Mike's Statement to the Russian
Conference
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STATEMENT
OF MICHAEL RUPPERT FOR THE INTERNATIONAL FINANCE CONGRESS AT THE BOR
PRESIDENTIAL HOTEL AND RETREAT MOSCOW, RUSSIA -- DELIVERED
MARCH 7, 2001
March 12, 2001
[On March 7, 2001 I was asked by the Chairman of the International
Financial Congress, Igor Tolstoshein, to make a 10 minute presentation
to an assemblage of approximately 40 of Russia's top economic and financial
experts. Also included in the group were experts from Germany and the
Maylasian Ambassador to Russia, His Excellency Datuk Yahya Baba. I had
traveled to the Congress at the Bor Presidential Hotel and Retreat not
planning on speaking and had not prepared a written statement in advance.
My presentation therefore was not made from a written text but rather
from some hastily assembled notes.
There were only individual translators available that day and I did
not tape record my remarks. The following is the most faithful recreation
of my statement that I can make relying upon the original notes I made
just before speaking.
A full report on the Congress and my evaluations of the current Russian
situation will appear in the March 31 issue of my newsletter From
The Wilderness. That newsletter is available to paid subscribers
only and may be subscribed to through our web site at www.copvcia.com.
I am happy however, to share this freely with so many of my newfound
Russian colleagues and concerned fellow residents of this very troubled
planet. I thank all of the Russians I met on this trip for their wonderful
hospitality, courtesy and genuine concern in these perilous times. -
MCR]
Thank you and good afternoon. I would like to thank the Chairman for
this opportunity to speak to this august group and begin by saying that
I am not an economist or a financial expert but rather a former police
investigator turned journalist. My newsletter, From The Wilderness
is now read in 16 countries and by 15 members of the U.S. Congress as
well as the intelligence committees of both Houses of the US Congress.
We are also read by professors at 11 universities in the US, Canada
and Great Britain. We have a free research web site at www.copvcia.com.
It is an honor to be in Russia as my mother was, as a cryptographer,
connected with operations of the US Secretary of State Cordell Hull
who visited Moscow in October 1943 to discuss matters regarding the
war against Nazi Germany.
I have spoken out for more than twenty years about the CIA's involvement
in the international drug trade. While in Russia I have listened closely
now to outstanding presentations by many experts and if I have anything
significant to add to this discussion it is to agree clearly with other
opinions I have heard expressed that the study of economics and international
finance, if it is to be effective, must be connected to political and
social undercurrents. A mere study of numbers and graphs often leads
to erroneous conclusions because it does not take into account the unseen
events which truly guide and determine the economic symptoms which are
then measured by numbers.
This congress has focused on what many here believe is the imminent
collapse of the U.S. dollar. I do not agree with this concept and I
have heard others here express the same sentiment. While I do not think
that the collapse of the US dollar is imminent I absolutely do believe
that the collapse of the US stock markets is. Too many countries around
the world rely upon the US dollar as a reserve currency. This fact alone,
I believe, would prevent the dollar's collapse. However, as all of the
experts here have so clearly pointed out, the US economy is in serious
trouble and I believe that the US stock market is in immediate peril.
In order to understand this it is essential to study the role of money
laundering in international finance. As much as $200 billion US has
been looted out of Russia in the last ten years and much of it laundered
through US financial institutions like the Bank of New York. I wrote
about this in the fall of 1999. But to place this in context it is necessary
to note that in 1994 the UN estimated that $440 billion a year in illegal
drug money was moved through the world's banking system. Just 18 months
ago "Le Monde Diplomatique" estimated the annual drug flow
at $500 billion with the total annual proceeds of criminal activity
amounting to $1 trillion US. And just two weeks before I came here the
"San Francisco Chronicle" cited the International Monetary
Fund as stating that the amount of criminal money moving through the
world economy is $1.5 trillion US each year.
Criminal activity and money laundering has become the world's largest
free enterprise and it is also determining political, economic and military
action around the globe. $1.5 trillion is larger than every national
GNP except for the five largest industrial economies in the world. Now
I have heard the experts here cite truly astounding figures like the
$30 trillion in derivatives in the US market and the overall values
of the world economy. To compare $1.5 trillion and state that this amount
is not the most important component of success or failure is to miss
the point entirely.
If two race cars are capable of doing 240 mph the race will be A tie.
No one will win. The world economy is a fierce competition for capital,
liquidity, markets and, perhaps most importantly, currency. Therefore
the race car capable of doing 241 mph is the one that will win the race.
That $1.5 trillion a year of highly liquid, low cost, unrestricted capital
is what is determining the results in the present day world economy.
This is because, as noted by former US Assistant Secretary of Housing
Catherine Austin Fitts, "Those with the lowest cost of capital
win." Winning, however, comes with a heavy price. I have confirmed
that even now the US government works directly with some of the biggest
drug dealers in history.
I wholeheartedly agree with Russia's brilliant economist Michael Khazin
and others who state that the US engages in serious long term planning
and manipulation of world events. As an example I will cite the fact
that in June of 1999 the Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, Richard
Grasso, traveled to Colombia and met with leaders of the FARC guerillas
who control a third of that country and who have acquired billions of
dollars from taxation of the drug trade. Grasso's request was that the
FARC rebels invest their drug profits in Wall Street. This was necessary
in order to continue pumping cash into the already precarious investment
bubble in America that had also been partially sustained by the systematic
looting of Russia from 1993 to 1999.
The FARC guerillas refused to give Wall Street their money.
A year and half later the United States is implementing another Vietnam
conflict which is just now commencing and which is an absolute necessity
to prevent a total collapse of the US economy. That conflict will not
only suck capital out of Colombia it will open up oil rich lands in
rebel territories to US drilling and it will create thousands of displaced
persons who will become low cost labor for multi-national corporations
seeking to build factories in South America.
As the Euro seeks to establish itself as an alternate currency
to the US dollar - a healthy competition that I believe would diversify
and strengthen the world's economy - you here in Europe should take
note of leaders like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez who has opposed America's
"Plan Colombia." Just recently the European Union voted unanimously,
with one abstention, to oppose this new Vietnam War. If South America
is to resist this war it will need strong economic support to pull away
from US domination and the influence of the Central Intelligence Agency.
This brings to light what I consider to be an emerging determinant
of economic and political realties in this era of globalization - geography.
I have noticed that in recent years the drug trade is following businesslike
principles that tend to reduce transportation and distribution costs.
The American drug market is now predominantly supplied by cocaine and
heroin from South America. Europe and Russia have been increasingly
supplied by heroin from the Golden Crescent in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And the Asian drug market is receiving most of its supplies from Southeast
Asia. We are seeing less and less large scale smuggling over long routes
and a trend toward efficient and more cost-effective management of the
trade that produces liquid, hard currency.
Just before coming to this conference I read in the Associated Press,
Agence France Press and other reliable sources that the Taliban has
recently eradicated most of its 300 ton opium crop in Afghanistan. If
true, I view this as a form of economic warfare against Russia because
it would drive opium production more into Southeast Asia and Colombia.
However, I now suspect that this will result in a shift of opium production
to the Caucasus under the Kurds which will see an increase in smuggling
through Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan. I should note that both the
American Vice President Richard Cheney and the designated Deputy Secretary
of State Richard Armitage are members of the US-Azerbaijan Chamber of
Commerce. Such a move would have the effect of drastically shortening
smuggling routes and costs into Western Europe and bypassing unstable
areas of the Balkans.
I have received additional reports that Uzbekistan is now awash in
the opium poppy and, as in the US with the CIA, that Russian military
and intelligence agencies facilitate the trade as a means of protecting
access to hard currency. The point here is not that the US it totally
evil or the only country doing these things. But the US is far and away
the most advanced nation when it comes to the use of such methods to
achieve superiority. As Khazin has noted the US and Britain and
Germany started the conflict in Kosovo in 1999 to stave off a collapse
of western markets following the Asian collapse of 1997-8. Now Colombia
is a last-ditch effort to protect the US markets and European opposition
is jeopardizing that plan.
This is one of the reasons that I believe that as long as European
countries play in a game created by and controlled by the US, and in
which the US holds back critical information and unseen trump cards,
the results will always be the same. That is one reason why I totally
favor decriminalizing drug use throughout the world.
I am not anti-American, I love my country. But I see it succumbing
to the same level of criminality that now eats at the rest of the world.
We have talked about the looting of Russia but that same looting has
begun in the US. Last year $59 billion US was looted from the Department
of Housing and Urban Development. That money disappeared into US markets
and into offshore havens. Perhaps trillions more is missing from the
US Department of Defense. We looted our Savings and Loan Institutions
in the 1980s and we now stand poised to loot our Social Security System.
It has become a "search and destroy" world economy in a climate
of increasing economic disparity and this can only lead to apocalyptic
results. A snake eating its own tail is not nutritious. That is why
I believe that a healthy Euro, using different strategies for wealth
creation, can bring some sanity back into the picture. For in the current
modality the only inevitable course is for world governments to seek
to "out-crook" each other in competition for the cheap capital
afforded by criminal activity. This can only end in war.
As an example of the highest form of criminal activity imaginable I
would ask you to look at the depleted uranium scandal in Europe. This
was not a matter of US imperialism or recklessness. This was a matter
of corporations that produce nuclear waste seeking to boost their stock
values by increasing net profits. As a result they sold a product they
knew to be contaminated with transuranics and plutonium and U-235
to the nations of Europe without telling them and, as a result, portions
of Kosovo will be radioactive - forever. This does not address the horrible
carnage in Iraq, many times greater than Kosovo, where thousands of
children are dying of birth defects and leukemia and the southeastern
portion of that country will also be uninhabitable virtually forever.
The first thing that our Chairman, Igor Tolstoshein, said to me when
he picked me up at the airport was, "Why is President Bush uniting
all of Europe?" His observation was most perceptive. As a matter
of defensive reaction to increasing economic exploitation, Europe is
indeed uniting in unimagined ways as Germany invests in Russia and Russia
enters into agreements with Germany and France for upgrades of the MiG
29. Indeed, I again strongly concur with Michael Khazin that the WTO
and globalization will fail as the world retreats into three dominant
economic spheres of activity: The Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Asia.
What is most telling here is a recent quote by U.S. Senator John McCain
as the United States strenuously opposed the creation of a European
Union Rapid Deployment Force. In discussing NATO he said, "The
issues that confront us go to the very core of our existence as an alliance.
Fundamental questions regarding the future of NATO stand before us.
I am afraid that our geographical divide is increasingly becoming a
functional one. Our perspectives are diverging."
In order to respond to this crisis what is essential is that the world
find new ways of creating wealth that are beneficial rather than destructive.
I refer this Congress to the web site of former U.S. Assistant Secretary
of Housing and former managing Director of the Wall Street investment
bank Dillon Read, Catherine Austin Fitts. She is a true innovator in
alternative means of wealth creation and she has been my greatest tutor
on matters of economics and fiscal policy. Her web site is at www.solari.com.
I regret that she was not at this Congress. But she is very accessible
and eager to help create a safer, healthier and more profitable world.
She has a profound understanding of American political economics and
a wealth of information to offer those seeking creative solutions.
I would like to thank the Chairman for this opportunity to address
this body and conclude by saying that I am an optimist and I believe
that the world will survive these impending challenges even though I
am afraid that there will be some serious dislocations before the crisis
passes.
Michael C. Ruppert Publisher/Editor "From The Wilderness"
www.copvcia.com
[A FULL REPORT ON THE MOSCOW CONFERENCE WILL BE INCLUDED IN THE MARCH
31 ISSUE OF FROM THE WILDERNESS AVAILABLE TO PAID SUBSCRIBERS ONLY -
SUBSCRIBE TODAY!]
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© COPYRIGHT 1998 - 2001, MICHAEL C. RUPPERT. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
