[Mentalist]

Bla-bla-bla.
VVH's pressser even today was more of the same: "were innocent, the West is picking on us for being concerned about our "brotherly" people, in our special interests zone, West bad.

On fighting the economic collapse: it's the work of outside agents, but we got reserves to meet our social assistance obligations.

At the risk of jinxing it, not expecting much excitement for the next month or so. The Ruble's sitting practically glued to the current rate, which means Centrobank's responding to any attempts to raise rates by pouring reserve dollars on it. I'm perfectly content with letting them burn through their reserves for now. Means I can stop following headlines and twitter like a madman and get some work done.

[Nicodimas]

To me this is what I have been wondering.
http://www.scmp.com/...elp-deal-crisis

China to bail out Russia. I await the mutual defense treaty next. China wants those resources and Russia has them. Simple concept...see how this plays out.

Also what's your all thoughts on Scott Walker for president?

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 18 December 2014 - 06:22 PM

[Terez]

Not sure if this is the place for that discussion, but I think Walker is a long shot. He has very little appeal outside of Wisconsin; he lacks personality, and his record is not as impressive as people like to pretend, since Wisconsin has been trending Republican lately. Plus, he has the taint of corruption. He's not being counted among the front-runners by the people with money who are looking to narrow the field in advance of the debates so as to avoid a show like 2012. Anyway, that's for the American Politics thread.

[Nicodimas]

Terez, on 18 December 2014 - 06:31 PM, said:

Not sure if this is the place for that discussion, but I think Walker is a long shot. He has very little appeal outside of Wisconsin; he lacks personality, and his record is not as impressive as people like to pretend, since Wisconsin has been trending Republican lately. Plus, he has the taint of corruption. He's not being counted among the front-runners by the people with money who are looking to narrow the field in advance of the debates so as to avoid a show like 2012. Anyway, that's for the American Politics thread.

Your right your right.Ill go there just wondering cause a Republican will be there who stand's to work with the geo-politics as this next term is going to be very interesting for them in that department. <trying to Avoid the people that HAVE the money type line of thought , cause one of them will win>

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 18 December 2014 - 06:41 PM

[Vengeance]

Nicodimas, on 18 December 2014 - 06:22 PM, said:

To me this is what I have been wondering.
http://www.scmp.com/...elp-deal-crisis

China to bail out Russia. I await the mutual defense treaty next. China wants those resources and Russia has them. Simple concept...see how this plays out.

Also what's your all thoughts on Scott Walker for president?

Yeah that isn't going to happen (the Scott Walker for President thing). Although it should be noted that that question is better asked in the American politics thread then in the US - Russian Policy thread.

[Nicodimas]

Yeah been fighting a random bout of insomnia...like really body..so very tired yet can't sleep..gonna fracture my personality soon.

Anyhow looks like Obama signed that Sanctions Bill..I like the term "lethal aid" usually they tone that verbiage down. I mean we all know they are going to arm the hell out of Kiev. But lets all called it Evil for what it is..escalation. The Neo-warmongers still rule Washington if anyone hasn't been paying attention.

(Crazy Nico thought: Russia's gonna get sick of this shit park a boomer off the coast and nuke DC..we have more to lose than them-I honestly didn't used to feel this way)

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 18 December 2014 - 08:51 PM

[Mentalist]

Nicodimas, on 18 December 2014 - 06:22 PM, said:

To me this is what I have been wondering.
http://www.scmp.com/...elp-deal-crisis

China to bail out Russia. I await the mutual defense treaty next. China wants those resources and Russia has them. Simple concept...see how this plays out.

Also what's your all thoughts on Scott Walker for president?

Re: China-Russia. I don't see it. China has no reason to stand up for Russia against the US/the West at large.
China is the world's manufctyuring hub. It makes their economy great, it allows them to claim superpower status (if they want the moral responsibility that comes with it and the incessant need to interfere everywhere), BUT: the West is their market. It's not a market China can replace. It's not a market China can ignore.
China has potential, bc it's economy is manufacturing. Russia's economy is relies on exports, as well, but 75% of its export revenues are natural resources. Russia doesn't have a single resource monopoly. Russians can't eat their oil and gas. Ergo, Russia is desperate for buyers. But their mentality, refined by good 300 years of state propaganda (with very small breaks, such as, for example, 1991-1993 Yeltzin's Russia prior to the conflict with the Parliament). Prevents thwm from being a reliable partner, due to their messianic tendencies.
So, the way I see it, China will wait untill Russia comes crawling to them, and they will buy at their conditions. At a business forum in St Petersburg, a Chinese high-up gave a speech, and the point was basically "you've a ton of resources, but your people are lazy bastards who aren't using them properly. You should let us develop them for you". And there's already a strong Chinese presence in the Russian Far East-illegal seasonal migrants east of the Urals number in hundreds of thousand--which is a big deal, given how low the population there is.
In the recent rounds of Russo-Chinese talks, VVH made a hugely unprofitable deal to build a gas pipeline to China, which was supposedly going to built from a Chinese loan. Then all of a sudden it wasn't. But it's still gonna be built. On top of that, Chinese capital's being allowed into Russian enterprises in the Far East + Eastern Siberia. Russia's being primed for colonization, it's not an equal partnership, because Russian moronic ambitions of "great-power-ness" make them act in ways which make them look stupid and as unreliable partners internationally,such as their "gas blackmail" stunts. The more Putin talks about "changing the world order" and "multi-polar" world, the more pathetic he looks. Russia is pathologically sick, as a country--the all-pervasive corruption means that over 15 years of high oil prices which brought $1.25 trillion into the country led to the country becoming a banana republic, mortally vulnerable to a drop in oil price, with nearly destroyed manufacturing, with its food production, having a good 75% import component, it's education and healthcare gutted again and again, etc. Sure, the people's standard of living improved, salaries went up, pensions went up--but it wasn't a sustainable model, as we are witnessing now.

Parallel to that billions were sunk into dubious infrastructure projects (Sochi, World Cup), with contractors being owned by VVH's inner circle, as well as defense. And the results of those are a dying space industry (I think they've had 4 failed rocket launches in the year I've started following the news again), an army which, both in Georgia and in UA didn't demonstrate anything particularly incredible (in particular the "genius" can be seen in Donetsk airport where one after another Russia's elites get sent in frontal assaults against an entrenched position, which is supported by artillery covering all approaches).
And on top of this, this joke of a country carries out a program of state propaganda in goebbels' best traditions (with VVH referring to the 20th century father of propaganda as a "talented man"), instilling in supposedly 86% of the population a belief in their "great destiny", being threaghtend by the West (i'm refraining from translating colloquial language usually used here), and openly smirking at the anyone disagreeing with their belief that theirs is the only way (Russian opposition. Georgians, Moldovans, Ukraianians), and believing that the whole world owes them, that it's everyone else's fault that making such insane money off natural gas, 40 fucking percent of Russian households aren't hooked up to a gas line--not just in Siberia or the Far North, but in villages in the goddamn Moscow oblast! Because it's somebody else's fault that while the entire world rejoices at the fall of oil prices because it means lower petrol prices, Russian prices go up, because their oil companies directors (whose salary in ONE DAY is higher than what an average Russian will make in TWENTY YEARS) pass the losses onto the consumers, and the consumers nod and accept it, "because it's the damned American's fault".

Sorry, I'm having a bit of a bad day, so this turned into a rant. The necessary caveat is that in Ukraine, which doesn't have Russia's resources things are about 9 times worse (if one was to compare GDP), but the difference is, we DID have freedom of speech for the better part of these 23 years, and the new generations that grew up during the collapse did show some promise in critical thinking, and wants to actively change things. And right now, despite enormous resistance from a system very similar to that in Russia (except it's weaker, but just as all-pervasive), we are trying to change something. Which gives us an ever-so-thin ray of hope. Which I don't see for Russia. And that's what really frustrates me the most about this whole thing.

So, getting back on topic: I don't see an equal partnership Russia-China alliance against the West. Because China is the most obvious threat to Russia's existence, and if such an alliance does happen it will be the first step towards Russia being assimilated by China.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 26 January 2019 - 06:04 PM

[Nicodimas]

I like rants..more rants..

[Tsundoku]

Meanwhile, in Crimea ...

http://www.news.com....g-1227167969811

[Mentalist]

Crimea a veritable riot of fun now. UA`s cut off railway connections, the land border with UA has customs which discourages any attempts to leave the area that way, and the Kerch ferry is out of service due to the bad sea weather. In addition, they`re getting a ton of power outages, as the electricity situation in the mainlaind is pretty grim as well.

Watching a stream of the Rada meeting concernign the budget and supplementary laws right now. The stream`s garbage (Rada`s tech is stone-age, and their wifi sucks), but it looks like the govt`s being forced to give up its concessions that`it`s been making to oligarchs, which is good.

More to come later. i've been understandably behind schedule on translations, but should catch up in the upcoming week, and I hope to get alll of ukropnews' blogs to date done today.

Edit: naturally, got a lot less done than needed to. The budget was passed, though its highly questionable. basically prior to it the Rada voted a ton of changes to the Tax Code, the Budget Code, etc, which will really affect the figures. But instead of givign the Cabinet time to recalculate and provide precise figures and do a proper vote the next evening, 233 MP have decided, at 4 in the morning to vote in a "cat in the bag" as the proverb goes. Rumor has it, the pressure was on due to the fact that a large number of MPs planned to be away on their holiday vacations by Monday evening, and the thus the budget had to passed asap. sigh.

anyhow, the many changes made prior to the voting seem to be mostly positive. time will tell.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 29 December 2014 - 05:43 AM

[Terez]

http://www.sunherald...s-keystone.html

This is what I was talking about re: the political advantage for the Obama administration with the timing on the oil glut. I gather that the current glut is the result of years of hoarding primarily by Saudi Arabia. Why now? Russia could be one reason. Keystone could be another. This fight in the US and Canada has been raging for years, but the GOP just took over the Senate. Obama now has another reason to veto it should Congress pass it. And it's one of the first things on their agenda as the new Congress begins.

I might discuss this more later in the American Politics thread. It is looking like the final two Obama years are going to be interesting, as he exercises power through the State Department and the Justice Department and executive action.

[Nicodimas]

Random Thought: What if Russia went all in and kept up the pressure to lower the price of Oil now..a line of thought. So OPEC/Russia doesn't cut production and keeps up the over-supply.

A ton of US Rigs/Texas/ shales goes belly up, Foriegns interest's buy it all up. Then in 2-3 years..rise the prices and US as a lack of Supply in a couple years..cause of lack of supply as they slow production down, we can't meet demands due to closures. Interesting to think about...



OPEC: http://www.reuters.c...N0KH1HA20150108

So they aren't cutting production...good article and I await $1 dollar gas!!

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 08 January 2015 - 06:16 PM

[Gothos]

Russia can't afford a low oil price to pull this off. They'd go tits up way before any US companies do.

[Mentalist]

Nicodimas, on 08 January 2015 - 06:16 PM, said:

Random Thought: What if Russia went all in and kept up the pressure to lower the price of Oil now..a line of thought. So OPEC/Russia doesn't cut production and keeps up the over-supply.

A ton of US Rigs/Texas/ shales goes belly up, Foriegns interest's buy it all up. Then in 2-3 years..rise the prices and US as a lack of Supply in a couple years..cause of lack of supply as they slow production down, we can't meet demands due to closures. Interesting to think about...



OPEC: http://www.reuters.c...N0KH1HA20150108

So they aren't cutting production...good article and I await $1 dollar gas!!

What Gothos said. Russian companies got too much foreign debt as is, the reserves aren't big enough even to bail out ALL the oligarchs in Putin's inner circle.

Every dollar/barrel drop means smth like minus 500 million in Russian budget, I believe. And we still haven't factored in the losses in gas, whose price is tethered to the oil price.

While oil is a chank of the US econonomy, it's not the only one. Russian putinomics, otoh have done a pretty bang up job of gutting most non-carbohydrates/resource based industries in Russia as far as exports are concerned. And yes, I'm including hi-tech mil gear among things gutted, b/c Russian military relies on imported high-tech components, both from the West (avionics, electronics) and other FSU states (UA in particular provides the bulk of helicopter/plane engines + ship engines + the targeting electronics + service for Russia's vaunted "Satan" ICBMs)

Putinomics will probably weather out even 20 bucks / barrel, but at that point a lot of ppl will be getting upset. Whether that'll make up the critical no necessary for stuff to change is anyone's guess tho.

Right now the one who's crying is actually Canada. The Alberta oil sands boom is as good as dead. We'll hit a major slump just in time for a federal election, imo

[Nicodimas]

I don't know it's just a passing thought I had upon waking up, but essentially what happens if oil stay's low is *deflation* correct..

Who get's crushed the hardest with less money US or Russia? I am really not 100% sure on this as it just a musing this morning...but deflation and missing number's in the market mean a loss of good jobs here in America. I guess if Russia knew exactly who held that debt with derivatives triggers. (I read this particular market was at 22 trillion as a note--atomic for sure) Maybe this results in a game of chicken essentially.This probably won't come to pass as I am sure this time next year we will be arguing over the price of oil rising....

@ mentalist
Also your probably right on the economies as Oil would effect one country far more than the other. Someone out their you hope has charted this out and knows the outcomes with some certainty.

I see what you are saying even if one person could have this much influence to release this much Oil and keep supply high, his inner circle would eventually turn on him/them/that interest as the timeline involved would be too long..with too much sacrifice on their part with no profit gains?

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 08 January 2015 - 06:58 PM

[D'iversify]

I imagine any deflationary effects of the low oil price are more than offset by the greater level of economic activity enabled by cheaper energy.

[Terez]

Nicodimas, on 08 January 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I don't know it's just a passing thought I had upon waking up, but essentially what happens if oil stay's low is *deflation* correct..

That's not Russia's main problem. Aside from private interests in Russia which are suffering, the national budget is suffering because the government depends dangerously on oil export revenues. The US federal government does not.

Nicodimas, on 08 January 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I am really not 100% sure on this as it just a musing this morning...but deflation and missing number's in the market mean a loss of good jobs here in America.

Probably not, because we'll feel the benefits more than we'll feel the pain. Russia is suffering a currency crisis as a result of dropping oil prices; we don't have that problem, so for most of us, it's an economic boon. We have more money to spend on other stuff.

Nicodimas, on 08 January 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I guess if Russia knew exactly who held that debt with derivatives triggers.

I might be wrong, but I don't think our TBTF institutions are holding much risk in this area. I haven't read anything along those lines, but I can't claim to have been scouring financial blogs lately. I read Yves Smith every now and then and that's all I have time for. So long as the TBTF banks aren't holding that much risk, then most of us in the US will be alright because we don't have to socialize the losses.

Nicodimas, on 08 January 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I see what you are saying even if one person could have this much influence to release this much Oil and keep supply high, his inner circle would eventually turn on him/them/that interest as the timeline involved would be too long..with too much sacrifice on their part with no profit gains?

This is mostly Saudi Arabia, not any one individual, and Saudi Arabia essentially dictates OPEC policy at this point, from what I understand. (Again, fairly weak here.) But what I gather is that it's good for them to flood the market and price out a number of alternative energy extraction methods which have, in the era of steep oil prices, managed to become profitable. When oil prices drop, many of those markets disappear. Tar sands investors are not the only ones crying; even natural gas extraction has gotten tricky, shale is borderline, and some clean energy methods are borderline or priced out of the market. Those with the supply are taking this opportunity to knock out the competition, and they have resisted calls to hold back any portion of that supply to keep the prices moderately high.

[Gothos]

Nicodimas, on 08 January 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I don't know it's just a passing thought I had upon waking up, but essentially what happens if oil stay's low is *deflation* correct..

Who get's crushed the hardest with less money US or Russia? I am really not 100% sure on this as it just a musing this morning...but deflation and missing number's in the market mean a loss of good jobs here in America. I guess if Russia knew exactly who held that debt with derivatives triggers. (I read this particular market was at 22 trillion as a note--atomic for sure) Maybe this results in a game of chicken essentially.This probably won't come to pass as I am sure this time next year we will be arguing over the price of oil rising....

@ mentalist
Also your probably right on the economies as Oil would effect one country far more than the other. Someone out their you hope has charted this out and knows the outcomes with some certainty.

I see what you are saying even if one person could have this much influence to release this much Oil and keep supply high, his inner circle would eventually turn on him/them/that interest as the timeline involved would be too long..with too much sacrifice on their part with no profit gains?

The thing is, with the difference between Russia and the US, is that the US has other industries to pick up the slack, the infrastructure, mindset, laws and mechanisms to let people make the shift elsewhere if their business is being gutted.
Russia has none of these things. It's basically USSR as far as an arms race is concerned, and we've seen what the last one did to them. With mining and manufacture value dropping, it all comes down to added value and services, and there it's a knockout before the fight starts. Improved exports that (will) come with the drop of the ruble will not offset the gaping hole in the state-sponsored make-believe economy.

Regular Russians remember worse times so they won't much mind, for as long as their super retirement pensions won't start disappearing.
The oligarchs will lose their shit eventually. We'll get to see how much power VVH actually holds.

[Mentalist]

Gothos, on 08 January 2015 - 08:44 PM, said:

Nicodimas, on 08 January 2015 - 06:57 PM, said:

I don't know it's just a passing thought I had upon waking up, but essentially what happens if oil stay's low is *deflation* correct..

Who get's crushed the hardest with less money US or Russia? I am really not 100% sure on this as it just a musing this morning...but deflation and missing number's in the market mean a loss of good jobs here in America. I guess if Russia knew exactly who held that debt with derivatives triggers. (I read this particular market was at 22 trillion as a note--atomic for sure) Maybe this results in a game of chicken essentially.This probably won't come to pass as I am sure this time next year we will be arguing over the price of oil rising....

@ mentalist
Also your probably right on the economies as Oil would effect one country far more than the other. Someone out their you hope has charted this out and knows the outcomes with some certainty.

I see what you are saying even if one person could have this much influence to release this much Oil and keep supply high, his inner circle would eventually turn on him/them/that interest as the timeline involved would be too long..with too much sacrifice on their part with no profit gains?

The thing is, with the difference between Russia and the US, is that the US has other industries to pick up the slack, the infrastructure, mindset, laws and mechanisms to let people make the shift elsewhere if their business is being gutted.
Russia has none of these things. It's basically USSR as far as an arms race is concerned, and we've seen what the last one did to them. With mining and manufacture value dropping, it all comes down to added value and services, and there it's a knockout before the fight starts. Improved exports that (will) come with the drop of the ruble will not offset the gaping hole in the state-sponsored make-believe economy.

Regular Russians remember worse times so they won't much mind, for as long as their super retirement pensions won't start disappearing.
The oligarchs will lose their shit eventually. We'll get to see how much power VVH actually holds.

All of that. Few small corrections:
Regular Russians who remained dirt poor through the "years of plenty" (1999-2013)n i.e., those living in villages/small towns and basic manufacturing won't give a damn.
2) oligarchs (both inner circle and the Old Guard) will feel the pinch, but the billions of cash they already got sitting in offshore won't go anywhere. Unless them and their huge entorages of children that study in Western Unis, their wives/lovers who take private jets to Milan and Paris for a day of shopping suddenly ALL find themselves personal non-grata they'll sit tight and hope they don't get noticed-no one wants to become the new Khodorkovsky.
3) that thin layer of Russians who made themselves in the Bad Old 90s/Years of Plenty-small/mid businesses, IT guys, "office drones", senior engineers and the rest of the "true middle class" (a unique characteristic of modern Russia is that over 80% of those whose income would normally slot them as "middle class" in the West are state employees-i.e., they lived off the Putinomics oil money machine and the surrounding corruption. Thus, they cannot rebel against this regime, because the existence of the regime is the only thing that justifies their well-being). The "true middle class" is relatively tiny and disorganized, it has no distinct leadership, and yet they are the ones everyone's looking to to launch the overhaul, a la "all the other velvet revolutions"

There's also an estimated 10 million people in Russia that "live off the grid"-successful businessmen and well-off people who don't use govt services, live under fake names, don't give anything to the govt and don't ask for anything from it. Can be another variable, or majority of them may just emigrate, who knows?

There's way too many scenarios, if we start thinking into how it can go sour, as there's so many issues (just the basic 3-majority of people have been so ideologically pumped that a true revolution would probably result in some ultra-right "go to war with everyone" fanatics getting if not full power than at least close to it; the whole Chechen mafia/dynasty/internal invasion/sovereignty issue, which is a part of a larger problem of Muslims (in major cities, on the Volga, in the Caucasus); the Chinese problem and their interests in the Far East and Eastern Siberia). A new round of bandit oligarchy under a pseudo-democratic veil is the smallest of the possible evils here.



... and then you factor in the nukes, the oil, the debts, (the possible humanitarian and refugee crisis) and the rest, and you get a brief idea of why Russia is such a headache for the West and why no one wants to deal with it.

[Mentalist]

https://www.fitchrat...to%20%27BBB-%27

Monday will be a good day to watch the markets.....