larry johnson shows you some more official foolishness aimed at the russians;

I don’t know US Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Scott Bessent, but I am told by people who worked with him on Wall Street that he is a really smart guy. But based on his most recent claim over the weekend that he believes a new round of sanctions — which includes shutting off the flow of Russian oil and natural gas to China and India — will collapse the Russian economy. Bessent’s statement tells me he understands nothing about the resilience of the Russian economy, nothing about the nature of Russia’s bilateral relations with India and China, and not a damn thing about Russia’s military industrial complex. In short, he may be really smart about trading bonds and securities on Wall Street, but he’s a dummy when it comes to Russia and its economy.

The belief in Washington policy circles that the Russian economy can be collapsed is not a new goal hatched by Bessent. That scenario figured prominently in the Rand Corporation’s April 2019 report, which was prepared for the US Department of Defense — Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground. The authors assessed the Russia economy in 2019 as follows:...........more..........