Reflections on War, Economics, and Financial Crises August 18, 2008
Posted by Mark T. Market in Reflections.Tags: war, russia, financial crisis, asian crisis, george soros, LTCM
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Today’s war is South Ossetia, today’s crash is subprime and commodities. All these themes are not new, and have replayed in the past.
Here are two videos that can help shed some insight on past crises:
- The story of Long-Term Capital Management – on the Asian Crisis, and Russian Debt Default
- Google Interview: George Soros – hedge fund manager, philanthropist, and critic of the War on Terror
Joke Time August 17, 2008
Posted by Mark T. Market in Quotables.Tags: Bush, georgia, Putin, russia, south ossetia, war
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Wagging The Dog And The Ossetia Conflict August 15, 2008
Posted by Mark T. Market in Reflections.Tags: deception, economics, georgia, russia, south ossetia, war
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Great preamble by Ellen Brown on her article:
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had just announced record losses, and so had most reporting corporations. Unemployment was mounting, the foreclosure crisis was deepening, state budgets were in shambles, and massive bailouts were everywhere. Investors had every reason to expect the dollar and the stock market to plummet, and gold and oil to shoot up. Strangely, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 300 points, the dollar strengthened, and gold and oil were crushed. What happened?
Ellen draws a web of deceit of how powers such as the US trigger world events to their own economic advantage. Wars are only about ideologies and politics on the surface. At the core, its business and profit.
Capitalism turned on its head.
Is It Really About Oil? August 10, 2008
Posted by Mark T. Market in Reflections.Tags: georgia, russia, south ossetia
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Reading more about the Georgia-Russia conflict in South Ossetia, Jerome a Paris writes:
OK, first, the oil angle.
Georgia does not have oil, but it is a transit country. This is valuable because it provides the only outlet for Caspian oil and natural gas which is not going either through Russia or through Iran. (See the maps and the wider context in that diary) And after a 15-year tug-of-war, the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline was inaugurated two years ago: it takes roughly 1 million barrels per day from the Azeri oil fields run by BP to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, via Georgia. That’s over 1% of world production, and it is fully controlled by Western oil majors. There is also a smaller gas pipeline that follows the same route and brings smaller volumes of gas from Azerbaijan to Turkey.
These pipelines have been at the heart of the relationship between Georgia and the USA over the past 15 years, but, oddly enough, they have played a very small role in the current crisis. In fact, the BTC pipeline has been cut off for the past few days, not because of events in Georgia (which are in the north of the country, whereas the pipelines go through the south), but because of a bomb attack in Turkey before the conflict started, with claims by the PKK, the Kurdish movement.
From many angles, the players behind the ongoing skirmish appear to be US and Russia–who have staged an elaborate wargame for their economic benefit. Parallels exist in history, where in the past–it was the US that was the deliberate aggressor while Russia was behind the scenes as in the case with Cuba and Vietnam. Even farther back, we can look at the Spanish-American War over the Philippine Islands as an excellent parallel of how wargames have an economic component. Incidentally, that war with Spain was also triggered by events in Cuba.
Geopolitics and Geoeconomics go together.
A New War – Georgia, South Ossetia, Russia August 9, 2008
Posted by Mark T. Market in True Stories.Tags: georgia, NATO, russia, south ossetia, war
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Strangely the headlines aren’t screaming about this, on top of the Olympics and John Edwards’ sexual dalliances. But a new conflict has risen in the Russian Sphere.
After reading up on historical precedents such as Lusitania (WW1), Pearl Harbor (WW2), Gulf of Tonkin (Vietnam), Bay of Pigs (Cuba), Desert Storm (Kuwait/Iraq), and recently 9/11 War on Terror (Afghanistan/Iraq), the motivations behind a new war are highly suspect.
Perhaps the fact that the media is keeping this low is an indicator of the reality of things.
However, US involvement is not explicit in this case, but can’t be discounted. According to a dissident website:
The military conflict between Russian and Georgian forces is undoubtedly a curtain raiser that could potentially escalate into a much larger conflict. Although this is an extremely serious situation, the U.S. press has downplayed its significance choosing not to make this the top story of the day.
there is little doubt that U.S. forces are actively engaged in battle with the Georgian military fighting the Russians.
On more mainstream media, the Georgia-Russia conflict has hit a couple of issues. One is that Georgia is supposed to be a NATO entryway into Central Europe. Secondly, the impact of a conflict in that region has affected Russian assets and currency in the financial markets.
Just another engineered event in the geopolitical scene.
