FED is not playing fair – can it go bankrupt?

The most important central bank in the world, the US Federal Reserve (FED), recently presented its financial report, which shows that it had a substantial loss of USD 114 billion last year. Why such a large loss for the FED? To explain this, one should first distinguish between two aspects of the central bank’s activities.

Firstly, the FED holds large quantities of US bonds, which in turn yield interest. Of course, in this case, this interest is income for the central bank. It is worth noting that since the FED began buying bonds on a large scale in 2008, interest rates have also risen considerably
Secondly, the Federal Reserve allows commercial banks and various types of funds to hold money in an account at the central bank. At the same time, it pays a certain amount of interest on these funds, which depends primarily on the level of interest rates.

Well, between 2022 and 2023, there was a series of interest rate hikes in the US. Eventually, a level of 5.5% was reached. This meant that the FED had to pay 5.5% interest to banks and funds (and there were a lot of them) that wanted to keep their money in a central bank account.

So on the one hand, the Fed still held a similar amount of bonds in 2023, for which it received interest rates close to the 2022 level (i.e. much lower than this 5.5%). On the other hand, it had to pay much higher interest rates to commercial banks or money market funds. This resulted in the loss.

You may ask: What happens when a central bank suffers a loss? From a purely financial point of view: Nothing significant happens. It is assumed that this loss will be covered by future profits. In the context of a central bank, it is difficult to talk about bankruptcy, especially as central banks can create gigantic amounts of money under the current system.
Gefira is critical of the monetary policy of central banks, but for completely different reasons. No one from the central bankers is commenting on the following questions:

1) Is it fair that the central bank only rescued and wants to rescue selected financial institutions simply because they operate on a large scale?

2) Is it normal for these institutions (especially banks) to hold their reserves at the central bank and safely receive a few percent interest in return?

3) What’s more – is it fair that unprofitable companies are kept alive by the central bank printing money, which in turn makes it more difficult for new companies to enter the market?

4) Is it good for the economy that unprofitable zombie companies are kept afloat in this way, which otherwise – in the real free economy – should have gone bankrupt long ago?

Pathetically piteous sight

A few days ago, Yulia Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny’s widow, gave a speech in the EU parliament. This is what she had to say:

Allegedly voters of the EU deputies ask them how they could help Yulia in her fight and the deputies relay those questions to her. Before answering the question how, Yulia said that Putin (she repeated this name more times than one can stomach, just as Victoria Nuland did in one of her latest speeches), who had begun the murderous war, had gone nowhere, and that everything had already been used – weapons, money, sanctions – with nothing working. Stop. It is hard to believe that Yulia Navalnaya wrote the speech on her own or, granting she wrote it on her own, that no one had a look at it before her address. Did they not notice the contradiction between “Putin had gone nowhere” and “weapons, money, sanctions (i.e. the support for Ukraine) did not work”? Obviously, she was nervous, but still she read the short text from paper. Never mind, let us scan the rest of her speech.

She said that that the worst had happened (again, so Putin has achieved something after all) in that people were getting used to the war (read: they became indifferent) and then, she said sort of disconnectedly, Putin killed her husband. Worse, she said. On Putin’s orders her husband had been “tortured for three years and had been starved in a tiny stone cell, cut off from the outside world and denied visits, phone calls and then even letters. And then they killed him,” she repeated, as if not sure that the EU deputies had understood her the first time she said Putin had killed her husband. Then, said Yulia Navalnaya “they abused his body(?) and abused his mother(?),” which only goes to show that “Putin is capable of anything and that you cannot negotiate with him,” at which point something weird happened (have a listen from this moment for a few seconds). Barely had the audience begun to clap as she said “thank you” – just as if she had it written in her speech text: applauds here, make a stop.

Yulia Navalnaya continued that many people believed that Putin could not be defeated at all, and still they kept asking her how they could help. Before answering that question Yulia Navalnaya saw it fit to describe the character of her husband in more detail. She said he was an inventor(?) with new ideas for everything(?), especially in politics. Then she reminded the deputies that soon they would be campaigning to get reelected. Imagine, she said, that all this political campaigning was impossible because no TV station would allow an interview with you, no money in the world would make commercials possible while the voters and the candidates would be arrested once they turned up at a rally. If you could picture that to yourselves, said Yulia Navalnaya, that was precisely Putin’s Russia. Applause.

An aside here. It was also a few days ago that we could witness how British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak publicly went ballistic and freaked out because in ONE British constituency ONE man (George Galloway) outside the establishment was elected by the local people. Rishi Sunak addressing journalists in front of Downing Street 10 repeatedly described the event as an ugly victory of the far right extremists even though George Galloway’s political proclivities are leftist. Most likely Yulia Navalnaya does not know about it at all. Yet, she should know, living for so many years in the West, that people get deplatformed and demonetized in the social media whenever they voice opinions diverging from the political correctness of the West. She should also be familiar with the fate of Julian Assange, Edward Snowden or most recently Gonzalo Lira. Gonzalo Lira was tortured, isolated and killed by Ukrainians because he dared to express opinions diverging from those propagated by the Kiev regime. These three men are not Putin’s victims so they simply don’t matter.

Despite all the hindrances, Yulia Navalnaya continued, Alexei Navalny managed to become the most famous politician in Russia (really?), inspiring millions(you don’t say!) of people with his ideas. How did he do it, she asked herself. Well, if you are not allowed to appear on TV, let’s post YouTube videos for all to watch (surely, Alexei Navalny would not have been deplatformed like thousands of others!); even in Putin’s gulag, she said, Alexei was able to “pass ideas of projects that would make the Kremlin panic” (Wow!). But hang on for a moment! Didn’t she say a minute or so earlier that her husband was “cut off from the outside world and denied visits, phone calls and then even letters”? The audiences would not have noticed that, for sure. So the answer to the question of how to defeat Putin, she continued, is simple: you have to become an innovator, you have to stop being boring(!). Ovation. You cannot harm Putin, she said, with another set of resolutions or sanctions (obviously). “You cannot defeat him by thinking he is a man of principle who has morals and truths.” That’s dehumanization of the opponent or adversary in its purest form, an attitude which the Western ideologues are otherwise so vociferously against. This time the principle did not apply.

“You are not dealing with a politician,” Yulia Navalnaya continued, “but with a bloody monster. Putin is a leader of an organized criminal gang.” Here she was interrupted by an applause after which she went on saying, “it’s good to repeat it again: Putin is a leader of an organized criminal gang.” To which she received more applause. This criminal group includes “poisoners and assassins”. The inference? The West needs to fight organized crime or mafia headed by Putin (Putin’s mafia in Europe itself? Gee…). How? By fighting the mafia’s associates who happen to be operating in the West(!), who help Putin and his friends to hide money (Where? Why can’t he hide his money in Russia?). In this fight the West has, according to Yulia Navalnaya, “tens of millions(?) of Russians on the West’s side, Russians who are against war, against Putin, against the evil he brings.” The West “must not persecute them [Russians], but on the contrary” the West “must work with them [Russians]”. Putin must answer for all that he had done to Russia and Alexei (in the Hague, I guess). “The evil will fall, and the beautiful future will come.” These were the final words of Yulia Navalnaya’s speech delivered in the EU Parliament.

Compare this address with the latest rant by Victoria Nuland. Putin, Putin, Putin said again and again with vilification, insults, vitriolic hate, and you name it. Dehumanization, bad-mouthing and immolation. Poor woman. She most likely believes in everything she said. And poor as she is, she was used in this séance of hatred by those who are beginning to taste a crushing defeat at the hands of the “mafia boss”. A pathetically piteous sight.

The French nation desires to abort itself out of existence, so be it!

Liberty, Equality, Fraternity and Abortion. These words are going to define France as its national assembly enshrined the right to abortion in the country’s constitution on March 4, 2024. The constitutional amendment was passed by the majority of 780 votes against 72. The announcement of the amendment whipped crowds of people, mostly women, gathered among other places around the Eiffel Tower into frenzy. Protesters were few and far between. Even the so called far right with Marine Le Pen were in favour of the constitutional amendment. The media around the globe called it a historic event. It is a historic event, indeed. The French nation has been aborting itself out of existence since 1974, when abortion was made legal, and now the same nation is besides itself with joy that the right has been made even stronger, as it is anchored in the country’s basic law. With the fertility rate of 1.83 (as of 2020), which includes the millions of the “new French”, the autochthonous French nation is continuing the commission of its own suicide with joy and glee and delight.

Why did this amendment need to be anchored in the constitution in a country where (i) the overwhelming majority of people are in favour of abortion, where (ii) abortion has been legal for half a century, where (iii) contraception is commonly available, and where (iv) sexual education is part and parcel of the school curriculum? Proponents of the amendment say they needed to anchor the right to abortion in the constitution to make it harder for any future government to repeal it. Here they point to the 2022 US Supreme Court ruling against Roe vs. Wade. Well, ok, but that’s what democracy is all about: if it happens so in the future that the majority decides to ban abortion, then why not?

Why do women across France are overjoyed, elated and euphoric because of a legal act like this one? Why do they claim to be oppressed by pregnancy? Why can’t they resort to contraception if they want to avoid pregnancy? Why do they believe that this right grants them control over their bodies when they ought to know that the baby has a separate DNA, which means that the pregnant woman carries someone else’s body and by terminating pregnancy kills a human being? Why can’t these women – who are surely all in favour of nature and anything natural – see that terminating pregnancies is unnatural? Why can’t they see – quite apart from moral or religious questions – that what they celebrate so very much is simply distasteful? Why of all the French women even Marine Le Pen, who opposes mass immigration of Third World people into France, can’t see that voting for the right to abort future Frenchmen and Frenchwomen she automatically makes immigration economically and socially necessary???

Abortion frenzy

Ukraine is an inalienable part of Russia’s strategic zone, said Dimitry Medvedev

On March 5, Dimitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation and former President of Russia, gave a speech at the World Youth Festival held in Sochi. In a leisurely manner Dimitry Medvedev laid out the outline of Russia’s policy and Moscow’s stance on the current political events. He said among others:

We do not need foreign territory, but we will never cede what is ours. It was 210 years ago that Russian troops captured Paris. On doing so Russia established a government in France that was Russia-friendly and friendly towards Russia’s allies. We have never, either before or afterwards, sent our armies so far westwards. Why did we need to do it at that time? We needed to do it because we needed to remove the prime threat to our existence.

Geopolitics assume the following thesis: each sovereign state has two kinds of borders and these are geographic borders and strategic borders. The former overlap with the territory actually occupied by a state, the latter correspond to the international political clout of the state: the more powerful a state is, the larger the territory enclosed within its strategic borders. The strategic borders overlap with the zone of political, cultural and economic leverage of the state. Though the strategic interests are not tantamount to national interest, they are closely related. That’s a historical fact, commencing from the Roman Empire. The empire’s strategic borders covered a territory larger than the empire’s geographic borders. Weak states were included in the empire’s zone of influence; weak states oftentimes willingly assumed the role of vassals in return for the political protection granted to them by the suzerain, by the empire. In our times vassal states are politely referred to as friendly states. The moment an empire begins to lose its international political clout, its strategic borders shrink. That is what happened to the Portugal, Spanish and French global empires. Surely, in the case of Russia its strategic borders extend far beyond its geographical borders.

As for the so-called Ukraine or to be precise Little Russia, our antagonists ought to remember once and for all: the territory on either bank of the Dnieper are an inalienable part of Russia’s historical strategic zone, which is why any and all attempts to snatch those territories from us are doomed to failure. Russia’s strategic geopolitical zone stems from the times of medieval Rus’. This zone is characterized by the common language, religion and culture. These territories are Russia’s holy space. Our enemies keep repeating that Russia’s goal is allegedly to conquer Ukraine, but nazi-Ukraine has nothing to offer to Russia: we have all the resources and in much larger quantities. The only wealth that Ukraine has and that we will never share with anybody is Ukraine’s people, who are in point of fact our relatives. Our enemies have managed to brainwash Ukrainians into zombies. We need to return Ukrainians to our common fold. The greatest enemy of Ukrainians is their current destructive state. Under the current Kiev regime, the best Ukrainians can hope for is to become a footstool of the West, a dispensable material. Once Ukraine’s leader coined a phrase: Ukraine is not Russia [The title of President Leonid Kuchma’s book.]. Now this phrase ought to be obliterated once and for all: Ukraine IS with no doubt Russia!

The United States operates in the remotest corners of the globe, but is oh so sensitive when it comes to its sphere of influence. Washington regards Mexico and Canada as its backyard. Recall: a 1917 proposal from Berlin to turn Mexico into Germany’s ally immediately compelled Washington to enter the First World War against Germany. What would the United States do now if there was a world power aiming at encircling the United States with military bases, trying to incite and exploit American internal conflicts and demanding decolonization along with the independence for California and Texas? What would happen then? We know what would happen: the Caribbean Crisis 2.0. The current circumstances are far worse. In 1962, the Soviet Union and the United States were psyching other up. Now the United States is for all practical purposes at war with the Russian Federation. The current neo-nazi Ukraine is the West’s battering ram against Russia. The collective West by means of Ukraine seeks to materialize the West’s centuries-old dream of reducing Russia to the size of the medieval Principality of Moscow.

We will without a doubt complete the special military operation and crown it with its logical success: we will clinch a victory, and we will compel the Nazis to surrender (the audience rose, applauding and chanting “Russia! Russia!”).

After the speech Dimitry Medvedev took a number of questions from the audience. Answering them, he said among others:

– There is no return to the Soviet Union: you cannot enter twice the same river. Still, both the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union were made up of Great Russia, Little Russia (Northern Ukraine) and New Russia (Southern Ukraine), and these three ought to be reunited, ought to return home, making up one, indivisible territory.

– Russia is indifferent to who is going to be the next American president: US policy vis-a-vis Russia is not going to change.

– Negotiations with Ukraine are possible on condition that Ukraine has new leaders replacing the current comedian actor and his company, and on condition that Ukrainian authorities recognize the current political and military reality.

– War in Ukraine has forged the inhabitants of the Russian Federation into one nation.

Ukrainians, please continue dying so that Americans can have good paying jobs

If you wanted to have an audio and visual illustration of the idiom a pack of lies, watch and listen to Undersecretary of state for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland that took place on February 22, 2024 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Taking her words for truth, you get the idea that Ukraine is winning the war, harming Russia enormously while improving its economy. You get the impression that the whole world supports Ukraine and very few irrelevant states are on Russia’s side. You also get the impression that (crushing, as she put it) sanctions imposed on Russia are bringing Moscow to its knees and Russia’s failure is a matter of time. You also learn that the many Ukrainian refugees are impatient to return the their country, which with the aid of the West will soon reform and rebuild. My goodness!

Do you still remember Madeleine Albright? Victoria Nuland resembles her physically and mentally. The same ugly face, the same stout body and the same thirst for blood.

Listening to Nuland’s speech and the following interview with Victoria Nuland, you could also notice her visceral hated of Vladimir Putin. She mentioned his surname almost every other sentence. The more she mentioned the president of Russia’s surname, the more you could see how helpless she felt in her anger. Putin, Putin, Putin, all the time Putin! Victoria Nuland is possessed – obsessed – fixated on Vladimir Putin. Putin has invaded her mind and is there to stay. She will spew out Putin, Putin, Putin even on her death bed. And no wonder. You see, Victoria Nuland thought Ukraine was hers for grabs and now she has found out that all her efforts has come to naught. Poor Victoria… Putin, Putin, Putin – all the time through the speech and the following interview. Putin, Putin, Putin! Victoria Nuland most likely has a doll representing Putin and she regularly pricks it with pins. I just dread to think what vocabulary she uses thinking about her nemesis – Putin – when not standing on ceremony.

Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, so was Victoria Nuland. She said, Most of the aid for Ukraine ended up in the United States, creating good paying jobs. Ukrainians, did you hear? Shed your blood, lose your hands and legs, die in the battlefield so that the Americans can have good paying jobs (and the American oligarchs can enrich themselves)!

Two deaths so alike and yet so different

It was a few days ago that Alexei Navalny died in a Russian prison. What a gift for the Western world, what a remarkable coincidence! With the fall of Avdiivka and the approaching presidential election in Russia, with the farmer protests that have shaken every other EU country, with the difficulties that the American president has getting yet another approval of by Congress for his financial aid for Ukraine, Alexei Navalny’s death is really a godsend. Of course all the media and commentators have shown themselves to be soothsayers: they all know for certain that Navalny was murdered. By Putin’s henchmen, no need to add. They all know it, the soothsayers that they are, no evidence is required. The consumers of the media, properly preconditioned for years, can only nod their heads in agreement.

In 2000, also in a prison, died Slobodan Milošević, Yugoslavia’s and then Serbia’s president. Nobody ever came up with the idea that he might have been murdered. God forbid! Slobodan Milošević was incarcerated in a democratic European Union, which honours human rights and is averse to deceit, violence, illegal methods of interrogation, injustice and the rest of it. Slobodan Milošević was justly brought to court because – unlike Navalny – he was the bad guy, who was responsible fully or partly as the case may be for no smaller a crime than genocide of Kosovars and Croats. Though Alexei Navalny according to his own words felt intense hatred towards non-Russians in Russia, which was familiar to anyone who only cared to listen to or read his statements, though because of that Alexei Navalny would have been termed as a white supremacist in the West, miraculously his controllers turned a blind eye to his political beliefs.

But then, do we wonder? Everything and anything is used – abused – misused – (choose the appropriate word) – to suit the managers of the world. Serbs needed to be bombed by NATO because they were reported to have murdered a number of Kosovars and Croats; Ukrainians, officially followers of the Stepan Bandera racist and chauvinist ideology need to be unconditionally supported by the collective West, which otherwise is oh so sensitive when other comes to nationalisms, racism, fascism and similar ideolo gies.

Alexei Navalny was a hugely inflated front man if ever there was one. Look up the English Wikipedia article about him and compare with that devoted to Vladimir Putin. Alexei Navalny, a man whose political popularity in Russia never exceeded 5% (five) enjoys a text of 78 PDF A4 pages, whereas Vladimir Putin, a recognized leader with huge popularity – 107. John Kennedy – one of the better known modern-age American presidents – has a mere 55 pages. Even John Paul II, the most popular and widely recognizable pope, is no match for Navalny: the Wiki article about him is 71 pages long.

Do you remember how Slobodan Milošević landed up in jail and how was Alexei Navalny imprisoned? The difference is striking and telling. Let us recall. Under the pressure from the collective West Slobodan Milošević, once he ceased performing the function of president of Serbia, was arrested by his own authorities, his own state and handed over to the Hague to stand trial there. How did Alexei Navalny end up in prison? Let us recall it. He happened to be in Russia where he was oh so unjustly prosecuted and persecuted, and one day he sank into a coma due to a poison administered to him by the notorious KGB (Russian equivalent of the American CIA), or at least that’s the official Western story. Navalny’s wife demanded that her husband be released to Germany for medical treatment and Vladimir Putin, the mad dictator that he is, let him leave Russia, knowing full well that his agents had bungled the operation of poisoning Navalny (obviously he was on the way of surviving) and knowing full well that German doctors – chemists – pharmacists – would find the traces of the substance that was to kill Navalny. Nevertheless the dissenter was released and cured of his poisoning in Germany, and of course German specialists found the traces of poison, didn’t they? Once cured, safe and sound, Alexei Navalny decided to return to Russia to be prosecuted and persecuted by the undemocratic regime. Why for heaven’s sake? To make things even more Hollywood-like, before returning to Russia, Navalny managed to produce a documentary which exposed Putin s a man who stashed away millions in order to build a palace for himself in the Crimea. Only after the film was made public and shown on YouTube did Alexei Navalny go back to Russia. What could he expect there? The really interesting question is: did Alexei Navalny really want to go back or was he made to? Did not the Russian authorities by letting him out of Russia show that they wanted to get rid of him rather than have him imprisoned? What was Navalny promised in return for agreeing to do time in prison? Who promised it?

You see, it was not so, as in Slobodan Milošević’s case, that the Russian government pressurized Germany to release Navalny. No. Navalny appears to have been a pawn in the hands of powerful players who traded his life for political benefits. He seemed to be useless in the West, but very useful inside Russia. A prisoner of conscience! Living evidence of the dictatorial and inhumane Kremlin authorities! That’s the message. That Navalny was sentenced for corruption and other acts of violating the law is not on the radar of the Western media. He was important as a card to be played and sacrificed if need be.

Slobodan Milošević was Serbia’s and formerly Yugoslavia’s patriot; Alexei Navalny was a traitor to Russia. Slobodan Milošević’s death was of course – how otherwise? – of natural causes; Alexei Navalny’s demise was of course – how otherwise? – murder in cold blood. End of story.

Enter Oleksandr Syrskyi or the latest stage of the Russo-Russian civil war

On February 2024, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, replaced Valerii Zaluzhnyi with Oleksandr Syrskyi as commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian army. Who is General Oleksandr Syrskyi?

He is an ethnic Russian, born in central Russia to Russian parents with Russian relatives the length and breadth of his family. He graduated from a Soviet military academy and swore allegiance as a Soviet military officer to the Soviet Union. It so happened that during the time of the dissolution of the Soviet Union Oleksandr Syrskyi served in Ukraine and was faced with a choice: either to relocate to Russia and serve in the Russian army or to stay in Ukraine and serve in the Ukrainian army. As it were, during the Yeltsin era, when Russia was afflicted with all kinds of crises – economic, social, political – its army was also in deep trouble. That explains why though Oleksandr Syrskyi with the aid of his father – a retired Soviet colonel – sought employment in the Russian armed forces he could only be offered a position that was much below his military rank. That made him reconsider. Since the Ukrainian army offered him a higher rank, he made his choice. In furtherance of his career.

Still, his parents and his brother has remained and continue to live in Russia, loyal to their country and President Putin, taking part in the annual Immortal Regiment marches.

Oleksandr Syrskyi was born in the Vladimir Oblast (region, province), some 200 km east of Moscow, in 1965. His paternal grandfather fought throughout the entire Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, and was awarded the medal For Bravery and the Order of the Red Star; his maternal grandfather went to the front as a volunteer and died in an ambush. Syrskyi has a Ukrainian wife and two sons of which one has been living in Australia for years and remains highly critical of his father’s disloyalty towards Russia.

The new commander-in-chief is said not to enjoy popularity in the army. Contrarily, he is nicknamed either a “Russian officer”, or “Soviet general”, or “Bakhmut butcher”. He earned the last of the nicknames after his inefficient command during the fight for Bakhmut, where it is said he did not particularly economize on the soldiers’ blood. Needless to say, Oleksandr Syrskyi needed to learn the Ukrainian language (just as President Zelenskyy) and speaks it with a Russian accent.

No wonder that President Putin describes the ongoing hostilities as civil war. Russians kill Russians just as Spaniards killed Spaniards during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39, or Americans killed Americans during the War of Secession of 1861-65, or the English killed the English during the times of the English Civil War of 1642-51.

Towards the end of the interview that Tucker Carlson conducted with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin told a short story related to him from the front line in Ukraine. The story was about a Ukrainian unit that was encircled by the Russian troops with no chance of either winning the skirmish or making their way through the encirclement. The Russians proposed surrender to which the encircled Ukrainians replied – in Russian: Russians! never surrender. There you have it.