"Putin’s Real Doomsday Device"
by Addison Wiggin
“If the doomsday scenario happens,
will it help if you have heaps of paper money?”
- Bjorn Ulvaeu
“Watching the news is a bit like watching a bad opera,” we quote from the introduction to Empire of Debt. “You can tell from all the shrieking that something very important is supposed to be happening, but you don’t quite know what it is. What you’re missing is the plot.” Let’s begin today by noticing that this is a comic opera that seems as though it might veer into tragedy at any moment. The characters on stage are familiar to us - consumers, economists, politicians, investors, and businesspeople.
They are the same hustlers, clowns, rubes, and dumbbells that we always see before us. But in today’s performance, they are doing something extraordinary: They are some of the richest people on the planet, but they have come to rely on the savings of the world’s poorest people just to pay their bills. They routinely spend more than they make - and think they can continue doing so indefinitely. They go deeper and deeper in debt, believing they will never have to settle up. They buy houses and then mortgage them out - room by room, until they have almost nothing left. They invade foreign countries in the belief that they are spreading freedom and democracy, and depend on printing press money to pay for it. They run trillion-dollar deficits, routinely, giving almost no thought to who will eventually pay… or how.
Alas, people come to believe whatever they must believe when they must believe it. All these conceits and illusions that we find so amusing come not from thinking, but from circumstances. As they say on Wall Street, “markets make opinions,” not the other way around. The circumstance that makes sense of this strange performance is that the United States is an empire - whether we like it or not. It must play a well-known role on the world stage, just as you and I must play our roles, not because we have thought our way to them, but simply because of who we are, where we are, and when we are there.
We, citizens of today’s great empire, have our roles to play, too, and the empire itself must do what an empire must do. Fish gotta swim. Birds gotta fly. Empires gotta be empires. One of the things we have to do is believe that Russia, and its bloodthirsty leader, “Comrade Vlad,” is trying to resurrect the “Evil Empire.” Why else would he invade Ukraine, try to block vital shipping in the Black Sea, or launch satellite-destroying nukes into space?
The trouble with the news cycle is it doesn’t often follow the script. Tucker Carlson’s interview with Vladimir Putin, for example, was a hot story all over the world last week. It began with a partial transcript, sent around in the morning; the video followed that evening. We let our coauthor Bill Bonner pick up the story from here…
"The Evil Empire Reboot"
"Sending the Putin interview in two parts was important for several reasons. First, Carlson seems to have bolted from the Democratic/Republican juggernaut. The two mainstream parties, along with the whole Establishment of universities, press, Wall Street, Pentagon, and the federal government itself – all have embraced a childish ‘good guys vs. bad guys’ narrative. Russia, in their minds, is a bad guy.
Second, he has also broken ranks with the media itself. The American press operates as a propaganda arm for the government. Press releases from the White House and the Pentagon are passed along as ‘news.’ Enemies are identified…and then described as ‘brutal’…’terrorists’…who make ‘unprovoked’ attacks and are often ‘backed’ by even more evil opponents. The last thing the U.S. press will do is go to the source and get an alternative opinion.
Third, real journalism could even get you put in jail. Newsweek magazine reported that the European Union might block Carlson’s visit since he could be seen as ‘assisting’ a ‘war criminal.’ [Putin].
A Dark Period: Of course, in these days of fake news and deepfake voice and visuals, you can never be sure what you’re seeing. The interview was undoubtedly authentic; nobody could portray Mr. Putin as well as he plays the role himself. But we were unable to match up the advance transcript with the actual interview. Here’s a key exchange from transcript:
TUCKER: What is your opinion of President Biden?
PUTIN: We’re convinced he is not running the country. Let’s say we have good sources that confirm that but it’s plain for anyone to see for themselves. The U.S. has now entered into a dark period. It has unaccountable leadership.
PUTIN: … Joe Biden may not even be aware of what’s going on. He may not understand the level of sanctions thrown at Russia. Who put those sanctions together? Those are our adversaries…. The elites have deserted you.
TUCKER: So who do you think is running the U.S. then?
PUTIN: The same forces which have always run it. You may change presidents, but you do not change those in real power. That is who we have to deal with. Joe Biden is just a facade for this power structure.
What gives? Is this a special Artificial Intelligence-generated version, just for us? Because Putin’s pensée is remarkably close to our own!
Losing the War: In our view, America’s elites really have abandoned the people they are meant to serve. The rich get richer, on fake money and fake wars. But the country goes broke. Meanwhile, the West seems to have lost the shooting war in the Ukraine and the ‘sanctions war’ against Russia; most reports insist that the Russian economy is in good shape. VOAnews: "The Russian economy in 2023 outpaced both the United States and Europe in terms of growth, increasing in size by 3.6% despite being subject to a wide array of powerful economic sanctions and being cut off from major global markets."
And here’s The American Conservative magazine with a review of new book by French analyst Emmanuel Todd: "From 2000 to 2017, from roughly the beginning of Putin’s reign, the Russian rate of death from alcoholism dropped from 25 per 100,000 citizens to 8; from suicide, 39 to 13; from murder, 28 to 6. As for infant mortality, long the gold standard signifier of the level of a country’s development, under Putin it fell from 19 per 1000 live births to 4.4. Todd quotes UNICEF to note the American rate is currently 5.5 per 1000.
He goes on to cite several sectors where Russia has made stunning progress in the last 20 years (agriculture, internet access) before speculating about how it is that Russia, dwarfed by the United States in per capita income statistics, is somehow able to keep pace during wartime and produce as many armaments as the United States.
An interesting clue is that 23 percent of Russians in higher education study engineering, versus 7 percent in the U.S. The result is that Russia, with a far smaller population, produces more engineers than the U.S., which helps it keep pace with Goliath.
Perhaps even more remarkable in the actual video interview is Mr. Putin himself. Launching directly into a very long discourse on Russian history - beginning in 862! - the man has a depth of knowledge that would be almost unthinkable in a modern, glib American politician. And while his conclusions are subject to argument - as all are - it is clear that he’s thought them through…and holds them sincerely. This, too, is something we don’t expect from our own politicos. Then again, perhaps it doesn’t matter. If we (and Mr. Putin) are right, our front-facing ‘deciders’ do not really decide anything important.
The Biden Façade: Take the momentous decision to blast away at 85 targets said to be ‘Iran-backed proxies.’ Does Mr. Biden have any idea about the complex rivalries and twisted politics of the Middle East? Did he know who, exactly, he was trying to kill…or why? Instead, his pollsters told he had to ‘do something’ to look tough…and his firepower industry advisors told him what to do.
But if Biden doesn’t actually ‘run things,’ who does? Mr. Putin says he had no need to meddle in U.S. elections, because “the same people end up running things anyway.” Who are these people?
PUTIN: There are strong financial entities in whose interest it is to keep us as adversaries. One of your presidents warned against that.
That is more or less what we’ve concluded here at Bonner Private Research. Every society has its elites. The elites are the deciders. After many years of rising power and wealth, they become incompetent and corrupt. Looking out for themselves, they abandon the rest of the people.
But we let Putin have the final word (from the video interview): "It is not about the personality of the leader. It is about the elites’ mindset…If the idea of domination at any cost, based also on forceful action, dominates the American society, nothing will change. It will only get worse. But if in the end, one comes to the awareness that the world has been changing due to the objective circumstances, and that one should be able to adapt to them in time using the advantages that the U.S. still has today, then perhaps something may change." Mr. Putin is an optimist!"
P.S. As we detailed yesterday, Putin will play host to the next BRICS nation summit at an undisclosed location in Kazan, Russia on an as yet to be determined day in early October of this year, 2024. Time’s a tickin’.
The Russian meeting will mark the first time the new member nations will include Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates. Most notably, Saudi Arabia and Iran – the principle benefactor and detractor, respectively – of the U.S.’ “petrodollar” will also be there. While an alternative BRICS currency is not currently viable, it will be first on the list for discussion… as it happened to be when Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva forced the issue last August in South Africa.
You’ll recall from yesterday’s missive, with the new members, the BRICS nations now account for 40% of the world’s population. Another 23 nations have applied for membership. That would be a sizable portion of the world economy who could avail themselves to an alternative currency to the U.S. dollar.
Following the last BRICS meeting in South Africa in August, 2023, Donald Trump warned economist Larry Kudlow, “The U.S. dollar is losing its dominance.” “Our country is going to hell,” the former president added for good measure, “the U.S. is like a Third World country.”
“The U.S. dollar served its purpose since the end of WWII and became the major foreign exchange reserve currency,” said Brazilian economist Ricardo C. Amaral. But, “the days of the U.S. dollar playing that special role…has reached the end of the line… [and] today that system is very sick.”
Presiding over the next BRICS meeting in his home country could well put Vladmir Putin’s fist on the real doomsday button – unseating the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Such a move would be a logical step in the history of reserve currencies… but could wreak havoc on the standard of living of those citizens of the west who’ve come to depend on the dollar’s ‘exorbitant privilege.’"
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