In July 1944, just weeks after the successful Allied invasion of Normandy, hundreds of delegates from around the world gathered in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire to determine the future of the global financial system.
The vision was simple: America would be the center of the universe, and every other nation would revolve around the US.
This arrangement ultimately led to the US dollar being the world’s dominant reserve currency which still remains today. Continue reading
For anyone who, or knows someone who, naively thinks Russia doesn’t have both the capability and the guts to pull the trigger, this is a must-read. It also goes to show you that the Cold War had never died, but had simply gone into a new phase. The phase of which America is going through, and is almost finalized. The US is now stuck with a leader who draws a new line in the sand, or makes a concession, every time another is breached. The Russians smell blood and they, along with the Chinese, won’t stop capitalizing on the opportunities until America is reduced to a third world country. They, who know America lives by an honor system, do not, which makes it even more easier to keep hammering away.
There is a cynicism in the relationship between Russia and the US, being played out in the Crimean crisis, which is deep, rooted in history and shows that the triumph of capitalism over communism wasn’t the end of the power game between these two nations.
The depth of mistrust between the two was highlighted in the interview given by Hank Paulson, the former US treasury secretary, for my recent BBC Two documentary, How China Fooled The World.
The excerpts I am about to quote never made it into the film, because they weren’t relevant to it. But they give a fascinating understanding of the complex relationship between Washington and Moscow. Continue reading
There was a startling revelation from Senator Mark Warner. Basically, he admitted that there was more to the hacking of 100-million+ Americans credit cards than meets the eye. Here are some comments from CNBC:
Transcript: ”In all this, we got a hint yesterday from senator Mark Warner from Virginia who suggested that U.S. Intelligence knows a lot more about this hack attack problem than it can say publicly. Take a listen to Mark Warner yesterday –‘Quite honestly, I think we’re going to see and I know from my role in the intel community this is a crime that happens daily to financial institutions, retailers at a level that frankly, if most Americans realized, I think would find rather confounding.’ So, Warner suggesting there that U.S. Intelligence knows more about this than American consumers do.”
Now, pair this statement regarding Target with comments from General Keith Alexander on 60 Minutes as reported in Forbes: Continue reading
Global Geopolitics 