For FIFA's Sepp Blatter it has not been a good year thanks to the US Department of Justice which in May, years if not decades after the entire world knew full well that FIFA is the second most corrupt and criminal organization in the world after Wall Street, decided to step in and spoil the racketeering and bribery party of 79-year-old Swiss.
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It is not clear why the DOJ, which has trillions in overt and covert criminality still left to tackle just on the island of Manhattan (or perhaps not, now that the statute of limitations on virtually all crimes has run out) decided to crack down on football, although according to many the ultimate target of this particular crackdown was none other than Russia's hosting of the 2018 World Cup, and therefore Obama's arch nemesis, Vladimir Putin.
So earlier today, it was Putin's turn to troll not only the DOJ, but also Barack Obama who is currently in Ethiopia as part of his African tour when in an interview aired by Swiss broadcaster RTS on Monday Putin said that Sepp Blatter deserves a Nobel Prize for his stewardship of soccer’s governing body.
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On Saturday, at a meeting with Putin in St Petersburg, Blatter said that FIFA, facing a major bribery scandal, had passed a resolution offering full support for holding the 2018 World Cup in Russia.
“We all know the situation developing around Mr Blatter right now. I don’t want to go into details but I don’t believe a word about him being involved in corruption personally,” he said.
“I think people like Mr Blatter or the heads of big international sporting federations, or the Olympic Games, deserve special recognition. If there is anyone who deserves the Nobel Prize, it’s those people.”
Putin's position is not surprising: in May, when the scandal broke, Putin harshly criticized the U.S. investigation into FIFA as meddling in matters that were outside its jurisdiction.
He rekindled that criticism in the interview broadcast on Monday, and widened it to include Britain, noting that those two countries had bid to host the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.
"The way there is this fight against corruption makes me wonder if it isn’t a continuation of the bids for 2018 and 2022."
It is, of course.
As for Putin's observation about Blatter's Nobel price eligibility, he clearly is qualified for the "Peace" version - after all he hasn't even droned thousands of innocent women and children to death - and considering how much Keynesian reconstruction, destructive as it may have been in the long-run, his World Cup awards have generated, not to mention illegal kickbacks for corrupt incompetent politicians, his "contribution" to the global economy and some of its most prominent thieves is well greater than that of Paul Krugman who is a mere op-ed scribbling dwarf by comparison.
As such, it is about time the Nobel prize farce finally made a full circle, and award Blatter the Nobels for both Peace and Economics, two fields which in the New Paranormal are anything but what they seem.
