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Radio War Nerd #338 — World of Wars: Ethiopia, Ukraine + Ben Aris on the West's Economic War on Russia (Patreon)

Published:
2022-07-16 00:54:32
Imported:
2023-06

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Content

Guest: Ben Aris, editor BNE IntelliNews

Recorded: July 13, 2022

First, we update the latest from Ethiopia's insurgencies in Tigray and Oromia...then we discuss some of the latest grim war news out of Ukraine & consider the not-so-deeper meaning of NPR's attempt at historical war analogy + the Kagan Industrial Complex's strange flirtation with truth bombs...

At 43:27 - we talk with Ben Aris (ep #320, #316) about the G-7's economic war on Russia, and all the unintended consequences and boomerang effects it's having on the home countries & the world.

*Map of Ethiopia

Check out Ben's media outlet BNE IntelliNews, and follow Ben on Twitter.

Total time: 1:39:04

Direct link to this episode's mp3 here 

Files

Comments

Anonymous

He's changed his tune a fair bit since the interview shortly after the operation began.

dillards dept.

Appreciate the updates about tigray and Ethiopia!

dillards dept.

I'm a high school teacher and one of my students is a refugee from Ethiopia and we often talk about the ongoing war. Your show has been helpful keeping me abreast of the situation.

Doug Cartel

it sounds like the MSM is building up a bibliography that we can all point to when the west ukrainians try to genocide the east ukrainians, assuming they control any of east ukraine a year from now. I guess Kimberley's initials spelling KEK instead of KKK is a step up. I guess.

Anonymous

just something important to note that might clear up why Russia can't spend the money: those dollars are on the balance sheets of correspondent banks and any transaction involving them would ultimately go thru the NY Fed, which clears all dollar transactions. It's helpful to think of it less as Scrooge McDuck piles of cash and more as easily surveilled database entries. They don't "physically" have the money, that's just not how modern banking works. There's only a trivial amount of world trade not denominated in dollars (minus eurozone transactions), which makes evading these sanctions difficult. It's no easy thing to construct an alternate global monetary architecture on the fly, even if people make noise about it every now and then.

Anonymous

Sometimes I forget that not everyone has worked in finance and that what Dan says here is important to remember. Even the physical gold that Russia has is limited in what they can do with it. Even if they can swap/repo that for dollars/euros with a willing counterparty (and finding that counterparty isn't a layup), when it's time to use that money to buy anything it's almost always going to be in dollars at some point in the transaction. And at that point in the transaction it has to go through the same system that is enforcing the sanctions. And the size of any of those deals is going to work against them. Maybe you can sneak a few million around here and there on the margin, but if you're buying a hundred million of oil and gas equipment, some actual person at the NY Fed/UST has time to really go over that deal and figure out where the money is from. One of the things that Aris is talking about here, and Zoltan Posznar from Credit Suisse has also talked about, is that every country that isn't extremely friendly with the US has to worry about getting o the wrong side of these things. Those countries and central banks have a strong incentive to find ways around the dollar/NYF/UST hegemony, but that's not an easy thing to manage. It's a lot of time and effort and just looking to safeguard yourself against future sanctions might make it more likely you get sanctioned. So not an easy like to walk.

Sean Kelly

Fantastic interview!

Anonymous

Interesting comment from Aris that NATO/EU support has been on a "just enough" basis, which is exactly the same as their COVID response has been. Well, Ukraine/our health care system hasn't completely collapsed yet so that means our policy is the bestest.

Anonymous

Maybe have Rania Khalek on? She knows Lebanon inside out and I think has a different view from you guys on Ethiopia? A little bit of debate might make for a very listenable episode.

Cameron Young

Really solid episode, Ben’s discussion on the fertilizer production in Ukraine and Russia stuck with me from the last one.

Mark Ames
>>87848991

Thanks. Yeah that makes sense, and shows what a truly powerful weapon a dollarized global economy is compared to mere military hardware weaponry. Can these booked "dollars" be converted into another currency like yuan, outside of America's reach, and be used that way to buy goods? Or converted into rubles and used to pay Russians? The money isn't currently in the NY Fed either.

Mark Ames
>>87866468

Something tells me that, with so much money to be made on the spreads, finance/laundering people will find a way around it that will involve larger sums than those on the margins. It may take a few months more but I'd bet they'll find more ways to move larger and larger sums.

Anonymous
>>87848991

Mark - you might want to read 'The Money Lenders' by Anthony Sampson (who also wrote my favourite book on the oil industry 'The Seven Sisters' and Mandela's authorized biography). TML is pretty old (1982) but he talks extensively about the history of Eurodollars which are (synthetic) dollars outside of the control of the US govt. People who talk about the end of the dollar hegemony should read: https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c6838/c6838.pdf But I think Eurodollars can help China/Russia weaken US power. If they built a shadow swift that was denominated in eurodollars that would be a big deal IMO.

Anonymous
>>87866468

I though the US didn't have a chance on Iranian sanctions when the Obama admin went heavy with those pre-JCPOA and then stuck to the letter (not the spirit) of the deal after. They didn't stop oil sanction busting, because they just mix that shit off the coast of the UAE with ship to ship transfers. The Iranians were the world's best sanctions busters and I figured they'd walk all over the US when it came to moving money offshore. Outside of oil the US held the line remarkably well. So I think if the US Treasury/Fed really want you by the balls, it seems they can do it. The single to double digit millions, sure, you can get a few of those, but it sure seems like the US can catch most of the fish much bigger than that. At least that's how it looks from what I can gather.

Ernesto

https://russiandissent.substack.com/p/remembering-the-crimean-war

Doug Cartel
>>87950938

I'm too lazy so just pretend this post is a joke about the air force refusing to donate all those A10s that they hate because they dont want ukraine to win the war too fast

Anonymous

War in Ukraine is about liberal democracy? Was he reading from Bidens script.