Craig Murray: Profiteering from Death
Craig Murray, Consortium News, Murray says energy giants such as Shell are not alone in profiting from the war in Ukraine. Everybody with a finger in the pie is clamoring to send more tanks and planes.
How much of Shell’s record $40 billion profit was due to the Ukraine war and freezing Russia out of the market?
If you apply the “excess deaths” methodology we became familiar with during Covid, comparing profit against a running average of the previous five years, [from 2017 to 2021], we get a figure of about $25 billion “excess profit.”
This is of course a rough technique, both with deaths as with profits, as neither Covid nor the Ukraine war were the sole factor affecting the outcome, and “all other things” are not equal but in some degree variable.
But it is a good indication when a major new factor comes in to play.
If we simply remove Shell’s 2020 accounts, with their $20 billion Covid loss, from the equation as exceptional, we still have a figure of $15 billion excess profit, arising largely from the war in Ukraine.
Isn’t it good to know that all those people have not died or been maimed in vain? At least Shell is raking it in.
Shell of course, is not alone. We are seeing something similar from all the energy companies, including those that are billing you massive amounts to heat your home. It isn’t costing any more to produce the energy, it is simply vulture predation on market disruption.
[Related: US Utility Giants Reap Huge Profits as Households Struggle]
Capitalism in theory works in free markets of trade flows. But in practice financial flows are manipulated by states to the benefit of the rich in numerous ways, of which war and sanctions are just the bluntest examples.
The United States blowing up the Nordstream pipelines, according to Seymour Hersh, was a pretty significant state market intervention. Yet when the result of that kind of action is to cause super profits to Western energy companies at consumer expense, market intervention to remove that super profit becomes “unhelpful.”
[Related: DIANA JOHNSTONE: Omerta in the Gangster War and SCOTT RITTER: Pipelines v. USA]
Arms manufacturers are also coining it. By December, investors in merchants of death BAE had seen an increase in value of their investment by 63 percent in 12 months. Now everybody with a finger in the pie is clamouring to send more tanks and planes to the Ukraine. Money, money, money.
The story is no different at Lockheed Martin etc.
We should also not forget that the military and security services are themselves a vested financial interest. Vastly rising budgets, more career opportunities, more second career jobs in the arms industries and the think tanks that pump out the propaganda for more war, war without end.
I have said this before, but J. A. Hobson’s short book, Imperialism: A Study contains analysis of how all this works that stands true over a hundred years on, is expressed with clarity, and fundamentally changed how I view the world, when I read it 40 years ago.
There is yet more acceleration in the massive transfer of resources to the wealthy.
Every world event — Covid, the war in Ukraine — is manipulated by states to increase inequality. Oxfam, who seem the most genuine of the large relief charities (admittedly not a high bar), recently published this:
“Billionaires have seen extraordinary increases in their wealth. During the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis years since 2020, $26 trillion (63 percent) of all new wealth was captured by the richest 1 percent, while $16 trillion (37 percent) went to the rest of the world put together. A billionaire gained roughly $1.7 million for every $1 of new global wealth earned by a person in the bottom 90 percent. Billionaire fortunes have increased by $2.7 billion a day. This comes on top of a decade of historic gains —the number and wealth of billionaires having doubled over the last ten years. “
In this Western world, I am not sure what percentage of ordinary people have to reach what stage of desperation before we see the start of genuine revolt. Should things continue on this trend, we are going to find out eventually.
Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010. His coverage is entirely dependent on reader support. Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk.