a "vision thing" which is drowned in quibbling--the only way to to get one to the political top, into the safe confines of the US Congress which exists today for only one reason--to dissipate any kind of personal responsibility for ruining the country, both domestically and on the international arena. US Dollar being the victim of the US insane foreign policy is one such example. US political elites do not discuss anything truly strategic and to the benefit of the United States, no. They quibble about how to better "stop China", how to better sanction Russia, how to better parade their own country as a psychiatric ward (granted, EU takes the lead here)--no visionaries nor "vision things" can emerge under these conditions. And we observed it today everywhere in the US, from media circus, to legislature, to executive branch. They do not know how to do it differently, they do not know how to do "vision thing", because, as Pattberg points out:
Unsurprisingly, quibbling in western Christian denomination has always
been associated with ‘the devil’, and the quibblers in literature were
‘the devil’s advocates’. A nation of quibblers, on the other hand,
cannot be deterred by ethics or morality. Hence the Americans’
relentless digging the ‘the rule of law’ from under the rest of the
world: At one point, the freest people in the world employed 2/3 of
lawyers on this planet.
US Congress is run by lawyers, they are everywhere, US Supreme Court long ago stopped being a Court, it increasingly becomes a political organization with the agenda. Recall also that a good share of US journos are, actually, lawyers. Be that foreign policy and international relations ignoramus Jeannine Pirro, or well known to all Megyn Kelly, or Geraldo Riviera, not to forget Jerry Springer. Jeffrey Toobin, despite his urges to masturbate publicly, is a lawyer. They are everywhere, and that is why nothing works anymore in the US. Those quibblers are not into saving the US Dollar or encouraging broad discussion of the life and death issues for the country. They are there to preclude that, even though most of them do not recognize the fruits of their labor. And that is why they cannot recognize that the more they don't have a vision, the more the United States, which lives off the world where it exports its inflation through the US Dollar's "reserve" status, is sinking. Guess who present National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan is--you already guessed it--he is a lawyer by education. So is the President of the United States. See the pattern?
One may argue that Vladimir Putin is a lawyer himself, yes, he is by his initial higher education but then again, people who go through KGB schools, especially famed KAI (former Red Banner Andropov Institute), they are not really lawyers anymore. And as the last 20 years have shown, these guys, do have vision and it is a powerful one. Many of them don't quibble, they just do things and they achieve on such a scale that we will be able to fully judge it in the future.
When you are the one who drives it. What 10 years ago could have been viewed as an overstepping the red line of US Dollar's hegemony, today is a normal, business-like occurrence. Vladimir Putin effectively offers Russian Ruble as a reserve currency within BRICS in Brasilia at BRICS summit. Starts at roughly 4:00. Albeit the whole report is very interesting.
Now, Putin may wax all he wants (for the consumption of business people and investors) about Russia's macroeconomic situation which looks, indeed, stable and is not dependent on hydrocarbons market. That is easy. What needs to be emphasized, yet again, is that US Dollar's reserve status in the last 50 or so years is based primarily on the myth of American military power, period. The times when the United States was a manufacturing powerhouse of the globe are long gone, with China taking this position, and, once this American capacity was gone, the only thing which remained, apart from the "soft power" driven primarily by Hollywood, the only thing on which US Dollar's status remained to be based became expeditionary warfare. As Moammar Qaddafi, and few others, learned the hard way--one doesn't question the dominance of US currency, nor US "economic" views. That is, of course, if you are Libya, Iraq or any other location where the pre-deployment of about 300,000 US marines and GIs could be done without interruption from subject or, rather object, to be taught a valuable lesson. Color revolutions are also in this teaching tool-box.
But those instruments go only so far, until they run into the wall of near-peer, let alone peer, who, actually, can teach its own lessons and draw its own red lines. Once one considers that Russia sits on roughly 30% (by different estimates) of global mineral wealth, has modern economy, stable political system and, what really matters, state-of-the-art Armed Forces armed with some mind-boggling weapons--that is the moment when one, like Russia, can offer a variety of alternatives from increasing the share (already growing) of payments in national currencies, to using Ruble as a main payment tool within BRICS at least. Not only Russia can, but she questions US Dollar's hegemony and, in fact, calls for overthrowing it. She can afford to. In the end, it is Russia, not even China, who now stands guard on Eurasian economic integration and this guard function requires a real high-end military capability, which is a first derivative of economy of scale. As one long-time observer of China noted recently:
Russia is. In fact that's Russian professional occupation for the last 1000 years--to handle storms. As I continue to state ad nauseam now for years--Russia has a product so valuable, so desirable by so many around the globe, that the question of price is not even that important, even if making Ruble a main currency of BRICS. Stability and peace are the names of this most treasured commodity and it is only the strength of arms which can provide it. How ironic, indeed.
