Bannon’s War Room- Steve Cortes- “A Concerted Weaponization of Money” March 1, 2022
The Economy: Guest Steve Cortes, March 1, 2022
Bannon’s War Room: March 01, 2022 "Steve Cortes- "A Weaponization of Money"
Steve Bannon:
Cortes talk to us about the global capital markets and what's happening here? They've weaponized the dollar, now. We're in uncharted territory. The, you know, finally Daily Mail picked up a little bit and hammered about. They haven't picked it up yet on hammering the oligarchs about the mass of energy purchases. I think the Daily Mail said, was a billion dollars a day in between Europe, the United States, Steve Cortez. Where do we stand?
Steve Cortes:
Steve, this is it is truly unprecedented. You're exactly right. We have never before engaged in this kind of, as a world in this kind of concerted weaponization of money. And what I mean by that is cutting Russia off essentially by de-banking Russia with very important exceptions for energy. I'll get to that in a moment, but essentially de-banking the entire country of Russia. What has that done? While it is forced the ruble, their currency, into an absolute free fall. To get a visual on this. I think it's smart for us to take a look at a chart.
So, I have a chart, a dollar versus ruble to show just how momentous this is. At the very far right of the chart there you see an absolute explosion higher in the dollar versus the ruble. You can see for most of that chart, on the left part of the chart, currency markets generally are pretty stable, dollar versus ruble, have traded in a pretty predictable range for a very long time. That chart goes back a year and a half. The dollar bought 69 rubles as recently as just a few months ago. It has now exploded to over 100. It touched 113 yesterday. It's over 100 rubles to the dollar right now.
Now, what does this mean tangibly? This goes way beyond foreign exchange markets. What it means tangibly, is that Russian citizens are right now seeing their purchasing power collapse. The rubles that they hold. The rubles that they have worked hard to earn people who have nothing to do with this war, people who may not support Putin at all, they are seeing their buying power, they're seeing their quality of life collapse in front of them in a violent way and this was instituted and caused by anybody volitional decision of the United States and European powers primarily to de-bank Russia, something we did not even do to Nazi Germany as atrocious as that regime was. So, this is uncharted territory. This is a country of 145 million proud people who are suddenly being cornered, who are being put up against the wall. We don't know what the, quite honestly, we don't know what the consequences will be. But when you're talking about a nation with the largest nuclear arsenal on earth taking this kind of unprecedented step, in my view is incredibly dangerous. I would argue Steve that because of this weaponization of money and because we have basically excluded the oligarchs.
Okay, Putin and his oligarchs, guess what? They're still getting paid and you're right to the tune of a billion dollars a day in total. They're still getting paid for the energy that they shipped to the United States and to Europe. US last year had an 11-year high in Russian energy imports because of what Biden did to American energy. They're still getting paid while the Russian people are being put up against the wall. In my view, this creates a scenario where the chance, I'm not saying it's a high chance, but the chance of a nuclear episode is probably higher than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. We are playing with fire right here. We have dropped a financial dirty bomb on the Russian people, and we don't know what the consequences might be.
Steve Bannon:
If it's not nuclear, could be look, they’re cyber superpower. It could be cyber. They could be in the grid or anywhere. My point is that what the party of Davos is doing is trying to have a regime change and that's why they’re going after the Russian people. This is clearly about regime change the talking about it all day long. Fiona Hill. Just like the young woman jumping Boris Johnson, the Ukrainian journalist is saying, we’re already in the middle of the third world war.
And look to be blunt, I strongly recommend, these are the tools and policies I recommended first off just to go off the Chinese Communist Party originally and also Hong Kong after Hong Kong, which is every bad is except for the bombs dropping, right? What they did to the people in Hong Kong was far worse than they did to the people in Ukraine until they started hitting them with missiles. But nobody, the world didn't say a peep about that. And I actually agree the 1619 project there. I recommended de-banking the oligarchs in the CCP, the criminals, I recommended weaponizing the dollar against an existential threat which is the Chinese Communist Party.
Here you're doing it in something that we still don't have, they have not made the case while it's in the vital national security interest of the United States for us to be involved in any kind of, by the way, you have three types of war, you have cyber and information war, economic war and you have kinetic. We're full on in information, cyber, and in economic warfare right now. This is, we’re in economic warfare. I recommended against the Chinese Communist party because there's a font of all evil, and they're the ones that are going to prop up Russia right now and have the ability of Russia. Steve any other comments, and we’ll go to Lee Smith here. Any other comments, analysis of particularly where is money going today and how’s that going to impact people?
Steve Cortes:
So, money right now, the stock markets are actually fairly stable but what we're seeing today, the biggest move is money into US Treasuries into the bond market, meaning that as price goes up the interest rates, the yield goes down on bonds. You know, we've been talking a lot about interest rates on this show. 10-year treasury yield, which is the benchmark for the world very recently was above 2% (percent). It's all the way down to 1.76% (percent) today the lowest level since January, why? Because Capital Markets are increasingly convinced that the Federal Reserve is going to use the Ukraine crisis as an excuse as cover to not engage in normalization of policy, to not hike interest rates.
What does that mean for the audience out there? It means the inflation scenario, the inflation pain that you have already endured that had nothing to do with Ukraine, all the doing of Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, that inflation pain in all likelihood is going to get acutely worse in the coming weeks and months because the FED thinks they have found the excuse to screw over the deplorables and working class people. And once again try to reward the asset class holders, the hedge fund types, the very people, by the way, that are clamoring for war for American involvement in war, over in Ukraine.
Steve Bannon:
Also, the gas lighting on what's causing the problems in the economy is ratcheting up, you got CBS ABC and another article out there I think was in the Hill. “It's all because of Putin, it's all because of this war. That's why inflation's out of control. That's why you have shortages and that's why you have supply chain issue.” Steve Cortes.
Steve Cortes
Yes. Listen, the corporate media clearly thinks that they found a beard here. They think they found a narrative they can sell on the American people. Undoubtedly, Joe Biden, will try the same tonight in his speech, and I'm glad you're not calling it a state of the union, because he's not a legitimate president. But undoubtedly, he will try to use that excuse for it but let's talk about actual data, let’s talk actual numbers. When Joe Biden, illegitimately prevailed in November of 2020 this current Futures price on crude oil was at forty-one dollars a barrel.
The Trump energy boom had made America energy dominant not just independent, but energy dominant and we had low priced affordable consistent dependable American Energy. Joe Biden reversed all of that as one of his first actions in office, declaring war on pipelines, on fracking, and on drilling. The result was before Ukraine heated up before things got hot in the Black Sea region crude went from 41dollars a barrel to $90 a barrel.
So, it had well more than doubled before any of this aggression in Eurasian. So, it is a canard. It's a ridiculous excuse. Our audience will not fall for it because Steve, your audience is too well educated on these issues, but they need to also become force multipliers, because believe me, ABC and Washington Post and CNN are all going to try to say these prices you're dealing with are because of Biden. They're not there because of Biden.
DONE
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