Media Reports Heading into BRICS Summit

Here is a roundup of various media reports as we head into the BRICS Summit. It is already interesting to see the contrast in media reports on the BRICS between media related to those nations and western media (like the Blooomberg article we list below). Below are links to three articles out and some brief comments on each article.

First we will note this Bloomberg article titled "BRICS Fight Waning Clout with $150 Billion Deal in Brazil Summit". Funny, but you don't see any mention of the BRICS "Waning Clout" in the media articles coming from BRICS nation publications. Every article we have seen there touts the BRICS as having a significant % of the world population and GDP. This Blooomberg article is all about how this $150 Billion startup for the reserve fund and BRICS bank is too small to have any real impact on things. 

It raises questions about how the BRICS can really have much influence and says the individual countries have too many domestic issues to really become a formidable bloc right now. It quotes one expert as saying about the new reserve fund and BRICS bank, “The measures are more symbolic, designed to show they have alternative instruments to the IMF and World Bank.” 

So the first major article we find from a western media source basically yawns about the BRICS as a force to be reckoned with. The very attitude that irritates the BRICS.

Next we have this article where Russia does what we would expect. They use the BRICS summit to prove to the world that the US efforts to isolate Russia are failing. They expect the BRICS summit to rally behind them and issue a statement against the use of sanctions. They also intend to demonstrate that Russia is far from isolated in the world. They state that "the world" includes everybody, not just the US and some other western nations.

Then we have this article about another major nation in the BRICS (South Africa) arriving for the summit. Interestingly, this article makes it sound like that Russia jumped the gun in announcing that the new BRICS bank would be in China. This article suggests that an effort will be made to locate the bank in South Africa and says India and China would be OK with that. That gives another interesting item to watch during the summit.

In other news, as the Summit gets underway, we still have hot spots all over the world in the Ukraine, Iraq, and Isreal. Any or all of those could flare up into larger conflicts. All of them can also impact global energy supplies. So July is turning out to be an active month so far.