Ukraine War

" There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the Communists act.... . I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments. I have objected ... to a few of its policies ... but in general my chief difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known." (Chapter 65) "The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences." (Chapter 20) (emphasis added)

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that if Russia was responsible for listening to, recording and publishing a private diplomatic telephone conversation, it would be "a new low in Russian tradecraft". When asked if the call was authentic, Ms Psaki would not directly confirm it was Ms Nuland's voice but said: "I didn't say it was inauthentic." She said Mrs Nuland "has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologised for these reported comments".

A new deal with the IMF would also send a positive signal to private markets and would increase foreign direct investment that is so urgently needed in Ukraine.

We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.

The Russian and Ukrainian people are still paying the price for the mistakes made by men the West considers economic luminaries—Larry Summers and Jeffrey Sachs among them.

I saw the poverty that shock therapy unleashed during my own time living in Russia during the 1990s. As an idealistic college student with a grandfather who had fled the Bolsheviks in 1917 (but who later got to meet Mikhail Gorbachev, bringing his experience with the USSR full circle), I was eager to help Russia become a country of capitalism and democracy. With one year of physics under my belt, I got a job with the U.S. Department of Defense—through Sandia National Labs—to work with Russia’s top scientists. I saw brilliant men and women making just $40 a month, their whole life savings now worthless. At night, I would hail a $5 illegal cab from professionals who needed extra income to make ends meet—and then spend more in a night at Rosie O’Grady’s bar than my scientist colleagues made in a month. I befriended a babushka who was now reduced to cleaning my dormitory after her savings and pension evaporated.  Despite the evident ruin, the Yeltsin administration—with the support of the Clinton administration—stuck to its guns. At the core of the shock therapy effort was the International Monetary Fund and the Harvard Institute for International Development, to which the U.S. Agency for International Development subcontracted its Russia file. Professors like Sachs and Andrei Schleifer teamed up with former Harvard professors Larry Summers and David Lipton, both senior officials at the Department of the Treasury at the time, to advise Gaidar and Chubais. Unlike under the Marshall Plan, the architects of Russia’s transformation refused to give monetary relief while Russia underwent the reforms which the West advised. The result was economic ruin.