Category: Aggregated

On April 3, the “Panama Papers” operation was unleashed, focussed immediately to slander President Vladimir Putin, and President Xi Jinping, as well as a variety of other hits, slanderous or less so. Some background was provided April 3 by Fortune.com (it takes one, to know one), and other media, including the following features.

Some time in 2015, an anonymous source contacted the Suddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), and provided it with 40 years worth of data on European and other accounts, from the Panama-based law firm, Mossack Fonseca, which specializes in hiding money in offshore shells. This firm is said to rank fourth in the money-hiding world, with hundreds of prominent clients. SZ reports it received 11.5 million documents, going back to the 1970s.

The story is that SZ then enlisted a unit of the George Soros-funded Center for Public Integrity, in Washington, D.C., to take up the analysis—the ICIJ (International Consortium of Investigative Journalists). This Soros-funded group then put together a network of some 400 reporters in 80 countries to research the data. On April 3, the stories started coming out, of dozens of figures claimed to be, or suggested to be involved in off-shore money stashing schemes.

The April 3 Guardian article by Luke Harding, “Revealed: “The $2 bil Offshore Trail That Leads to Vladimir Putin,” is a doozy for innuendo on Putin, whose name appears nowhere in the Panama Papers. Harding writes, “The documents suggest Putin’s family has benefited from this money—his friends’ fortunes appear his to spend.” One of Putin’s friends is a ‘cellist, called “wealthy,” who maybe once upon a time, received payment from a firm which had off-shore holdings, etc.

For the first time in three years, a U.S. Congressional delegation has sought to re-establish an international dialogue with Russia, with a visit by a five-member, bi-partisan group, to the Russian Valdai Discussion Club on Sunday, April 3. Led by California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, the group included fellow Republican French Hill (AR) along with Democrats David Cicilline (RI), Brian Higgins (NY), and Juan Vargas (CA). Rohrabacher is—along with Higgins and Cicilline — a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and chairman of their Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia and Emerging Threats. His number one concern: stopping the spread of ISIS.

In stark contrast to the neocon media (as well as his Democratic counterparts’) portrayal of Russia as a neo-imperial force threatening Europe, Rohrabacher — who characterized these reports as “bizarre and out of touch” — talked down the Obama-boosted, billion-dollar European Reassurance Initiative, saying that, “There is no threat that I can see of a major military incursion by Russia into Europe. A much greater threat to Europe now is radical Islamic terrorism, and in that battle we should be working with Russia rather than try to base our policies on thwarting Russia,” according to a prominent posting on the Valdai website. He told his Russian hosts, “Our fight against the radical Islamic terrorism is not even halfway over, and it’s going to become more dangerous in the years ahead,” adding that, “If there is anything that can help us, that will further our efforts to defeat radical Islamic terrorism … then it will be the cooperation between our countries.”

Concluding his presentation, Rohrabacher strongly defended the Russian state, saying, “We’ve got to get the word out that Russia is a strong modern nation. When the president of Russia moves forward to do something in the interests of his country, it should be seen as the president of this country watching out for the interests of his people.” Then, in words that could only endear himself to Putin, he took an implicit swing at Obama, adding, “I wish we had a president that was watching out as much for our interests as Russia has a president watching out for theirs.”

Valdai, a mountain retreat half-way between Moscow and St. Petersberg, was founded in 2004 by the Russian International Affairs Council, a joint project of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education and Science, with the stated goal of “promot[ing] dialogue between Russian and international intellectual elite.”

Interviewed March 31 by the American Prospect, Sen. Elizabeth Warren restated the current necessity for Glass-Steagall re-enactment; the interview was the first time she has linked this necessity to the lack of productive credit in the U.S. economy.

Asked by interviewer Robert Kuttner about the Wall Street banks’ practice of using Federal Reserve QE reserves and borrowings to speculate with U.S. Treasury securities, avoiding the economy, Warren said that small and medium-sized companies continue to be unable to get credit for production, due to the constantly increasing dominance of credit markets by the biggest Wall Street banks. She described Wall Street lending to corporate giants [who use the loans to build up the stock market—ed.] and to consumers, but not to the vast majority of companies.

“Over the long run, that shift in lending will have a devastating effect on our economy,” Warren said. “And that’s exactly why we need a new Glass-Steagall Act to break up the biggest banks.” She described them gobbling up the community banks which would lend to business, while on the speculative markets, using their huge FDIC-insured deposit bases as an advantage over the shadow banks.

Warren said that her Glass-Steagall bill with Senators McCain, Cantwell, and King closed the holes that “regulators” [i.e., Alan Greenspan] had punched in the Act before its 1999 repeal, and walled off derivatives from commercial banking, which the original Glass-Steagall had not specifically had to do.

She also disagreed that there is less systemic risk in Wall Street than in 2007, noting particularly that “if one fails, then several of them are headed over the cliff together.” Dodd-Frank should not have left the giant banks as they were, she implied, and doing so allowed them to maintain the political power to repeal derivatives regulations of Dodd-Frank, etc.

American Prospect‘s accompanying article was full of speculations about Senator Warren’s impact in pushing Hillary Clinton to the left, and whether Clinton — who they assume will be the nominee — will appoint an economic team of Wall Street bankers as Obama did.