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Izabella Kaminska
Senior Finance Editor at Politico Europe + Founder Editor of The Blind Spot
Professional Background
Izabella Kaminska is a distinguished journalist with an extensive background in finance, media, and digital information organization. Her professional journey has taken her across various prestigious organizations, enhancing her credentials and expertise in journalism, particularly in the finance sector. Notably, Izabella served as the Senior Finance Editor at POLITICO Europe, where she honed her skills in delivering insightful analysis on European finance and economic policies. Beyond her role at POLITICO Europe, she made significant contributions to the Financial Times (FT) as the FT Alphaville Editor, where she integrated financial journalism with innovative digital formats, engaging a diverse audience interested in market trends and economic insights.
Izabella's career began with her foundational role as a Graduate trainee at Reuters, followed by commendable positions such as Associate Producer at CNBC and Associate Editor at Platts. She showcased her versatility and adaptability in the fast-paced world of finance, leading to her founding of The Blind Spot, an initiative aimed at reconfiguring how information is organized on the internet. Her commitment to refining journalistic standards and improving information accessibility highlights her innovative mindset and industry foresight.
With her hands-on experience as a journalist for various publications, including the Warsaw Business Journal and Caspian Business News, she has built a reputation for her thoroughness and dedication to producing high-quality news content. Izabella's career trajectory illustrates a strong commitment to excellence in journalism, underpinned by her academic achievements and professional experiences.
Education and Achievements
Izabella's solid educational background plays a crucial role in her successful career in journalism. She earned her Master's degree in Journalism from the University of the Arts London, where she developed advanced skills in reporting, storytelling, and digital media. This degree equipped her with the tools required to excel in today's evolving media landscape, where the demand for high-quality, timely information is paramount.
Prior to her master’s education, Izabella completed a Bachelor's degree in Ancient History at University College London (UCL), where she delved into historical analysis and critical thinking, skills that have proven invaluable in her journalism career. Her academic journey also includes completing an Art Foundation Course in Art and Design at Chelsea College of Art, fostering her creative approach to storytelling and media presentation.
Achievements
Izabella has made remarkable contributions to journalism, particularly in finance and information management, leaving her mark in several publications and platforms. Her adept reporting and editorial skills have attracted recognition in the industry, positioning her as a thought leader and innovator. By founding The Blind Spot, Izabella has shown her passion for evolving the digital landscape and improving how information can be accessed and curated, fostering a richer understanding of complex information.
Her roles at esteemed organizations such as the Financial Times, POLITICO, and CNBC are testaments to her journalistic integrity and commitment to delivering factual and engaging content. Izabella Kaminska continues to be at the forefront of journalism, striving to improve the organization of information on the internet, thus benefiting a broad community of readers and audiences. Her professional narrative is one of proactive engagement, creative thinking, and unwavering dedication to her craft.
Highlights
A note on the increasingly frustrating dollar swap line confusion.
While the ESF definitely has a shady history in which it doubles up as black ops financing arm of the US Treasury, when it comes to the UAE situation, it's simple dollar liquidity mechanics that are the issue in this case.
To understand this you need to go back to your Zoltan Pozsar 101, about how shadow dollar liquidity actually flows through the system. This explains entirely what's going on at the moment.
Adam Tooze would have you think otherwise and brings up the ESF's shadowy history as a source of slush funds to add intrigue to the situation. (While it's not untrue, it's besides the point). And now Brad Setser is speculating there may be "something radically new about the US providing dollar credit to a country that itself has pledged to invest in the US" and that this "looks like the US government is financing a off balance investment fund outside Congressional scrutiny, with the Emirates getting the upside ..."
But I'm pretty sure that this is not the case. It's an entirely obvious and transparent situation.
First of all, the original WSJ story that flagged the UAE situation talked about swap lines not ESF-funded Argentina-style swaps. These are entirely different arrangements. For one, the ESF is a Treasury-powered vehicle and usually operates via finite credit facilities. It is also usually arranged between respective sovereign Treasuries.
A swap line, however, is Fed-initiated and potentially limitless. It is an arrangement between fellow central banks.
Now, if you speak to central bankers in the know, they will tell you that despite the central banking framing, it's not entirely the case that the Treasury has no influence on the initiation or not of a swap line. But this doesn't change the mechanical structure, which sits outside of the Treasury system — and imposes on it only in so much as central bank profits or losses ever do. The WSJ may have got the nomenclature wrong, but I doubt it.
As to why the UAE, despite having pledged to invest in the US, needs dollars? I'd argue it's because the original investment is mostly an expression of allegiance, and a signal that the UAE trusts the US to defend its property rights more so than any other superpower and is prepared to fund its military-industrial reconstitution... since the protection of its property rights also hangs in the balance.
If the UAE decides to fund these investments with USTs, this mostly constitutes a transfer of that economic value from the Treasury to the private sector. There needn't be a liquidity event associated with the transfer if it's mediated, as it has been, at the US Government level and extended via a co-investment with the US into newly forged equity investments.
The UAE leg, in that sense, becomes a promise to expire its outstanding claim over the US Treasury in exchange for x shareholding (49% one would presume) in the newly forged company. Think of it more like an asset swap, wherein its debt-based assets are swapped into equity assets underpinned by USG co-investments.
The actual liquidity to start the venture up would likely come exclusively from the US side, with the funding essentially already raised by way of the defense industrial allocations in the BBB. In that scenario, the investments act more like a quid pro quo with an ally, to ensure the US can raise the money it needs via formal channels, without fear that its bond markets do a Liz Truss.
But it's very unlikely that the UAE plans to fund these American investments entirely with UST reserve assets. Much more likely, it plans to deploy its trillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund chest, as well its future oil revenue, to meet most of the $1.4 trillion investment it has promised over 10 years.
In that case, what the UAE would really be doing is merely bouncing back dollar liquidity that's already coming its way from existing USD-denominated assets straight back into American investments. The only difference is that on this occasion, it has agreed to transfer some level of influence over how those investments will be steered. This makes sense if the true purpose of the arrangement is to help reindustrialise the US, as the USG sees fit, so that it can better provide regional security and defy industrial decoupling with China.
Why does it make sense for the UAE? Since some 50% of its SWF is already invested in the US, if America loses in a war with China or Iran, so does the UAE. It needs a strong and autonomous America with trusted supply chains to defend it.
In some respects, this is an echo of how China funded its own industrialization. In 1979 under Deng Xiaoping’s broader “Reform and Opening-Up,” China brought in its Equity Joint Venture Law, creating the main channel through which foreign capital first entered China’s industrial economy.
The main difference here is that in China's case, the co-investments were with Western private sector companies or multinationals. In America's case it is wooing capital from fellow sovereigns, with whom it can establish related defense agreements. Statecraft 101.
Why dollar swap lines then? Well, if a good chunk of UAE dollar liquidity is drawn from oil sales, this is self-evidently currently under pressure. And while the UAE probably has many other sources of dollar income, it's what happens at the margin that matters. Under a peg system even a small marginal fluctuation in flows can put pressure on the system. All the more so, if foreign residents are moving money out of the UAE because of regional volatility.
A country like the UAE, in such circumstances, faces the same problem as a distressed bank. It finds itself technically dollar-asset rich, but simultaneously dollar-liquidity poor.
The options it has on the table in that case are either to abandon its peg temporarilly, liquidate its assets at potentially firesale prices compounding the problem (definitely suboptimal), borrow from the market, or seek the one thing it doesn't have under a pegged system: Access to a dollar lender of last resort.
With the UAE likely to become a formal ally, extending lender of last resort facilities to help it manage local dollar liquidity issues, seems the obvious way to go for the US. In a sense it becomes the first official member of what Robert McCauley sees as the emergence of a new dollar swap-line diplomacy club. [Which could, in my mind, be the makings of a new type of IMF system.]
For a country that already operates under a soft form of dollarization, it's not too great a leap.
References below:
DAVOS AND GREENLAND
A useful framing for this year’s Davos is that it is a 🏴☠️ “parley” 🏴☠️ between the capital owning “pirates” of International finance and the new sovereign powers who will no longer tolerate making concessions to those who plunder their systems.
The former have historically maintained power by integrating sovereign power into their systems at the elite level via the pretence of making tolerable accommodations (e.g. ESG). But ESG didn’t work for those left behind by the system on Western turf. They were the ones funding the concessions that empowered the rise of the new global power elite.
When one of those grifting elites unexpectedly switched sides in 2016 to become a champion for such disgruntled elements not only did it break the pirate code system (articles of agreement/rules based order), it threatened to destabilise the grift for all elites.
The war between sovereign populist power and international capital began at that point. Any focus on Trump’s personal grift is a distraction from this fact, as it ignores that grift (also known as rent extraction) is a pervasive and common phenomenon across the entire elite system.
Since the old elites snubbed the op to negotiate new grift allocation terms under the Mar-a-Lago framing (not neutral ground), it is a significant signal that Trump is sending a large delegation to Davos.
Davos is supposed to be neutral ground, yet in practice it hasn’t been such a thing for years. [That said, it may have regained some legitimacy as neutral ground after the Swiss came to Washington in 2025 to make terms.] Nonetheless, it still edges toward the historical home turf of the international piracy base.
Thus, while for most people the sudden escalation over Greenland is disorientating and makes little to no sense, it very much does make sense when viewed from a historical statecraft perspective. Especially vis a vis piracy systems. Think Barbary wars.
Historically, no sovereigns gets anything from a parley without demonstrating a major show of force ahead of negotiations.
You have to show the other side just what you are capable of in real power terms if negotiations don’t go your way.
This is a well trodden historical norm. Before agreeing to talk with pirates, authorities always made sure pirates could see that force was available.
Common methods included:
- sailing warships visibly into the area.
- Running out cannon and clearing for action.
- Forming a blockade or partial cordon.
- Public displays of militia or marines.
This established a baseline message:
“We are choosing to talk — not because we must, but because we can afford to.”
Without this, parley risked looking like submission.
Trump has clearly chosen Greenland as the location he will display that force if it must come to it.
Thus IMHO the escalation over Greenland has little to do with any of the standard narratives you are hearing about.
It’s not about security. It’s not about access to rare earths. And it’s not about arctic passages.
For a man obsessed with achieving global peace, it is arguably - should it come to it - the optimal battleground for determining how global power will be allocated if negotiations in Davos don’t play out.
It is a remote, low population, territory where the human costs of any drawn out battle would be minimized and where a traditional power like the USG has a critical structural advantage over most other players.
Greenland is a sinkhole to avoid a more costly and bloody battle elsewhere. At the same time a defeat there for any engaged power represents a Suez moment that totally reasserts the power order.
In that sense Greenland finds itself at the crossroads of the key super powers who are vying for power, much the way Poland found itself in a similar position ahead of both world wars.
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