New from latest Manafort hearing: Govt. said explicitly that banker Stephen Calk knew Manafort submitted a fraudulent loan application but approved it anyway because he wanted a Trump job — Rachel Weiner (@rachelweinerwp) July 23, 2018 Does Putin have kompromat on Trump? It is WAY worse than that. Trump is trapped in a massive system …
C.R.E.A.M. Open Thread: “A Theory of Trump <em>Kompromat</em>“Post + Comments (124)
Trump and many of his defenders have declared his businesses, including those in the former Soviet Union, to be off-limits to the Mueller investigation. They argue that the special counsel should focus only on the possibility of explicit acts of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. This neatly avoids the reality of sistema. As Pavlovsky wrote, “Under Putin, sistema has become a method for making deals among businesses, powerful players, and the people. Business has not taken over the state, nor vice versa; the two have merged in a union of total and seamless corruption.”…
Additional reading, from Quartz — “The mystery of Russia’s missing wealth shows how Putin retains his power”:
… When nations and businesses run a surplus, they have to find something to do with all the foreign cash they earn. This is why running persistent trade surpluses is usually a surefire way to rack up wealth overseas, typically in the form of assets or loans to foreigners… Over time, those overseas riches accumulate, creating a steady stream of income.
So what about Russia? Add up its two-plus decades of fat export surpluses and it should have socked away investments abroad equal to about 230% of national income—and that’s not including the return earned on the gains on those investments, which should have yielded a heck of a lot more.
Most of that wealth, however, doesn’t turn up in Russia’s official ledgers. As of 2015, its official net foreign assets—the value of what a country owns overseas, minus the value of domestic assets owned by foreigners—totaled a mere 26% of national income, according to the economists’ calculations…
Simple math implies that a share of those accumulated surpluses worth more than 200% of Russia’s current national income has disappeared. Considering the steady annual returns that would likely have been earned on those investment, the economists put the total missing foreign wealth on the order 300% of Russia’s current national income, or more…
Putin, who has run the country since 2000, is in no small part responsible for keeping offshore and onshore wealth flowing into the hands of the few. Measured by his ability to sabotage liberal democracy, that heavy investment in the allegiance of Russia’s ultra-rich may be paying off. Russian oligarchs have been connected with many of his efforts to undermine elections, particularly in the US.
In terms of the Russian people’s wellbeing, though, Putin’s leadership has been disastrous. That includes not just his wealth distribution policies, but also the international sanctions his geopolitical machinations have provoked.
The Russian public has yet to demand a return on Putin’s plutocratic gamble. As the economists note, “extreme inequality seems acceptable in Russia, as long as billionaires and oligarchs appear to be loyal to the Russian state and perceived national interests.” But it is, they say, a “fragile equilibrium.”
One hand washes the other, tovarich! But keep in mind: Just as Trump’s shambling around frantically, trying to keep his scotch-tape-and-spirit-gum ’empire’ spinning for another day, his dear friend Putin’s got his own jury-rigged ‘superpower’ forever teetering on the edge of collapse.
Coda: Click on the tweets for the rest of this story…
Internet’s out. I check the little closet in the office. He’s standing over me. But he seems friendly. I tell him I need to get to the basement where all the connections are. He says no. I say okay, no internet then.
— Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough) July 19, 2018
I really didn’t see anything interesting, at the time. But the first time I heard pee tape rumors, motherfucker, those guys got blackmail fodder on the fucking cable guy.
— Lauren Hough (@laurenthehough) July 19, 2018