“Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, Boom!” - R.E.M.

By Tom Luongo - April 30, 2024

The world we’ve known is over. The US Congress finally pushed the big red button. When the West froze around $300 billion of Russia’s foreign exchange reserves in March 2022 it was the first step in breaking down the system of foreign exchange reserves that makes up the global economy.

Freezing assets of countries they are mad at isn’t new behavior from the locusts that run the G-7 countries. We still have to listen to conservatards whine about Obama giving Iran back “pallets of cash” for signing the JCPOA (Iran Nuclear Deal) in 2015, when all he did was unfreeze assets we’d frozen in 1979…

… 1979, folks. Seriously. Get a grip on reality. Obama gave Iran back their money. I’m no Obama fan, far from it, but as payments go, it was really nothing.

Freezing assets, however, isn’t really theft, it’s just the tip.

The money frozen in 2022 was supposed to operate the same way. It was supposed to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin into ending the war in Ukraine. The theory being that the oligarchs whose money that represented would push Putin out of power to get that money back.

Theories, by the way, speaking as a scientist, mostly suck.

Putin used this to his advantage, rallying the world around him and to the burgeoning BRICS Alliance. It worked a treat and here we are with $90 per barrel oil, raging inflation and a shattered Ukraine.

Typically, the British call this, “money well spent.”

Overall, it was a statement by the G-7 that no one’s money is safe. Look, no offense to Iran (or Venezuela or anyone else who previously ran into this problem), but cutting them out of the global economy was an effective piece of intimidation of everyone else.

It had it’s limits, however. And the increasingly common usage of sanctions while possibly effective in enforcing the rules based order demanded by the G-7, only decreased the cost/benefit analysis of playing by those rules in the future. Eventually someone would turn what was supposed to be a weakness into a strength.

No self-proclaimed ‘serious person’ in DC, London and/or Brussels thought that doing something so arrogant (and stupid) to one of the most important commodity-producing countries in the world would backfire on them. When you stop to think about it we’re talking about a country, Russia, that in 2023 exported more wheat than the 3rd largest producer (the US) harvested — approx. 60 million tonnes exported (RUS) vs. 47 million tonnes produced (US).

So, like the hubristic morons they are, our leadership thought this would work. It didn’t.

Or was their plan even dumber?

Because the recent actions by the US vis a vis Russia and China is so dumb it defies description. Congress has authorized President Joah Bii-DEN! to seize Russia’s foreign exchange reserves as they have threatened to do for the past six months and hand the money to Ukraine.

This isn’t the tip anymore, this is just outright theft.

And they call this #winning.

Leaving aside the inconsolable butthurt this move implies, it really signifies that this may have actually been the plan all along.

In their April 26th livestream, the Alexes at The Duran brought up the brilliant point that the real target of this move to seize Russia’s forex reserves wasn’t Russia, but China. (START AT the 3:00)

By all accounts the US has frozen a small portion of the $300 billion of Russia’s money sitting around now collecting interest because of Jerome Powell. But in the Age of Bii-Den! no foreign policy blunder is too small, no shakedown attempt to brazen, and no act of diplomatic vandalism too destructive.

Sec. of State Antony Blinken’s ‘performance’ in Beijing was nothing short of a declaration of war, as Alex Mercouris put it, and he’s absolutely right. It’s good to see both of them come to the same conclusion I reached during the first days of the Bii-Denn! Junta…

… that they are trying to destroy the United States.

So, all in all, the threat hangs out there that the G-7 stands ready to seize Russia’s forex reserves, which is an implicit threat to China that the US will cancel all outstanding debts owed to China because we are at war with them.

Because this is exactly where this leads.

Russia famously sold all of their US Treasury reserves in 2021 in preparation for war with NATO over Ukraine. There were no CUSIPs to cancel unilaterally by the US. As always, Vlad is one step ahead of the predictably brutish neocons at the US Dept. of State.

Even though Vicky the Hutt is gone and the US is offering a few fig leaves to Russia here and there to simulate attempts at opening up a diplomatic end to Ukraine, Russia is looking at Blinken, David Cameron (UK), Josep Borrell (EU) and the rest of the Gang that Can’t Sanction Straight and calmly saying, “Nyet. Fuck you, pay me.”

And, by all accounts, the EU is paying Russia while Bii-Denn! tries to open up global oil markets in a desperate bid to bring oil prices down because “Our Money, Your Problem” is now “Our Commodities, Your Political Unrest” or something like that.

This speaks to the heart of this matter . . .

[SNIP]