The Big Stick

Janet Yellen speaks to the issue plainly and clearly.

Yellen Calls for More Ukraine Support and Warns China Against Helping Russia

Ahead of a meeting of G20 finance ministers, the Treasury secretary offered a dark assessment of Russia’s economy and warned China of the consequences of helping Moscow skirt U.S. sanctions.

BENGALURU, India — Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen said on Thursday that the United States would redouble its efforts to marshal global support to help Ukraine and warned that China would face repercussions if it helped Russia evade American sanctions.

She spoke as top policymakers from around the world gathered in southern India for a meeting that is expected to focus largely on accelerating a global economic recovery after three years of international crises. The warning to China underscores how the impact of the war continues to reverberate, straining ties between the world’s two largest economies as they were attempting to stabilize their relationship.

“We have made clear that providing material support to Russia or assistance with any kind of systemic sanctions evasion would be a very serious concern for us,” Ms. Yellen said. “We will certainly continue to make clear to the Chinese government and the companies and banks in their jurisdiction about what the rules are regarding our sanctions and the serious consequences they would face for violating them.”

Ms. Yellen declined to describe specific U.S. intelligence about Russian attempts to avoid sanctions but the Treasury Department has pointed to attempts by Russia to seek assistance from China to supply it with items such as semiconductors which face trade restrictions.

Trade data shows that China, along with countries including Turkey and some former Soviet republics, has stepped in to provide Russia with products that civilians or armed forces could use, including raw materials, smartphones, vehicles and computer chips. Biden administration officials have expressed concern that China could provide Russia with lethal weapons, however China does not appear to have done so yet.

The United States has cracked down on some of the companies and organizations supplying goods and services to Russia. In January, it imposed sanctions on a Chinese company that had provided satellite imagery to the Wagner mercenary group, which has played a large role in the battle for eastern Ukraine. In December, it added two Chinese research institutes to a list of entities that supply the Russian military, which will restrict their access to U.S. technology.

On Thursday, Ms. Yellen made clear that the United States would crack down on sanctions evasion. “We are seeking to strengthen sanctions and to make sure we address violations of sanctions,” she said.

The effectiveness of sanctions on Russia continues to be a subject of intense debate, as recent forecasts from the International Monetary Fund suggested that its economy is performing better than expected.

But Ms. Yellen offered a dark assessment of Russia’s economy, arguing that sanctions imposed by the United States and other Western nations were working to isolate the Kremlin, drain the country of talent and sap its productive capacity. Still, the United States continues to view the conflict as the biggest threat to the global economy, and Ms. Yellen made clear that the Biden administration is prepared to continue punishing Russia for its incursion.

Ms. Yellen said that the United States plans to unveil additional sanctions on Russia and that it is working with its allies to devise ways to tighten restrictions already in place.

“We will stand with Ukraine in its fight — for as long as it takes,” Ms. Yellen said at a news conference as finance ministers from the Group of 20 nations, which include Russia and China, convened for two days of meetings.

The Treasury secretary said that the United States had already provided more than $46 billion in security, economic and humanitarian assistance to Ukraine and that another $10 billion in economic support would be delivered in the coming months. Ms. Yellen also called on the I.M.F. to “move swiftly” with a fully financed loan package for Ukraine. The I.M.F. last year approved more than $1 billion in emergency financing to Ukraine to mitigate the economic impact of the war.

“Continued, robust support for Ukraine will be a major topic of discussion during my time here in India,” Ms. Yellen said.

The United States hopes to include a condemnation of Russia’s actions in Ukraine in the joint statement, or communiqué, that the finance ministers are set to release later this week. However, it is not clear if a decisive statement will be possible because Russia is a member of the G20 and India, which is hosting the event, continues to buy large quantities of Russian oil.

Despite the urgency to address the crisis in Ukraine, Ms. Yellen offered an upbeat assessment of the global economy, which has begun to recover. While she acknowledged that headwinds remained, she said the world was on more stable footing than last fall, when many were forecasting a global recession.

“It’s fair to say that the global economy is in a better place today than many predicted just a few months ago,” Ms. Yellen said, pointing to a recent global growth upgrade from the I.M.F.

She added that the United States economy was proving to be resilient, with inflation moderating while the labor market remains strong.

During their meetings on Friday and Saturday, finance ministers are also expected to discuss ways to alleviate the debt crises facing many developing countries. Officials are also expected to put pressure on China, which has become one of the world’s largest creditors, to demonstrate more willingness to let more countries restructure their debt.

“I will continue to push for all bilateral official creditors, including China, to participate in meaningful debt treatments for developing countries and emerging markets in distress,” Ms. Yellen said.

It was unclear if Ms. Yellen would have any meetings with Chinese officials this week. She said that keeping lines of communication open about macroeconomic issues remained important.

“I certainly expect that we will resume discussions,” Ms. Yellen said, adding, “I don’t have a specific time frame in mind but I think it’s important to do so.”

Today's Banking Fuckery

Esquire's Charlie Pierce:

At this point, if you told me that Wells Fargo was running dope out of Marseilles, and responsible for the unsolved murder of Roger Rabbit, I’d probably believe you. Seriously, this latest malfeasance alleged against the company, as reported by The Wall Street Journal and relayed to the shebeen via The New York Daily News, is further proof that this particular respected financial institution is about three fedoras short of being the Gambino family.

The bank overcharged their corporate clients on foreign exchanges and levied hefty transactions fees through ingrained practices that rewarded employees for raking in the cash, according to a Wall Street Journal report. If the companies questioned why the foreign exchange rates were higher than the ones they were initially offered by the bank, employees would simply chalk it up to the “time fluctuation,” saying the market rate changed by the time the transaction was executed, one former manager said. Companies were also charged unusually high fees for currency conversions — which employees blamed on the bank’s “automated” computer system.

But hey - who needs that silly ol' CFPB anyway.

In Other News

The Daily Beast:

During Wednesday’s Senate hearing on the Equifax data breach, a protester dressed as the “Monopoly Man” from the board game photobombed Equifax CEO Richard Smith’s testimony.

While the CEO discussed his company’s breach that affected 145.5 million people, the protester gazed skeptically through a monocle at the back of his head.

The protester, who is named Amanda Werner, tweeted a photo fully decked out in Monopoly’s Rich Uncle Pennybags attire, complete with the top hat, mustache, and monocle. Werner is a campaign manager for the Americans for Financial Reform coalition and the nonprofit Public Citizen.

In the tweet, Werner explained that the prank, while distracting, was meaningful.

Don't ever forget that "Tort Reform" is coded language used by coin-operated politicians to make it sound reasonable for their client corporations to fuck us out of our right to seek redress through the courts.

I ❤️ Elizabeth Warren

But what we really need to do is de-regulate big business - to help the little guy make his $200,000,000 in stock options.

Dots

Fun fact reminder: the American economy took a 12-14 Trillion-Dollar hit starting in 2008.  

And tax-payers had to borrow that much (paying interest, of course) from our buddies around the world, and that means - lemme see - about 13 Trillion plus about 2-and-a-half percent interest - gosh, it seems we might have a number that fairly closely resembles the horribleness of the $15 - 18 Trillion added to our national debt that "Conservatives" love to bitch about.

Or maybe it's purely coincidental.  I suck at math, and I'm often real wrong about a lotta things.  But my Spidey Sense tells me the guys who make billions off of Other People's Money aren't likely to become saintly and altruistic just because their shit hits somebody else's fan.  They'll do what they know how to do - which always comes down to making sure they're not the ones left holding the bag.

And oh yeah - I want Elizabeth Warren to stay where she is, doing exactly what she's doing for a good long time.  Dang - the mad crush on that woman continues unabated.

A Giant Killer

Elizabeth Warren continues to be a great example of what political courage looks like; and what happens when somebody who knows a little something about leadership in a representative democracy stands up and speaks the kind of truth that makes oligarchs very uncomfortable.

(Reuters) - Big Wall Street banks are so upset with U.S. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren's call for them to be broken up that some have discussed withholding campaign donations to Senate Democrats in symbolic protest, sources familiar with the discussions said.

Representatives from Citigroup, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs and Bank of America, have met to discuss ways to urge Democrats, including Warren and Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, to soften their party's tone toward Wall Street, sources familiar with the discussions said this week.

Bank officials said the idea of withholding donations was not discussed at a meeting of the four banks in Washington but it has been raised in one-on-one conversations between representatives of some of them. However, there was no agreement on coordinating any action, and each bank is making its own decision, they said.

The amount of money at stake, a maximum of $15,000 per bank, means the gesture is symbolic rather than material.

Moreover, banks' hostility toward Warren, who is not a presidential candidate, will not have a direct impact on the presumed Democratic front runner in the White House race, Hillary Clinton. That's because their fund-raising groups focus on congressional races rather than the presidential election

Still, political strategists say Clinton could struggle to raise money among Wall Street financiers who worry that Democrats are becoming less business friendly.

The bit that I hi-lited in yellow wins this week's Corporate Bullshitter award.  A "cap" of $15,000 is window dressing.  It's "symbolic rather than material"?  Well dip me in shit and call me lonesome - whooda thunk it?  When you threaten to take that away from a candidate, it's a signal - it means you'll (prob'ly) be spending hundreds of times that amount on attack ads and mailings and blowjobs for the pimps at AEI so they'll pop up on DumFux News & Meet The Press Poodles to spout warnings about all the horribleness that's just gotta happen if Bad Ol' Perfesser Egghead won't let the Giant Vampire Squid continue sucking the life out of everything we thought we were all supposed to be working for.

But the red part's the real kicker.  More and more, it's not about who lives in the White House.  It's about who owns the US Senate and the Governors' mansions, and the state legislatures and on down the line.

So we're busy arguing over the Federal-level shit - where we get to have a president and a coupla dozen high-profile Senators and Representatives in order to maintain the illusion of "self-government" (and that's not bound to last much past the next few cycles if things don't change in a big fuckin' hurry) - while the American Aristocracy is even busier puppeteering the rubes into slashing and burning at the state- local- and municipal levels.

And one last item: I know it sounds like I'm railing against all the doom-and-gloom coming from "the right" by railing about doom-and-gloom from what you might see as "the left".  If that's how you hear it, then you've internalized all the Middle-Ground bullshit we hear every day from practically every media outlet everywhere, and you must get the fuck over it.  

The difference is that I'm arguing in favor of the firewalls that have to be in place as a way of preventing the toxic and corrosive effects of having too much power concentrated in too few hands, while the other side is pimping the wholesome goodness of outright authoritarian rule.

Get up on your hind legs and make some noise.

Little Guy Wins One

And he may be set to win another one - big

The wild west atmosphere in Russia since the USSR fell apart, has pointed up some of the worst examples of Unfettered Market Capitalism.  But 2 days ago, we learned that a little pluck and imagination - plus a pair of brass balls - just might get you a shot at some payback.

From Business Insider:

In 2008, Dmitry Agarkov received an unsolicited letter from Tinkoff Credit Systems (TCS) offering the 42-year-old Russian man a credit card with what he found to be unattractive rates.

While most people would have just thrown away the letter, Agarkov decided to do something different. He scanned the contract in the letter into his computer and altered it in his favor, including, for example, a 0% interest rate, no fees, and no credit limit. Moreover, every time the bank didn't stick to these rules, they'd be fined 3 million rubles — $91,000 — which of course would go to Agarkov. If they broke the contract, they'd have to pay Agarkov 6 million rubles ($182,000).

Agarkov's altered contract was, surprisingly, accepted and he received a credit card. "The Bank confirmed its agreement to the client's terms and sent him a credit card and a copy of the approved application form," Agarkov's lawyer Dmitry Mikhalevich told Kommersant this week.

I'll be kicking myself for a while for not thinking of this one.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

This Can't End Well

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone:

All of these stories collectively pointed to the same thing: These banks, which already possess enormous power just by virtue of their financial holdings – in the United States, the top six banks, many of them the same names you see on the Libor and ISDAfix panels, own assets equivalent to 60 percent of the nation's GDP – are beginning to realize the awesome possibilities for increased profit and political might that would come with colluding instead of competing. Moreover, it's increasingly clear that both the criminal justice system and the civil courts may be impotent to stop them, even when they do get caught working together to game the system.

We have a few options right now.  We still don't have to let our baser instincts rule over us - not the way these asshole banksters have done anyway.  But we'd better be watching very carefully for the flashpoint.  That special moment when too many people believe there's no chance to break 'em up, so they'll have to shoot 'em down.

I say it can't end well because even tho' there have been a few notable exceptions just in our own history, it's far more likely that the kind of power Taibbi's trying to warn us about is simply too seductive.

(ed note:  I carp a lot about "silver-spoon-legacy pukes" - Matt Taibbi is definitely not among them)

Know Your Mortgage Shit

WTF, Mr Holder?

Hey, rednecks.  You guys are always goin' on about how the death penalty is a good idea, and a useful tool for preventing crime - how 'bout we hang a few of these Bankster pricks and see what kinda hurry their shit gets straight.

60 Minutes via YouTube - part 1   part 2