Putin Fires First Shot at America…
and Your Portfolio…
Less then 10 hours after the 2007 G8 Summit with President Bush and other major leaders in Germany ended, Vladimir Putin made his cutthroat intentions known to the world.
“The world is changing before our eyes,” he said before 200 corporate leaders at the International Economic Forum in St. Petersburg.
Global financial institutions like the World Trade Organization and the IMF were, according to Putin, “archaic, undemocratic and inflexible.”
They didn’t, he said, “reflect the new balance of power.”
And Putin left little doubt as to where this new balance of economic power would be centered.
“The new architecture of economic relations requires a completely new approach,” he stated defiantly.
“Russia intends to become an alternative global financial center and to make the ruble a reserve currency for central banks.”
This was more than just a warning shot. It was a blazing opening salvo that caught the U.S. and the rest of the world, for that matter, totally off guard.
Putin was pouncing on the weakened dollar, going for the kill shot on its global value. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out that what he was pitching Russia as the “alternative” to was the U.S.
This was the beginning of a well-planned attack designed to dismantle America’s economy, take down the institutions supplying its wealth and shift the world’s center of power from Washington D.C. straight to Moscow.
It all dates back to the mid-‘90s when then-President Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin as the head of the FSB (the secret police successor to the KGB).
Putin watched helplessly as Yeltsin sunk his beloved country deeper and deeper into debt and rendered Russia less and less relevant in the world’s economic scene.
He bided his time running the FSB until Yeltsin finally resigned in 2000, leaving the presidency to Putin.
He could hardly wait to get to work and to resurrect Russia on the international scene.
Eight years later, he’s done just that — and with a vengeance.
So, how is it possible to take a flailing, debt-ridden country and put it in a position to directly challenge the U.S. for economic supremacy in less than 10 years?
Two words: natural resources.
It’s mind-blowing, really.
Putin’s grand empire accounts for over 20% of the world’s oil and natural gas reserves. That makes Russia virtually energy independent from the rest of the world.
Russia also holds huge reserves of countless raw materials, including iron ore, manganese, chromium, nickel, platinum, titanium, copper, tin, lead, tungsten, diamonds, phosphates and gold, and the forests of Siberia contain an estimated one-fifth of the world’s timber supply!
They’re a rogue nation, the largest in the world, in fact, that owes allegiance to no one but themselves.
That poses an incredible threat not only to the world at large, but to the U.S., especially, and, quite possibly, your personal finances most of all.
Andrew Mickey
Editor, BreakAway Investor
