The 2014 American Values Survey released Tuesday by the Public Religion Research Institute reports that 72% believe the recession is still on and just 7% say they are in excellent financial health. A third of the people in the survey said they or someone else in their household had to cut back on food in the last year to save money. There is a connection between weakness at home and an increasing focus on foreign intervention.
“Best-selling author Nomi Prins says the trouble with Ukraine, Iraq and Syria are happening because they are what she calls the “gateways.” Prins explains, “What I call the gateways are the countries in the world where political and financial strategy connect in respect to the United States and its bankers. . . . Why do we care about the Ukraine? We care about Ukraine because it’s a gateway to oil. It’s a gateway to Eastern Europe. It’s a gateway to control a situation politically, but also for our banking system to get involved from a financial perspective. Putin understands Ukraine is a gateway, as well. Russia backed a lot of the larger Russian banks . . . to fund oil and infrastructure and to basically take over the roll the U.S. banks and European banks were starting to have in the Ukraine.”
The Middle East is the same scenario. Prins says, “Russia has backed pipelines in Iraq. Lukoil is involved in projects there that have billions of dollars of money attached to them. U.S. banks also see the potential for billions of dollars of, not just oil money, but financing, or what’s called project financing, of the pipelines in Iraq. There is an $18 billion pipeline project and Citi Group wants to finance that. Citi Group set up a bank in Iraq last year to be able to do that. Citi Group has a $2 billion contract with Boeing financing airplanes with Iraq. So, there are a lot of other components in that region that are still in flux.”
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