A Non-Musical Musical Interlude -- July 3, 2023

Locator: 45882RUSSIA. 

There are reports that "some Russians" were sent $6 billion by the US / CIA as a special type of "GoFundMe" request to help make this happen (see below). It appeared neither Vladimir nor General Prigozhin were able to get this ball rolling without some outside funding.

There are rumors that some folks in Washington, DC, did not support this but the president stepped in and said, "Let It Be." 

So, with a "Little Help From Their Friends" in the CIA (?), the Russians "forced" a merger. 

And that, boys and girls, is how Big Finance does things.

Tomorrow: how to use a viral pandemic to "GoFundMe" to keep the US bull market going for the Big Banks on Wall Street. Spoiler alert -- it ensured the banks would "pass" the stress test so the banks could reward their shareholders with big dividend increases. ABBA helps explain it with "Gimme Gimme Gimme" and "The Winner Takes It All." 

"Money, Money, Money."

Wednesday: George Harrison, and "Taxman."

Re-posting:

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Meanwhile Putin Takes Charge:
A Corporate Takeover Of Wagner

Link to The WSJ. 

The story begins:

In the wake of a mutiny that almost reached Moscow, Vladimir Putin is facing a new test—managing one of the most complex corporate takeovers in history.

Inside the Wagner Group’s sealed-off glass tower headquarters in St. Petersburg, agents from the Federal Security Services, or FSB, have been scouring the offices for evidence against Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Wagner chief who led last month’s insurrection.

New Kremlin-backed military contractors are launching recruiting drives on Russian social-media networks with recruitment ads to poach some of Wagner’s 30,000 mercenaries, hackers and moneymen, whom the longtime ally of President Putin deployed to Ukraine, the Middle East and Africa.

Across St. Petersburg, Russian law enforcement took computers and servers at Prigozhin’s Patriot Media Group, a key piece of a communication empire that once included the Internet Research Agency, the social-media organization that pumped millions of pro-Kremlin messages onto social-media channels and caused mayhem in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, according to staff and text messages reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. A likely new owner of Patriot Media, the messages say, is National Media Group, chaired by Alina Kabaeva, the Washington-sanctioned rhythm gymnast the U.S. government believes to be the mother of at least three of Putin’s children.