Author: Christine Schier

In a study published Oct. 2, the Washington Post analyzed data from the past 40 years to address the dramatic decline in life expectancy in the United States, compared to other “peer” (developed) nations and even to some poorer nations. While not addressing the collapsing U.S. physical economy and related factors directly, the study does usefully refer to the failing healthcare […]

At the Russian Energy Week International Forum on Oct. 11, Vladimir Putin could hardly avoid ridiculizing the European Union’s energy policy – whether he wanted to or not. He reiterated that Moscow had proposed to immediately begin supplying Germany and other European countries with up to 27.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas annually, pumped through the undamaged pipeline of […]

Judging from the preliminary results of the national elections in Poland on Oct. 15, the current PiS government is set to be replaced by a coalition of the three opposition parties, which altogether received 53.1% of the votes. The new Prime Minister would be Donald Tusk, who served as Polish Prime Minister in 2007-2014 and President of the European Council […]

China’s Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, on Oct. 17-18, will give new impetus to the initiative which has become the largest infrastructure and development project ever undertaken in the world – in just ten years after it was launched. The forum has brought together participants from 130 countries around the world, and some 20 heads of state […]

A good deal of the discussion at the IMF/World Bank annual meeting, that took place Oct. 9-15 in Marrakech, Morocco, was devoted to the soaring indebtedness worldwide. These two leading institutions are pushing some new lending, but only for projects to “save the planet” and other boondoggles. China, which insists instead on funding actual development projects, remains a prime target […]

There have been two reactions internationally to the terrible escalation of events and loss of lives in Israel/Gaza. There are those trying to exploit it for geopolitical reasons and those calling for ceasefire, and for addressing the underlying causes. On the geopolitical side, Washington immediately sent into the Eastern Mediterranean a battle group led by the world’s largest aircraft carrier, […]

Chas Freeman is a senior U.S. diplomat, now retired, who during his 30-year career of service, was ambassador to Saudi Arabia. He was interviewed on the breaking situation in Southwest Asia by EIR’s Mike Billington on Oct. 9, of which he said the following: “We are seeing a disturbing tendency in our press to invent Iranian direction of this war, […]

The unprecedented ouster of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, generated headlines about “chaos” engulfing Congress. Indeed, that is true, as far as it goes. The budget crisis was not resolved, but kicked down the road until mid-November (cf. SAS 40/23); the increased funding requested by Joe Biden for the Ukraine war was temporarily derailed — […]

Paulo Nogueira Batista is a highly-respected Brazilian economist who served as Vice President of the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) from 2015-2017. In a sharp speech delivered on Oct. 3 at the Valdai Club Dialogue meeting in Sochi, Russia, he both reiterated his proposal for creating a BRICS-linked new currency to issue development credit, and addressed the mistakes that led to […]

In his Oct. 3 remarks to the Valdai Club, Paulo Nogueira Batista also put into focus the strategic significance of the policy fight ongoing in Russia around the role of the Central Bank. Why was progress with both the NDB and the CRA so slow, Nogueira asked: “Having participated intensely in the two years of negotiations that led to the CRA, […]