Money and Ammunition In Ukraine. By DNYUZ.
First the money:
The pockets of French President Emmanuel Macron — and others who attended Tuesday’s Bilateral Franco-Ukrainian Forum for Resilience and Reconstruction of Ukraine — were emptied of some $1 billion. The immediate pledge to fix Ukraine’s obliterated power grid and other public utilities doesn’t come close to the $1 trillion Ukraine needs to fully rebuild the country, but there’s an even bigger problem at hand.
The war-ravaged country needs an insurance agent willing to secure their investment against Putin, who could choose to destroy the infrastructure they’ve vouchsafed to recreate by April 2023. The Russian president’s belligerence isn’t covered under the umbrella policies offered by the likes of insurance giants Lloyds of London or the GEICO Gecko. …
“There’s another elephant in the room,” warns one intelligence specialist. “How do the politicians dispense what will undoubtedly amount to more than $1 trillion in a country that’s historically corrupt?” …
Ammunition:
Western military intelligence officials speaking on background say the only reconstruction math that matters is the number of munitions.
“The Russians are firing about 20,000 artillery shells a day, most of them more than 40 years old,” an analyst explains. “Ukraine fires back with between 4,000 to 7,000 rounds a day. Russia can’t keep that up, so even if they cut back to 10,000 a day — not including rockets and weapons attached to drones — that’s still a lot of hellish damage to the rebuilding effort.”
Over the last three decades, China became the manufacturing workshop of the world. It built large surpluses, earning US$3 trillion.
In response to covid, the US in 2020-2021 created US$17 trillion out of thin air to pay for the lockdowns etc. It could because its money is credible.
Compare:
- $3 trillion for three decades of hard work actually making things
- $17 trillion for typing a few numbers into the right computers.
Without getting into the fairness or morality of that, note that the total US aid to Ukraine for the war is $100 billion, or $0.1 trillion. It’s a rounding error. No US troops are at risk or have been killed (at least, not officially). This is a cheap war for the US, and has brought Putin and his army way, way down.
PS All that money? Just more debt. It’s never going to be paid back, and one day it will collapse into a worthless pile of busted IOUs. Now is not a good time to be owed money.
