Gorbachev is no fall-in-line Putin backer. As the Times reports, it looks like he's about to join Russian tycoon, and vocal Putin critic, Alexander Lebedev, to form an opposition party. But in an op-ed last month, Gorbachev called crap on the US media's coverage of the war, and pointed out that Georgia was an easy aggressor, and perhaps not in the right.
Palin (and everyone else) took the war as an opportunity to talk tough on Putin. (Her blatant idiocy appears below). They're completely missing the point.
As the bogus credit of the last several years is wipped off the market, it will become necessary to tie credit to real assets. With all of these fancy, and once-high performing financial instruments out of the market, investors and lenders will have to ask, What is a real asset? It's pretty clear that Russia is asset rich. They've got plenty of oil, a massive (and growing) agricultural base, and a burgeoning consumer economy (the fact that their birthrate is below-replacement is negligable when year-over-year GDP and spending-power growth is taken into account). This makes them credit worthy, and it also makes them cash rich (how many Russian oil oligarchs are there now?).
The best way to keep the peace between Russia and the US is to turn them into our national credit card, just as we've done with China. China holds $500 b in t-bills--Russia could hold more. The US needs liquidity from somewhere, why not get it from Russia, and tie their fate and their financial interest more in line with our own? Financial ties keep the peace.
(Yes, Putin just loaned Venezuela $1b for arms purchases, but this is posturing and nothing more. Venezuela--or for that matter, Russia--is not about to go to war with the US.)
God help us, this woman has absolutely no idea what she's talking about...
