Pot meet kettle.
Janet Yellen, the U.S. Treasury secretary, on Friday called out Russia’s representatives at the Group 20 meeting in Indonesia and blamed them for sharing in the responsibility for the economic toll that the Ukraine War has taken on the world.
Yellen told Anton Siluanov, Russia’s foreign minister, and Timur Maksimov, the deputy finance minister, that their actions have resulted in innocent lives lost, and “the ongoing human and economic toll that the war is causing around the world.”
“Those most directly impacted are the poorest households in the poorest countries,” she said, according to The Wall Street Journal.
She endorsed the proposed plan to put price caps on Russian oil and Ukraine called on the group to impose tougher sanctions on Russia.
Yellen’s tough talk against Russia may have been overshadowed by Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian finance minister, who tweeted that the presence of Russia at the conference was akin to having “an arsonist joining firefighters.” She said the war in Ukraine does not only include generals on the battlefield but economic technocrats.
The International Monetary Fund issued a report last week that said 2022 will be “tough,” and 2023 will possibly be “even tougher,” with an “increased risk of recession.” The report said the situation is “increasingly grave for economies in or near debt distress, including 30 percent of emerging market countries and 60 percent of low-income nations.”
The two-day meeting in Bali was contentious and Sri Mulyani, the Indonesian finance minister, said the disagreements over Russia were “quite overwhelming.”
The initial hope of the meeting was to discuss a path forward given the realities in Ukraine, but the meeting was challenging due to “geopolitical tension.”
Al Jazeera reported that a source from the French Finance Ministry told another news outlet that the group’s “capacity to act” was “strongly hindered by the war in Ukraine, which one of the G20 members is fully responsible for.”
Yellen continued, “Russia is solely responsible for negative spillovers to the global economy, particularly higher commodity prices.”
TRENDPOST: As this meeting was about economy and not military, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s public rebuke of these Russian officials at the G20 meeting comes across as off-trend and excessively petty…considering the United States long and ongoing warmongering murderous history.
We have been opposed to the Ukraine War since the beginning, but have pointed out the history leading up to the conflict and the diplomatic blunders the U.S. has made. (See “BLINKEN MEETS WITH LAVROV: WAR HAWKS SCREAMING,” “KREMLIN BLAMES UKRAINE FOR STOKING TENSIONS AT BORDER” and “BIDEN AGREES TO MEET WITH PUTIN ‘IN PRINCIPLE’ FOR HIGH-RISK SUMMIT.”)
TRENDPOST: Again as we have noted, it is hypocritical to hear Yellen criticize another country for engaging in needless conflicts because the U.S. wrote the book.
Gerald Celente has made it clear that he is opposed to Putin’s war in Ukraine, but has pointed out that Russia is a minor war-mongering nation compared to the U.S. track record of killing millions and stealing trillions from its taxpayers to wage war.
Brown University’s Watson Institute said over 929,000 people were killed “directly in the violence of the wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.” Several times as many civilians have died due to the reverberating effects of these wars.
One needs to look no further than the dismal economic condition in Afghanistan after the U.S.’s withdrawal last summer. The U.S. has frozen billions in the country’s assets due to Taliban rule and inflation hit 15.5 percent in April. The Wall Street Journal reported that the country’s banking system is “barely functioning.”
The country’s GDP is expected to decline by about 34 percent this year compared to 2020, the report said, citing the World Bank. About 90 percent of the country is not eating sufficiently and about half of the population is facing acute hunger.
“The current humanitarian crisis could kill far more Afghans than the past 20 years of war,” the International Rescue Committee told the Journal.
We won’t hold our breath for the next time a finance minister from the West presses Yellen on these numbers.