Our values: we LOVE corruption and kleptocracy
Key Markets report for Thursday, 26 February 2026
Keele University in Staffordshire, UK runs a program called the “Keele World Affairs” series. It is a prestigious speaker series featuring high level intellectuals, thought leaders and public officials. From their website: “Members of the House of Lords speak at Keele World Affairs, along with diplomats, academics from Britain’s leading universities, national journalists, and other prominent figures.”
The institution touts its long-running programme as “an authentic contribution to the public good,” and proclaims that, “nothing equivalent exists elsewhere in Europe and North America.” Earlier this month, Keele World Affairs featured British historian Mark Galeotti who gave a fascinating lecture titled, “Can The West ever be Reconciled with Russia?”
Galeotti’s lecture was particularly fascinating because it revealed important insights into the British establishment’s mindset. For starters, he speaks with an almost insufferable smugness and pomposity, matching his racist contempt for the Russian people. At one point, he muses about the future of Russia, “if Putin doesn’t wake up one morning.”
“So, Putin is going to be around until illness or maybe some kind of political intrigue... or just death does the job. I don’t know if people have seen the film, ‘Death of Stalin.’ It’s a brilliant, gloriously black comedy. But in many ways I think it does represent one of the best indications we’ve got of what’s going to happen if Putin doesn’t wake up one morning.”
The problem, as Galeotti puts it, is that “there’s no one individual; no one institution strong enough to simply step into his shoes.” He knows this about Russia for certain, no evidence needed, so when Putin goes, everything could be up for grabs. When that happens, Galeotti hopes that the post-Putin Russia will be returned to “pragmatic thieves,” who will loot the country “on an industrial scale” and spend the proceeds in the West.
We support pragmatic thieves
In other words, he regards these “pragmatic thieves” as Britain’s ideal partners. They are not “nice people,” warned Galeotti, who seems to believe that he and his audience are clearly better: his eloquence, posh accent and smug superiority all in display. He elaborated:
“These people are usually well padded, affluent, pragmatic kleptocrats. They just want to be able to steal. Steal on an industrial scale and then enjoy that. And, look, I’m sure Dubai’s very nice. But when it comes down to it, Russians consider themselves to be Europeans. And where do Russians want to look to safely bank their money, but also to spend it?
What’s the point of being obscenely rich if you can’t send your wife clothes shopping in Paris and your mistress clothes shopping in Milan? If you can’t enjoy that nice penthouse in London that you bought and send your kids to a prestigious American University and moor your yachts safely off the Riviera. All of these are things and indeed just get spare parts for your BMW.”
But Galeotti’s remark that these not nice people want to loot Russia “on an industrial scale,” could be one of the most extraordinary examples of tone-deaf projection: looting on an industrial scale is precisely what the British establishment has been doing around the world for centuries. The key two minutes of Galeotti’s lecture are below:
Faith in corruption and kleptocracy
Yet somehow, not only is professor Galeotti not embarrassed to say this, he appears quite pleased with himself in saying it and continues:
“What am I putting my faith in? I’m putting my faith in corruption and kleptocracy; that, in fact, we can deal with pragmatic thieves - well, particularly in Britain because we do it all the time and we’re really rather good at it.”
This is precisely what the British establishment does and wishes to perpetuate forever. The surreal aspect of Galeotti’s faith is that it entails a callous disregard for the victims for these “pragmatic kleptocrats,” and their “industrial scale” looting. Once upon a time, Russia did fall under exactly this sort of “not nice” people and they behaved exactly the way Galeotti describes: they had yachts moored on the Riviera, sent their wives shopping in Paris and their mistresses to Milan, they had penthouses in London and banked their money safely with Western banks. The same is true for Ukraine since it introduced “democracy and freedom,” and the same is true for every resource rich nation that partners with the British establishment.
But looting on “industrial scale” impoverishes the large majority of ordinary people in all these countries around the world. Russia was ruled by “pragmatic kleptocrats” during the 1990s and the effects were catastrophic, as we discussed recently:
In the 1990s, Russia experienced the longest economic depression recorded anywhere during the 20th century; her GDP fell by 50%, which was worse even than during the German invasion in World War II; death rate soared by 60% to a level only experienced by countries at war.
From 1992 to 2000, Russia sustained between five and six million excess deaths that couldn’t be explained by normal population trends. That figure represented between 3.4% and 4% of Russia’s total population, many times more than countries like Britain, France, the U.S. and China lost during World War II (Britain lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the US lost 0.32%).
But at that time, Western powers loved Russia and its President Boris Yeltsin. They all thought it was cute and amusing that he worked two hours a day and was drunk most of the time. He was a democrat and that’s all that mattered. Now that Russia is resurrected under Vladimir Putin’s competent leadership, we feel fully justified in feeding a hysterical hatred toward him and daydream about a future when pragmatic kleptocrats will once more take over.
We’ll celebrate them as champions of democracy and human rights and richly reward them with honors, privileges, wealth, and who knows, occasional vacations with underage boys or girls on some private Caribbean islands arranged by our good, democratical intelligence services.
Importance of the “bling” weapon
Another relevant aspect of Galeotti’s lecture is that it admits that the West’s key attractors with which to incentivize these “not nice” pragmatic kleptocrats is the bling factor, corroborating what I wrote about in this report last September, including the fact that China has now taken aim at this weapon:
The takeaway of that article is that “the other side” understands very well what “we’re really rather good at” and have taken strategic aim at neutralizing the West’s bling factor. It could turn out that Galeotti’s musing amount to little more than wishful thinking and nostalgia for times that will never come back.
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Today’s trading signals
With yesterday’s closing prices we have the following changes for the Key Markets portfolio:
