Guest Post by Martin Armstrong
Nearly $300 billion worth of confiscated frozen Russian assets have been set to the side by the West. Some of the world’s leading decision-makers have been urging the powers that be to release these funds into Ukraine, arming Russia’s enemy with the private wealth of its own citizens. Russia has finally responded to these threats near our critical turning point during the week of April 19/20, 2024.
Russian authorities released a statement to say that they are fully prepared to implement retaliatory measures.
“We also have a prepared answer,” Valentina Matviyenko, the speaker of the Russian upper house of parliament, was quoted as saying by state news agency RIA. “We have a draft law, which we are ready to consider immediately, on retaliatory measures.” While the precise retaliatory measures have not been stated, it is safe to assume that Russia will begin to confiscate Western assets. “And the Europeans will lose more than we do,” Matviyenko, who is a member of Russia’s powerful Security Council, said.
The response also comes ahead of the critical target of May 7, which also happens to be the next Russian election. The computer selected the date many years ago. The people want a strong leader who will fight to return what is rightfully theirs. The West has never technically been at war with Russia and Russia has been overly patient in awaiting a response. As it seems the funds will be released in the slush fund which is Ukraine, Russia has been forced to respond.
It is unclear how much Russia holds in foreign assets. Russian Parliament speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said he believes that Russia would be justified in seizing these assets, especially after the US House of Representatives recently voted on legislation that will expand the illegal seizure of private Russian assets. Russia noted that Europe has more to lose than America because Europeans have more invested in Russia. Europe holds the majority of Russian assets, freezing around $224 billion in assets compared to the $5 to $6 trillion held by the US.
Now Volodin is prepared for more than mere economic warfare. In January, he stated that Russia was prepared to unleash a “global catastrophe” upon all unfriendly nations for creating this proxy war in Ukraine. “Arguments that the nuclear powers have not previously used weapons of mass destruction in local conflicts are untenable. This is because these states have not faced a situation in which the security of their citizens and the territorial integrity of their countries were threatened,” he stated in January 2024. He then stated on Telegram: “With their decisions, Washington and Brussels are leading the world to a terrible war … foreign politicians making such decisions need to understand that this could end in a global tragedy that will destroy their countries.”
Now, the amount frozen surpasses Ukraine’s entire GDP, but world leaders are using it as a ruse to cover up the fact that their own nations are in a liquidity crisis. US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen falsely claims that sending off these assets to Ukraine would “incentivize [Russia] to come to the table to negotiate a just peace with Ukraine.” She knows that Moscow has been prohibited from seeking a peace treaty since this war began. Putin went on a live stream that was broadcast around the globe and said he would welcome a call from Zelensky at any time to arrange a peace treaty.
The wise have been pouring money out into anything tangible. Everything from collectible cars to art, antiques, coins, and stamps have been rising. Geopolitics have collided with plans for the Great Reset, and private assets will be used on the economic battlefield.
In this wholesale confiscation of private assets, these politicians are using the excuse of Ukraine to implement a completely new normal procedure – the confiscation of billions without asking who the funds belong to and whether there is a connection to the Ukraine war. There is no check or balance for where the money is spent or sent.
For all intents and purposes, the people who lost their life savings are mostly private citizens who have been victims of circumstance. They did not fund Russia’s invasion or have a say in their government’s decisions. Russia now states that they view this as a complete violation of international law as an act of war and they are willing to play the same dirty game.
This will change world trade entirely. People will be wary of international investments in places where they too may face illegal seizures. Why would, say, someone in China continue investing in Europe and the US when hostilities are building with Taiwan? These politicians simply fail to see the longterm damage that their policies create.
The West deliberately pushed Russia to suspend servicing their debts to Western lenders in preparation for their own excuse to suspend their own servicing of debts. As usual with sanctions, not only the person against whom the sanctions are directed, in this case, Russia, is harmed but also this has undermined the entire world economy ensuring its collapse in the years ahead. In this context, it cannot be stressed enough that sanctions historically have never worked and they know that they are generally pointless.
There is absolutely no question that we are headed into a very serious sovereign debt default. Western governments have been engaging in a Ponzi scheme, and the house of cards comes crashing down when they can no longer sell new debt to redeem the old. They need this war as an excuse to cover up their fiscal mismanagement, and they will then start all over again with digital currencies.
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The Khazars are cutting off their noses to spite their face. There is no other world they can go to.
Someone who is a financial expert please help me to understand this.
Are we supposed to believe that there are stacks of cash on pallets in some bank warehouse banded with little paper wraps that say Property of Russia?
How does one impound 1’s and 0’s? They are completely isolated from access by the artificial boundaries of imaginary borders?
This makes absolutely no sense to me. If it’s Russian money being held by the US, why doesn’t Russia simply zero out those holdings and exchange them with freshly created ones? How are they unique if they are just numbers on a ledger in some computer databank?
Money isn’t real, it’s an agreed upon belief system and the only validity it has is when everyone agrees to believe it is real and conscribes to certain limitations and parameters. If one can simply seize your fictional money, why can’t you replace it with some more you just made believe you have?
This is why it is impossible for us to ever come to any kind of compromise ideologically with the people running things because everything they say and do is so obviously fake and gay there’s no way to accept any of it as reality. People who see the world as it actually is cannot possibly fathom how this is even a story because it makes zero sense. The reality is that there is no conflict between Russia and NATO, or Europe or the USA because they are all telling the same made up stories that are demonstrably fake while pretending there is an actual conflict.
I mean, whut?
And the crazy thing is when you point this out to people they look at you with some blank stare or try and use more conjuring and fakery to prove to you that it is real, like saying well there was an existing contract, like words written on paper are anything other than an agreement between two parties that have chosen to believe it means something real, even when reality proves it false. I mean there was a contract existing to insure money in US banks still belonged to Russia and visa versa. Why don’t those contracts count when the ones to sell energy to your enemies do?
It’s all such nonsense.
I can’t even fit my mind around this level of imbecility and childlike fantasy that passes for a narrative.
All explained here.
Billions for Bankers–Debts for the People
Sheldon Emry
Continuing Cycles of Debt and War
But instead of peace and debt-free prosperity, we have ever-mounting debt and cyclical periods of war. We as a people are now ruled by a system of banking influence that has usurped the mantle of government, disguised itself as our legitimate government, and set about to pauperize and control our people.
It is now a centralized, all-powerful political apparatus whose main purposes are promoting war, confiscating the people’s money, and propagandizing to perpetuate its power. Our two main political parties have become its servants, the various departments of government have become its spending agencies, and the Internal Revenue Service is its collection agency.
Unknown to the people, it operates in close cooperation with similar apparatuses in other nations, which are also disguised as “governments.”
Some, we are told, are friends. Some, we are told, are enemies. “Enemies” are built up through international manipulations and used to frighten the American people into going billions of dollars further into debt to the bankers for “military preparedness,” “foreign aid to stop communism,” “the drug war,” etc.
Citizens, deliberately confused by brainwashing propaganda, watch helplessly while our politicians give food, goods, and money to banker-controlled alien governments under the guise of “better relations” and “easing tensions.” Our banker-controlled government takes our finest and bravest sons and sends them into foreign wars where tens of thousands are murdered, and hundreds of thousands are crippled (not to mention collateral damage and casualties among the “enemy” troops.)
When the “war” is over, we have gained nothing, but we are billions of dollars further in debt to the bankers, which was the reason for the “war” in the first place!
https://silverbearcafe.com/private/blueplate/billions_contents.html
nothing new
pull on your boots
lace up your thrill
pump up the psyche
get ready to kill
forces against us,
believing as we
the only solution
kill all that disagree.
bombs and missiles
ready for death
believe in opposition
until the last breath
puppets we elect
laugh in our face
the beginning of the end
of a civilized human race
the dollar is a mirage
a fantasy writ in blood
some can’t understand
why it was never understood
days will be long
toil covered in pain
lifeblood you shed
always in vain
get on with your life
like today is your last
beyond your control
the die is cast
the corrupt always rule
of this be sure
the only recourse
is God as the cure
It’s a curse to be able to see this when almost no one else can even fathom it. It’s not like it’s even difficult.
I burst out laughing randomly when I truly ponder this man made existence. It is so bizarre to me to share the same physical realm with others, all while knowing their “reality” is totally alien to my own reality.
There is no such thing a reality, only your perception of reality.
I feel the same way.
It makes more sense to me when I consider people are observably socialized by Hollywood, rather than the community, because the community is socialized by Hollywood. Objective reality then becomes a difficult concept for them.
Actually socialized by the Internet and schools. See the Universal Slob Culture as exemplar.
Farmer, there are others who ask similar questions and have a similar difficulty wrapping a thoughtful mind around the phony baloney narrative our fake and gay ‘leaders’ are spinning. To one point though, if a large majority of people go along with it, those of us who essentially see through it are just lemmings caught in the lemming herd being swept along by the vast pool of lemming ignoramuses who ‘really believe’.
Fiat money is purely a social construct. Gold and silver have reputational usefulness over the last 5k years or so, but as money are still a social construct themselves.
Fiat money is absolutely necessary in the modern world, and there is nothing wrong with it provided it is managed responsibly. You cannot conduct international trade in gold and silver, it is logistically impossible in todays world. The problem with fiat, comes from mismanagement and overprinting. Backing a currency with assets, puts limits on money printing, which helps to prevent corruption. A fiat money system which is tightly controlled and tied to GDP is a sound system, but it requires an honest government, and so long as we have human beings in government, it will never be honest.
Earlier in the year, I went to a gun show. One of those guys outside of the show had a sign… “Silver Discount Applies”.
He was offering a 15% discount after negotiated price if he was paid in silver – even had a handy scale which you could verify with your own weight. He was doing good business on some really crappy old rifles and told me he has several customers go home and return with their silver…
My guess is this type of thing is gaining steam in local areas – and it will be as impossible to police as gun transactions.If one removes the internet, the entire house of digital cards collapses, and until that actually occurs, everything will remain a lie or some kind of shimmering BS narrative.
I think the entire global financial system is BS, because it is all 1’s/0’s in some data core, and as a programmer in another life, software is the most easily corrupted thing in most modern activities.
Until the internet takes a poop, it’s all BS…
Pudnocker, Eighteen years ago I carried 10K to the Tulsa gun show (the biggest) expressly to purchase pms. There were less than 6 dealers that had any and the deals were good. I returned to Tulsa two weeks ago and it seemed that many ( maybe 10%) of the 1000 or so dealers (4400 tables) had glass cases with coins or bars. The PMs are definitely a coming thing; but unfortunately gun shows themselves may be a going thing. Maybe gun shows will morph into hard money/gun stuff/freedom/other bullshit shows.
I always carry some PMs to gun shows. They will often help close a deal that otherwise dies. If you choose to swim in those waters know for a fact that you must be fairly fluent in both PMs and the trade items. The skills you gain will be very useful whether or not we suffer currency/economic collapse. You may be able to make an honest market and be your own bank (however small) where there was no market or bank before. It has been fun and profitable. It could become necessity. This is what people did before there were banks–unless you were a serf. Then it was only barter or debt.
But the Federal reserve is losing “money” on IOER payments!!!!
How will they ever pay their bills??
It is not that hard. Russia sells oil. Most oil is traded in dollars, (petro dollar) and the US and European banks handle the transactions. Prior to the war, if Russia sold oil to India, India paid in dollars through the SWIFT system run by banks in the US or Europe. When the US and Europe sanctioned Russia, they froze all asset in all the banks. Now they are getting ready to steal the money, which tells the rest of the world that it is stupid to have your money in SWIFT, and it is much safer to deal with BRICS, and stay away from Dollars. The OPEC countries are now looking to de-dollarize their oil transactions.
As the world de-dollarizes it has less and less reason to buy US Treasuries and to fund the US debts.
So now the brain trust in Washington is doing all it can to piss off China and to ensure they will not buy any Treasuries either. After the latest trip by Blinken to China, it looks like we are well on the way to a full blown trade war.
Perhaps it is not what the elites in Russia (or Nato or the west) think, but rather what beliefs they can reinforce upon their little peoples.
In order to steal from the little people, you have to inculcate in them the belief that there is a system that makes such stealing possible and irreversible.
After all, how can they pull of a steal that leaves everyone owning nothing and being happy, if they have already given the game away? How can they get away with stealing all the money in pensions, stock markets, social security, etc., if they demonstrate that the numbers can simply be reissued?
The poor have no wealth or assets. The rich do not have enough assets to go around (and they won’t steal from themselves anyway). It is simply the general population that have the money, assets, and earning power that make them a useful target.
They do tip their hand occasionally though. For example, the money that was used to bail out the banks in the 2006-2008 housing crash TARP program could have been distributed to the little people to pay off their mortgages. In doing so, the little people would have had free homes, and the banks would have been made whole. But they did not do that though. They skipped the little people leaving them to struggle with unpayable debts, and just gave the money straight to the bankers.
[And as an aside, why do I always see articles from MA saying how something happened “just as he predicted,” but never articles from him that say “Watch. Next Tuesday this will happen!” After reading him for years, it seems his predictions are always vague and predicting hindsight.]
And Here… We… Go
JP Morgan just lost all of the funds it was holding in its bank accounts in Russia:
Pax Americana is over. Plan accordingly.
Gosh, l didn’t see that broadcast on CNN…
Duh
In other news, “migrants “ are busy beating each other senseless on the streets of NY, and, random shit is exploding all around the world…
Ain’t shit, only half a billion. Nothing in the scheme of things.
If our leaders had wisdom and integrity, they would not ACCEPT foreign investment at all. Nations SHOULD be able to stand on their own strengths.
Good luck finding a leader with the power to say no to free money!
The Russian election already took place weeks ago.
“May 7” is the inauguration day, of the new and old president.
“The West deliberately pushed Russia to suspend servicing their debts to Western lenders”
I’m not aware of such occurrences – in cases where Russia couldn’t pay because the SWIFT payment system was blocking them from doing so, it is my understanding that Russia has put the payments into special accounts (in Rubles), where the creditors can get them if they find a feasible way for the money transfer and exchange.
Martin, if you have differing info, links please!
It may be narrative setting, usausa spews out its propaganda of russia not ‘servicing’ its debts so on that basis usausa then doesn’t have to.
So when russia starts making their payments then the suausa will make theirs but until then the usausa will keep stealing and destroying everyone around them.
For national security reasons of course.
“Now, the amount frozen surpasses Ukraine’s entire GDP”…
When you add up the total of U.S. and EU aide to Ukraine their GDP is many billions more…the true Ukrainian GDP is based on harvesting the lives of it’s citizens.