The Duran Podcast - US sanctions China via Russia. EU agrees to cover $50B loan

Episode Date: June 17, 2024

US sanctions China via Russia. EU agrees to cover $50B loan

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the latest sanctions against Russia, which are really sanctions, U.S. sanctions against Russia, which are really sanctions against China. But the sanctions did knock out the U.S. euro trading in the Moscow Stock Exchange. That was interesting. But I don't think it will be affecting Russia too much. I think they've kind of shrunked it off already. I think 24 hours they've shrugged it off. And China was very angry about these sanctions because obviously China understands that the real purpose of these sanctions announced by Yellen are mostly directed towards China.

Yelan seems to have some sort of beef with China. I don't know if it's personal or what's going on there, but Yelan is definitely taking the lead in going after China. Anyway, what are your thoughts on these latest U.S. sanctions? I think an incredibly important line has now been crossed. I don't think people understand this very well at all, but let's just unpack it. Let's deal, first of all, with the least important part of the story, the one that's attracting most attention in the international media, but which is not, in my opinion, remotely the most important part of this story.

First of all, the United States has sanctioned the Moscow Stock Exchange and its financial exchange desk. Now, Russia is very unusual, was very unusual, in that the way in which you exchange money in Russia, the banks exchanged money in Russia, they, you know, they exchange rubles for dollars or rubles for whatever. It was done through an exchange, you know, a central registry operated by the Moscow Stock Exchange. a historic reason for this, which is that back in the 90s and for the 2000s, right up in effect to the 2008 crisis, Russia effectively had two stock exchanges. One was completely in dollars and euros and the other was in rubles. But there were two Russian stock exchanges operating

simultaneously with each other. Those two stock exchanges have been merged, but there were certain structures that were carried over from that previous time. And one of them was, as I said, that there was this desk, this foreign exchanges desk, which is where the Russian banks made their transfers. Now, that is not how transfers happen in most of the world. Most of the world, banks that want to exchange money in transfer currencies do it directly with each other. Moscow was different. Anyway, the US has now sanctioned. that the Russians have therefore announced that from now on the Moscow exchange will no longer make transfers in dollars and euros. Russian banks and other financial institutions could in theory

do directly with other Western banks. But the reality is that the Russians for some time now have been pulling out of the dollar and euro trade. It represents only a small part of the of their trade and their policy anyways to divest themselves of it. So it might, for a short time, make it more difficult for Russian exporters to receive payments for their exports in USD or Euros. But as they're transferring, as I said, to trade in various other national currencies, this is more going to be more going to be a short-term problem, a long-term problem. The stock exchange dipped yesterday by about three points. It's now rising today. The Russians have already prepared for this for a very, very long time. To the extent that they're

going to need to receive payments in dollars, I'm sure they've already developed their own structures. This is a blip. That's all it is. It's not going to have the dramatic effects that many people assume it will. Far bigger story is the fact that the United States is now saying that is because as far as it is concerned, Russia today is a war economy, any transaction of any sort with any Russian economic entity assists Russia, conduct its war in Ukraine, and that means that the United States is now authorized to sanction it. Now, this is a roundabout way of using secondary sanctions to sanction Chinese banks. If you remember, a couple of weeks ago, Blinken was saying that the United States was going to start moving towards sanctioning Chinese banks. He went to

Beijing and he uttered all of the same threats all over again and now we see that it's going to start to happen. Now, if we take these sanctions at face value, any Chinese bank that conducts transactions with any Russian commercial entity now risks being sanctioned. But of course, the United States is the sole judge of which Chinese bank is doing. what, and they now have the tool to sanction any and every Chinese bank if they wish to do it. And what this means is that for the first time the United States is empowering itself to use secondary sanctions to sanction the financial services industry, and indeed any part of the economy of another country. So the Treasury can do this by itself without needing an executive order

from the President. So what you see is, firstly, preparation for an economic war to be waged against China. And secondly, the Treasury Department, assuming usurping authority that properly speaking ought to belong to the President of the United States. So let us say Donald Trump becomes president in November, wants to change course of policy towards China. He wants to avoid having sanctions on China. The Treasury Department can, in theory, simply disregard any decision he makes.

And he can only reverse those secondary sanctions if he decides to, set aside the executive orders of imposing sanctions on Russia, which politically might be extremely difficult to do. So this is a huge step. I mean, in theory, of course, the president appoints the secretary of the treasury. The secretary of the treasury can give directions to the Treasury Department, irresponsible, but you could start to see the way things are happening in the United States. and the president's powers are gradually being taken away from him and are becoming concentrated in more and more parts of the bureaucracy and the United States is cranking up now

for an outright war against China and its entire economic and financial system. Yeah, they couldn't sanction China directly. So they did this roundabout way. They did this roundabout way, exactly. And China's response? It is incredibly strong. I mean, they've made strong... They realize what's going on.

Oh, absolutely. Of course, the Chinese understand exactly what's going on. And they've made some very strong statements. The Chinese foreign ministry spokesman has spoken out against it. There is a withering article about this in Global Times, talking about the G7 and what it's doing. And the Chinese obviously understand to figure this out completely, and they understand what the Americans are about.

And that this is what this is it. Where we're going. We remember we spoke, I think it was about two years ago, when the US imposed its first sanctions against some Chinese officials. We said that the US was now, had now climbed onto its sanctions escalator with respect to China and the point would eventually come when China would be fully sanctioned and we've just gone up a huge number of steps up the escalator. As predicted. As predicted. As predicted.

Can I just say, the pressure is coming from all directions in the United States. Apparently, there's a plan being floated, which is being associated with Donald Trump, and which many people in Congress on the Republican libertarian side are very excited about, which is due away with income tax, and the government raises all its money through tariffs. Now, that sounds very attractive to many people. And it, on the face of it, would return the United States to something closer to what the founders probably envisaged back in the 1790s. The problem with doing that, of course, is that if you raise tariffs to those kind of levels, move over to a complete protection system. At the same time as you're ending income tax, you're going to have a shortage of good.

and you're going to have a massive inflation inside the United States. So what this is really all about, again, is increasing tariffs on Chinese goods. It's been packaged once again to make it look like it's part of a plan within a libertarian economic philosophy. But the way it's going to play out and the way it's... intended to play out and the people who drafting this, I mean, and who are advising Donald Trump understand this perfectly well. It is about creating massive tariff barriers against imports from China. This is what we're heading towards. You're going to get the tariffs, but you're not going to get the end of the income tax. I mean, that isn't going to happen. Yep,

this is also about giving more power to the permanent state. Absolutely. And using Donald Trump as an excuse. Exactly. The fear of Trump is a really good excuse to shift more power to the permanent state. Absolutely. Because Trump is four years. Well, Trump is four years.

He's not going to have another term. Four years after that, though. The power is going to stay. The power is going to stay. And as I said, we now see how secondary sanctions are now expanding. The mechanism. for imposing secondary sanctions is now expanding, is being expanded to such a degree

that control of the sanctions weapon is slipping out of the hands of America's elected government, the president, and indeed Congress, and is passing to the bureaucracy, to the Treasury Department in this case, and to the other parts of the American bureaucracy. It is an absolute disaster. The president in the United States has been shown every year now of more and more of his power.

People are talking about, you know, the imperial presidency that might have been true in, you know, Lyndon Johnson's and Richard Nixon's day. But it's no longer the true, to any real extent, any longer. The presidency is just becoming decoration, as is Congress. the power is elsewhere. It is with the permanent government of the United States, the appointed officials and the bureaucracy and the other people who work with them. Yeah, the whole dictator thing.

Trump is going to be a dictator who's not going to want to leave. That's a ruse. The real plan is, the real goal of the permanent state is to concentrate more power to the permanent state. That's why Biden is such a popular president amongst the permitted state. Yes. Because he's not really doing anything.

He's just there to rubber stamp, whatever he needs to rubber stamp. If he even understands what's going on, we don't even know if he understands what he's signing or what he's saying. That's why they like Biden. That's why they like Biden as president because he's not going to really make any decisions. He's not capable of making any decisions. And they can concentrate more and more power, shift more and more. power into the permanent state. That's why every time they say, oh, Trump is a dictator, Trump's going to be a dictator and he's never going to leave. What they actually are saying is,

we want to shift more power into our hands as the permanent state. And we're going to use this Trump dictator thing as a distraction, as a deflection. That's what they're. This is a common trick. They do it all the time. But to what to what end to do these sanctions? what do these sanctions actually accomplish? Because the only thing that I see that, the only thing that I see these sanctions is doing is diminishing and destroying the U.S. dollar, which is the foundation of the permanent state's power. Yes.

Well, they don't see that. That is one of the fundamental problems in having a bureaucracy run things. Because if you deal with bureaucracies, and remember, I've served in them, so I should know. The problem with bureaucracies is that they never think strategically. That is why you need someone like the president and his team to be ultimately in control, able to get advice from all kinds of people, listen to the decisions and make the decisions. Because that is the role of the president.

He is ultimately the decision maker according to the way that the founders intended. Now, you see, the president can be informed by various people in the academic world, within the government, within the business community, that the effect of all of these sanctions is it's going to undermine the US dollar system, which has been increasingly threatened and all that. But people within the bureaucracies aren't really thinking about that. They have a war, as they see it, to fight against China. An economic war and ultimately a military one as well. And as far as they're concerned, they're now carrying out that policy. That's their objective to push the Chinese back economically by wrecking their financial system, imposing massive tariffs on Chinese goods.

There is, I suspect, some kind of inner belief that the United States will come out okay from this and that ultimately it will play out to the US's advantage because it always has before. This is, I suspect, what people think about when they do these things. But in bureaucracies, bureaucracies are not good places for debates to take place. I mean, remember again, I've worked in one. What they do is that they set the target and they work towards it. And that's what's going to happen. So I think that they don't probably believe that it's going to play out in the way that you said.

They probably don't take seriously these attempts by the bricks to set up alternative systems. They assume that they're going to fail because they say to themselves, the USDA is so convenient, so easy to use, of course most people will stick with it. And in the meantime, it's not going to stop them preparing. for the major conflict with China that is now on the horizon. Even though most people are not sticking with the U.S. People are leaving the U.S.D. Russia has announced that since this whole Moscow exchange sanctioning debacle, that everything's going to be going to be priced trading-wise off of the yuan.

Well, if we go. It's going to be ruble yuan. This is psychologically, not even financially, psychologically, is a big step because your whole life, my whole life, I've always looked at everything in comparison to the dollar. And now I imagine you're going to go to Russia and slowly, slowly, everything's going to be looked at in comparison to the Chinese yuan as far as exchanges go. I mean, these are big shifts, not only financially, but these are also psychological

shifts with regard to the U.S. dollar and the dollar. the dollar being the reserve currency. And we also have the news about Saudi Arabia, which I also think is misunderstood. And I want to focus a bit on the psychological impact and the impact of choice. Because everyone's saying there was this contract with Saudi Arabia, a 50-year-old contract to use the petro dollar,

and this contract has ended, and now Saudi Arabia can use other currencies. that's not what's going on here. I don't think, I mean, you tell me if I'm wrong, I don't think there was a contract. I don't think Saudi Arabia was 100% obliged to use the U.S. dollar when trading oil. What happened was that the U.S. dollar was the only game in town. And the U.S. military was the only game in town that could provide protection to Saudi Arabia. So the fit was there.

The deal was there. But now Saudi Arabia, it's entering bricks. it has other choices, it has other currencies, it has other options, and it also has other choices with regards to protection and to its military needs as well. So now Saudi Arabia can make decisions to trade in other currencies and it has been moving towards trading in the Chinese yuan over the past couple of years. I think people are seeing this whole Saudi Arabia thing. I think this story has kind of morphed into something that it's not. But my point in all of this before you respond is that there is underneath all of this,

there's a change in psychology, a change in choice, a change in options, which is what is leading to what appears to be the winding down of the US dollar as the only, as the only game in town. Absolutely. There's exactly what it is. Let you just go back to the sanctions so far as they apply to Russia. First of all, you're absolutely right. This is going to be a major psychological shift within Russia as well.

From now on, the benchmark currency is going to be the yuan. It is the Chinese currency, the RMB. It is not going to be the dollar anymore internally within Russia. Now, Russia is one of the three big oil exporters, it's just a huge export in practically everything else. Grain metals, increasingly, by the way, finished goods as well. And that's probably going to continue to expand. It's, as we now know, the fourth biggest economy in the world.

Though, again, I wonder whether people in the bureaucracy in the United States have fully absorbed the implications of that, the new rankings readjustments, that the World Bank has been doing. So pushing them out of the use of the dollar, changing the psychology in that kind of way, is going to make a massive cultural change in Russia, and that inevitably is going to spill over

with the various countries that Russia trades with, and it's going to gradually shift idea thinking away from the dollar in international trade, it is inevitably going to happen. But if we talk about this particular move, the one that we've just been discussing, there will be, you know, a couple of months, perhaps six months, when the Russians will have to see how this thing works out, work out their, you know, their roundabout ways of doing it, their workarounds, which they will do. You know, they'll have to adjust their systems with various trading partners, which they will.

But long term, what this is doing, and this is, I'm talking specifically about Russia now, is it is making it all but impossible for Russian billionaires and oligarchs and all those people to take their money out of Russia and to invest it in the West. And the British government has been working for decades now to try to persuade Russia. not just, you know, the super rich, but even middle-class Russians to stop doing that, to keep their money in Russia, to invest it in Russia itself. And what is the US Treasury Department doing? It is giving the Putin government another huge measure of assistance to doing, to doing precisely that.

So in the end, long term, it's going to play out to Russia's advantage. because, of course, they have secured trading partners in China and India, and it's important to stress. China and India don't just trade with the Russians out of charity, you know, charity, or because, you know, they like the Russians or something of that kind. Well, they may they do like the Russians. But it is based ultimately on hard-headed, economic, practical realities. China needs Russia's natural resources. So does India, increasingly so. India's had a bad harvest, for example.

They're looking to make up the difference in that with imports of Russian grain. So, and they have to pay for it in some way. And they're now going to start looking for further ways to pay for it outside the dollar system. And they're going to have to have banks and financial institutions. they had to create them in India, which operate outside the American financial system because those banks and financial institutions run the risk of being sanctions. And since we're talking about enormous economies, and since we're talking about what is going to be a very profitable trade,

they will do it. They will create these things. This is, again, where I think people just don't understand that there is nothing that Western countries can do, that other countries cannot do as well and replace. So the Indians and the Chinese are going to set up special banks charged with managing the China trade, the Russia trade, and we're going to see that spread, and we're going to see other people, other players in other places who want to trade with Russia, start using those Chinese and Indian banks in order to help them do that. And we're going to start to see it increasingly an alternative financial system emerge.

In the meantime, as I said, you know, Deripaska and Patanin and all of these awful people in Russia who used to take all their money out and all those Russian middle-class people who used to go on trips to Europe, to buy things in Western shops and to buy apartments and things like that in the West, they're going to have to keep it in Russia, assisting the Russian investment boom and strengthening the Russian economy that way. This is a completely misconceived policy, both in terms of Russia and in terms of global trade, it is going to make things worse. Now, why this isn't understood, I really don't know.

Now, let's turn to the Saudis. You are absolutely right. Back in the 1970s, when the original deal was done, and this was an emergency deal, by the way, it was something that was agreed by the Americans and by the Saudis in the period, the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis, and some years after, the United States had ended the dollar's connection to gold. You know, Richard Nixon's famous, or maybe I was it, infamous decision in 1971,

to, you know, end the link between the U.S. and the U.S.'s gold reserves. So back in the 1970s, the world was very different. the United States was by far the world's biggest economy. Of course, there was a Soviet Union, but the Soviet Union was the adversary, it was a communist country, you didn't put your money in the Soviet Union. I mean, the Soviets had no mechanisms to absorb money in that way. Europe had a very underdeveloped financial system in terms of, you know, accepting vast amounts of foreign, securities and investments and things of that kind. And the US military was dominant in the world. And of course, Saudi Arabia was very, very much in conflict at that time with the Soviets and

their allies because Saudi Arabia was a viscerally anti-communist country. And it was also in deep conflict with the various left-wing, socialistic Arab states like Egypt, Syria, Iraq, all of Algeria, all of those, which in those days were allied to the Soviet Union also. So the Saudis needed American protection. They also needed to make sure that the dollar had an underpinning, because by this point they were being largely paid, what they were being paid. paid already for their oil in dollars. I mean, people no longer, I mean, back in the 50s and 60s, the oil trade was conducted in gold, or to a certain extent, in gold. But even that was before, from that point on, it had to be done in dollars. So the deal was done. You accept payment in dollars. In fact, you insist on payment for oil in dollars. You invest half of your dollar earnings in the US, which made total sense, and in return, the US protected you.

That was the arrangement that was done in the 1970s. The world today is completely different. If you want to put your money in Singapore or Hong Kong or Shanghai or even in Moscow, you can. You might not be able to do it in USDA because obviously, the Russians won't hold the USD, but you can do it in all of these other places. And you can also invest in the Russian economy. You can take money out of Russia.

You can trade with it because the ruble is still, to some extent, convertible. You can do all kinds of things with it. And of course, you now have good economic relations with the Russians and with the Chinese if you are the Saudis with the Russians. the Russians are your partners on the international oil market. You need to keep a good relationship with the Russians in order to keep the oil market stable. And the Chinese are the people from whom you're buying more and more things all the time. So the Saudis have not walked away from an agreement that was made in the 70s

in the sense that they're refusing to renew it because this was not a common. This is not a treaty or anything like that which needed renewal. It was an arrangement that was agreed then. But they are gradually opting to diversify their holdings, and they're no longer feel as bound to that arrangement as they did back then. And obviously, the main driver in these policy shifts is MBS, who has a very ambitious investment programme. that he wants to run in Saudi Arabia.

And he needs help from the Chinese especially to be able to make it work. And he also needs help from the Russians because he needs the oil market to be stable. But he's also somebody who thinks outside the box. And as we know, he doesn't like Biden very much. And he's got issues with the Americans altogether. But even if MBS were to disappear,

sooner or later the Saudis would come back and also do this. sort of thing, because it is in their interests too. Saudi and Russian relations were already very friendly even before the present king and MBS came to power under the previous king. And that's not going to change. Yeah. Choice. Choice and options.

That's what Bricks is. Choice and options. Exactly. I mean, this is, this is it. Exactly. I mean, it's understand. It's exactly. Biden, of course, doesn't understand that because he's living in the world of 1990.

But I suspect that an awful lot of people in the U.S. don't really see it either. They still assume that if the U.S. isn't able to crash Russia or force back China and all that, it's because it's due to. it's due to lack of will, willpower people in Washington, whereas, of course, the reality is it's the huge changes that are taking place in the world. Yeah. So Saudi Arabia is exercising their options in their best interest. And the European Union is stuck in this unipolar system. subservient paradigm, this prison that they've imposed on themselves. And there's no better

example of this than the EU, it's incredible, deciding to take on this $50 billion loan that the U.S. is going to make to Ukraine. And the EU has accepted to, at least as a, as a of what we know, the EU has accepted to be the, what's the word that I'm looking for, Alexander. Guarantor, I think is the word. The guarantor, yes, the guarantor. The backstop. The backstop.

If there happens to be a default, and I, you know, I personally believe that Ukraine is absolutely good for the $50 billion. I can't imagine Ukraine not paying back the $50 billion to the United States. But if something goes wrong, well, don't worry, the European Union, they'll take care of the $50 billion loan. Anyway, let's talk briefly about this story, which is incredible. This is one of the most incredible, one of the most farcical, but also one of the most comical stories I've ever seen. I mean, for Europeans, for the people of Europe, I mean, if they knew about this, this would tell them everything about the quality of the people who lead Europe today. But anyway, let's, let's unpack it. So the Biden administration has come to understand, I think,

that it's going to become more and more difficult to get Congress to authorize funding for Ukraine. I mean, there was already a big problem. Earlier this year, the American people are cooling off this whole idea and they're opposing it. So they can't just go on printing money and handing it over to Ukraine. So they've got to keep the grift, sorry, the support for Ukraine going. So they've come up with this idea of a $50 billion loan. And the project is therefore to float apparently a loan, I presume, on the international foreign, you know, the international bond markets. But of course, they have to explain how this loan is going to be repaid.

and they've come up with this clever idea of repaying it from the interest of the assets, the Russian assets that have been frozen principally in Europe. Now remember the United States, the original Biden plan was to seize those assets out by it and to give them in their totality, well, ultimately to Ukraine that there would have been a fund set up, no doubt, to manage them, which would have been. have dulled them out over time to the Russians. Anyway, the unanimous view of the legal community, the international legal community,

and all of the warnings, apparently from the central banks and the financial community, was you cannot do this thing. It is straightforwardly, completely illegal. It will fail at the first post in the first legal challenge. You're going against the basic doctrine of sovereign immunity, and if you succeed, you're going to destroy the reputation of the European financial system, which is where this money is placed. So the Biden administration pulled out of that idea. They accepted, I think, very grudgingly and very unhappily that this couldn't be done. So they

go for the loan idea instead, $50 billion, front-loaded. It's going to be raised, presumably, as I said, on the international bond markets, and it's going to be paid off through the interest that the assets, the Russian assets, accrue, which Euroclear is going to pay to the bondholders. Now, there is a obvious legal problem with this, which is that if the assets, the principle belongs to the Russians logically. So does the interest. I've never known a situation where interest on money doesn't belong to the owner of the principal. I mean, I've never heard of such a thing in my life before. Moreover, I would have thought that if you accept that the principle is owned by someone, then you are undermining your own claim that the interest belongs to you rather than to that

someone that owns the principle, because you are admitting, in effect, that other person's ownership. So this is Russia's interest. Now, I know that there are legal arguments about this, but I don't understand them. And they don't make any kind of sense to me. There might be some provisions in the contract Russia took out with Euroclear. But I suspect that this is very much open to challenge. So, of course, there is the problem that the interest might be frozen. There might be court decisions, maybe not in the European Union, but outside, which might interfere eventually with the payment of the interest. And of course, going beyond that, there is the question of whether or not Ukraine itself can ever repay the loan. Ukraine might not survive. It might be gone in a year's time.

Or it might survive, but under a completely different government, which is now friendly to the Kremlin. So bondholders will probably come along and say, well, look, This looks like a very risky loan. We are not sure about these repayments that you're saying we should achieve because we're not sure who actually owns those repayments. I mean, it looks to us as if it's the Russians. And they're not agreeing. They're not agreeing to pay them. And we don't want to get involved in a law case. And as with the Ukrainians, the ultimate borrowers, well, their financial position is absolutely catastrophic. Their economy is imploding. their industries are collapsing. They've got no energy system to speak about, and the Russians control 20% of Ukraine's territory and are not continuing to advance. So most bondholders will stay away in that kind of situation, that kind of scenario. So how do you persuade them to come forward and take, you know, buy these bonds so as to create this loan? Well, you get the, you know, you get the Europeans to stand as guarantors. So if the interest from the Russian loans doesn't become

available, or if Ukraine defaults, or if both of these happen, don't worry, the European taxpayer will pay it for you. Now, in the run-up to the announcement from the G7, there was a whole series of articles that appeared in places like Politico, in which we had various European officials coming along and say this would be an absolutely idiotic idea. We are not so stupid as to agree to this. I always thought that was perhaps being rather over-generous to European leaders. They have agreed to this. It wasn't formally stated in the G7 announcement,

but since it's now clear that they are going to go forward with this, this loan. The only mechanism whereby it can be done is if the Europeans are prepared to stand guarantors and clearly in private that is what they've agreed to do. Otherwise, this announcement is meaningless. So European taxpayers are now going to pay $50 billion to bondholders, international bondholders, plus interest by the way, because remember loans attract interest. They're going to pay all that money to the international bondholders because sooner or later either the money from the Russian assets

will dry up or Ukraine will default. It's unbelievable. It is absolutely astonishing. The European Union, the laws, the treaty, the Lisbon Treaty makes it clear that there cannot be Eurobonds, for example. They can't join.

come together and float Eurobonds. Well, they're doing the next best thing. They're acting as guarantors for bonds that will be floated to pay for Ukraine, which isn't, by the way, even a member of the European Union. It is so crazy. It is so imprec. It is so stupid that, you know, how do it mean anyone else than this group of people, Olaf and Osceola and Behrbock and Macron, I would have said it couldn't possibly happen.

But of course, with those people, it was inevitable that it would. Dumbest leaders in the world. Absolutely. Without a doubt. Absolutely. And just to wrap up the video, it gets worse, I think. I think it gets worse. Ukraine will default.

I think there's a guarantee that Ukraine will. They're not going to pay back 50 billion euros. There's no chance. The interest payments from the 200 billion at Euroclear, at best, the profits at best amount to $3 billion a year. Maybe $3 billion. I've heard anywhere between $1.5 to $3 billion. So $50 billion is going to be the loan. And you're banking that loan on $1.5 to $3 billion in profits every year.

Good luck with that bond. And your thoughts on this. The 50 billion is going to get burned through very quickly. Six months, one year's time. That 50 billion is going to be gone. And if Ukraine is still around, they're going to want another 50 billion. Of course, yeah. And so they're just going to use the same mechanism. This will never end. And Europe is on the hook. Your final thoughts and will be. You're completely clear. I mean, I haven't gone into the financial logic of the whole thing because, of course, there isn't any. And bear in mind, we're talking about one point one and a half to three billion euros a year from the interest from the assets based on existing interest rates, which are high. If interest rates start to fall, as some people think they will, well, the accruing interest in the assets is going to fall as well. So who's going to make up the difference? You can guess. It's not difficult to understand. What is happening, what is straightforwardly happening here is that European taxpayers are being shafted. They're entering into an indefinite commitment to pay, well, you know, I don't know how long this loan is going to be for, but they're going to entering into a long-term commitment to go on funding, not just Ukraine, but the bondholders. So, I mean, just imagine.

just imagine how this is going to play out. I mean, it's, it's, it's, I think I said in my program yesterday on my own channel, you know, there's a soccer every time at this time. It's the year of years. I mean, it's just, it is just so weird. It is so bizarre. I mean, some people are going to do very well out of this. And as you absolutely rightly say, I mean, you know, they'll come along in a year's time because by the way, they've already had something like, I think it's $300 billion I saw since 2020 that they've run through in weapons and all kinds of other things.

I mean, bear in mind that with their economy now basically imploded economic activity to such an extent as it exists at all is entirely dependent on financial transfers from the West. So, I mean, civil servants, soldiers, bureaucrats, all of these people, they're all getting in Ukraine, their money from the West now. And, of course, you know, fortifications and all that. They're also being paid for by the West. Notice that Zelensky's just sacked the infrastructure minister who was in charge of fortifications. And massive, woe is us, you know, from the financial times and Ukrainian. and US officials and all kinds of Western officials because this man has gone.

Of course, the fact that all the money that was spent on the fortifications has been embezzled, as has been universally acknowledged across the media in Ukraine. It's all been embezzled and that he was the man who was in charge. That is not something that they're worried about because, of course, you can imagine. And the money goes in, it's intended to be used for all sorts of purposes. It all goes out again.

It comes to all kinds of interesting places in, you know, the Canary Islands or Gibraltar or wherever. And the European taxpayer is now on the hook for that for another $50 billion. And of course, even if Ukraine falls, you set up a government in exile, it will need to continue to be funded. So it will come back and ask for more and more and more And you'll do it in exactly exactly the same way And, you know, European taxpayers will have to bear the burden But an awful lot of people are going to do extremely well out of this As we saw with the business, with the infrastructure

And the sacking of the man who was in charge Guy that started the Maidan that sent out the message for the Maidan that guy. No funny business going on there, huh? No, no. No, absolutely none. I mean, you know, this isn't, let me, you know, we're sorry that he's going because, well, who's going to, who is going to hand us all checks? Or maybe, maybe, maybe not checks, maybe not checks, but envelopes.

Just, just a, suitcases. Suitcases. What a, yeah, what a, what a bad idea. Project Ukraine is for, for the collective of West. Well, for the West, it is a disaster for you, I mean, European governments that are signing up to this kind of thing. I mean, I mean, either they are completely stupid. I mean, either they are so stupid that, I mean, they, they are dances, frankly.

Well, they are people without conscience. Of course, the one doesn't exclude the other. but bear in mind their own officials were briefing the media before we're not so stupid as to do this thing well they've just gone ahead and done it they are that stupid all right we will end the video there the durand dot locals dot com we are on rumble odyssey bit shoot telegram rockfin and twitter x and go to the duran shop pick up some football merch uh football 24 take care Thank you.