04/13/07
Is it a blunt threat or just bluster? The exiled Russian gazillionaire Boris Berezovsky tells the Guardian that he's financing a palace coup in Moscow with the help of people close to the regime of President Vladimir Putin:
"We need to use force to change this regime," he said. "It isn't possible to change this regime through democratic means. There can be no change without force, pressure." Asked if he was effectively fomenting a revolution, he said: "You are absolutely correct."
Although Mr Berezovsky, with an estimated fortune of £850m, may have the means to finance such a plot, and although he enjoyed enormous political influence in Russia before being forced into exile, he said he could not provide details to back up his claims because the information was too sensitive.
Maybe this is simply intended to make Putin paranoid, drive him to carry out some sort of Stalinesque purge of his own ranks…only in this case, it would likely make him appear weaker in the eyes of his countrymen, prone to panic, reminscent of his less-than-stellar handling of the Kursk submarine disaster during his early days in office.
There are no white hats in this long-running feud — the autocratic ex-KGB man Putin versus the oligarchs who plundered their country in the 90s — and a lot of it has to do with Russia's energy resources. It's one of the areas of focus in a new special report from Strategic Investment's Dan Amoss. You can read it right here.
Dave Gonigam
Treading a fine line between contrarian thinking and conspiracy theory, Dave Gonigam explores the nexus of finance, politics, and the media for Agora Financial's 5 Minute Forecast. He joined kindred spirits at Agora Financial in 2007 after a 20-year career as an Emmy award-winning writer, producer, and manager in local TV newsrooms nationwide.
The Daily Reckoning is your premier source for making sense of the news Washington and Wall Street generate. Each business day, The Daily Reckoning calls on its stable of world-class writers and thinkers to show you how to get ahead.
Start your 100% FREE subscription to The Daily Reckoning today and you’ll get a free research report, “How to Survive the Fall of Social Security.” Simply enter your email address below to get your free report and join over 495,000 worldwide Daily Reckoning subscribers!
We Respect Your Privacy and We will
Never Share or Sell Your Email Address
After reading your vitriolic comments, it is apparent that not all the crackpots are in Washington!
Dan Amoss might have amissed something in his strategic investment “special report”. The Shia population of Saudi Arabia is about 5%, hardly a majority.
Wow, looks like the folks at DR have sunk to a new low, using a misleading blog entry to promote their own hype. Previously that award was held by the promotion of an “Invest in Ethanol” pitch following an article discussing why ethanol is a political scam not a solution. It took little ole me to alert that author that he was being abused, and we both wondered what kind of debt held Mr. Bonner to such low standards of integrity.
I seriously do not understand the ideas behind the functions of Agora Publishing. Instead of continually improving the site to draw more traffic, it gets worse, and I find myself coming here less and less.
An example is the always day to day and half late “daily” reckoning. For something usually written in Europe, why it doesn’t see the light of day until sunset in the US? Or isn’t updated for 2 or 3 days?
It seems to me that the layout of the articles on the site is meant to do nothing but confuse people into generating more clicks as articles are broken into pieces to be used as a completely “new” article in the future (especially the Mogambo Guru). To parade around dated material as new does nothing to serve anyone.
What is most ironic to me is that I actually completed a user survey one time, which they then used to make the site less usable. As I stated in the survey, I visited the site daily, and read everything posted. If there was anything I needed, it was a better system to make sure I didn’t miss anything new.
But now I cannot tell when and where new articles exist as they do not appear in any rational manner. I’ve since taken to visiting the archives, where I’ve noticed many times that this is the first place they appear.
To be honest, this behavior makes me wonder about just who Mr. Bill Bonner is. When I read his writings, I feel like he is one of the most rational people I have ever read (and I want him to be my best friend), but when I look at his company, and its behavior, I’m absolutley stunned at how manipulative these people are in their daily work.
It was this reason that I didn’t attend the Wealth Symposium in Vancouver, even though I really, really wanted to, and had started making plans to go.
On another note, I notice that since Agora has switched the Mogambo to an RSS feed, I no longer have access to his articles for my Wednesday lunch hour. So I’m left with the fact that either, today it is a coincidence, or that Agora has broken my access to information for their own purposes. Are you guys the gatekeepers for the Mogambo?
I absolutely loved the DR website when I first discovered it (I even purchased Mr. Bonner’s Kondratieff books), but the longer I’m here the less satisfied I become, as I see the goal being abuse of the reader in exchange for a few pennies.
It isn’t “right,” and it most certainly isn’t what I expect from Mr. Bonner and associates.
In closing,
WTF?