Newsletter: The Brzezinski perspective
This is a repost of Sunday’s Blind Spot Newsletter.
In the Blind Spot today (Trident, WAGMI, famine)
Finance, markets, business etc: Zoltan Pozsar worries Russian sanctions might spell the end of dollar hegemony. Sanctions have shown that currency reserves accumulated by central banks can be taken away. (IMHO this is the biggest risk emerging from the Russian sanction issue — though many informed money-market experts disagree. If the integrity of the dollar […]
WW3 Watch: Buy the MIC stonk rally?
Covid gave us the Stay at Home stonk trade. This peaked at the height of the Omicron panic in November (when yours truly was making predictions about a February gas squeeze), it then powerfully collapsed in January of 2021. Almost like, err, capital knew it would have to go on the hunt for a new […]
WW3 Watch: Blind Spot OSINT (03/03/2022)
From the daily chats curated by The Blind Spot community (in the last 24 hours-ish). The conduct of the war: Apparently a Russian OSINT map of Ukrainian positions, showing how heavily concentrated Ukrainian forces are on the Donna’s line. France seizes Sechin yacht: (French customs have seized a yacht belonging to Rosneft boss Igor Sechin […]
WW3 Watch: The petroleum factor
Inquiring minds want to know: what’s up with the collapsing price of Urals crude and can it ever find its way to market? Here’s a short summary from someone in the know (with my emphasis): Russia supplies crude/products via pipelines direct to customers and via the sea. Under sanctions, movements likely go the way of […]
WW3 Watch: Blind Spot OSINT (02/03/2022)
From the daily chats curated by The Blind Spot community (in the last 24 hours-ish). The conduct of the war: Russian Army – underpromising and overdelivering? The PG Tips International Brigade. Prediction markets and pundits, Ukraine edition. Counter-strike on Russia propaganda talk, a global offensive. Russian satellites in space out of control, maybe. Players got […]
In the Blind Spot today (Hong Kong lockdown, Apple Pay, Knights)
Finance, markets etc: Italian energy bills are getting pricey. Google, Meta face penalties in Russia as deadline passes to open local offices. Rana Foroohar warns Beijing is quite serious about the new de-dollarised world order that it is pursuing. Helen Thomas on Germany’s Zeitenwende (turning point). China is buying more Iranian oil now than it […]
WW3 Watch: ESG fallout
Haven’t verified this, but someone told me this is the single biggest down move in the EUA futures market ever: What does it mean? Probably that our priorities are shifting. Rapidly. National security-backed fiat money will be taking over from moral money in the near future (and hopefully we won’t be looking to 16-year old […]
YDANGH* Watch: Russian exploding ETF AUM edition
*YDANGH = Your Dengi Are No Good Here. (In case you were wondering) Hat tip to Blonde Money’s Helen Thomas for flagging the below from Bloomberg: That ETFs bearing Russian equity or bond exposure are having an issue is no secret. Even FTAV is on it 😜. The key bit to highlight, however, is the “create-to-lend” […]
WW3 Watch: Blind Spot OSINT (01/03/2022)
The Blind Spot Telegram community has turned from development talk to war talk. It’s a valuable little group for keeping an eye on events. But info is flowing way too rapidly. Since bandwidth is becoming a problem for me, which impacts my capacity to do HUMINT, I’ve made a call for volunteers to help me […]