The Real Enemy
Atlanta, GA
March 12, 2022
“When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”
– attributed to Frédéric Bastiat.
Strange as it sounds, there’s a move afoot to nominate Vladimir Putin for a Nobel Prize.
Not for peace. But for medicine.
After two years of nonsensical and tyrannical tactics to conquer Covid by controlling us, all it took to suppress the “pandemic” was Russian arms crossing the Ukrainian border.
Apparently, it took a war to lift the siege.
Under cover of a shifting news narrative, Dr. Fauci has been disappeared. And even the most hysterical states, cities and corporations have begun to quietly relax or “suspend” their misbegotten “mitigation measures”.
Mask mandates are being discreetly dropped and vaccine requirements are being strategically scrapped. Facing backlashes and labor shortages, companies that ignominiously booted the vile unvaccinated are sheepishly inviting the vermin back.
But the scoundrels who did this admit no error. Recent easing is attributed to shifting “science” or updated “data”, tho’ all the recent “reasons” for removing restrictions have been known for the better part of twenty-four months.
Ominously, these depraved wack-jobs leave open the possibility that the lunacy will return if temperatures drop or cases rise (or the politics change). We cannot allow that to happen. Any attempts to reimpose dystopian restrictions must be defied.
As much as we welcome a return of the “Old Normal”, it can’t be on terms dictated by those who spent two years depriving us of it by distorting society. Those who did this should be hounded from office, deprived of their titles, stripped of their credentials, and dragged to the dock.
Whether it was Canadian truckers, Vladimir Putin, or midterm elections that finally persuaded them to reluctantly relent, the perpetrators of this disaster can’t be allowed to simply lift the siege, wipe their hands, and move merrily along.
But that’s exactly what they’re trying to do. They’re cooking up their next calamity by stirring the pot on the steppes of Europe. And as the pressure mounts in their latest crock, they run the risk of blowing us all up.
We know that in the fog of war, truth is the first casualty.
It is shrouded in the mist…surrounded, as Churchill put it, by bodyguards of lies. As fighting intensifies, clouds pour in, thick with spin and damp with deceit. In the two weeks since the Russians rolled into Ukraine, reliable information has been as rare as a chaste prostitute.
Self-annointed “fact-checkers” just two weeks ago “debunked” claims of US-funded bio labs in Ukraine, dismissing the charges as (what else?) “Russian disinformation”. But as with phony stories of Snake Island heroes or ghostly pilots in the Kievan sky, the “news” Americans were groomed to believe was soon exposed as false, misleading, or incomplete. And no doubt designed to be.
After a couple years of incessant media misinformation and official government lies, that shouldn’t be a surprise. How anyone can believe anything any government says is beyond me. Yet the American public seems incapable of resisting the tide, and is repeatedly hooked by mendacious bait on propagandistic lines.
Bill Bonner reminded us last week of the old Wall Street expression that “when everyone is thinking the same thing, no one is thinking at all”.
With regard to Ukraine, as in the early days of Covid, everyone is thinking the same thing. Or they’re sternly admonished to do so. Those who don’t display blue and yellow as if it were an AIDS ribbon, while reflexively genuflecting at the altar of Volodymyr Zelensky, are treated like a maskless passenger on a commercial flight.
But why should that be? Many people encouraging US conflict with a nuclear power were among the “if it only saves one life” crowd during the Covid craze. Those who robotically wave Ukrainian flags probably couldn’t have identified that fabric at the Winter Olympics four weeks ago. Yet now we’re all expected to join forces, and get in line.
No thanks. Much as we condemn the Russian invasion, why must we automatically support a propped-up sock-puppet government installed in corrupt country by an American coup? Why is this any of this any of our business at all? As with Covid, the precipitating event isn’t the main threat. The US government response is.
The public reaction is too. It mostly ranges from sinister to silly; malevolent to moronic. We read this morning that some German hospitals are refusing to treat Russian patients. Orchestras are pulling Tchaikovsky performances. “Russian“ vodka, regardless the source, is dumped derisively down righteous drains. A brick broke the windows of the Russia House restaurant in Washington, D.C.
This behavior is repulsive, but it’s not new. When the French government opposed the US invasion of Iraq, some Atlanta restaurants dumped Bordeaux wine into the Chattahoochee River. I only wish I’d known their plans before they did it. I’d have happily taken those illicit treasures off their hands, and found a much more pleasing place to pour them.
During World War I, symphonies shunned German composers, banishing Bach when the world needed him most. And perhaps most disgracefully, during the next world war Franklin Roosevelt rounded up American citizens of Japanese descent, and confined them to concentration camps.
But while idiocy rages on the western flank, insanity holds the center. The main front in this war is economic. And the US dollar is the primary weapon. For doing to Ukraine what the US did to Iraq, the Russian economy has been locked down, and quarantined from commerce.
As we’d expect, politicians blame the incursion into Ukraine for inflation in America. But inflation was already baked in the cake, and the Federal Reserve is covered in flour. The invasion is only icing.
As financial writer Dan Denning pointed out, 80% of all dollars printed in history came into being since September 2019. The price of gasoline had risen 50% before any Russian tank left tracks on Ukrainian soil. Prices rose further under the throttle or threat of American sanctions. But that’s to be expected when the US government deprives its citizens of five million daily barrels. And the broader CRB Commodity index is also on a tear, up 140% this year alone.
For the last decade, Russia has been ditching dollars and accumulating gold. Realization of this reality prompted another dumb idea in Washington: to “freeze” Russian gold.
But as Jim Rickards put it, “the gold is physical and it’s inside Russia. The only way to freeze it is to leave it outside in the winter. You can freeze dollar-sale proceeds, but Russia’s a buyer not a seller. It can buy gold directly from Russian mines.”
Weaponizing the dollar is financially feckless and strategically stupid. The appeal of the US currency is its liquidity, and trustworthiness. Showing the world that it can be unilaterally seized for political reasons will encourage holders to seek alternative reserves, undermining the ultimate source of American power.
By denying Russians access to financial services and excluding them from SWIFT, the US not only drives Russia toward China, but endangers western holders of Russian debt. On every trade from which Russia is prohibited, someone was on the other side. And when you’re owed the money, that’s a bad place to be. As Rickards wrote a few days ago, “Hedge funds and banks are losing billions, and are sinking. It takes about a week for bodies to float to the surface.”
We’ll see what bubbles up (or which ones pop). No paper currency ever survived a full credit cycle. This cycle began at Bretton-Woods toward the end of World War II, when the dollar was established as the reserve currency of the world. After three decades, Bretton-Woods collapsed when Nixon severed the link to gold. Interest rates peaked ten years later.
They’ve fallen ever since. Like a weary soldier climbing from his trench, their head is now popping up, trying to rise from the trough. When they get a good look around, they may choose to duck back in.
We read an interesting tidbit on the front page of Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal. The paper reported that the Saudis spurned calls from Joe Biden. That part’s not surprising. After all, who wouldn’t? But then we learned the real reason for the royal snub.
After rejecting Russian oil because that country’s government invaded a vulnerable neighbor, the Americans were pleading with the Saudis to send more crude to reduce American prices. But the Saudis demurred. As the Journal reported, they “want more [US] support for their intervention in Yemen’s civil war, [and] help with their nuclear program as Iran’s moves ahead.”
Governments, as Rothbard said, are nothing more than armed criminal gangs writ large. The “civil war” in Yemen is a Saudi-led genocide backed with intensive US support. Bad as things are in Ukraine, they pale beside the Saudi slaughter the American government is enabling in Yemen. Yet there are no calls to ostracize the Saudis or to embargo their oil. To contrary, the president calls (literally) for more.
But to cripple Vladimir Putin, the US government will punish innocent Russians as well as its usual targets: us. The people who’ll suffer the least are the enlightened officials imposing the sanctions, and the Russian “oligarchs” who are their ostensible targets.
Even the repeated use of the term “oligarch” is revealing propaganda. As Jeff Deist put it, “oligarchs” are wealthy guys from countries we don’t like. “Billionaires” are rich people from the US, who we also are supposed to despise. A “philanthropist” is a left wing rich guy.
The way we’re told these “oligarchs” will be punished is also meant to rile resentment and stoke envy. “We” are going to impound their planes and take their yachts.
The people seizing the yachts have apparently never owned a boat. Anyone who has would say that the way to punish a boat owner isn’t to take it away, but to make him buy another one.
But as the oligarchs struggle or bask in the loss of their boats, average Russian citizens might struggle not to starve.
When announcing an embargo on Russian oil, the US president bragged that his sanctions have made the Russian ruble worth less than an American penny. He was essentially boasting that his response to Putin’s war is pulverizing Russian people, while doing nothing to stop the Russian army.
Indeed, as with most government programs, this one may backfire. Not that average Americans and regular Russians won’t suffer by these sanctions. That’s guaranteed, and already happening.
But by putting Putin in a corner, the US response may make the Russian realize he has little to lose. Rather than reconsider his choice to invade, he might decide that the sanctions validate it, and redouble his efforts. He will doubtless view the economic embargo as an act of war. Because that’s what it is. Especially as the US government keeps Russian oil out of America, it funnels American weapons into Ukraine.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Russian political scientist Georgi Arbatov told Americans that Russia was going to do the worst thing to them that they could. They would take away their enemy.
It was an insightful quip, but incorrect. America’s real enemy has been here all along.
JD
