William Engdahl is one of the world's top geopolitical analysts. His books - from Century of War to Full Spectrum Dominance - are absolutely essential to understand how the self-described exceptional nation created and expanded its global hegemony tentacles.
A measure of his influence is that as much as Engdahl may be dismissed or derided across the Beltway, the usual suspects do read him - and are incapable of finding conclusive arguments to prove him wrong.
This extensive interview by financial journalist Lars Schall is largely centered on Chapter 3 - The Rape of Russia - of Engdahl's new book Manifest Destiny: Democracy as Cognitive Dissonance.
Here you will find all you need to know about the genesis of the 1990s Russian oligarchs; the dirty deals of the Yeltsin mafia; everything from the plunder of Soviet gold to the dodgy operations of the elder Bush's brother; the incredible Yamashita gold story; the "privatization coupon" scam; the way the Harvard mafia run the Russian economy - all the way to Putin's uphill battle throughout the 2000s to turn Russia into a functioning economy as NATO kept marching east.
As Engdahl notes, if we don't understand what happened in Russia in the 1990s it's absolutely impossible to contextualize the neocons and US Think Tankland's deep hatred and 24/7 demonization campaign of Putin's Russia.
So sit back, relax, enjoy the crash course and keep it as an essential reference you will find nowhere else.
The Rape of Russia (full transcript)
Engdahl spends ten + minutes or so talking about the Russian gold heist that was laundered by the usual suspects and the Yamashita gold looting of China and other parts of Asia during the fifty or so years from 1945. Allegedly, this was stashed away in the Philippines and Pres. Marcos seemed to have dug some up and then tried to sell it to Khashoggi, who double crossed him with the Bush-gang.
This whole Yamashita gold business came up in a book of fiction by author Neal Stephenson titled 'Cryptonomicon'(1999) that was a pretty good read. Like Engdahl mentions, in Neal's book the gold was hidden in engineered constructed caves (very elaborately built ones).