Friday, August 10, 2012

A Gold Bug as Secretary of State in a Romney Administration?

This is damn fascinating. Robert Zoellick has been named the head of Romney’s national-security transition team.

FT's Gideon Rachman reports on what this may mean:
This is taken as a strong hint that Zoellick might be Secretary of State in a Romney administration – and he will certainly have a major influence on the senior appointments....

Perhaps the most encouraging thing about Zoellick is that he has the right enemies. The repellent John Bolton – the very epitome of swaggering nationalism – loathes Zoellick. I have seen the two clash publicly. Some had even suggested that Bolton might be Secretary of State under Romney. That would be a disaster. It is both telling and encouraging, therefore, that the paleo-conservatives in the GOP have reacted badly to news of Zoellick’s appointment...

In fact, Zoellick is so intelligent and decent that I have sometimes wondered what he is doing in the modern Republican Party.
Make no mistake, Zoellick is an elitist insider, but somehow he comes down on the right side of many issues, including gold.

As I reported last December, I believe Zoellick is a pretty solid gold bug. And he is likely more anti-war than Rand Paul.

22 comments:

  1. Paleo-conservatives? or Neo-conservatives?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, I think the writer was confused there.

      Also, this appointment may be meant as a sop to the Paulians.

      Hmmmm.....

      Delete
  2. Pah. You guys never learn.

    Zoellick turned gold bug AFTER 2009, when the mainstream media started cheering it along. The banksters probably had got into their positions by then.

    Zoellick is ex of Goldman Sachs, heavily invested in Asia.

    Of course, he's antiwar. Who isn't? It's a cheap position. What it means on the ground is that the transnational elites have done what they can do in the Middle East by arms, and have now turned their attention to Asia, where they will conduct "US" foreign policy through espionage, color revolutions, police actions, covert ops, human rights courts, drug/arms money-launderng, bribery/blackmail, of government officials, black propaganda, satellite surveillance, psyops, financial manipulation. weather modification, secret nuclear tests, engineered viruses, biological experiments, assassinations, and cyber-attacks, non of which are included in the term "war" right?

    This fiasco should be laid at the foot of Ron Paul and his campaign.

    They did this, by going soft on Romney.

    Today the DOJ announced it was closing its investment of Goldman, with whom Romney is fully implicated. Zoellick is ex of Goldman.

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  3. Lila,

    You id Zoellick with Goldman as though this is some kind of news. In any post I have made on Zoellick, I either identify him as a major insider or, specifically as ex-Goldman. No news here.

    As for Zoellick's views on gold. I have talked to him and a lot of other major players, who would be ranked higher on the elite charts than Zoellick, they are not as pro-gold as Zoellick. In fact, most have no positive view on gold.

    Zoellick is solo on this one and real.

    As for blaming Ron Paul for global ills, because he was to soft on Romeny, I blame you for being too soft on RP about his Romney stance.

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  4. Hes not anti war or no interventionist at all. In 1999 he co-signed a letter with Bolton, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz calling on Clinton to remove Saddam Hussein from power. He wrote an essay praising Wilson and Roosevelt on their interventionist foreign policies, and called for the UN to expand its military presence in Sudan and other conflict zones in Africa.

    Oh and your swipe at Rand at the end was a nice touch. Your smears are getting a bit pathetic.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Rand Paul is really antiwar as long as it's not his kids that are fighting or dying.

      Delete
    2. Realy Dixie? When has Rand voted to send American troops into war?

      Delete
  5. Well if the FT report is accurate and Bolton hates Zoellick, Zoellick can't be all bad.

    And it seems that Wenzel is pretty solid in his thinking that Zoellick is pro-gold, so overall Zoellick seems to be the best creep among them.

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  6. "Zoellick" can't be all bad.

    Yes he can.
    Please read this
    http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/bob-zoellicks-a-two-bit-bore/

    He's better than Bolton in the sense many people would prefer a colonoscopy to a proctoscopy or radiation to chemotherapy.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. How does this link contradict Wenzel's point:

      "Make no mistake, Zoellick is an elitist insider"?

      Wenzel's headline to this point is: "A Gold Bug as Secretary of State in a Romney Administration?"

      I will take Wenzel's gut read on Zoellick and gold. None of the other elitists are talking about gold.

      Delete
  7. All you high-IQ folks (unlike us dumb gals)do seem to lack a decent attention span. To wit:

    From a piece I wrote in 2009, April:

    "Who else would we want cleaning up the nuclear fall-out from the housing bubble, if not one of the leading bubble-heads around, right?

    Besides advising Enron on finance and screaming for war in Iraq, I don’t know if you could come up with a more radioactive resume than that.

    Oh, that’s right, Zoellick’s got those two wrapped up, as well.

    (Wiki: Zoellick signed the January 26, 1998 letter to President Bill Clinton from PNAC that advocated war against Iraq. During 1999, Zoellick served on a panel that offered Enron executives briefings on economic and political issues."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Big deal. Wenzel nailed Zoellick as an inside Goldman player in 2007:

      http://www.economicpolicyjournal.com/2007/10/does-goldman-sachs-run-world.html

      Delete
  8. Bob can you correct my first post - should be investigation

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't have the capability via blogger to alter posts.

      Delete
  9. @DixieFlatline

    Thank you, I think. It's my duty, nothing more, nothing less.

    Awesome are all the doctors and nurses in India during last week's black out... the ones that kept doing their jobs (for about 300$/ mth) in 120 degree Fahrenheit, no AC, and often no fan, and with continuous water shortages, working 80 hr weeks and doing that all year long, every year, during all the other thousands of smaller power-cuts that never make the headlines.

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  10. What is this nutty comment all about? It links to a Wenzel post where Ron Paul discusses the Solyndra scandal. So what.

    Then its followed by Lija links posted last week, well there has been a mighty bunch of us that have become disappointed with RP in recent weeks, stand in line. No heroics from Lija here.

    ReplyDelete
  11. FIRST ANONYMOUS
    @Anonymous 1 at 4:12 PM:

    "What is this nutty comment all about? It links to a Wenzel post where Ron Paul discusses the Solyndra scandal. So what."

    MY REPLY:

    1. The point is not the post, it's the comment section underneath, to which I linked to REFUTE Bob's notion that I was somehow duped by Ron Paul or overly soft on Romney (no way!)..
    I bring up Bruce Fein in the comments - someone no one else did, on this blog. The Fein appt was a big, big deal.

    ANONYMOUS 1 AGAIN:
    Anonymous 1 again at 4:12 PM:

    "Then its followed by Lija links posted last week, well there has been a mighty bunch of us that have become disappointed with RP in recent weeks, stand in line. No heroics from Lija here"

    MY RESPONSE:

    Lila:
    1. The time when I said something is not an issue in the first place.
    The point was to refute Bob's baffling comment that I am soft on Romney.

    3.
    The comments were not posted "last week" - they go back to July, because that's all the time I had to post links.

    4.
    - My posts on the subject go back to June and the comments at EPJ and elsewhere go back to 2010...and my criticisms of the Paul campaign go back even earlier.

    5.
    If I put too many links in one post, it might get rejected as link spam.

    6.
    But here are some more, not on Romney, specifically, but on the pandering in Paul's campaign:

    http://mindbodypolitic.com/2012/06/08/rand-paul-shows-true-colors/
    http://mindbodypolitic.com/2012/01/04/dominating-youth-vote-not-enough-for-paul-victory/
    http://mindbodypolitic.com/2011/10/11/rosannes-temple/

    Comment at Veterans Today:

    Lila Rajiva
    September 16, 2011 - 9:02 am

    Sibel,

    Here are some links that you and your readers might like to follow up on.
    As for me, I was never going to vote for Ron Paul. I don’t believe in political messiahs and no body can stop the flow of consequences.

    But I did support his campaign as an educational effort.

    Now I no longer do. I see far too much support for questionable people and positions on the main site that promotes Paul.

    I am sending you another interesting link about Fein:

    http://lukery.blogspot.com/2009/05/bruce-fein-turkey-and-armenian-genocide.html

    And FYI, I should point out that his pro-Tamil position exactly coincides with Wikileaks’ position in that region. If you dig further, you will find that the so-called extreme right, and so-called extreme left are simply a dog-and-pony show.

    We are talking about global supremacist thinking that goes beyond any country. It is the new transnational regime on human rights, but some human rights will be more equal than others.

    Thank you again for this. You are a brave and forthright woman."

    COMMENT AT DAILY BELL (2010)

    Posted by Lila Rajiva on 11/23/10 11:40 AM

    @Pisano.

    Why would it distract him?
    How hard is it to say, unequivocally, "Goldman Sachs and several other banks, are involved in corrupt actions and should be investigated and prosecuted."

    There. Back to "business."

    He certainly had no problem drawing a hard line over relatively trivial things like a monument to Rosa Parks. If he was really afraid of distraction, why would he make a fuss over something like that, and then on something crucial, suddenly go silent?

    Why doesn't he state clearly – "9-11 needs to be investigated. There is credible evidence that there was some kind of conspiracy involving intelligence agencies, US and foreign."

    I like Ron Paul and want to believe the best of him.
    But this excuse doesn't hold water for two seconds.

    MY RESPONSE (continued)

    7. I posted on Ron Paul pandering to the left (Romney is RINO) dozens of times at this blog (from everything about his position on earned income tax credits, to his support for OccupyWallStreet.

    8. It was Bob, not me, who has been promoting the Paul campaign.

    9. Why all the remarks about "heroics"? Did I mock Bob? Get a life.

    ReplyDelete
  12. ANONYMOUS TWO
    @Anonymous 2 at 4: 17 PM:

    1. Chill. I'm the one who told Bob to go on Lew Rockwell, I do believe, and a bunch of other tips..maybe he's forgotten.

    2. Stick to the topic and save the personalities for someone who cares.

    3. I'm just REFUTING Bob for his totally incorrect statement that I'm acting as if the Zoellick-is-Sachs story is news and that I was soft on Romney!

    a. I know it not news.

    b. I'm not the one making excuses for the financial industry.

    See here:
    Deep Capture:

    Lila Rajiva says:
    September 22, 2011 at 6:03 pm

    @Fabio Bossi

    Some of us have changed our minds about Dr. Paul’s campaign, after the hiring of Bruce Fein and the thundering silence about it.

    It was the final straw for me, after two years of watching LRC and its circle carry water for Milken, Boesky and Rich, defend Goldman Sachs and BP, pump the strictly-for-laughs J. Altucher, articulate the moral case for blackmail and bribery, defend the theft of IP and criminal assaults on privacy, confuse legitimate speculation with criminal manipulation, and publish every half-baked analysis of the financial crisis while ignoring the riveting and well-researched material at Deep Capture.

    I have come to the sad conclusion that despite their sterling anti-war and anti-police state commentaries, they speak with forked tongues.

    Publishing stuff you know won’t go anywhere, falling silent on crucial issues, and selling your soul for popularity with every shady denizen of the financial community is not my idea of truth-telling.

    This is not my opinion alone. In fact, I’m late seeing the light on it. Mea culpa.

    RP seems to be an honest man personally, but he didn’t stop anything while he was in government, even though he knew what was going on. He has ridiculed 9-11 truth, while riding to popularity on the backs of the 9-11 movement, said nothing about Goldman Sachs, and lately has been defending non-intervention as “good for Israel”. If you think government is such an absolute evil, why spend so much time politicking in the first place?

    Seems to me that “End the Fed” will not end the machinations of the power-elire. The locus of power will just shift elsewhere.

    To state it plainly, I have come to believe that RP, honest as he might be personally, will not stand in the way of the power elites.


    ANONYMOUS THREE:
    @Anonymous @4:27 PM

    How does this link contradict Wenzel's point:
    "Make no mistake, Zoellick is an elitist insider"?
    Wenzel's headline to this point is: "A Gold Bug as Secretary of State in a Romney Administration?"

    MY RESPONSE:

    1. I'm not refuting Wenzel. I'm telling him not to act as if Zoellick is in any way a GOOD GUY.

    2. The whole intention of this appt seems to be to co-opt the financial crowd.

    So when I see people, starting to act like Zoellick's not so bad, since he likes gold, I want to warn them.

    3. My point was made to refute Bob's attack on me (when I had not attacked him). It wasn't to one-up him, although apparently that's your point.

    4. Last thought: Maybe if you all would actually listen to other people's reasonable and politely expressed disagreements, instead of swarming them like kids in high school, then the campaign would have been held to account a long time ago and Romney might not be in office.

    But, no. Valid debate ends up in personalities.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Lila,

      For the record. I did not "go to" Lew Rockwell. It was only after he published me for six months at LRC (without any prompting from me)that I even as much as exchanged an email with Lew.

      Delete
    2. "To state it plainly, I have come to believe that RP, honest as he might be personally, will not stand in the way of the power elites."

      Lila,

      Even if we were to accept that premise (which I don't), what's to say that he wouldn't be "eliminated" soon enough, JFK style, thus rendering his work pointless? Isn't is better for him to get the people to stand in the "power elite's" way, making their goals next to impossible to achieve?

      Delete
  13. I don't why people have their panties in a wad about Rand Paul.

    We criticize politicians for betraying their rhetoric and becoming more hawkish/statist becasue its politically convenient, yet Rand does the opposite and he's somehow the spawn of Satan?

    Robert Zoellick signed the PNAC letter, making him responsible for at least 1 war.
    http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm

    Rand Paul Delayed WW3
    http://dailycaller.com/2011/12/05/rand-paul-prevents-war-with-russia/

    I love your work Mr. Wenzel. But in this case you let emotion lead logic, and lost that argument.

    ReplyDelete