As Europe moves to harden it's position against Russia it looks more and more like the continent is shooting itself in the foot.
Capitalist financial markets were invented in Europe. They rely on the free flow of money but more fundamentally on the sanctity of the ownership of assets. Break this rule and you destroy the trust on which the markets are built.
To believe that Russia should not be in Eastern Ukraine is one thing. To want to help Ukraine militarily and economically is another one. But in order to do that, to destroy the trust on which markets and therefore in the end, European prosperity was built looks like desperation and sheer stupidity.
The war in Ukraine for now is limited to NATO and Russia but by involving financial assets in the balance, Europe is forcing the rest of the world to make a choice. Now if you are an average African country, the choice looks rather stark: Should you bow once again to your former colonial masters who are pressuring you and could cease your assets anytime they choose, having proved that laws are flexible, or should you side with the rising multi-polar world let by China and India, and profit from their cheap financing and readiness the invest in infrastructure?
As these choices are being made in real time, capital moves away from London and Frankfurt towards new trading platforms in Singapore and Dubai. The current vertical rise of gold but also the higher interest rates everywhere in the West are a clear indication that the world is changing and that invisible financial currents are shifting, transforming the landscape.
The video below reminds us that what is at stake in Ukraine is a complete transformation of the post WW2 financial system which was built around the dollar but also in many ways benefited Europe with most of the financial infrastructure based in Zurich, London and Brussels. Are the Europeans ready to jeopardize all this to fund a few more months of a futile war which from a strategic point of view they now stand very little chance of winning? The answer seems to be yes. Well, let's hope that a few sane people will have the power to put an end to this madness. Not that this would stop the decline of Europe which we have commented at length on this blog, but there might not be any need to rush into the abyss in short order either!
PS: Warning: The video below is interesting and the message relevant but I am afraid this is unfortunately one of these AI generated channels which plague YouTube recently and which probably will be erased in short order. (So you may or may not want to watch the video. The purpose of such channels is to get clicks and advertising income, which by the way YouTube is glad to pay them, not to influence people, which they couldn't care less.)
Another good reason to watch the video is to understand how these channels are made: Thousands of hours of a famous person ingested by AI, then given a theme, a few relevant and up to date facts and lo, you have a video ready to upload. If nothing is done, in a year or so, the Internet and especially YouTube will list little else than this kind of junk!
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