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Russia may hit USA very hard below the belt

Joined
Jan 9, 2008
Messages
959
I am sorry that it got to this.... But your neo-cons are asking for it.



US leading experts analyzed punishing opportunities of both Russia and the West after the recent armed conflict in Georgia. Specialists came to conclusion that the list of potential Western sanctions pales in comparison with what Moscow could do in response. However, the US administration hopes that Russia will not resort to radical measures not to harm its own financial and security interests.

The US administration has issued yet another warning to Moscow recently claiming that Russia’s actions in Georgia would question the future of its WTO bid, as well as Russia’s position in the Group of Eight.
The list of Washington’s threats also includes the blocking of Russia’s membership in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the boycott of Russia’s hosting of Winter Olympics in 2014 and a freeze of US-Russian strategic dialogue.

US experts warn that the list of Moscow’s potential sanctions is a lot longer. Angela Stent, the director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies, Georgetown University, said that Moscow may respond at the UN Security Council, where it can put obstacles on the way of US intentions to punish Iran for its nuclear ambition. All anti-terrorist programs, the struggle against drug mafia, Syria, Venezuela and Hamas can be added on the list too. There are many questions, on which Russians may stop their cooperation with the USA, with the cooperation in the energy industry on top of that list, the expert believes.

The International Herald Tribune wrote with reference to US outstanding analysts that Washington needed a lot more from Moscow than vice versa. The US needs to ensure the security of Soviet nuclear weapons, to obtain Russia’s help in the endeavor to make Iran and North Korea shut down their nuclear programs.

The sale of Russia’s arms is another problem. The governments of Western countries and Israel are concerned about reports saying that Russia started the shipments of first components of its S-300 missile system to Iran. The latter may subsequently use the powerful systems to down US and Israeli aircraft.
Russia may complicate USA’s and NATO’s supply of the coalition in Afghanistan In April, Moscow gave France and Germany a right to transit non-combatant cargoes via Russia. Russia’s ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said that the West should not bite the hand that feeds 50,000 servicemen in Afghanistan. Moscow can offer show pressure of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, which the USA would like to use for their operations in Afghanistan.

In addition, Russia is capable of blocking any sanctions at the UN Security Council. Moscow can also pull out from a number of disarmament treaties, including the one signed with the USA about the liquidation of short and smaller range missiles after the expiry of START-1 Treaty in 2009.

Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council senior director and CIA senior analyst, said that Moscow was becoming a very important buyer of US Treasury bonds and US government agency issues. The specialist believes that those officials, who urge Washington to put forward various ultimatums to Russia, would hardly prefer Moscow disposing of its dollar assets. Leverett wrote for The National Interest that Moscow was sounding out opportunities of selling Russian crude for roubles, which would obviously affect long-term dollar positions.
Washington hopes that Russia will not go too far.

READ MORE -- http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/25-08-2008/106188-russia_usa-0


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The the neo-cons are doing the best they can to blow America up....


McCain Defends 'Enron Loophole'

By Jason Leopold

20 May, 2008
Countercurrents.org

Sen. John McCain says he opposes the $307 billion farm bill because it would dole out wasteful subsidies, but his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm also wants to stop its proposed regulation of energy futures trading, a market that was famously abused when Enron Corp. manipulated California's electricity prices in 2001.

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Then, over the next year, Enron – with Gramm's wife Wendy serving on its board of directors – worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.

Gramm left the Senate in 2002 but now has emerged as what Fortune magazine calls "McCain's econ brain," not only filling the Arizona senator's acknowledged void on economic expertise ("I don't know as much about the economy as I should") but recognized as one of McCain's closest friends in politics. The two men talk daily.

A McCain aide told me that the Arizona senator opposes the farm bill because it "rewards lobbyists" by granting rich farmers lucrative subsidies, although he would support "a reasonable level of assistance and risk management to farmers when they need America's help."

But the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee also opposes the farm bill because Gramm advised McCain that he should resist its regulatory language on the energy futures market.

Democrats have dubbed that gap in energy futures regulation the "Enron loophole," but it played a part, too, in the more recent attempt by the Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to corner the national gas market by shifting trades to the unregulated "dark markets" of the Intercontinental Exchange.

The "Enron loophole" also has become part of the debate over the soaring price of oil. Last week, a study sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, concluded that speculative futures markets were partly to blame for the surge in oil prices that have pushed gas at the pump toward $4 a gallon

At a May 15 news conference, Levin said the skyrocketing price of oil is "not the result of supply and demand. Speculators have taken over most of the futures market."

However, the 673-page farm bill, containing the regulatory provisions on electronic energy trading, still faces obstacles amid overall concerns about the bill's largesse to farmers at a time of rising food prices.

President George W. Bush has vowed to veto the bill, although it cleared the House and Senate by margins wide enough for an override, assuming Republicans don't rally behind Bush and McCain, their current and future standard bearers.

Gramm and Enron

The battle over the "Enron loophole" also could draw attention to McCain's dependence on Gramm as his chief economic adviser and Gramm's key role in passing legislation that let Enron trade commodities on electronic platforms without federal oversight.

In 2000, with the Republicans in charge of Congress and Gramm chairing the Senate Banking Committee, the exemption on electronic trading was approved without a Senate hearing.

Internal Enron documents, which were released in 2002, revealed that the Houston-based company helped write the legislation, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in December 2000.

Freed from regulatory interference, Enron then used manipulative trading practices to game the California electricity market and drive up electricity prices across the state.

While California consumers were getting fleeced, the new Bush administration shielded Enron from early accusations of market manipulation. President Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity, buying additional time for Enron although the company's house of cards collapsed anyway in fall 2001. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Enron Lies."]

In 2006, the "Enron loophole" allowed Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to shift its trades from the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) to the unregulated Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in Atlanta.

That let Amaranth corner the natural gas market, betting that futures prices would rise. The hedge fund lost about $6 billion and imploded as natural gas prices fell to a two-year low in September 2006.

READ MORE -- http://countercurrents.org/leopold20058.htm
 
Our own fucking country is red.

The Russians are not doing anything worse than we as a nation are doing.

Which is exactly why we can't look to mother russia for salvation. They are all the same. At least America has a history of respecting liberty- thats something most nations can't claim.
 
Looked to me like he was trying to answer a question, Governorishkiya.

coyote, I fear the original point was that we have finally gotten at least as 'red' as Russia.

It seems they may also have a more vibrant capitalist free-market system as well.
 
red = soviet russia. the communist flag is red. the soviets were always referred to as the reds.
Better dead than red.

Right... but the Soviet Union no longer exists. The Communist system that supported the Union collapsed with the end of the First Cold War.
 
It seems they may also have a more vibrant capitalist free-market system as well.

not in russia, but in china they do.
Russia, from its very beginnings has had bad luck economically... or, actually, its not really luck. more to do with location/geography.
 
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The Media propaganda campaigns are still VERY effective obviously.

I know what you mean, IChooseLiberty.... But this is Ron Paul forum for Christ sake!....

Well.... OK....
Here's some info for those Ron Paul people who think that Russia is a Communist/Soviet/Red country:


This should give the US neo-cons some headache:


Flynt Leverett, a former National Security Council senior director and CIA senior analyst, said that Moscow was becoming a very important buyer of US Treasury bonds and US government agency issues. The specialist believes that those officials, who urge Washington to put forward various ultimatums to Russia, would hardly prefer Moscow disposing of its dollar assets. Leverett wrote for The National Interest that Moscow was sounding out opportunities of selling Russian crude for roubles, which would obviously affect long-term dollar positions.
Washington hopes that Russia will not go too far.

READ MORE -- http://english.pravda.ru/world/americas/25-08-2008/106188-russia_usa-0



Rich Russian banks to buy European rivals

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The purchase of major EU bank, B.M.P.S. by a Russian counterpart could mark the start of a shopping spree by the country’s cash-rich banks.

VIDEO - http://www.russiatoday.ru/business/news/24055/video


On Wednesday influential business daily Milano Finanza reported that a Russian consortium is eyeing the French and Belgian operations of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA.
Observers believe only VTB or Sberbank has the resources to buy the assets put up for sale by the Italian major.
Experts think cash-rich Russian banks will not be able to resist the temptation to purchase European banks. The current credit crisis provides all the conditions for such deals: EU banks have become relatively cheap, while Russia's banks are full of cash.
However, some banking analysts do not see the logic for Russian banks to buy abroad. “I think the priority for any Russian bank’s management must be first to focus on the domestic market,” an expert from global investment bank Lehman Brothers said.

http://www.russiatoday.ru/business/news/24055



From Bloomberg:

The world's biggest banks are advising their clients to load up on Russian rubles

Rubles-Fistful.jpg

The world's biggest banks are advising their clients to load up on rubles in a bet that one of the first things Dmitry Medvedev may do after he's sworn in as Russia's president this week is to allow a stronger currency.

Merrill Lynch & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Deutsche Bank AG predict gains of as much as 4 percent in the next six months. They say pressure will mount on the central bank to let the ruble appreciate to stem inflation even if it risks damping profits of oil and energy exporters, which according to Merrill Lynch fund more than half of the federal budget.

The last time Bank Rossii, which must submit proposed changes in monetary policy to the government, allowed the ruble to strengthen was in August, when the inflation rate was 8.5 percent. It's now 13.3 percent, five times the average of the Group of Seven industrialized nations. Two interest-rate increases this year failed to restrain consumer prices, and Russia ``isn't ruling out'' letting the ruble gain, Bank Rossii Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev said April 24.

``Ruble appreciation will continue to be a key anti- inflation tool given the limited domestic monetary instruments the central bank has at its disposal,'' said Ramin Toloui, a senior vice president at Newport Beach, California-based Pacific Investment Management Co., which manages more than $800 billion. ``That favors continued ruble appreciation.''
The central bank sets the price of the ruble against a so- called currency basket made up of 0.55 dollars and 0.45 euros.
It let the currency appreciate against the basket three times last year by a total of about 1.3 percent. The ruble was at 36.7684 per euro and 23.7601 per dollar at 9:18 a.m. in New York.

Surging Growth

Russia, the world's biggest energy exporter, has expanded an average of about 7 percent a year since President Vladimir Putin, 55, took office in 2000. During that time, the price of oil has risen almost fivefold to a record $119.93 a barrel. The economy will grow 6.6 percent this year, more than five times the 1.2 percent average of the G-7, according to Merrill Lynch.

Medvedev, 42, and the central bank are faced with the challenge of maintaining growth while stemming inflation. Consumer prices have surpassed the government's target every year since 2003.
Bringing down the inflation rate ``is one of our biggest priorities,'' Putin said during his annual press conference on Feb. 14. Putin will become responsible for the economy when he assumes the role of prime minister on May 8, the day after Medvedev's inauguration.
`Doing Everything' ....

READ MORE - http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601083&sid=aR.hK1IldoC4&refer=currency
 
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