Darkpriest
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Posts posted by Darkpriest
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55 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:
@Darkpriest looks like I was correct about Meloni. The new Italian government is shaking even before it has been established. Berlusconi did an oopsie with couple of Vodka bottles, and Meloni as a reaction, has firmly shown him, where his place is. And hers. She is willing to drop her win in the election, if she will not be able to build a pro EU government. No place for Russian lapdogs there.
It's more of catch-22.
If you will work for energy costs relief and stabilizing prices you are going bankrupt on the debt and lack of ECB support as bond yields or ITA bonds would explode. Probably EU commission would also freeze post-covid help funds.
Given the choices, I can see why she does what she does now.
Question is, how long she can meander in such political conditions. I'm also not surprused she would rather have someone else get the head out in the current economic situation and come off clean, that you never had a real chance at governing, when the next elections come.
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Slightly unrelated, but that incomptent **** Truss could not outlast a lettuce. She folded after 44 days and managed to burry the Queen, The GBP and most likely The Torries. (lets not forget her incompetence in the foreign affairs and the trip to Russia to rattle a sabre there amd do a publicity stunt instead of real diplomacy)
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4 hours ago, Malcador said:
" “We are not in a position to further donate terminals to Ukraine, or fund the existing terminals for an indefinite period of time,” SpaceX’s director of government sales wrote, in a letter seen by CNN. "
Well, theybtold him to Efff off
Anyway, if US gov does not want to pay for its proxy war, why should a single company pay USD 20mil/month? And the company is not yet profitable to begin with, so 100mil at current cost of debt is quite a big single org donation
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Seems Turkey is on board with Russia, at least when it comes to becoming a gas hub to EU, replacing NS initiative.
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US acting irresponsibly towards their own energy supplies... I guess Dems are that afraid of fuel prices affecting midterms, so they drain strategic reserves to dangerously low levels, where in fact it loses its stratego 'reserve' status. Just to hold of oil price and gasoline increases until the modterms...
Who knows, maybe China will strike on Taiwan when SPR will be even lower just before or day afyer elections....
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4 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:
Buying cheap oil and gas from Russia is the only thing, which still holds India kind of neutral to Russia, but Modi's rhetoric has already signs of small shifts away. Especially, after they have seen how all the hardware, they've purchased from Russia is "under-performing" in Ukraine. USA and other western countries has already started to reach for this new opportunity, and the closer the China will be with Russia, the more reasons will India have to not do business with Russia. The other issue is the trivialization of use of nuclear strike by Putin. Because this is already starting to affect tensions between India and Pakistan... Edit: And the last but not least issue, is the current influence vacuum in Central Asia, where India wants it's cake too, but is very concerned with rising Chinese influence. Especially in Kazakhstan...
IMHO China and US will sooner or later come to some sensible solution. The rhetoric coming out of the China is pretty much in line with their rhetoric since Xi overtook the party. You have to keep in consideration, that China is going into new "leadership season" now, so a lot of powerful rhetoric will go out of China in very close future. Which should stabilize as soon, as this shifting period ends... Oh and if any Chinese leader would decide, that they will need some landgrab to empower his position, the most logical choice with the least resistance would be invasion of ex-Manchuria, not Taiwan
A tinfoil hat theory, which I've crafted as one of odd but not impossible scenarios...
1) China keeps economy in a shut down mode due to the 'covid', even though nowhere else this strick measuers are in place, not even close.
2) China has strict population movement and communication restrictions
3) China has been ramping up military activity
4) Xi is waiting for 'lifetime' election
5) US has been ignoring quite openly all the red lines that China put on the Taiwan issue
6) China observes impact on the Western economies of current RU-UA conflict
Theory is, that with all the shutdown of economh and population controls, once Xi gets re-elected and the full scope of the economic damage comes to play into view in the West (especially EU), they will move with Taiwan formal annexation back to the mainland.
Not sure how the weather season is there, but I would assume they would pick a moment where ocean/sea conditions are regularly bad.
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Seems Russians took the gloves off and want to send Ukraine to the pre-Industrial times
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Nah, it's a polit posturing and game.
India still gulp a lot of gas and oil.
As for Russia-China lovey sovey, US is keen on making it stronger.
US over the weekend declared an economic war to China, with a ban on a lot of new tech. This may backfire and may lead to a prompt take over of Taiwan and the semiconductor business/infrastructure.
If you will look at the rhetoric coming out of China after the weekend, it's bad...
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10 minutes ago, bugarup said:
It's quite endearingly naive to think retaliation was caused by russian govt caring (lol) about citizens (lololol) and not to placate those "russia stronk" jingoistic pieces of sh†t howling for blood after the bridge strike.
Well, as far as the whole thing goes, it goes to pre-invasion part and cutting off water and stuff to Crimea.
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On another side, the hits on the UA infrasteucture have led UA to stop sending electricity surpluss to Europe as they need to stabilize their grid.
That was based on yesterday's UA announccement, with effective date today. I wonder what more damages are done since today morning.
It's clear that Russians will be weaponizing the infrastructure hits in UA to put the economy to a halt (with - 30%GDP alread in dmg done to UA) and create civil unrest and disruptions as people will lack basic amenities for the winter time.
In Russian eyes it seems justified QPQ for the same type of actions aimed at Crimea and its citizens.
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2 hours ago, BruceVC said:
Dont be too hard on yourself, before Putins war and the invasion most of us were saying things like " Putin would never be that stupid and invade Ukraine " and then some people were hand-waving the US accurate intelligence with comments like " LOL...you can never trust US intelligence. Remember Iraq and WMD"
@Darkpriest still needs to send us the video of him eating his hat
Shortages I say! Blimey!
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Seems, per NYT, that it was Ukrainians orchestrating the Crimea bridge car bombing.
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A senior Ukrainian official corroborated Russian reports that Ukraine was behind the attack. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of a government ban on discussing the blast, added that Ukraine's intelligence services had orchestrated the explosion, using a bomb loaded onto a truck being driven across the bridge
It was unclear if the driver of the truck, who died in the blast, was aware there were explosives inside
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11 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:
Well, 10 casualties and 60 wounded out of 75 missiles shot is pretty good statistics for Ukraine. If they blew up the bridge, they surely knew, what would happen, and they still did it, because strategically it was still worth for them. And I bet, they even have statistic numbers, how many Ukrainian lives they saved with slowing up the Russian GLOCs over Crimea…
Still no one has given a plausible explanation, how Ukraine was able to manage to fill a truck owned by Russian company deep inside Russian territory with tens of tons pf explosives, and pass all the control checkpoints on their way to Crimea…
Some have a theory, since it was an Azer driver, that it was CIA led action using Turkey's influence in the Azerbejan-Armenia conflict, where Turks support Azers and Russia supports Orminas.
There is definately a lot of grey areas, although less so, than in the case of Nordstream piplines destruction, where two main beneficiaries are easily located, US, and anti-NS/German Poland
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1 hour ago, Elerond said:
Casualties aren't massive, because there are alarms and people hide in shelters.
Poor aim does not explain why missiles hit tens of kilometers away from any civilian infrastructure. Even if you make assumption that Russian's targeting systems are ****, you still would hit closer to the target.
Hitting main city artery, attempt to destroy a bridge in Kiev, a storehouse, etc. Those are infrastructure hits. Poorly executed, but nevertheless they are such.
Last I read confirmed numbers it was 10 dead and 60 wounded in all attacks.
Maybe you have more accurate and more current news?
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5 minutes ago, Elerond said:
As most missiles that weren't shot down by air defense didn't hit electricity, heating, waterpumps etc., but parks, busy streets etc. I would say that you are wrong in your assessment
And how many casualties are reported? I think less than in your average carbombing?
As for infrastructure, you might check your news again. Even @pmp10posted targets hit here
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3 hours ago, bugarup said:
Aaaaand russia retaliates - to the surprise of absolutely no one - by bombing civilians.
I'm fairly sure it is more aimed to actually kill the infraatructure, like electricity, heating, waterpumps etc. Maybe also road structure in big cities. Given the past experiences, it is possible some of the offshots were either deflections from air defense strikes or just a poor aim. The number of casualties does not indicate a 'civilian terror killing'. If they would aim for that, they would hit apartmebt buildings.
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12 minutes ago, Lexx said:
I'm a bit out of the loop with this one, but why does Turkey want those islands? Anything of value on them except for military bases?
Turkey is aggresively expanding its 'economic zone' due to various resources ubnder the sea. There has been a lot of political clashes around Cyprus as well
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A couple points for thought as things are emerging.
1) Apparently UK and GER consume way too much energy and are in a material risk of running out of supplies unless serious cuts will start right now.
Wonder what will that do to a political scene?
NOT asking = be prepared to be asked.
2) Seems Turkey is openly threathening Greeks with demilitirization of Aegean Greek Islands. What a hot engagement would do to the NATO relations? Who would US back? An EU member or 2nd largest NATO military and a power actor in the ME as well as a counterweight for Russia in the Black Sea region?
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@BruceVC Oil at 95, Biden admin furious at OPEC on the cut, and more production cuts are expected in Dec, should EU not falter and decide to go with price caps and embargo on maritime Russian Oil.
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2 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:
Yes it is very unfortunate, but the Russian piles of soldier bodies are still 3 to 5 time bigger than UKrainians. And most of the people already know, that if Ukraine would stop right now, the piles of bodies amnogst the civilians would go skyrocket high on all of the annexed territories, as they were piled up in Bucha, Mariupol, Izyum and many many more places… and before, Same happened at South Ossetia, Chechnia, Abkhazia and occupied Donbass… I am not surprised, that Ukraine is not willing to accept similar cleansing of their own people.
Oh and I would not be so sure, that Russia could sustain 300k bodybags. First thing that they need to do, is find 300k people stupid enough to get themselves killed in Ukraine. And that is pretty much as futile attempt as their attempt to conquer Bakhmut. Just Kazakhstan alone has confirmed, that 200k men fled from Russia to their country since the start of the mobilisation, and the queues at their borders are not getting any shorter
Jut Run it through Google translate.
Not sure where you get that ratio from, but until the conflict is over, i doubt any ratio can be verified.
I'd be surprised on a such, considering that Russia still has artilery superiority and air force and long range missiles are still on the Russia advantage side.
Perhaps in some close combat or ambusj scenarios that holds true, but i doubt that overall one would be so skewed to one side. War would be over there by now with such a ratio.
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12 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:
But Aljazeera was never considered as a pro-western media.
Here, Reuters on US base in Syria
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5 minutes ago, Lexx said:
Russia is fighting NATO now:
Well considering all the donated equipment, training, intel, etc. he is not far from truth. (aside of long range tactical and strategic weaponary) The difference is, its Ukrainian bodies pilling up in that conflict against similar piles of Russian bodies.
Russians can probably loose 300k men. Can UA to?
It's unfortunate and i do agree with Musk on his assessment. I think I even mentioned similar, early in the war, that this is the minimum Russia will want onve they commited to war. Land corridor to Crimea and safety of water and energy supplies.
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41 minutes ago, BruceVC said:
Why would the US need to loot and pillage oil fields in Syria when they worlds biggest producer of oil?
Is this still happening in Syria and do you have any links that support this?
You will likely not see this in Western media as it is quite uncomfortable.
However, you will hear on attacks on US forces stationed in OIL rich areas of Syria.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/19/us-military-base-in-syria-targeted-in-failed-rocket-attack
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1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:
It seems to me that Bruce is fundamentally wrong because he persists in the idea that the current Russia has any interest in adhering to anything that it has put pen to paper about.
It sort of goes the same for every deemed 'superpower'. US is no different in ignoring whats on paper when it is incovenient...
For example, continous looting and pilliging of Syrian Oil fields by US Army Corps of Engineers.
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Ukraine Conflict - "An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war"
in Way Off-Topic
Posted
Because I value this place for something, which would most likely cause me a lot of grief in other places. I can write in almost unfiltered way, with all the emotions attached.
If you think this language is not professional, you'd never want to see what happens on various Bloomberg chats between trading desks or trading and analytics.
The ZH is not a 'source' as in it does not shape my views. I use it to reference to views sourced from some other authors (people still make the same mistake of not recognizing what is a ZH article and what is an 'authored' article sourced from some other place) . It also contains charts in daily summaries or related topics that I could not share from my resources as screens etc. , for example some Bloomberg or Refinitiv data based views.
On ZH you are also more likely to read opinions which are contrarian to main media sources, and that in itself is a value. The hedge funds world works on various contrarian scenarios. ( watch The Big Short for example to view a simplified and sterilized view of some of the things people do in funds) .
I've called on inflation and asset buble in 2021, I've called on the social and economic costs of excessive sanctions on a commoditty giant, I've called on a debt crisis and credit panic, which in near term will lead to stagflation as central banks will throw in a towel on inflation fight as the costs of recession and issues with soverign debt will amplify.
I rarely point to a gold bug like Peter Shiff, but read some of his publicized estimates on debt service costs in US, should the high rates persist. You've already witnessed first hand recently what UK suffered in relation to debt issues.
On the UA front, just give it more time. The support will start to wane by the end of the year and will drop significantly by the end of Q1 2023.
There will be a lot more domestic social issues to solve in EU and US.
China might soon pounce on Taiwan too. Even read something on main media on this, after the recent Xi reelection. Markets certainly decided to bail at the moment. Some funds are risking to go back in now, with hopes of stabilization, but here I'm more pesimistic after the recent 'chip bans' from US.
Lets see if Xi will make German channcelor squirm during his visit and take back what he voiced in Japan.