Comments on economics, mystery fiction, drama, and art.

Monday, July 24, 2017

All those meetings

I am tired of hearing that the famous meeting between the team of Junior, Kushner, and Manafort and the Russian lawyer wound up being about Americans adopting Russian children.

The reason no adoptions are occurring is a Russian law prohibiting them. If Russia wants to resume adoptions, all it needs to do is *repeal that law.*
But, it might be objected, that law exists for a reason.

And what, we ask, is that reason?

It's that the US has a law restricting investments by American companies in Russian oil & gas extraction projects. And Russia insists that the US end those restrictions *before* it will *consider* resuming adoptions.

So that meeting? It was really an attempt to get the US to end economic sanctions against Russia. Nothing more.