Here’s a screed (NYT) that puts some of the rhetoric around the Ukraine crisis in perspective. If the Europeans were truly concerned about Russia’s shenanigans, they have the leverage to impose huge damage. London alone could bring many Russian oligarchs to their knees – in ways the US cannot. But London isn’t. Just follow the money:
Russians … know that London is a center of Russian corruption, that their loot plunges into Britain’s empire of tax havens — from Gibraltar to Jersey, from the Cayman Islands to the British Virgin Islands — on which the sun never sets. British residency is up for sale. “Investor visas” can be purchased, starting at £1 million ($1.6 million). London lawyers in the Commercial Court now get 60 percent of their work from Russian and Eastern European clients. More than 50 Russia-based companies swell the trade at London’s Stock Exchange. The planning regulations have been scrapped, and along the Thames, up and up go spires of steel and glass for the hedge-funding class.
Britain’s bright young things now become consultants, art dealers, private bankers and hedge funders. Or, to put it another way, the oligarchs’ valets.
One suspects that Crimea is a small price to pay in return.
The Dish 