The conflict of interest is simply off-the-proverbial charts here.   Tom Donilon is a deep DC swamp operator and has been for his entire career.  Donilon is connected to every tentacle of the Obama and Biden administrations.  Donilon is also the Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute.

We have written about the conflicts {Go Deep Here} and {Go Deep Here}, but this move by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is stunningly fraught with serious conflicts of interest.

Tom Donilon’s literal job description at Blackrock is to “leverage the firm’s expertise and generate proprietary research to provide insights on the global economy, markets, geopolitics and long-term asset allocation,” and the State Dept has just appointed him as Co-Chair of the U.S. foreign policy advisory board.

Specifically, the Biden administration has just put Blackrock Investment Institute Chairman Tom Donilon in charge of U.S-China policy.

How in the proverbial hell can this be permitted?  That’s way beyond a rhetorical question.   The Dept of State has selected a team of Wall Street control agents to guide global U.S. policy.

(STATE DEPT) – Today, Secretary Blinken announced his selections for the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board.

Since its establishment in 2011, the Board has provided independent advice on the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and diplomacy, consistent with each Secretary of State and administration’s evolving priorities for it.

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Within the same 30-day cycle Joe Biden asked Venezuela to produce and deliver more oil in order to help him politically.  The Venezuelan government, having been the subject of an attempted coup and sanctions driven by the DC interventionist mindset, refused to assist.  Joe Biden then refused to invite Venezuela to his Latin-America summit scheduled for this week.

Latin-America leaders are not stupid.  It doesn’t matter whether the self-interested bully comes from the east or the west, they are not blind to the parasitic self-interest contained within the blackmail of any larger nations on the geopolitical stage; especially as the cleaving of the west and east is taking place with increased ferocity.

Today Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez-Obrador announced he will not attend Joe Biden’s Latin-America summit.

AMLO joins the leaders of Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and the tiny Caribbean state of St. Vincent in refusing to attend the summit because Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua were blocked from attending by the Biden administration.

(Via Wall Street Journal) – […] After weeks of wrangling over the issue amid threats of country boycotts, the administration excluded the three autocracies due to U.S. concerns over human rights and lack of democratic institutions in those countries, the officials said. The regional summit, scheduled for June 6-10 in Los Angeles, is expected to focus on migration and economic issues.

“I’m not going because not all the countries of America are invited,” said Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador Monday at his daily press conference. The Mexican leader said he had a good relationship with Mr. Biden and that he planned to visit the White House in July.

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The last question from the assembled press pool in Tokyo, Japan, brought about the most serious foreign policy response from the installed occupant of the White House.  Joe Biden said he is willing to use military force against China if Beijing decides to take over Taiwan.

[Transcript] – Q    Very quickly: You didn’t want to get involved in the Ukraine conflict militarily for obvious reasons.  Are you willing to get involved militarily to defend Taiwan, if it comes to that?

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  Yes.

Q    You are?

PRESIDENT BIDEN:  That’s the commitment we made.  That’s the commitment we made.  We are not — Look, here’s the situation: We agree with the One China policy; we’ve signed on to it and all the attendant agreements made from there.  But the idea that — that it can be taken by force — just taken by force — is just not a — is just not appropriate.  It will dislocate the entire region and be another action similar to what happened in — in Ukraine.  And so, it’s a burden that is even stronger.

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We often talk about the disconnect between Wall Street (globalists) and Main Street (nationalists), and their influence in economic policy.  Today, Jason Furman, a former Chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, appears on CBS News to discuss his Harvard-Kennedy School impression of the U.S. economy.

There’s a particular point in the interview [Transcript Here] that encapsulates the moonbat perspective of the globalists.  Listen at 01:20 and you will hear this:

FURMAN:  “Look, we’ve seen a remarkable thing. Consumers, if you survey them, are very pessimistic and negative about the economy. When they vote with their wallets, we saw- we got the consumer spending data for April and it was way up. Consumer spending on just about everything has been booming. Over the next 6 to 12 months, I’m not super worried about a recession. After that is where I start to get worried because that’s where the Fed’s policy will start having more of an effect.”

Put another way: Our policies have made prices skyrocket (inflation). Consumers are forced to spend more money to sustain themselves (food, housing, fuel, energy); ergo consumer spending is booming. Brilliant, our plan to increase consumer spending by raising their prices is working.  That’s the way these people think. WATCH:

We force you to pay more, then turn around and claim economic victory because you are paying more…. “consumer spending is booming.”

By the way, he’s at the World Economic Forum where this perspective is actually cheered inside the echo-chamber.

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This is one of those interviews that will likely not gain much attention; however, if you listen carefully to how Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet describes the need for expanded operations throughout their facilities you get a good perspective on the scale of anticipated foreign intervention by the crew behind Joe Biden.

Joe Biden recently traveled to Alabama to thank Taiclet and his company for increasing production of Javelin missiles.  In this interview the weapons manufacturing CEO states the timeline to increase production is a few years and he anticipates the Ukraine conflict will be ongoing throughout.

Additionally, due to the Biden foreign policy James Taiclet happily anticipates conflicts beyond Ukraine, in Tiawan, Iran and North Korea.  The CBS stenographer Margaret Brennan doesn’t even pause as she asks questions about how fast more of these wonderful bombs and missiles can be made available. Not a moment of reflection amid the gleeful war drums. Quite remarkable.  WATCH:

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Robert Lighthizer was the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) under the Trump administration.  Lighthizer was exceptionally strong in developing and structuring the America First trade policy that included the effective use of tariffs to get fair trade outcomes.

In this video Ambassador Lighthizer discusses the current trade policy of the Biden administration with former National Economic Council Chair Larry Kudlow.  The discussion centers around U.S-China trade policy, the phase-1 trade deal that was interrupted by the pandemic, and the future of the existing trade tariffs against Beijing that Biden is reportedly going to remove.  WATCH:

As noted by Lighthizer, if Biden drops the Chinese tariffs, it will only make the trade imbalance worse and push the U.S. deeper into the cycle of lost jobs and economic contraction.  He’s correct.

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There comes a time when ideology runs headfirst into the monolith of unwavering reality.  Today, during a press briefing as a part of the IMF World Bank Meetings [TRANSCRIPT HERE], Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was forced to admit the sanctions against Russia have hurt the EU more than Vladimir Putin and the Russian economy.

Secretary Yellen was asked about the need for increased western government bans against Russian exports.

Yellen was faced with the discomfort of admitting the global market is still open to receiving Russian products, specifically oil and gas, and that banning the EU from receiving those products only drives the EU prices higher, which has already led to unsustainable inflation.

Key Segment:

…”Europe clearly needs to reduce its dependence on Russia with respect to energy. But we need to be careful when we think about a complete European ban on say oil imports. We want to harm Russia – that would clearly raise global oil prices would have a damaging impact on Europe and other parts of the world. And counterintuitively it could actually have very little negative impact on Russia because although Russia might export less, its price for its exports would go up.”

The EU is already experiencing massive energy price increases.  Yesterday, Germany announced manufacturing price increases of more than 30% following increased energy costs exceeding 80%.  The current western government sanctions against Russia are hitting the EU economy harder than they are hurting Russia as alternative customers (India, China) for Russian energy exports are still purchasing.

In essence, the EU has partly removed themselves as a customer, but the seller, Russia, is still selling; only now they are getting higher prices because the EU and U.S. are disrupting oil and energy production in an effort to chase their climate change goals.

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During his opening segment tonight, Fox News host Tucker Carlson gave a summary explanation of the horrors in Shanghai, China.  The city of 25 million residents has been locked down by the Chinese Communist Party as an outcome of their zero COVID policy. {Direct Rumble Link}

Desperate people are running out of food and have been locked in their homes from the outside by regional authorities.  The pets, including cats and dogs of residents who tested positive to the COVID-19 virus, have been confiscated and killed by the government.  The scenes and sounds from the area are very troubling as thousands of people scream into the night begging for help and mercy. WATCH:

https://rumble.com/embed/vy1dwf/?pub=4

A few more aspects to this outlined below.

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This is not some grand conspiracy, ‘out there‘ deep geopolitical possibility, or foreboding likelihood as an outcome of short-sighted western emotion.  No, this is just a predictable outcome from western created events that pushed specific countries to a natural conclusion based on their best interests.

You can debate the motives of the western leaders who structured the sanctions against Russia, and whether they knew the outcome would happen as a consequence of their effort, but the outcome was never really in doubt.  Personally, I believe this outcome is what the west intended. The people inside the World Economic Forum are not stupid – ideological, yes, but not stupid. They knew this would happen.

The finance ministers of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have decided to create their own financial mechanisms to continue trade between nations of similar disposition.  Once the internal issues inside the BRICS alliance are resolved, and once the mechanisms are created, then other nations will be able to decide to join or not.  The great global cleaving will commence.

(Reuters) – Russia, hit by Western sanctions, has called on the BRICS group of emerging economies to extend the use of national currencies and integrate payment systems, the finance ministry said on Saturday.

[…] On Friday, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told a ministerial meeting with BRICS, which consists of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, that the global economic situation had worsened substantially due to the sanctions, the ministry’s statement said.

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Comrade rebels, the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Deputy Managing Director says the sanctions against Russia are likely to undermine the US dollar’s global dominance as a trade currency.

As we have outlined, this is ultimately the counter strategic goal of Russia and Putin’s economic allies.  It’s a feature, not a flaw, in the process that Joe Biden has triggered.

(Inside Paper) – […] “The dollar would remain the major global currency even in that landscape, but fragmentation at a smaller level is certainly quite possible,” Gopinath said in an interview with the Financial Times.  She went on to say that some countries have already begun to renegotiate the currency in which they are paid for trade.

According to Gopinath, the drastic restrictions imposed by Western countries in response to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine may result in the formation of small currency blocs based on trade between individual groups of countries.  Furthermore, the use of currencies other than the dollar or the euro in global trade would result in a further diversification of central banks’ reserve assets. (read more)

This outcome, in combination with the realization the western alliance will also necessarily lose leverage for their climate change goals, is ultimately what triggered the G7 energy ministers to demand that Russia continue using euros and dollars.

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