I note that President Trump is threatening the BRICS nations for having the temerity to suggest that it may be possible to build an attractive society without the participation of the USA.
We are all aware of Americas use, or threatened use, of a variety of economic weapons against countries incurring Americas displeasure. We also are witnessing proxy wars, instigated by the U.S, against such targets.
This displeasure is the result of the aforesaid countries refusal to submit to “The Rules” as interpreted from time to time by America. Countries not aligned with the U.S instead prefer to rely on international law as first proposed in Nuremburg by the U.S but later abandoned in favor of the more malleable “Rulez”.
The scorn of the American establishment for anyone who thinks it might be possible to build a just, prosperous and fair society without American plumbing unfortunately even reaches these pages.
This time I won’t repeat the old joke about fog In the English channel, I’ll put it more bluntly; what if our efforts to exclude the rest of the world from our economy end up excluding us from theirs, at our expense, not theirs?
To put it another way; suppose the frat boys at some college hold a party and decide to exclude some “undesirables” from it. However the undesirables, annoyed, decide to hold their own party, inviting anyone and everyone, and end up having much more fun, especially because the girls flock to the open party instead of the frat boy monoculture.
Pardon my schadenfreude but we have a timely delectable morsel of the hell awaiting America as a result of these exclsuionary tactics; the Wegovy crisis:
“The chief executive of the drugmaker Novo Nordisk, Lars Fruergaard Jørgensen, is scheduled to face tough questions Tuesday on Capitol Hill about the high costs of the company’s widely popular weight-loss drugs…….
……The head of the committee, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has been vocal about his frustrations over how much Novo Nordisk charges Americans for both Ozempic (used to treat type 2 diabetes) and Wegovy (approved for weight loss).
“In general, we pay by far the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs. Same exact medicine sold in Canada, Europe is a fraction of what it is in the United States,” Sanders said in an interview Monday. “The result of that is that hundreds of thousands of people in this country who desperately need this product will not be able to afford it.”
A previously released committee report showed that the cost of Wegovy is significantly less in European countries — from $140 a month in Germany to $92 a month in the United Kingdom. Americans pay about $1,349 a month for the exact same drug.”
Given the high prices America inflicts on others for its drugs, can you not hear the rest of the world laughing their heads off? If the tables were reversed and Novo Nordisk was an American company Congress would be blathering on about “The free market” and suchlike.
The writing is on the wall, those backward Russians seem to have built some pretty good missiles. Those ignorant Chinese build pretty good electric cars. Iran builds pretty good drones. Brazil builds pretty good civil aircraft and India already dominates the software industry (just ring any help desk :P). There is a delightful Youtube video series by a Chinese girl as she explores the Silk Road to the borders of Pakistan on her motor scooter. The roads look great and no doubt they have plumbing too.
When we exclude others from our presence we need to be thinking that such tactics cut both ways.
Walrus,
Like offshoring manufacturing jobs to China, our healthcare pains are self-inflicted to benefit the few. I believe, by law, we can’t import the same drugs from overseas entering the U.S., even from places from Canada, for “safety” reasons. Sanders proposed a law undoing this years ago. It was shot down.
Did you scroll internet comments yesterday on YouTube and other media? The vitriol directed against United Healthcare’s former CEO was off the charts. Everyone shared their healthcare insurance denial stories. Everyone sympathized with the shooter instead of the victim. Instead of condoning murder the streets clamor for more blood. How did BRICS nations implement a U.S. culture that values financial success above all things, managed by a small percentage of the population?
I disagree with India dominating the software industry. Most tech participants describe the relationship as waxing and waning when outsourcing jobs. Companies lay off devs with institutional knowledge who cost too much. Company stocks increase thanks to shedding payroll and “increasing efficiency”. Overseas devs implement changes to the letter and do not go beyond because there is no sense of ownership. Customer dissatisfaction increases and the company rehires domestic devs. Rinse and repeat. My own company is investing in an incredible modernization effort. AWS tech support may come from India during implementation but the brainchild was homegrown, made possible with tax breaks that are now funding data centers overseas while local communities are expected to build the infrastructure to support their energy needs.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/amazon-has-received-at-least-dollar47-billion-in-subsidies-globally-watchdog-says/
Condemn, not condone.
Wonderful to hear from our noble ally down under. Too bad about the infliction upon the rest of the world of the cost of American designed, researched, patented, and manufactured drugs. If only those countries had no tariffs or regulations, then those prices would be – even lower than that are in US. Which is what they are now. Nor are the two drugs mentioned the only things used outside the US. How about Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine? Can’t get the latter here in the US. I wonder why…..
Meanwhile BRICS, which has zero to do with drug regulation or missile research, continues to grow. What it has achieved is about an 8% non-USD currency settlement rate. What the member states, some of them anyway, won’t get is access to the US Federal Reserve discount window. Which is a much bigger topic that the vaunted/derided “rules based order”.
Give our regards to Ambassador Downer and ask him for me when he’s going to apologize for the interference in our elections. Russia Collusion as you recall.
Fred, I worked with the drug industry and the vision they peddle to you: ” American designed, researched, patented, and manufactured drugs” is BS.
The basic, foundation, research that underpins drug discovery is done all over the world by all sorts of people working in Universities you’ve never heard of and usually funded by foreign Governments or local venture capital or both.. For example, We built a start up company around a chance discovery by a Chinese graduate student. It’s the locals who take the risk in this early research and trials not the big American drug companies.
In fact, the big guys will just tell you to eff off until you have results to show them. Where the big guys invest is doing the phase 3 efficacy trials involving thousands of patients and the whole business of getting a new drugapproved by the FDA, then they spend billions on marketing. They take almost none of the technical risk.
Novo Nordisk is an accident of a Danish company. Denmark has a huge pork industry. Novo Nordisk made money by recovering insulin from pigs liver(?). Novo Nordisk have been involved in funding research of Insulin and similar metabolic regulators for at least fifty years, it’s all they do. Wegovy came out of that research,. As for drug manufacture, the cost is generally an afterthought becauseit is dwarfed by marketing budgets. The exception being all these tailored stem cell and Monoclonal antibody things. There is no need to worry about the health of the drug industry just yet,
Downer was colluding with someone, Fred, but not the Russians.
Down here it has been widely understood for many a long year that Alexander Downer is owned lock, stock, and barrel by a certain three-letter-agency.
And, Fred, I do not believe that Ozempic/Wegovy (AFAIK the same drug) are “American designed, researched, patented, and manufactured drugs”
Danish, if I’m not mistaken.
Fred: “What the member states, some of them anyway, won’t get is access to the US Federal Reserve discount window. Which is a much bigger topic that the vaunted/derided “rules based order”.”
Well, yeah, excluding a country from the US Federal Reserve discount window will result in someone cutting off their nose to spite their face.
But whose nose? Whose face?
If BRICS is determined to move away from using the $US then they will do so using their own central banks, not the US Federal Reserve.
And no doubt greater minds than both you and I will say “Well, gang, if we are going to do that then we better create a discount window. Those things are mighty handy”.
Nobody is indispensable, Fred. Not even the Indispensable Nation.
Yeah, Right,
LOL we’ll be screwed by not letting Russia use our FED? If you say so. BRICS central banks will lead the way. What’s taking so long? Go! Go! Go!
Fred: “LOL we’ll be screwed by not letting Russia use our FED?”
It is well that you put a question.mark in there, Fred, because I certain didn’t make that claim.
What *I* claimed is something quite different: that BRICS won’t be screwed if they decided not to use the US Fed.
They’ll simply use something else of their own creation that they find more agreeable.
Honestly, your US-centric tunnel-vision is quite something to behold.
I take it you are struggling to comprehend what Walrus is attempting to explain in this article.
Pity, because it almost seems to be written with you in mind.
Fred: “BRICS central banks will lead the way. What’s taking so long?”
Well, that’s the sort of smart-ass comment I’d expect. Well done.
Remind me again, Fred: when the $US took over from Pound Stirling after WW2 how long did that take?
A few days? A week or two? Perhaps a couple of months?
Or longer, maybe?
And THAT happened without an adversarial attitude from the fading Empire, who was positively gracious as it walked away into the sunset.
Not so this time.
You ask why it’s taking so long, and the answer is obvious: the rest of the world are acting like the grown-ups, so they are leading the USA through the many stages of grief.
That takes time, since judging from your snark you are still in the “denial”stage
Quite a few more stages left to work your way through, but hang in there and you’ll eventually get to “acceptance”.
I’ll be rooting for you, buddy.
Yeah, Right,
Your historical memory is a little short. BRICs was formed in 2009, almost two decades. If you look back further you’ll see taht the reconstruction of Europe (non-soviet occupied) and most of economies therein were aided by the US both via the Marshall plan and preferential trade deals including allowing tariffs on US goods that were not reciprocated in the US. That’s going away, tough not as fast as the European, including UK, manufacturing capability. The latter is a self inflicted wound.
“the rest of the world are acting like the grown-ups,”
Congratulations!
Fred, you (and Eric, I see below) simply appear to be incapable of understanding what has been written in this article.
Indoctrination does that to people, I suppose.
Fred: “BRICs was formed in 2009, almost two decades.”
Well, yes, it was formed as A Reaction To the increasing weaponization of the USA’s central role in the international financial system that it created for itself.
Which makes entirely good sense from the BRICS PoV because they were, gosh, the targets of that weaponization.
Fred: “If you look back further you’ll see taht “… those countries were not being subject to that increasingly draconian weaponization of the $US and the financial institutions that the USA had created to support it.
So *prior* to two decades ago those five countries were more than happy to use the $US as the global reserve currency, and if the USA *hadn’t* decided to weaponize it then they’d still be more than happy to keep using it.
But, alas, Washington couldn’t help itself and so we are where we are now, and no amount of Trump-inspired tariffs is going to change that.
All the rest of your post is simply a non-sequitur, having absolutely zero to do with the topic at hand.
Fred, Eric, in the post-war era the USA had a goose that would lay golden eggs. Everyone wanted them, and the USA held the monopoly on their production.
Good for it.
But that was then – the era of before-BRICS, when the USA rebuilt Europe as a means of controlling it – and this is now.
You know, when Washington took a good thing and dashed it up against the wall because it could not conceive – as you (and Eric) still can not conceive – that if you weaponize something then the target of your ire is simply going to walk away from it.
Tunnel-vision. It’s a thing.
Yeah, Right,
“appear to be incapable of understanding what has been written in this article.”
What article is that? This is commentary on Walrus’ blog post. The “topic at hand” now appears to be how outraged you are at those of us not buying Walrus’ point of view or your anti-Americanism. But kudos and last word to you.
Walrus, you have an excellent understanding of what is going wrong.
Might I suggest another equally good explanation of the problem?
The Betrayal of American Prosperity:
Free Market Delusions, America’s Decline, and How We Must Compete in the Post-Dollar Era
https://g.co/kgs/EM8zqvP
I think that book is really worthwhile.
Oprah just hauled off to the ER with bodily fluids reported coming out of both ends. Reported by gal/pal Gayle. Did she get Wegovy-ed? More to come about access to cheaper drugs. A pox on all of them.
Walrus – doesn’t fit but may I submit this link here? The Hazel thread is now dead. Professor Postol has had time to assess the missile and gives some conclusions:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWi8ZncK9Tw&ab_channel=DialogueWorks
Not entirely off topic. Professor Postol also mentions Nuremburg and believes something similar would be appropriate for our own politicians.
But that’s been evident since early ’22. For me, since 2014. Many good men, both sides, died from that year on as a direct result of Brussels and Washington using Ukraine as a proxy against Russia. As Mozgovoy said early on of those he was fighting against, “If they knew who the real enemy was, the fighting would stop tomorrow.”
………………………..
On a less disagreeable subject, that was no “old joke”. Straight fact. There is indeed fog on occasion in the English Channel, always has been, and before the Channel Tunnel that impenetrable fog used to leave the Continent entirely cut off from civilisation.
All of This talk about the R&D to find Better…Medicine,,,Pardon Fauchi
MMM…..South Africa>? Yes..The Rest of the World..Funds COVID.
.while The Americans will Rapidly Find Cures…In a Free Nation that Does Not Kill Thousands to
Sell Body Parts…or With hold Medicine …From Other Nations… in True Fascist style.
The Greatest Period of American History ..is Coming..RnD,,,Science…Tech..Medicine..Free Enterprise…Social Development..Security…Military and Space…Advances..Unity..Represenative Government… Of..By….And FOR..
.Without all That Liberation Payback Garbage ….That Made the World a Mess..
Started Against..The Americans,,,in 2014…By..Those who Enjoy..Retribution..
..Making Crime Legal…..
in Vicious…Cruel..and Criminal Ways….
So…Now..This Question of ..The Other COVID,,,,er…BRICS..
Many of Those Nations..Have Corruption Problems..Have Helped Destroy 25 or More Percent ..%% Of The Worlds Rain Forests..While Making The Carbon Foot Print even Larger ..and Worse than Ever..
..Brazil..The Rain Forests..Liungs of the Worlds.
Russia..Hostile..Global Threat to Peace..Wants to Always Be a Player..Petrolium..Radiation Leaks…Trouble Maker..Anti Dollar..
India…Destroyed Large Areas of Forest..Big Carbon Foot Print..Sneaky..Anti Dollar,,
China…Ready For War…Owns it All…Thanks…Henry K.BIG..BIG Carbon CLOUDS.
Africa…Doestroying the Congo Rain Forests…Covert Play Ground…Bad..Ugly..Long Ago World Players..Brits..and Dutch…
I Will Stick with My Nieghborhood Ball Park..and Cheer for the Yankees..
Jim
This seems like a helpful overview of the political situation in Europe, by Anatol Lieven:
“Europe’s center is not holding
The collapse of the government in France and the ruling coalition in Germany spells continued crises —
and don’t think war has nothing to do with it.”
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/france-barnier-macron/
Walrus,
I couldn’t even make sense out of your post. So not at all sure of what point you’re trying to make. I’ll just say that the Ruble – and indeed all BRICS currencies – are getting smoked right now – and it appears the downward trend is going to continue. No strength at all.
Also, good plumbing and waste systems are the most monumental public health advancement in human history. That infrastructure is basic to societal advancement, a healthy population and a productive economy. Any country that doesn’t – or can’t – invest in it, is not ready to participate as a player in world markets. Everything is about global participation these days.
Eric, it’s a pity you don’t get it.
My original reference was to a tongue in cheek headline in “The Times Of London” that read: “Fog in the (English) Channel – Europe cut off”.
The meaning: Europe was cut off from Britain – to the displeasure of Europeans when the usual reading of the situation is that it is Britain that was cut off to the displeasure of the British.
Sanctions work the same way: You can place, for example, 100% tariffs on Chinese stainless steel. “Great” you say; American steel makers can now compete” but you forget that there were perhaps thousands of American manufacturers that were buying cheaper Chinese stainless steel whose products just got more expensive because they now have to buy expensive American stainless steel, so your sanctions not only hurt the Chinese but also your own users of cheap Chinese steel. In other words the sanctions cut both ways and hurt both parties.
Take it from me; I grew up in such a “protected economy” – I can tell you it is a miserable experience that is good for no one except lazy incompetent local business owners. I could give you ten pages about whey tariffs and sanctions are a very bad idea but I dont have time.
Walrus,
Naw, the Chinese just dump the steel in Canada and they add a markup.
Meanwhile, Europe is entering another cycle of self destruction.
The Borg barely got the pro Western President elected in Moldova using the “diaspora” votes. The attempt to pull off another Maidan in Georgia is in progress and they just cancelled the first round of presidential elections in Romania cause they didn’t like the guy the people voted for.
Gerald Celente is right. “When all else fails, they take you to war.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3qW6DB68lI&ab_channel=TheTelegraph
“I would like to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not yelling and screaming like his passengers.”
Just keep him away from the football. Not long till the 20th now.