Debt Rattle August 10 2018
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John French Sloan Sunset, West Twenty-Third Street 1905-6 • The Myth Of Market Cap (Berversdorf) • The Looming Threat of a Yuan Depreciation (M
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle August 10 2018]Apparently the sanctions gambit is having some effect; the ruble is 66.70 to the dollar.
A good time to be living in Russia and being paid in dollars. Last week the ruble was 62 and change; that’s quite a drop.
IMO it’s the U.S. that’s going to suffer the most in this latest insanity. I’d love to see Russia stop exporting the RD-180 rocket engine to the U.S. and refuse rides to the International Space Station. Talk about shooting oneself in the foot…
Financially Russia is one of the strongest countries on the planet; very low debt, very healthy cash reserves ($500,billion) 2,000+ tons of gold reserves as well.
Russia also has an alternative to the swift and with China (and BRICKS) a basket of currencies with which to do business.
Weak hand Luke (U.S.), is playing a crippled hand in this game…
But, danger lurkes below, a cornered U.S. is a crazy bunch of despots that may act irrationally/stupidly…I have often wondered when they talk abut the Silk Road and other countries dependency on Chinese loans whether anybody has seen any of the actual loan contracts. How are the loans structured and in what overseas currency, if any, is the loan to be repaid? The western idea of loans may not be the Chinese. The IMF is to be avoided like the plague but the BRICS Investment Bank, from what I have read, is a different kettle of fish.
“US Must Turn to Russia to Contain China (Rickards)” SO TRUE. It seems Russia understands that better than US. China is the real threat.
China is the real threat? Bollocks!
The U.S. hegemon is the threat!
China is only a threat to the U.S. hegemon.
For what reason is it not understood that Russia and China are bossom buddies; and the lameassed U.S. is not going to split them up, period!
A good read is Mackinder, Mahan, and Spykman regarding the Heartland theory.
This is a very old theory based on the real center of the world; Eurasia! Readjust your maps and thinking to the genuine world; not U.S. centric any longer. China’s BRI is the realiization of the new world order and it’s coming sooner than you may realize.
A new world order is in process and the U.S. has little say in how it unfolds.
The U.S. recognizes the gravity of the Russia/China alliance and will do anything to split it up…fat chance! Not going to happen; the U.S. has absolutely nothing to offer…
It’s humiliating to see yourself left in the dust of the future with no options…
Nuclear first strike? By the U.S.? Only if it desires annihilation; Russia has already proved it can respond to any U.S. attack.Yeah, he’s whistling down the wind. U.S. romance Russia away from China? In this environment? Are the odds 0% or 0.0%? So nice going neocon media, that may have been your only chance for even a small rearguard action. China and Russia won’t break now for 50 years.
Odd part is, these guys TOTALLY 100% to the death believe in the MacKinder theory, even after air flight and space strikes, but then these are the same dinosaurs who believe Russia is communist. Russia hasn’t been the USSR in 30 years. There are Colonels, maybe even Generals who weren’t even born when the Soviet Union fell. For the love of God read a newspaper or something, times have changed. They’re doing the same with a race war in a country that doesn’t have race anymore. Everyone is intermixed, intermarried, with peoples from all over in every corner. Tibetan minority in rural Vermont? Serbians in Chicago, Ethiopians in Ohio? You got it. Intermarrying freely? Yup. Yet these tone-deaf nonagenarians and their media handmaidens think there are only two races…at least whenever it’s convenient. There aren’t even only two races or “purity” whatever the heck that means even in the “white” hinterlands like West Virginia, to say nothing of Georgia (hello Atlanta). This isn’t 1962 back when you were 40. It’s different. It’s just media nonsense and villainous stereotyping. /r
Back to MacKinder’s possibly false but certainly outdated theory, there is a corollary: if pan-Asia can confront and defeat the Anglo sea power of Oceana, then what about the Americas? Aren’t they big? Where do they fit in? Well, looking from the failed war of 1812 to recapture the colonies, the Crimean war, the attempt of division and dissent in the US Civil War, back to the sale of Alaska and the re-attempt on Russia in 1917, you can see a ping-pong action of similar interests and attacks. Russia backed the Union in the Civil War and floated their ships into NYC to keep off any British ideas of blockade in favor of the South. The U.S. invaded Siberia in 1900 against Japan. These US-Russian alliances, maybe dalliances, are footnotes of history, never mentioned in the main text.
My theory is that if there’s a MacKinder heartland theory, there’s another theory of equal or greater force: Keep the U.S. and Russia from ever uniting, by any means necessary. Revolution, Cold War, sabotage, engineered fabrications, fake missile launches, stark-raving nonsense, doesn’t matter. Because by any outside view, the U.S. and Russia have the most in common and are natural allies with similar outlooks — a thing often mentioned in the late Cold War.
So again I ask at Helsinki, what would happen if the U.S. and Russia stopped being enemies? What would happen? Something? Nothing? Who would be their enemy? Maybe the nation that used their secret service to inject false stories to rig the 2016 election? The secret service can’t seem to get any stories straight about Salisbury, nor find their head with both hands except for baseless, illogical allegations that are used against only one nation? Perhaps Mackinder said this himself somewhere; I haven’t read his full works. It would be only logical, though: if you’re at mortal risk of one continental railroad power, wouldn’t you be at twice the risk for two? And if they combined….
Now wouldn’t you be really mad if there were someone who could destroy all that hard work and bad feelings with a 10 minute senate testimony? Have a nice weekend. It’s not slowing down any.
Totally agree Dr. D but unfortunately it doesn’t matter how correct you are if the mass does not want to agree then we continue on the same mad path. It doesn’t matter how correct/incorrect Mackinder was, most of the world’s powers followed him and look what has happened since 1904. Absolute mayhem and it is still happening.
So many areas are affected by this idea of not wanting to know. Think of economics, religion50 years ago, they wanted to destroy a tiny part of the Great Barrier Reef. Now, they are pretending that the whole GBR will be gone in a few years. If you believe your politicians, you must be totally naive.
Harold Holt, the poet and ‘the bastard from Bingil Bay’: How reef conservation began
BTW, Holt is the Australian prime minister who was murdered by the CIA because he contemplated taking Australian troops out of Vietnam
WAKE UP!
Canada is under attack by Trump/USA!!!Trump says progress made toward trade deal with Mexico, but warns Canada
If you wait for the bullets to fly
or
boots on the ground
It will be too late to save your resources.
I think it is important to understand the BRI and MacKinder’s Heartland Theory are all about commerce.
Air travel is irrelevant to both. Rail remains the cheapest means of moving freight. China recently delivered freight to the UK by rail. Russia has opened the arctic shipping (maritime) route shortening by more than 2 weeks the time it takes to get to Europe.
MacKinder (Heartland) was preceded by Admiral Mahan (control of maritime trade routes) and followed by Spykman (The Rimland Theory).
Together they mapped out the future of commerce. My world view is no longer U.S. centric; Eurasia is truly the center (heart) of the world; geographically and by percentage of the world’s population; 46% if memory serves correct.
China, Russia, Iran and Turkey are the key players here. Syria is also important.
It is pretty obvious the U.S. is very unhappy with this whole thing and its constant challenges to China in the south China sea and the obsession with sanctions speak to the truth of this.
But the Heartland is impossible to control by military means. The only possibility is economically which we are seeing played out now.
The U.S. is going to have to learn how to share the sand box so everybody can play.
Unfortunately the U.S. is doing a splendid job of alienating the world at large. Traditionally the U.S. has gone to war to get its way and that option is still there; but for the first time it’s up against the certainty of selfdestruction if it chooses that path.
Putin made that crystal clear on March 1st; the U.S. is outclassed and totally vulnerable.The Ruble is 67.65 today.
“Rail remains the cheapest means of moving freight”
V. Arnold,
This may be true for very short distances – but it is certainly not true for intercontinental freight.
For example, moving containers from inland Shanghai to Paris, it would probably cost over 10 times more by rail – assuming rail has the capacity to do so which it does not.
Nassim
No, quite the opposite is true;…On average, longer journeys tend to be less expensive by rail, and shorter journeys are less costly by road. Where the point of cost neutrality comes is governed by many factors which are route and commodity specific, but in general, the point of cost neutrality can be expected to lie in the range of 130 to 150 miles.
https://freighthub.com/en/blog/modes-transportation-explained-best/
V. Arnold,
With respect, no one moves heavy less-valuable cargo long distance by road. I am comparing shipping by ship to rail. I cost of moving coal, or iron ore, in Australia a few hunderd kilometers by rail is far more than the cost of moving the same coal all the way to China.
<i>A study presented by Sea Point Group suggested that maritime transportation could save some $2,000-per container over railway transportation when moving containers between Long Beach CA and Memphis TN. The railway distance is approximately 2,000 miles while the maritime distance via the Panama Canal is 4,355 nautical miles to New Orleans and another 400 nautical miles along the Lower Mississippi River. </i>
Comparing Maritime Versus Railway Transportation CostsNassim
Obviously you didn’t read my link. I don’t give a whit about the U.S.; we’re talking Eurasia and shipping by rail more than 6,ooo miles, from onloading (China) to offloading (UK). That’s never been done before.
18 days vs 44 days by sea,
I’m agnostic as to rail or sea; but it’s important to the BRI participants who will use both methods.
This is opening a massive market area not seen since the original Silk Road.Zerosum. I think bombs etc will be looked at in the next few years as we now do of men going off to war on horses and waving swords at each other. I think the next Wars will be computer based to attack a country’s computer systems eg electricity, airlines, airports, hospitals, water systems, any computer system you can think of. If a country tries to send bombs or missiles to another country ‘Return to Sender’ will have a completely different meaning.
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