first to give money to the poor, then as a painter of realistic-looking images of notes....

THERE is no surprise in the fact that hardly anybody here knows the name: Victor Dubreuil. Not many did anywhere — whether in his native France, or in the US where he eventually settled down — even when he was still around. A recent article on him opens like this: “In October 1893, an unidentified reporter for the New York World visited Victor Dubreuil’s studio on West Forty-Fourth Street to ask him about his deceptively realistic paintings of United States currency."

Several of his pictures had drawn public interest when they were displayed over the bar in a Seventh Avenue saloon. What the journalist found, when the door opened, was a kindly, 51-year-old, virtually penniless Frenchman who spoke heavily-accented English and shared his accommodations with a young nephew.” This man, ‘portly of form with dark eyes, and a grizzled black beard’, appeared keen on not being recognised.

In some of his paintings of currency notes, there were hidden meanings, inserted clues and dates, and he signed each of his works to make sure that they were not meant to pass off as real notes

There was reason for this: he had had a shadowed past in his own country. Born in 1842 at Ayrton near Poitiers, this son of a landowner grew up to join the French army as a young soldier, some 20-odd years of age, and fought in two wars on behalf of his country. Then, having had a good education, he settled down in Paris, and worked for some time as the director of a bank. But, by 1881, he had become a ‘socialist agitator’; he co-partnered the founding of a newspaper called La politique d’action — ‘the Politics of Action’ — which did not succeed.

He then nursed the ambition to establish a Franco-African development company that would do for his country ‘what the East India Company had done for England and for India’, but with a difference. Any financial rewards that came from it would go ‘not to the capitalist but to the working man’. Nothing was working, however, except that by this time one knows in what direction his own mind was moving.

Having tried many things — from land-owning to soldiering, from banking to entrepreunership — one can guess that one day something was going to break. That day came early in 1881. On that day — apparently part of his ongoing efforts — he stole more than five hundred thousand francs from his bank and vanished. When the theft was discovered, the police thought he must have disappeared in neighbouring Holland. The machinery went into action: an extradition warrant was issued on the basis of his crime of forgery and misappropriation of funds. But, having made his plans carefully, Victor Dubreuil was by then moving to that distant land of opportunity: the United States. He arrived in New York in June 1882.

In all this, one must be wondering where does Dubreuil’s work on painted money come in. Oddly enough, in the midst of all these turbulent moves, he did pick up painting. After four months of work as a stable boy soon after he arrived, he began to teach himself to paint and found that he was very good at it. He began to paint still life, genre scenes, landscapes and even portraits. He even started to sell his works and succeeded: not on a grand scale but slowly. By the time he became a natural citizen of the United States, his certification of naturalisation described him simply as an ‘artist’.

In all this, his socialist leanings never left him. The writer of the article I referred to above emphasises that when he began to paint very realistic-looking — trompe l’oiel — images of US dollars and other currency notes, his intention was never to fake — there were enough fakers in the country around — but to engage people with money for a different end. There is little doubt that he came under surveillance by the US authorities repeatedly, for they were hunting for fakers, but nothing was proven against him. One of his most famous works, ‘Barrels of Money’, which shows casks overflowing with stuffed currency notes and spilling out, was even confiscated. But there was no real money in the painting, not even a suggestion of it. In some of his paintings of currency notes, there were hidden meanings, inserted clues and dates, and he signed each of his work to make sure that they were not meant to pass off as real notes. What he brought to his work was satire, a sense of humanising humour. The barrels of money that he painted in eight different versions were ‘imaginary creations that called attention to human greed’. As another writer has said that in them ‘the viewer is presented with the illusion of un-obtainable riches’. Dubreuil, in fact, toys at times with the viewers’ desire for a better life, tempting them with fortune. Or was it that he wanted to ‘touch upon the struggle between wealth and poverty in American society’?

It is not easy to comprehend all this: the turns and twists of the mind of a talented man in whose heart a battle was raging all the time, as it were. To make good in life, but in an honest manner using subtle means? Whatever the case, Dubreuil returned to France in 1900. Evaluation of his work had gone through a change. As Dorinda Evans says: “Like ‘The Eye of the Artist’, ‘Don’t Make a Move!’, ‘Safe Money’ and ‘The Cross of Gold’ (titles of some of his best known works), the works have to be chewed on to get out their marrow-like essence. They provide an intriguing, hint-based game of guessing. As is evident, they also tend to involve a moralising twist.”

https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/features/victor-dubreuil-and-his-illusory-wealth-481169

doing the switch....

Renowned economist Nouriel Roubini, who predicted the global financial crisis of 2008, has issued a grim assessment of US banking sector's status.

In an opinion piece for Project Syndicate, Roubini, dubbed ‘Doctor Doom’ by Wall Street for his tendency toward bleak predictions, claimed that most US banks are “technically near insolvency,” with hundreds already “fully insolvent.”

The comments came weeks after the US banking sector was hit by a wave of failures after the collapses of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank. The turmoil spread to Europe, engulfing Switzerland’s second-largest lender Credit Suisse, which was forced to merge with rival investment bank UBS.

According to the analyst, the pandemic-related economic decline aggravated the underlying vulnerabilities in the country’s financial system, leaving many financial institutions in shaky positions.

https://www.rt.com/business/573971-doom-roubini-us-banks-insolvency/

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While the Federal Reserve has made no decisions on whether to pursue or implement a central bank digital currency, or CBDC, we have been exploring the potential benefits and risks of CBDCs from a variety of angles, including through technological research and experimentation. Our key focus is on whether and how a CBDC could improve on an already safe and efficient U.S. domestic payments system.

CBDC is generally defined as a digital liability of a central bank that is widely available to the general public. Today in the United States, Federal Reserve notes (i.e., physical currency) are the only type of central bank money available to the general public. Like existing forms of money, a CBDC would enable the general public to make digital payments. As a liability of the Federal Reserve, however, a CBDC would be the safest digital asset available to the general public, with no associated credit or liquidity risk.

The Federal Reserve Board has issued a discussion paper that examines the pros and cons of a potential U.S. CBDC. As part of this process, we sought public feedback on a range of topics related to CBDC. The Federal Reserve is committed to hearing a wide range of voices on these topics.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/central-bank-digital-currency.htm

Why the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) is Being Replaced

LIBOR is a benchmark rate that’s used to calculate interest in a variety of financial contracts. It’s been used around the world for decades, and shows up in commercial loans, derivatives, small business transactions, and even some consumer products like student loans.

Today, U.S. dollar LIBOR is the most popular global benchmark for short-term interest rates, and represents $200 trillion of financial contracts and securities. But industry experts have started seeking LIBOR alternatives, due to changes in the rate’s transparency and reliability.

Over time, the underlying market that determines LIBOR has stopped having a significant transaction volume. This means LIBOR is often based on the judgement of a panel of banks rather than on robust market data, impacting its credibility.

For those reasons, LIBOR is being phased out over the next few years. After December 31, 2021, ICE Benchmark Administration (IBA) will stop publishing all non-USD LIBOR rates and some USD LIBOR rates. As a result, Capital One will stop originating new products using LIBOR by the end of 2021. By the end of June 2023, banks won’t be required to submit the information that’s used to calculate USD LIBOR. With LIBOR on its way out, the industry is leaning towards the Secured Overnight Financing Rate (SOFR) as a replacement.

Replacing USD LIBOR with a Transaction-Based Rate: SOFR

While there are a number of reference rates that could take USD LIBOR’s place, SOFR is the leading contender to replace USD LIBOR. Based on a few key factors, it's the official recommendation of the Alternative Reference Rates Committee (ARRC), the U.S. industry group convened by the Federal Reserve Board and the New York Fed that is guiding the LIBOR transition.

The main difference between SOFR and LIBOR is how the rates are produced. While LIBOR is based on panel bank input, SOFR is a broad measure of the cost of borrowing cash overnight collateralized by U.S. Treasury securities in the repurchase agreement (repo) market. The transaction volumes underlying SOFR regularly are around $1 trillion in daily volumes. The Repo market’s large transaction volume gives the ARRC confidence that SOFR will be reliable through a wide range of market conditions, making it a good long-term option to replace LIBOR.

https://www.capitalone.com/commercial/solutions/libor-sofr/

NO WONDER RUSSIA AND CHINA ARE GOING AWAY FROM ALL THIS TRICKERY:

By Vijay Prashad

Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

On March 20, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin spent over four hours in private conversation. According to official statements after the meeting, the two leaders talked about the increasing economic and strategic partnership between China and Russia — including building the Power of Siberia 2 pipeline — and the Chinese peace initiative for the war in Ukraine.

Putin said that “many of the provisions of the peace plan put forward by China are consonant with Russian approaches and can be taken as the basis for a peaceful settlement when the West and Kiev are ready for it.”

These steps towards peace have not received a warm welcome in Washington. Ahead of Xi’s visit to Moscow, John Kirby, the spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, declared that any “call for a ceasefire” in Ukraine by China and Russia would be “unacceptable.”

As details of the meeting emerged, U.S. officials reportedly expressed fear that the world might embrace China and Russia’s efforts to secure a peaceful resolution and end the war. The Atlantic powers are, in fact, redoubling their efforts to prolong the conflict.

On the day of the meeting between Xi and Putin, the United Kingdom’s minister of state at the Ministry of Defence, Baroness Annabel Goldie, told the House of Lords that “[a]longside our granting of a squadron of Challenger 2 main battle tanks to Ukraine, we will be providing ammunition including armour-piercing rounds which contain depleted uranium.”

Goldie’s statement came on the 20th anniversary of the U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq, in which the West used depleted uranium on the Iraqi population to deleterious effect. In reference to the U.K.’s provision of depleted uranium to Ukrainian forces, Putin said that “it seems that the West really has decided to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian — no longer in words, but in deeds.” In response, Putin said that Russia would deploy tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus.

Within China, Xi’s visit to Russia was widely discussed with a general sense of pride that China’s government is taking leadership both to block the ambitions of the West and to seek peace in the conflict. These discussions, reflected in journals and on social media platforms such as WeChat, Douyin, Weibo, LittleRedBook, Bilibili and Zhihu, emphasised how China, a developing country, has nonetheless been able to overcome its limitations and take on a leadership position in the world.

These discussions within China are largely unavailable to people outside the country for at least three reasons: first, they take place in Chinese and are not often translated into other languages; second, they take place on social media platforms that, in addition to being in Chinese, are not used by people from outside the Chinese-speaking community; and third, growing Sinophobia, stemming from a longstanding colonial history of thought and exacerbated by the New Cold War, has deepened a disregard for discussions in China that do not adopt the Western worldview.

For these reasons, and more, there is a genuine lack of understanding about the range of opinions in China concerning the shifts in the world order and the country’s role in these shifts.

Within China, there is a rich tradition of intellectual debate that takes place in journals inspired in one way or another by Chen Duxiu’s New Youth, first published in 1915. In the first issue of that journal, Chen (1879–1942), who was a founding member of the Communist Party of China, published a letter to the youth which included a list of admonitions that seems to have set the terms for the intellectual agenda of the next hundred years:

Be independent and not enslaved
Be progressive and not conservative

Be in the forefront and not lagging behind
Be internationalist and not isolationist

Be practical and not rhetorical

Be scientific and not superstitious

The experience of New Youth set in motion journal after journal, each with an agenda to build more adequate theories about developments in China that seek to establish the country’s sovereignty and lift them out of the so-called century of humiliation, a period that was characterised by Western and Japanese imperialist intervention.

In 2008, several leading intellectuals in the country founded a journal, Wenhua Zongheng, which has increasingly become a platform to debate what Xi called the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.” The bi-monthly journal features the country’s leading voices, who offer various perspectives on important issues of the day such as the state of the post-Covid-19 world and the importance of rural revitalisation.

Last year, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and Dongsheng began a conversation with the editors of Wenhua Zongheng which led to the production of a quarterly international edition of the journal. Through this partnership, select essays from the Chinese editions of the journal are translated into English, Portuguese and Spanish, and an additional column is featured in the Chinese edition that brings voices from Africa, Asia and Latin America into dialogue with China. The first issue of this international edition (Vol. 1, No. 1) was launched this week, with the theme “On the Threshold of a New International Order.”

This issue features three essays by leading scholars in China — Yang Ping (editor of Wenhua Zongheng), Yao Zhongqiu (professor at the School of International Studies and dean of the Centre for Historical Political Studies, Renmin University of China) and Cheng Yawen (dean of the Department of Political Science at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs, Shanghai International Studies University), as well as my brief editorial.

Both Professors Yao and Cheng discuss the changes in the current international order, mainly the decline of U.S. unipolarity and the emergence of regionalism.

Professor Yao’s contribution, which goes back to the Ming dynasty (1388–1644), makes the case that the changes taking place today are not necessarily the creation of a new order, but the return of a more balanced world system as China “revives” its place in the world and as the ambitions of the U.S. find their limits in the emergence of key countries in developing countries, including China, India and Brazil.

All three essays focus on the importance of China’s role in the developing world, both in economic terms (such as through the 10-year-old Belt and Road Initiative, or BRI) and in political terms (such as through China’s attempt to restart a peace process in Ukraine).

Editor Yang Ping is firm in his view that “China’s historical destiny is to stand with the Third World,” both because — despite its major advances — China remains a developing country and because China’s insistence upon multilateralism, as Professor Cheng argues, means that it does not seek to displace the U.S. and become a new global hegemon.

Yang ends his account with three considerations: first, that China must not be led merely by commercial interests but must “prioritise what is necessary to ensure strategic survival and national development;” second, that China must intervene in debates about the new international system by introducing the BRI’s principles of “consultation, contribution and shared benefits,” which include seeking to expand the zone of peace against the habits of war; and third, that China must encourage the creation of an institutional mechanism beyond economic cooperation — such as a “Development International” — to promote the genuine sovereignty of nations, the dignity of peoples faced with the International Monetary Fund’s debt-austerity trap and a new internationalism.

The perspectives of Yang, Yao and Chen are essential reading as part of an important initiative for global dialogue. The second edition of Wenhua Zongheng will focus on China’s path to modernisation.

As the United States pushes for a major power conflict in the Asia-Pacific, it is essential to develop lines of communication and build bridges towards mutual understanding between China, the West and the developing world. As I wrote in the closing words of my editorial, “[i]nstead of the global division pursued by the New Cold War, our mission is to learn from each other towards a world of collaboration rather than confrontation.”

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and, with Noam Chomsky, The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

This article is from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/31/china-the-developing-world/

READ FROM TOP.

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

A MEMORANDUM OF NON AGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....

By Gus Leonisky at 2 Apr 2023 - 5:16am
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digi-dollar.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbu8Ph1QbeM

You’ll be able to tell your kids about how the US dollar was once the strongest currency in the world, and you were there to watch it fall into ruin. This week the federal reserve rolls out the first stages of the new US digital dollar, which will bring about more control and surveillance of Americans. At the same time, China and Saudi Arabia are moving to settle oil transactions in the Chinese Yuan currency. What does it all mean for the US dollar?

FREE JULIAN ASSANGE NOW....