Russia’s special military operation appears to be proceeding apace, but there’s not much big news so far today. Therefore, I want to return to the even bigger picture of what Putin is up to. But, before that … there are some preliminary considerations.
I’m really disappointed in Trump. We all cut him slack during his term of office and afterwards, because of the Russian and Ukraine hoaxes. It’s understandable, but understand this, too: Trump was president while major new sanctions were slapped on Russia. In typical fashion he bragged about how tough he was being. I’ll be the first to agree that he probably felt he had to do this because of domestic politics, but it’s never a good look when you allow your enemies to dictate your actions. Those decisions played a part in where we are now—recall, it was 2018 when Putin said, “OK, now you’ll listen to us.” So for Trump to be saying this wouldn’t have happened if he were still president—the only way it wouldn’t have happened is if he had done a major change of course in Russian - US relations.
Now, apparently, there’s a recording of Trump doing a fund raiser and telling the audience of knuckleheads—I say “knuckleheads” because I presume Trump knows his audience—that NATO needs to do more. That’s not helpful. I understand this is politics, and Trump is playing to US voters, not the world. But it’s not helpful, and it’s not good for those US voters. Nor is it good that he’s being reported to have said:
Trump told donors that the US should put Chinese flags on America's F-22s and then 'bomb the s***' out of Russia, leading to conflict between the nations while 'we sit back and watch.'
We’ll have to see whether this can be confirmed, but it is being reported that there are tapes.
It’s interesting that GEROMAN brings up Jake Sullivan, because Luongo links to another article that connects Sullivan and the CIA not only with Ukraine but with the planned War On Domestic Terrorism—it’s a sort of Joker in the deck:
The eruption of war between Russia and Ukraine appears to have given the CIA the pretext to launch a long-planned insurgency in the country, one poised to spread far beyond Ukraine’s borders with major implications for Biden’s “War on Domestic Terror”
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Soon after Russia began military operations in Ukraine, Foreign Affairs – the media arm of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) – published an article entitled “The Coming Ukrainian Insurgency.” The piece was authored by Douglas London, a self-described “retired Russian-speaking CIA operations officer who served in Central Asia and managed agency counterinsurgency operations.” He asserted in the article that “Putin will face a long, bloody insurgency that will spread across multiple borders” with the potential to create “widening unrest that could destabilize other countries in Russia’s orbit.”
Other notable statements made by London include his assertion that “the United States will invariably be a major and essential source of backing for a Ukrainian insurgency.” He also states that “As the United States learned in Vietnam and Afghanistan, an insurgency that has reliable supply lines, ample reserves of fighters, and sanctuary over the border can sustain itself indefinitely, sap an occupying army’s will to fight, and exhaust political support for the occupation at home.” London explicitly refers to models for this apparently imminent Ukrainian insurgency as the CIA-backed insurgencies in Afghanistan in the 1980s and the “moderate rebels” in Syria from 2011 to the present.
London isn’t alone in promoting these past CIA-backed insurgencies as a model for “covert” US aid to Ukraine. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose State Department helped to create the “moderate rebel” insurgency in Syria and oversaw the US and NATO-backed destruction of Libya, appeared on MSNBC on February 28th to say essentially the same. In her interview, Clinton cited the CIA-backed insurgency in Afghanistan as “the model that people [in the US government] are now looking toward” with respect to the situation in Ukraine. She also references the insurgency in Syria in similar fashion in the same interview. It is worth noting that Clinton’s former deputy chief of staff when she was Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan, is now Biden’s National Security Adviser.
Is there more to the “Hillary’s running” rumors than sanity would suggest? If Zhou could be installed in the WH—even on a part time basis—God only knows what the ruling class may have planned for us. To have Trump and Cruz and that lot parroting similar lines on Ukraine is beyond discouraging.
GEROMAN’s second tweet brings us to Tom Luongo’s reflections, which get to the really big picture. I’ll be the first to admit I don’t fully understand this finance stuff, but Luongo’s piece strikes me as brilliant:
Now, we’ve talked a fair amount already about this war between Russia and the woke Globalist West, but Luongo gets into the details of the tricks Putin—the judoka—may have up his sleeve. Let’s dive right in—with the understanding that the key considerations, gold and oil, will follow. As usual, there’s much more at the link, but I’ll whet your appetite with a twitter thread that Luongo links to:
🔥If Russia sold their oil for gold at 1000 barrels per ounce, as @LukeGromen ponders, gold would quickly go towards 100k per ounce.
Russia’s gold position would then be worth 6.7+ trillion. Notice they’ve been buying a lot. 👇
Their total national debt is approx 300 billion.
The 6.7 trillion doesn’t include all gold they’d receive for oil.
Oil which everyone would be incentivized to buy as arbitrage until 100k gold was hit.
Effectively trading Russian oil for control over petrodollar.
I thought nukes were their most dangerous weapon…maybe not?
And the plot thickens when you remember the US gold reverses would then go up to 26 trillion.
The more I think about it the more it seems the gold/dollars/sanctions aren’t the ultimate arbiter of control…it’s energy. 🤔
• • •
So that should set the stage, as it were, for Luongo.
Luongo begins by noting two important things. First is how impressive Putin has been in leading Russia out its post Cold War prostration over the past 20 years. Secondly, Luongo conditionally accepts that Putin’s war is going pretty much as planned—the idea that this entire operation wasn’t thoroughly gamed out is absurd. And that explains, in part, why NATO has no appetite for a real war, opting instead for an “insurgency”. That insurgency may prove more difficult to put into effect than envisioned, however. The CIA is said to be building up the insurgency right now, in Poland. But will Poland get cold feet? Poland could prove quite vulnerable to Russian pressure, and there appears to be internal disagreement on how far the Polish government should go:
Crucially, there was this statement from an unnamed Polish official given to FT: "I can’t speak to a timeline but I can just say we’re looking at it very, very actively." The official said further, "Poland is not in a state of war with Russia, but it is not an impartial country, because it supports Ukraine as the victim of aggression. It considers, however, that all military matters must be a decision of Nato as a whole."
On Saturday, perhaps nervous about coming into Russia's crosshairs amid the flurry of reporting, Poland's government batted down the reports as "fake news" - saying there's been no transfer of its aircraft to Ukraine nor does it intend to...
‼️FAKE NEWS‼️ Unfortunately you are spreading misinformation with quotation from 27/02/22.
Poland won't send its fighter jets to #Ukraine as well as allow to use its airports. We significantly help in many other areas.https://t.co/wjNOgh97JT
— Chancellery of the Prime Minister of Poland (@PremierRP_en) March 6, 2022
Germany, too, appears to be reconsidering a variety of things:
Germany is no different than any other government—it needs a threat to social cohesion like a hole in the head.
Luongo then suggests that Putin’s plan is a lot bigger than Ukraine:
What’s obvious to me is that Putin put in motion a plan far more ambitious than was originally expected by the West. Their hysterical overreaction to this decapitation of Ukraine is my barometer on this. Because of this hysteria there are now all manner of questions as to why Putin did this and why, in effect, he allowed the West to respond to this war this way. Thus generating some quite fanciful theories.
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But they all lead to the same fundamental conclusion, in my mind. This has become a race between two radically different versions of The Davos Crowd’s plans for a Great Reset.
The big question, says Luongo, is: Why would the legendarily cautious Putin, who always has a plan for every contingency, have done this if the operative assumption is that he foresaw the over the top reaction? Is Putin, in the favored phrase in some circles these days, a “controlled opponent”?
Is [Putin] really a secret WEF stooge who is accelerating their plans for them by sacrificing Ukraine on the altar of their Brave New World?
Luongo rejects this theory out of hand, but then presents another: Could Putin be an unwitting dupe? only to reject that also. Putin gamed this out. There’s nothing unwitting about anything he does.
In fact, I would think Davos going financial DEFCON 5 would have been #1 on his list of potential reactions from his adversaries because that’s the way they have reacted in the past to major challenges to their plans, c.f. The Election of Trump and Brexit.
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Do you really think he wasn’t paying attention over the past six years? That he slept through the clear operation to take out Trump through election fraud and societal upheaval in the US in 2020?
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The sham impeachment process of 2019 over a phone call with Ukraine?
Of course not. Putin and his staff are completely dialed in because the survival of their country demands it. They know better than the people making up these theories who exactly they are dealing with.
So what’s going on?
Putin is upping the operational tempo on the neolibs of The Davos Crowd in Europe and the White House and their neocon useful idiots in the US/UK foreign policy circles, Congress and intelligence services to create the ultimate geopolitical Russian cauldron for their avarice.
Ukraine represents everyone’s existential threat.
If the neocons lose, they are done as an influence within foreign policy circles in the West forever because they will have failed to penetrate Fortress Russia.
If Davos loses, their grand plans for global domination become diminished to, at best, the European Union and some parts of the Commonwealth.
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If you are wondering why everything about this war feels weird or off, it’s because the stakes are so high for everyone. These are the stakes for the world. And because of that you had to expect the quality of information surrounding it has literally dropped to the international price of Russian sovereign debt, i.e. zero.
This is the point at which Luongo gets into the insurgency planning and the Ukrainian government in exile—Zelenskiy and his closest advisers are probably alread in Poland, if for no other reason than to protect them from the crazies back home. Poland, IMO, is playing with fire:
And the reason for that is the belief there is a way to stop Putin in Ukraine still exists within the minds of both the neocons at the State Dept. and Davos. That belief hinges on binding Putin in a land war in Ukraine he can’t win against an insurgency of the type and kind Whitney Webb just exposed the CIA has been building around the globe (including here in the US) for years now.
This has now become official US policy, setting up a Ukrainian Government-in-Exile in Poland while sending money there to support an al-Qaeda like guerilla army to harass the Russians. This makes sense since this is what we did in Syria, using Turkey as the staging ground for their assaults into Idlib and Aleppo.
Luongo has more to say about that, so follow the link. But this is where we get to the ultimate weapon: Gold.
The ground war is basically over, says Luongo, just as Col. Macgregor has been saying. NATO isn’t going to intervene and Russia’s cauldron strategy is proceeding. Now comes the financial war, the sanctions war, where the US and Davos are supposed to be supreme. But are they?
The capital markets are supposed to be Davos’ turf while Russia is financially weak. But that is only if you look at things in nominal terms, nominal dollars, euros, etc. Russia has weapons it has only just begun to deploy here.
... This is why Putin will have to make a move financially in the next few weeks.
Luongo discusses what he considers minor moves that Putin has already made, which we also have discussed—in particular, removing the VAT for purchases of gold by Russian citizens.
If I know Putin well, he will wait for his next big move so as to cause maximal damage in the financial markets and that means waiting to see how the central banks and capital markets respond to the big changes occurring within them right now.
I alluded to one of these moves the other day, saying
Those that brave the waters {Shell at -$28.50 to Brent} will get their {Russian} oil at a steep discount, those that don’t will pay through the nose, further accelerating the decline of those economies as inflation spirals out of control and the people put the blame, not on Putin, but on the people in charge.
Moreover, Russia has kept the gas flows going to ensure that money keeps flowing into the countryto finance further expansion of its gold reserves.
And that’s the key, gold. Russia has oil it pulls out of the ground for >$10 per barrel.
If Biden decides to excise Russian energy from US markets (and talking with Maduro in Venezuela is a clear signal here) then Davos is pushing for this to further isolate Russian energy. The JCPOA was supposed to be signed this week to get Iran’s oil back into the market, but Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put a monkey wrench in that.
Luongo then discusses ways for Russia to continue selling oil to the world, but the bottom line is: sell oil for gold. But that’s not Putin’s “big move”.
But the big move for Putin is quite simple (H/T to Luke Gromen for this) which is to offer up its oil at a steep discount to the futures price but only in gold, physical gold. The current ratio of gold to oil is ~17 bbls/oz.
All Putin has to do is begin a global run on physical gold. Oil is the M-zero of global trade. It is the trade on which all of the West’s financialization power is built upon. And that foundation is built on the petrodollar. By directly tying Russia’s marginal barrel produced to the price of gold far below market prices does two things.
First it creates a massive arbitrage opportunity for oil and gold that the market will fill. Second, it follows, it collapses the valuations of all assets priced in paper gold to the price of physical. So, either the price of everything collapses to maintain the fiction of $2000 gold or the price of gold rises to meet the new price.
This forces the West to come clean on just how much gold it actually has, creates a massive short-term run on physical gold and forces a repricing of everyone’s balance sheet.
And, that, my friends is the big weapon Putin is holding in reserve. He can afford to sell his oil at a deeply discounted price. I’m thinking 50 barrels/oz should do it. He forces the world to reprice oil in terms of gold, and then, by extension, rubles rather than the dollar.
This, says Luongo, is the dream scenario of Putin adviser Sergei Glazyov—remember, we’ve been talking about him? So, is anyone else anticipating this?
The key to understanding whether things are primed for this is looking not at Europe but at Saudi Arabia.
Y’all realize this is just code for “We are getting ready to de-peg the Riyal from the US dollar.”
And that means the official end of the petrodollar economy in place since the early 1970’s, opening the way forward for a complete repricing of energy by those that produce the lion’s share of it.
There’s good news in that for some—and the good news includes us, the US:
Those that are energy importers are the most vulnerable. The US is not nearly as dependent on foreign energy as Europe, which produces almost nothing other than coal. Everyone today virtue signaling about pulling out of Russian energy projects are slitting their own throats.
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The proof is in the markets now. Gold is breaking higher alongside oil, meaning currencies are crashing relative to energy and tokenized energy (money). ... All other commodities are repricing higher from metals to grains to fertilizers to coffee at levels the world has never seen.
Embargoes on food exports are coming in fast. If this was Davos’ plan it was a stupid one. Because Putin and Russia hold all the cards to ensure they decide what these commodities will be priced in, not them.
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Davos has to destroy Putin and Russia before Putin destroys Davos.They are fighting on his turf now in both arenas — militarily and financially. And Putin, despite the media blitz to the contrary, has a lot of friends across Asia representing more than half of the world’s population.
If I were Klaus Schwab right now, I would be very careful getting what I wished for because I may just get it good and hard.
All this is why conservatives who are reflexively anti-Russia should be doing some hard thinking. Who’s the real enemy? The US will come out of this in good shape because our fundamentals are solid. But it’s in the interests of the US as a country to see the Globalist threat and the Deep State destroyed.
I look forward to informed comments. Be sure to read all of Luongo.
Good post. I read the Luongo. Neocons I don't see as dominating the US State Department. I argue for more globalistic, and spreading the religion of Wokism to the little benighted people around the world. The Elite People's Burden.
- The Saudi's hold a grudge. And the Biden Administration and allies support of Iran, and attempted side lining of the Saudi Leadership using the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, not to mention the Yemen Civil War lack of support under Biden. Not to mention all the financial warfare being used against Russia probably terrifies the Saudi's. How do they know they are not next?
- Russia has a HUGE amount of influence over the Iran Deal that Biden is so desperate to sign.
- The going after Russian Oligarch assets, and other Russian assets in Europe, is a HUGE Wake Up call to non Western countries. This probably has a bit to do with the decline of the Euro. Assets in Europe are no longer safe.
- The Visa / Mastercard issue is also huge.
So many financial balls in the air have not fallen yet. Putin has a huge amount of cards he has yet to play. Interesting times.
I am surprised at how one sided the propaganda is, and censoring of Russian Sources. If they have the guts to do this to Russia, what of a smaller country?
One word of caution about Trump. His tweets were brilliant and his every public remark is calculated to provoke a desired response. That he is out of power gives him a latitude to say things he would never say as President. I am a true Trumpster, but he knows the art of the con as well as the art of the deal.
Good post. I read the Luongo. Neocons I don't see as dominating the US State Department. I argue for more globalistic, and spreading the religion of Wokism to the little benighted people around the world. The Elite People's Burden.
Amazing the decline of the Euro.
https://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=EUR&to=USD
Couple of areas not gone into:
- The Saudi's hold a grudge. And the Biden Administration and allies support of Iran, and attempted side lining of the Saudi Leadership using the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, not to mention the Yemen Civil War lack of support under Biden. Not to mention all the financial warfare being used against Russia probably terrifies the Saudi's. How do they know they are not next?
- Russia has a HUGE amount of influence over the Iran Deal that Biden is so desperate to sign.
- The going after Russian Oligarch assets, and other Russian assets in Europe, is a HUGE Wake Up call to non Western countries. This probably has a bit to do with the decline of the Euro. Assets in Europe are no longer safe.
- The Visa / Mastercard issue is also huge.
So many financial balls in the air have not fallen yet. Putin has a huge amount of cards he has yet to play. Interesting times.
I am surprised at how one sided the propaganda is, and censoring of Russian Sources. If they have the guts to do this to Russia, what of a smaller country?
One word of caution about Trump. His tweets were brilliant and his every public remark is calculated to provoke a desired response. That he is out of power gives him a latitude to say things he would never say as President. I am a true Trumpster, but he knows the art of the con as well as the art of the deal.