Author: Christine Schier

A good deal of the discussion at the IMF/World Bank annual meeting, that took place Oct. 9-15 in Marrakech, Morocco, was devoted to the soaring indebtedness worldwide. These two leading institutions are pushing some new lending, but only for projects to “save the planet” and other boondoggles. China, which insists instead on funding actual development projects, remains a prime target […]

There have been two reactions internationally to the terrible escalation of events and loss of lives in Israel/Gaza. There are those trying to exploit it for geopolitical reasons and those calling for ceasefire, and for addressing the underlying causes. On the geopolitical side, Washington immediately sent into the Eastern Mediterranean a battle group led by the world’s largest aircraft carrier, […]

Chas Freeman is a senior U.S. diplomat, now retired, who during his 30-year career of service, was ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He was interviewed on the breaking situation in Southwest Asia by EIR’s Mike Billington on Oct. 9, of which he said the following: “We are seeing a disturbing tendency in our press to invent Iranian direction of this war, […]

The unprecedented ouster of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, generated headlines about “chaos” engulfing Congress. Indeed, that is true, as far as it goes. The budget crisis was not resolved, but kicked down the road until mid-November (cf. SAS 40/23); the increased funding requested by Joe Biden for the Ukraine war was temporarily derailed — […]

Paulo Nogueira Batista is a highly-respected Brazilian economist who served as Vice President of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) from 2015-2017. In a sharp speech delivered on Oct. 3 at the Valdai Club Dialogue meeting in Sochi, Russia, he both reiterated his proposal for creating a BRICS-linked new currency to issue development credit, and addressed the mistakes that led to […]

In his Oct. 3 remarks to the Valdai Club, Paulo Nogueira Batista also put into focus the strategic significance of the policy fight ongoing in Russia around the role of the Central Bank. Why was progress with both the NDB and the CRA so slow, Nogueira asked: “Having participated intensely in the two years of negotiations that led to the CRA, […]

Last week we drew attention to the effect of central bank interest rate increases on the banking system, and in particular to the devaluation of bank assets as a consequence of higher yields on government bonds. The rise in yields is ascribed to inflation fears and to increased government debt, i.e., an increased bond supply on the market – both […]

The Oct. 8 elections for a new state parliament in Bavaria and in Hesse delivered a resounding blow to the federal government, with all three parties losing votes. While economic and migration issues were at the center of both election campaigns, Berlin’s pro-war policy was only opposed by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. More than Bavaria, Hesse was a […]

During a discussion at the Valdai Club’s annual conference on Oct. 5 in Sochi, Russian President Vladimir Putin rejected any notion of lowering the threshold for Russia’s use of nuclear weapons. He was responding to a question from Sergei Karaganov, a founding member of the Valdai Club, who suggested the government should modify its doctrine and move “steadily and sufficiently quickly […]

As part of the new transitional government’s efforts to make Gabon safe for development, Lee White, the Minister of Water and Forests under the Bongo government that was just ousted in a coup and a close friend of the British King, was put under house arrest on Oct. 4. He is accused of “complicity in illegal logging” and “embezzlement of funds”. […]