[ExI] Weapons Of Financial Destruction

[BillK]

Weapons Of Financial Destruction And The New World Disorder

Biden didn't have to take a blowtorch to the financial system in
response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But he has done so.

MARCH 9, 2022    DAVID C. HENDRICKSON

<https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/weapons-of-financial-destruction-and-the-new-world-disorder/>

Quotes:

The comprehensive sanctions the United States and the West have
imposed on Russia take us into an entirely new world. The sanctions
are multidimensional, but most important is the “freezing” of Russian
foreign exchange reserves, what President Biden called Putin’s $630
billion war fund in his State of the Union. This action means that all
previous economic contracts between Russia and the West are invalid.
Biden’s figure was probably overstated by half, but the precise figure
doesn’t matter. It’s the principle that counts.

The effective nullification of contracts is the Big Enchilada, an
H-Bomb rather than an A-Bomb, a 50-megaton Weapon of Financial
Destruction (WFD). Without bothering to announce it, the United States
and its allies have thrown a wrench into the gears of important
sectors of the world economy. They are badly underestimating the
fallout. Remarkably, they did this against the backdrop of a worldwide
crisis in supply chains. That is about to get a lot worse.
- - - - - - -
The unsettling conclusion is that everything we learned about the
workings of the international economy must be reassessed, given that
so many of its basic underpinnings have been overturned. Don’t think
of trade in the dreamy way that economists talk about it, with
everyone exchanging goods and services in Benthamite bliss at the joys
of utility maximization. No, it won’t be like that.

Instead, batten down the hatches for neo-mercantilism on steroids. At
some of its most salient junctures, exchange between the blocs will be
like two rival gangs of mafiosi making a guns-for-drugs
swap—disagreeable, but necessary—and coming to the transaction in a
remote warehouse with lots of armed backup just in case. “Let me see
the merchandise. Don’t try to pull a fast one.”
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This article is sort of political, in the sense that the End of the
World is also political.   :(
As the article mentions en passant, the elephant in the room is the 30
trillion (and rising) USA national debt.
To fix that means the destruction of the nation's savings, pensions,
jobs and economy. So the politicians responsible for that financial
disaster need a really good excuse to do that and avoid being
executed.
Something very much like World War III.

BillK