Not sure if the visit invite will be withdrawn.  China puts emphasis on ‘leader to leader’ diplomacy.  Perhaps Trump loses it and decides to decline the invite.  It is not in the bag in my thinking.   We will wait though for commentary as China is still on new year or spring vacation … the Chinese spox people are also on vacation.

It is now we need Seun!

Check it out … The raiders are already planning.

Howard Lutnick’s sons, Brandon and Kyle — now running Cantor Fitzgerald after Lutnick became Commerce Secretary — have been buying up rights to potential Trump-era tariff refunds from U.S. importers at steep discounts, reportedly around 20–30 cents on the dollar.

Cantor structured the deals as litigation finance: companies get immediate cash, while Cantor takes the upside if courts force Washington to return the tariffs.

If substantial refunds are approved, firms that accumulated these claims cheaply could see MASSIVE returns.

He is livid! And oh man … it is everyone else’s fault. Now the rest of the world must pay? This is the beginning of major court cases and the end of trade. It was foreign interference yeah.

I think in this context it is laissez faire – more of an economic term.

I had a short interaction with Michael Hudson yesterday not about this specifically.

He again confirmed the two broad categories of capitalism: Industrial capitalism was progressive in its day, and was leading to stronger government infrastructure investment and regulation – and this invariably leads to collective socialism.

The rentier counter-reaction has led to rentier finance capitalism. Its opposition by libertarians to socialism is a rejection of the entire program of classical political economy – the stuff inherent in Marx.

The commentary on Venezuela (they did not fight) frustrates me enormously. They simply chose not to kill half of the Southern Americas.

But having watched them for a long time, the classical political economy is quite directly what they followed in the Bolivarian teachings – albeit from being hammered over years, that was the natural outcome of the pressure. So now, they are alive and not dead .. waiting it out because there was not an alternative that was intelligent.

Thanks .. I feel better – Rhetoric is all it is.

We’re in for it! Iran is a go as far as we can see and imminent.

I’m not a Godnick, but God help us!

In all these years studying Russia, it has been a neverending theme that ‘something is wrong in the Russian State’. In a sense I say .. yeah, sure! There always is something wrong in the affairs of a state. A state is never fully cohesive because states are huge and made up of people who have to make decisions. The last time I saw Lavrov angry, was with the final meeting with the Turks and others before the headchoppers broke the Idlib borders and stormed into Syria. He was livid and did not hide it. Another war was on the horizon and nobody wanted to cooperate to de-escalate. Re Russia, I am convinced they can deal wtih any differences of opinion and are very cautious in terms of a too large break between decisionmakers for future planning. They know their history. I mean we’ve seen Putin, at the final meeting before the SMO started. It was iconic! He had his full security council, everyone front and center and everyone individually had to answer the question on video: SMO or NO. Putin is not scared to make decisions, but he makes them once he consulted with his full state apparatus.

It is almost a hobby to try and figure out who is supporting which initiative in Russia and who is sticking a knife into which back. This comes from the historical Russia, where they wanted to be an empire. I know it from the African side and nobody can tell me anything good about the USSR of the time. The break with China was a severe and massive mistake as it was based on who does communism better – stupid! And yet a fascinating story.

In reality, there is little else to talk about because Russia is doing well. There are in-depth questions and decisions which we do not know the calculus. We do not know how the Russian State considers the fall of the hegemon. We do know what timing is given to that (and of course relevant for the time). Patruschev and we had the interview on the site, considered that there is 10 years that Russia and China need to dance to keep the world out of major war. More or less 10 years to cement a world order of multi-polarity. I’m not sure if that thinking has now changed as the incredible push and wish for war on Russia was front and center at the recent security conference and a theme right throughout. I mean they even had Hillary Clinton there spouting.

It is no wonder if the Russian state discusses this with a view to cement decisions for their future. They are not jonesing for the Dollar. But sanctions? They have to go as these are not legal measures.

I’m not worried about the Russian State. If they could stage a comeback from 1991, and take back Russian resources from the criminals at the time, as well as the US, it is a massive win for them. This is their new history. We’ve seen Putin in meetings with the criminal oligarch groupings, tearing the skin of their backs. I have a bit of a birds eye view on the period and I’ve told the story of my father in law, who was in Russia at the time, a year or two before the fall of the Berlin wall and responsible for stealing the aluminum production and some oil production processes. “It was like shooting fish in a barrel”. We had years of conversations in depth on what happened, and also his own guilt for having been part of this major Rape of Russia.

Let Helmer waffle. Sometimes those are allowed to be continued as it forms a type of a security barrier on the real stuff. I say again, the real stuff is a little hidden now. Ryabkov is a man of short sentences. Lavrov is deep into something – I don’t know what. He has gone quite quiet again after a spate of interviews. China side? They say what they must say and really, nothing more.

An interesting day ahead.

Helmer?  Based on a concept document .. undated, unsigned, no provenance, from the NYT.  And hey ho!  The Little Green Dwarf confirmed it to the NYT.   What a wonderful bunch of crooks to take information from.

And Lavrov is angry – which he is – that is clear.  Must he by definition be angry at Putin?  Putin has the Russian population to report to.  Do you think they will fall for it?  Do you really think with the US Dollar in the state that it is, and the reserve currency concept disappearing across the world being replaced with trading in national currencies, Putin will fall for it?  Sanctions is the weapon of the US.  Will Russia tumble for the fast weakening US economic weapon while it is not tumbling for war weapons or sanctions from the US?

It is clear that after the Ukraine war American business wants to go back to Russia.  Putin himself said that it will be controlled and will be under Russian decisionmaking.  Nobody that stuck it out with Russia throughout the war will be disadvantaged.  But none of this will happen if the basic normal of diplomacy are not in place.  There is not a normal airplane schedule.  The US holds and gives visas even for UN business as it likes.  Nebeenzia at the UNSC said that they will not ask the US for a ‘permission’ (a license was how he put it), to do what they need to do.

Helmer is his own fifth column.  He has a full band that he plays all by himself.  When did he ever not find some intrigue in the Russian government?  Who was that guy that played a flute and made all the children run after him?  Aha, the Pied Piper.  Well Helmer is going blue in the face blowing his flute, but, the Russian kids do not want to follow.

Look at these two fools:  Buying US weapons means ‘waiting lists’ — Rubio & Hegseth In a USA Today op-ed, Rubio and Hegseth said buyers “all too often” pay “to join waiting lists,” with “unknown or unreliable delivery dates,” warning long delays “tempt our allies to look to other suppliers.”

If trade cannot be done, it won’t be done.

Yes, that was a good piece.  This is a crux:  “‘It is not a glitch (that nothing gets resolved). It’s a feature.”

The Blackrocks of the world made deals with Ukraine before the penny dropped that the Ukraine is going to get its ass handed to it.  So much of this is to figure out a way to save them, but they cannot be saved, as they dealt with a state with no legal standing.  This is why Ryabkov now raises the point again that Russia will support a kind of a technical management under UN auspices, to get a valid government into the Ukraine, and then negotiations can continue.  These ‘deals’ is why the US (Witkoff and the other realtor) are stuck on “the territorial issue”.

Here is a bit from TASS:  https://tass.com/politics/2087367