Darkpriest

Oil going good for Russia it seems https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/Russias-Oil-Export-Loophole-Runs-Through-Greece.html Plus OPEC making sure that Russia remains part of OPEC+ and also refusing to increase production

Seems more POW from Azovstal https://www.zerohedge.com/military/ongoing-surrender-far-bigger-scale-kyiv-has-acknowledged-azovstal

@BruceVC https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/one-four-britons-skip-meals-due-inflation-survey-shows-2022-05-17/

Meanwhile, CISCO alone lost 40billion in market cap, just because it admited 200mil lost on Russia revenue. You will see a lot of backtracking on Russia as US and more importantly EU will go into long stagflation period, where food price and energy will be increasing to the point of social unrests, that will be magnified by large migrant waves from African and West Asian countries struck by hunger (Sri-Lanka is a prelude to what will happen on a larger scale in a couple of months) EU has so much bad debt that it is paralyzing ECB from increasing the rates, because they well know it will crash soverign debt of a couple countries of EURoZone, like Italy.

Lets wait until September. We can discuss then.

If this will last until Autumn, and weather will continue to decimate food production on top of Ukraine war plus energy prices will start skyrocketing due to China waking up amd OPEC not giving a damn about those leftist/environmentals, you can bet that EU will backtrack everything, unless we aim for our own Arab Spring in EU. Seems already France, Italy and Germany are in some talks on how to close this diplomatically.

As I said, it sometimes is quite surpriaing what is the level of mind bending that some publicists go through. This is the original publication. https://thecradle.co/Article/columns/10277 I understand that ZHs policy is to gather all sorts of PoV, but sometimes the extremes are just too much of 'unreal'

It's sometimes interesting to read PoV of Russian leaning publicists, who conviniently leave aside or barely comment corruption, sick nepotism, lack of qualifications and brain among russian chain of command, plus **** discipline among soldiers, they do however point a few interesting things in that grandoise of Russia type of writing https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/escobar-death-thousand-cuts-where-wests-ukraine-strategy

@Elerondi believe that US itself killed the Memorandom as not legally biding, but more of a political commitment way before 2014 as it was justifying actions against Belarus. Although the Memorandum is not legally binding, we take these political commitments seriously and do not believe any U.S. sanctions, whether imposed because of human rights or non-proliferation concerns, are inconsistent with our commitments to Belarus under the Memorandum or undermine them I can't comment on the UN part and any other agreements, as I have no knowledge on those and really no time to look for some well composed summary of those.

Yes, so by that logic legislation approved by Duma in Russia is also not illegal, right?

In short, when countries start using economics and trade in an instrumental and political fashion, credibilty of all invovled parties crashes. That's why you will start seeing more and more decoupling from USD and EUR based transactions and much more billateral transactions in currencies of trading partners. This is probably also what might explain a surge in RUB value despite historical heights of USD value. Edit, for context 1USD is equal to 72.25 RUB which is higjest RUB value in a while, while USD index is at 103.5+++, (JPY and EUR crash against USD)

By that logic, Russia also imposes sanctions. It does not break any contracts, if its stipulated as sanctions and accepted by other members of international community?

That while such actions would be deemed fine by Ukraine in terms of response to direct hostilities, there is nothing that mandates such a direct and hostile economic action from non-involved parties. Russia did not attack EU or US or UK assets nor did it seize as first actor any assets of such. The US voilated existing contracts of companies first. By this logic an attack on a soverign nation of Iraq or Syria or Libia or Serbia etc. could be deemed sufficient to have all countries cease doing business with US, EU etc.

That could in theory be said also on US and EU as it was their unilatteral decision to ban trading etc. Despite existing contracts. This is a two way street, so one has to be really careful with all sorts of absolutisms. Russia did not attack any of the countries or seize the assets of such, which unilaterally broke trade relationships in multiple sectors. They did act in response to economic hostilities.

So US economy Contracted by 1.4% in terms of annualized GDP... With more inflation pain incoming, how sustainable it will be for US to keep pushing for geopolitical disorder in the midterms election year? @BruceVCseems I was right 'again' with economic fallout of the ****ty policies of the last couple of years. Can't wait for FED to pull the liquidity rug from under liquidity starved markets in the stagflatory / recession like conditions.

Yeah, BBG had some **** ups today apparently, as they've caused misinformation with the Austrian and Slovak part. Haven't seen Germans openly denounce that. BBG ****ed up also some data release on Meta, not that it helped FB ticker in any way today... Interestingly, while the USD is highest in value in 20 years, RUB is gaining value on it still. Not sure who is pumping the RUB because this is beyond actions of what Russia alone could have done with regulations.

Looks like Germany, Austria and Slovakia folded and are paying in rubbles (plus Hungary) and ten more are setting up rubble accounts.

Why would it worry me? Making money on stupidity of others is a great opportunity. So far I've been correct on bond yields and overpriced **** like Netflix and some other 'disruptive' names. I've been paying a price on some commodities as China went to a stand still, yet still with that oil is above 100...

I've been silent for almost a month, to let things go on without my commentary. A month later, we are on a verge of huge food and energy crisis globally, and significant economic pain. As for gas cut off, Poland will likely cope withbit by paying extra premius, as the infrastructure and reserves should keep it going safely until end of year, but at a significantly higher cost. Bulgaria is a different story, and I'm waiting for German reaction. If they will not fold, the economic collapse will make for interesting headlines in Euro zone.

I was always sure it was for condoms.... Always in hands reacj.

Well it looks there will be a lot of punching on Dems and Dems leaning 'media' 1) Psaki moving to one of two media giants that offered her job (at least that's what it seems to be now) 2) "Hunter Biden" from election time and its coverage, and flaging as fake news. Seems GOP is running to investigate election meddling on this angle. 3) Inflation destroying common folk 4) Incoming recession... https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/yield-curve-inverts-dramatically-goldman-sees-recession-risks-soaring It looks like Republicans sweep and possibly Trump 2024 right now...

About the gas part. True to an extent. Russia indeed is starting to overflow its storage and will most likely have to stop production for some time from parts of its system, however it does not chanhe that they will still have surpluss domestically and western economies will have serious issues without that gas if switched off today. It also does not change the fact that Russia will hold this resource under their ownership and in worst case scenario it will store value to a lter date until proper investment will be made to connect to eastern/southern side. Short term, they will lose revenue in curremcies they cannot use, so not really an impactful loss compared to what they experienced on sanctions already.

Well, why would they accept currency, which is of no use to them, when being sanctioned? On what legal basis did the other countries seize/freeze Russian assets, if there was no direct hostilities towards those countries? You can go back and fort on various legal aspects, but in the end it's about who has and who wants to buy

https://www.investmentmonitor.ai/special-focus/ukraine-crisis/which-countries-rely-on-russian-trade/

Good luck substituting Russian gas with LPG on such a short notice. Even long term it would take months if not years to have proper infrastructure to trade, transfer, store and turn back the liquid into a gas form without killing its properties. The problem with such investments in EU is all the Green Agenda, which has exact opposite directives, i.e. not investing in such. Problem is, without gas and nuclear energy, there is no way to secure enough energy to satisfy all the needs in a consistent and stable manner. Let's also remember, that gas is only a tip of an iceberg for all the commodities, which include oil, aluminium or refined steel (check steel Rebar), nickle, fertilizers, etc.