Yves here. Michael Hudson gives a short, persuasive explanation of the real reason the US and the IMF are bailing out the Ukraine. Hint: it’s not the reason you read in the American press.
Read more...Could the U.S. unleash a flood of oil from the strategic petroleum reserve that would drive down prices in order to punish Russia?
Read more...Russian President Vladimir Putin might have had a field day listening to Obama’s Brussels speech threatening more economic sanctions, except he was otherwise engaged.
Read more...A fellow blogger with substantial experience in Europe sent this BBC footage, which I believe readers will find instructive.
Read more...Dave here. In case you were thinking that the Great Game was obsolete or something. Needless to say the referendum passed, this was written slightly before the release of the results. By Nick Cunningham, a Washington DC-based writer on energy and environmental issues. You can follow him on twitter at @nickcunningham1. Cross-posted at Oil Price. […]
Read more...Russia’s incursion (invasion if you prefer) into Crimea, with prospects for movement into Eastern Ukraine, is the culmination of US/NATO policy since 1991.
Read more...Yves here. While I have every reason to assume the Russians mean to act on the currency front, on the surface, the remarks Wolf discusses in his post appear to be based on a misapprehension. But there may more method here than meets the eye.
Read more...To many, the answer to the specter of Russian natural gas dominance is clear: unleash America’s natural gas abundance and displace Moscow. But will that work?
Read more...We live in a world built on such an overkill of 24/7 propaganda and misinformation that some of it easily slips by. Especially when the topic is the Ukraine.
Read more...Yves here. The writing is delicious. But one thing that is frustrating (and of course quite deliberate) in reading the Western media account of the standoff in Ukraine is that they airbrush out how the West stoked this conflict and can hardly be surprised that Putin finally felt compelled to respond.
Read more...Yves here. It’s remarkable how much of London has turned into a ghost town thanks to the influx of serious foreign money. When I worked for a few months in London, in 1984, it was Mayfair that was the destination for Saudi money, and it clearly had far too little in the way of street […]
Read more...How we learned to stop worrying and love the IMF….
Read more...The Sochi Olympics were the great success Russia hoped for.
Read more...Yesterday, we put up a post on the subject of who won and lost as a result of Obama being cornered into taking up a Russian proposal to destroy Syria’s stockpiles of chemical weapons rather than launch punitive attacks. A Beltway insider weighted in via e-mail with some pointed remarks:
Read more...By David Dayen, a lapsed blogger, now a freelance writer based in Los Angeles, CA. Follow him on Twitter @ddayen Sure, this is an economics blog, but the story of the week is unquestionably the imminent Congressional vote on authorization for so-called “limited” military strikes on Syria. And there are a variety of significant economic […]
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