Patterico's Pontifications

6/13/2024

G7 Agrees to Lend Ukraine $50 Billion Frozen Russian Assets to Rebuild

Filed under: General — Dana @ 8:14 am



[guest post by Dana]

Too bad it’s just the benefits, but it’s still really great news:

Western leaders have agreed to loan Ukraine up to $50 billion to fight Russia and rebuild after the lengthy war, money that will be repaid over time from the interest accumulating on frozen Russian financial assets, a senior U.S. official told reporters.

. . .

Leaders of the G7 economies have agreed to use the interest generated by the assets — about $3 billion per year — to help Ukraine.

While details are still being worked out, there is a disagreement over the disbursement timetable:

The European proposal had been for about $3 billion a year go to Ukraine, and only interest from a certain part of the frozen Russian assets — $190 billion held by a company called Euroclear in Belgium — to be shared.

The U.S., on the other hand, wanted to give $60 billion to Ukraine up front, because Ukraine’s need on the battlefield is dire. Officials had said the interest generated from the frozen Russian assets would go toward paying back that money.

Scheherazade Rehman, a professor of international finance at George Washington University said that:

Washington has the weaker hand in the debate because only about $5 billion of the $300 billion in Russian assets are held in the United States — and European nations are concerned about how they would be paid back for a big initial lump sum.

Of course, Russia isn’t taking the news well. Russian foreign ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that using the money was “criminal” and that it would “be very painful for the European Union” as a result.

A somewhat related postscript: It’s just not looking too good for Russia:

—Dana

Trump Presses Speaker Johnson In Effort To Overturn Conviction

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:45 am



[guest post by Dana]

How is this not a problem??

…Trump, true to nature, has been obsessed in recent weeks with harnessing the powers of Congress to fight on his own behalf and go to war against the Democrats he accuses of “weaponizing” the justice system against him.

It’s a campaign he orchestrated in the days after his May 31 conviction on 34 felony counts in New York, starting with a phone call to the man he wanted to lead it: Speaker MIKE JOHNSON.

Trump was still angry when he made the call, according to those who have heard accounts of it from Johnson, dropping frequent F-bombs as he spoke with the soft-spoken and pious GOP leader.

“We have to overturn this,” Trump insisted.

Johnson sympathized with Trump’s frustration. He’d been among the first batch of Republican lawmakers to appear alongside Trump at the Manhattan trial. He’d been harping on DA ALVIN BRAGG’s case and the alleged broader abuse of the justice system since before he took the gavel.

The speaker didn’t really need to be convinced, one person familiar with the conversation said: Johnson, a former attorney himself, already believed the House had a role to play in addressing Trump’s predicament. The two have since spoken on the subject multiple times.

But sympathy can only go so far. With a slim majority and skittish swing-district members, Johnson is already finding it difficult to deliver for Trump.

For his part, on the day after the conviction, Speaker Johnson said on Fox and Friends that he believed that it was time for the Supreme Court to become involved:

“I do believe the Supreme Court should step in. Obviously this is totally unprecedented and it’s dangerous to our system . . .This is diminishing the American people’s faith in our system of justice itself and, to maintain a republic, you have to have that, people have to believe that justice is fair, that there’s equal justice under law.

They don’t see that right now and I think that the justices on the court – I know many of them personally – I think they’re deeply concerned about that, as we are. . .I think they’ll set this straight, but it’s going to take a while.

When it concerns Trump, accountability remains an ugly word.

As for Speaker Johnson, you might recall his assertion that the Trump hush money case (and the other charges against him) were “borderline criminal conspiracy,” and additionally, he asserted that it was all “election interference”.

But of course.

—Dana


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