For Russia Peace is a Deadly Precipice

Source: Breakingviews: Russia’s economy would struggle to cope with peace

The wartime economy poses an addiction akin to heroin, or even alcohol, withdrawal from which is attended by pain so severe that the addict relapses: resorts to feeding the addiction rather than leaving it. In the excellent analysis linked above, Russia–Putin–finds itself at a painful crossroads. Fighting further erodes the civilian economy further, but opting for peace puts enormous pressure on the government to help rebuild the civilian economy quickly enough to keep social unrest at bay. Key to such a rebuilding program is accountability on behalf of corporations and government. Such accountability is simply nonexistent in Russia, and it behooves Putin and his cronies to fight for “victory” in Ukraine rather than risk exposing Russians to the rampant culture of corruption in Russia. (Alternately and charitably, risk Russians lose in the world economy because they have become dependent on the wartime economic cocaine.)

Dreams of empire comprise the most powerful and most perverse intellectual opiate. Democracies that fail to exclude empire addicts from their leadership will sadly fail.

No Trust, No Currency

Currency is the medium of accountability that is accepted by a community in order to facilitate transactions. If the crypto “currency” world is to survive, it behooves the remaining exchanges to ensure that they are not plagued the lack of accountability that has predictably brought FTX to its unceremonious demise. The demise of cryptocurrency is almost as predictable as the 2008 financial meltdown of the US. Both are schemes to generate apparent economic activity through huge numbers of transactions over nothing, and in both instances, the apparent growth was based entirely on speculation. It is unknown whether the criminal masterminds of the crypto pyramid scheme will get away as the masterminds of the subprime bubble of the 2008 did. It will be a real shame if they do.

The new CEO of the collapsed cryptocurrency trading firm FTX, who oversaw Enron’s bankruptcy, said he has never seen such a “complete failure” of corporate control. John Ray III, in a filing with the U.S.

Source: Exec who cleaned up Enron calls FTX mess “unprecedented”