Welcome To The Future

Our friends the Russians, the Chinese, the Japanese, France and Saudi Arabia have here entered into an agreement to marginalize the dollar as a world currency, according to an important article in the The Independent.

“In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.”

Does anyone recall how Ronald Reagan of blessed memory marginalized the Soviet Union.

Here’s how: He made arrangements with our friends the Saudis to lower the price of oil. This plunged the Soviet Union into near bankruptcy. Why? Because Russia was then and is now rich in oil. Russia now controls the oil pipeline to Europe. China – drinking oil as if it were water – buys a large part of its supply from Russia and Iran; Iran gets some of it from our friends in South America, such as Hugo Chavez, who will help Iran develop its oil resources. That resource will be mostly exported.

Here is where it gets dicy: If the dollar is replaced with the so call “basket of currency” -- Chinese, Russian and Euro currency (Iran has already switched to the Euro) – then the US loses its monetary leverage and cannot do to Russia, China, Iran what formerly it did to the Soviet Union, which pulled out of an unwinnable war in Afghanistan, largely owing to its precarious monetary situation. China, Russia and Iran together now form the new axis of Anti-Americanism.

Does anyone see a pattern here?

The US is going to lose its monetary leverage in mega-foreign policy; already poor in energy, it has hobbled itself by refusing to pull oil out of the oil rich Gulf (Cuba is in the process of mining it, with some help from our pals the Russians); we are engaged in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan (just like the Russians); and we have a president whose understanding of real politic is, ahem … simplistic.

It doesn’t look good.

A day after the report had been published, denials poured in.

Comments

The Blumenthal Burisma Connection

Steve Hilton , a Fox News commentator who over the weekend had connected some Burisma corruption dots, had this to say about Connecticut U.S. Senator Dick Blumenthal’s association with the tangled knot of corruption in Ukraine: “We cross-referenced the Senate co-sponsors of Ed Markey's Ukraine gas bill with the list of Democrats whom Burisma lobbyist, David Leiter, routinely gave money to and found another one -- one of the most sanctimonious of them all, actually -- Sen. Richard Blumenthal."

Donna

I am writing this for members of my family, and for others who may be interested. My twin sister Donna died a few hours ago of stage three lung cancer. The end came quickly and somewhat unexpectedly. She was preceded in death by Lisa Pesci, my brother’s daughter, a woman of great courage who died still full of years, and my sister’s husband Craig Tobey Senior, who left her at a young age with a great gift: her accomplished son, Craig Tobey Jr. My sister was a woman of great strength, persistence and humor. To the end, she loved life and those who loved her. Her son Craig, a mere sapling when his father died, has grown up strong and straight. There is no crookedness in him. Thanks to Donna’s persistence and his own native talents, he graduated from Yale, taught school in Japan, there married Miyuki, a blessing from God. They moved to California – when that state, I may add, was yet full of opportunity – and both began to carve a living for them...

Lamont Surprised at Suit Brought Against PURA

Marissa P. Gillett, the state's chief utility regulator, watches Gov. Ned Lamont field questions about a new approach to regulation in April 2023. Credit: MARK PAZNIOKAS / CTMIRROR.ORG Concerning a suit brought by Eversource and Avangrid, Connecticut’s energy delivery agents, against Connecticut’s Public Utility Regulatory Agency (PURA), Governor Ned Lamont surprised most of the state’s political watchers by affecting surprise. “Look,” Lamont told a Hartford Courant reporter shortly after the suit was filed, “I think it is incredibly unhelpful,” Lamont said. “Everyone is getting mad at the umpires. Eversource is not getting everything they want and they are bringing suit. It was a surprise to me. Nobody notified me. I think we have to do a better job of working together.” Lamont’s claim is far less plausible than the legal claim made by Eversource and Avangrid. The contretemps between Connecticut’s energy distributors and Marissa Gillett , Gov. Ned Lamont’s ...

Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Search This Blog