What really happened in Beijing: Putin, Obama, Xi — and the back story the media won’t tell you
Ukraine, Iran’s nukes, the price of oil: There are ties worthy of a Bourne film, if the media connected the dots
By way of events on the foreign side, the past few weeks start to resemble some once-in-a-while event in the heavens when everyone is supposed to go out and watch as the sun, moon and stars align. There are lots of things happening, and if we put them all together, the way Greek shepherds imagined constellations, a picture emerges. Time to draw the picture.
The situation on the ground in Ukraine is getting messy again. Equally, events of the past year now leave Ukraine’s economy not far from sheer extinction. You have not read of this because it does not fit the approved story, but Ukraine’s heart barely beats. Further east, we hear in the financial markets that the ruble’s decline brings Russia to the brink of another financial collapse.
Let’s see. Oil prices are now below $80 a barrel. It costs me nearly $20 less to put gasoline in my car than it did a year ago, and good enough. But why has the price of crude tumbled in so short an interval? It makes little sense when you gather the facts, and — goes without saying — you get no help with that from our media.
Let’s keep on trucking. Secretary of State Kerry went to Oman for another round of talks on the Iranian nuclear question last weekend. Russia recently emerged as a potentially key part of a deal, which will be the make-or-break of Kerry’s record. In effect, he now greets Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov with one hand and punches him well below the belt with the other. Somewhere beyond our view this must make sense.
En avant! Obama went to Beijing last week for a sit-down with Xi Jinping, who makes Vladimir Putin look like George McGovern when he wants to, which is not infrequently. Still in the Chinese capital, our president then attended a meeting with other Asian leaders to push a trade agreement, one primary purpose of which is to isolate China by bringing the rest of the region into the neoliberal fold. (Or trying to. Washington will never get the overladen, overimposing Trans-Pacific Partnership off the ground, in my view.)
A big item on Xi’s agenda — he was in on the Pacific economic forum, too — was the recent launch of an Asians-only lending institution intended to rival the Asian Development Bank, the World Bank affiliate doing the West’s work in the East. Being entirely opposed to people helping themselves advance without American assistance and all that goes with it, Washington used all means possible to sink this ship. When Obama got off the plane in Beijing, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank had $50 billion in capital and 20 members, more to come in both categories.
Xi, meantime, had a productive encounter — another — with the formidable Vlad. My sources in attendance tell me both put in strong performances. In short order, Russia will send enough natural gas eastward to meet much of China’s demand and — miss this not — in the long run could price out American supplies in other Pacific markets, which are key to the success of the current production boom out West.
This is a lot of dots to connect. As I see it, the running themes in all this are two: There is constructive activity and there is the destructive. Readers may think this oversimplifies, but for this there is the ever-lively comment box below. I am willing to listen.
Let’s go back to early September. On the 5th, Germany brokered a cease-fire between the Ukraine government in Kiev and the rebels in the eastern Donbass region. Washington made it plain it wanted no part of this, preferring to continue open hostilities. And then strange things happened.
Less than a week after the Minsk Protocol was signed, Kerry made a little-noted trip to Jeddah to see King Abdullah at his summer residence. When it was reported at all, this was put across as part of Kerry’s campaign to secure Arab support in the fight against the Islamic State.
Stop right there. That is not all there was to the visit, my trustworthy sources tell me. The other half of the visit had to do with Washington’s unabated desire to ruin the Russian economy. To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1) to raise production and 2) to cut its crude price. Keep in mind these pertinent numbers: The Saudis produce a barrel of oil for less than $30 as break-even in the national budget; the Russians need $105.
Shortly after Kerry’s visit, the Saudis began increasing production, sure enough — by more than 100,000 barrels daily during the rest of September, more apparently to come. Last week they dropped the price of Arab Light by 45 cents a barrel, Bloomberg News just reported. This has proven a market mover, sending prices to $78 a barrel at writing.
Think about this. Winter is coming, there are serious production outages now in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela and Libya, other OPEC members are screaming for relief, and the Saudis make back-to-back moves certain to push falling prices still lower? You do the math, with Kerry’s unreported itinerary in mind, and to help you along I offer this from an extremely well-positioned source in the commodities markets: “There are very big hands pushing oil into global supply now,” this source wrote in an e-mail note the other day.
The Russians, meantime, are reported to be sending soldiers and artillery back across, or maybe just across, the Ukrainian border. This we read, but we read nothing as to why this may be so, assuming for argument’s sake it is. We are invited to accept that there is no reason worth reporting.
I decline the invitation. The possibility-likelihood-probability — it is impossible to say, we are so ill-informed — is that these reported deployments are in reaction to moves kept out of sight. Given Washington’s disapproval of the Minsk accord and its underhanded manipulations in the oil markets since it was signed, I label this a likelihood, at least, maybe more.
As to the Ukrainian economy, this is getting sordid even before the International Monetary Fund gets its mitts on the place. A Royal Bank of Scotland analyst in Hong Kong, Roland Hinterkoerner, just published a tour d’horizon, a few of the highlights (or lowlights) being these:
- With the Russian ruble cratering, Kiev recently had to remove a currency peg of 13 hryvnia to the dollar. It dropped 15 percent in the next five trading sessions. From a rate of 8 to 1 a year ago, it now cost 16 hryvnia to buy a dollar.
- With the banking system in peril, a third of deposits had been withdrawn—before the currency collapsed, this is. “There is no way to repair this damage by doing some kind of recapitalization exercise that may still work in the eurozone,” the RBS man writes.
- Efforts to stem the hryvnia’s fall have dangerously depleted foreign currency reserves. As of October, the central bank had $12.6 billion dollars in assets—taxi fare in the context.
- Ukraine owes Russia $1.6 billion in gas bills by yearend—and then faces fees of $700 million a month for new supplies.
- The Ukrainian automobile association, to burrow in slightly, just reported that new car registrations fell by 65 percent in October from the previous year, to 5,900 units—this in a nation of 46 million. The No. 1 producer, Saporisky Awtomobilebudiwny Sawod, turned out 1,007 vehicles. It has 21,000 employees on the payroll.
This kind of report leaves me nearly speechless — and our correspondents silent, of course. All that we have read of this past year, events taking place in the name of democracy and a better life for Ukrainians, comes to this. “The economy?” Hinterkoerner concludes. “What economy?”