The United States appears prepared to restart the Cold War and loan at least $1 billion of our tax money to Ukraine through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Why? In this episode, we look at what we're asking for in Ukraine in return for our generosity. Executive Producer: Anonymous * For an excellent perspective on the Russian invasion of Crimea, listen to Episode 270: Poking the Bear and Episode 271: Cashing the Doomsday Cheque of Common Sense with Dan Carlin. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans struggling countries money but in return the IMF demands that the country change its economic laws to make them much more corporate friendly. As explained in the The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, there are three economic principles that the free marketeers want their target countries to adhere to: Governments must remove all rules and regulations standing in the way of the accumulations of profits. Governments should sell off any assets they own that corporations could be running at a profit. Governments should dramatically cut back funding of social programs. In Ukraine's case, Their elected government - an elected government that had recently backed out of a "free trade" deal with Europe and was recently cut off from promised IMF cash because it didn't change Ukraine's economic laws - was overthrown and it was replaced by an IMF-friendly government, which has restarted the "free trade" deal with Europe and has promised to enact the "painful" IMF economic reforms. The new government is currently being promised $27 billion. "You know that we resumed talks with the IMF, we do understand that these are tough reforms, but these reforms are needed for the Ukrainian state. We are back on track in terms of delivering real reforms in my country. Probably in the near future, next week, or in ten days, Ukraine is to sign the political part of an association agreement with the European Union and we want to be very clear that Ukraine is and will be a part of the Western world." -Interim Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, March 12, 2014 Our government is supporting this new government. Here's my answer to "Why?". Potential Profits in Ukraine The two most promising areas are in energy and agriculture. First, energy. Poor Ukraine has the potential to become filthy rich because of the country's untapped natural gas supplies. Ukraine has not one, but two, big shale formations that are mostly unfracked. Ukraine is completely hooked on natural gas for energy, but they have been buying it from Russia. Russia has been giving Ukrainians discounts on their natural gas that keep Ukrainian's prices just low enough that Ukraine's natural gas company hasn't bothered to start fracking at home. And yes, that's the other thing. Ukraine's natural gas industry is nationalized. Ukraine's natural gas belongs to the state, it belongs to the government, it belongs to the people. In fact, in 2011, Ukrainians passed a law that said that all natural gas fracked in Ukraine must be sold to Ukrainians. No exports allowed. What that means for The People is that they will be able to use their own resources for energy - become energy independent, if you will. What that means for multinational fossil fuel corporations is that they can't profit from exporting Ukraine's nationalized natural gas. According to Morgan Williams, President and CEO of the US-Ukraine Business Council, "The new prime minister says he wants to privatize the state-owned energy companies." Second, agriculture is big business in Ukraine. Ukraine has been nicknamed the "breadbasket of Europe" for centuries and in January, The Financial Times called Ukraine "one of the world's most promising agriculture commodity producers". The reason is that in 2013, Ukraine had their best year ever for corn. The market is practically drooling over the prospects of getting control of this land. Morgan Williams, President and CEO of the US-Ukraine Business Council - the group I