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New Vlad must be unhappy.
The Ruble is falling like a rock. It might break 70:$1 in the next day or so at this rate.

http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=RUB&view=1W

Cheers,
Scott.
New Not good
The only fallback they have is war. What else can a failing wannabe empire do when the revenue stream runs out? Of course, they're sovereign entity like the U.S. That's what we do. There are other options, but conservatives don't like them. And shirtless KBG spook is definitely a conservative.
Again, messy...
"Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable."
~ AMBROSE BIERCE
(1842-1914)
New There is that...
He does seem to have learned the lesson that throwing the Russian Army around in tiny border states makes him popular at home (at least while the economy is improving). Let's hope he doesn't think that lesson applies when NATO is a potential adversary.

He's been given lots of opportunities to climb down without losing face, but he doesn't seem to want to take them. Instead he's been throwing around comparisons to Jerusalem which is not going to make it easy for him to get out of Ukraine.

Here's hoping a peaceful way out is found....

:-(

Cheers,
Scott.
New If the Russians march on Kiev, then what?
They could probably take it in a few weeks. I'm not sure the West would put boots on the ground in the Ukraine.
New He won't do that.
Foreign Policy:

The White House points to the billions of dollars moving out of Russia, the volatile Micex stock index, and the ruble’s falling value as evidence that sanctions are inflicting economic pain. But if the goal of the sanctions was to get Putin to stop bullying Ukraine, then they have yet to hit the mark. Instead, Putin is telling the head of the European Union that he could conquer Kiev in two weeks — if he wanted to. Yuri Ushakov, a Kremlin foreign-policy advisor, told the Guardian on Tuesday that Putin’s remarks were taken out of context. NATO plans to station rapid-response forces to protect Eastern Europe, though it’s unclear whether the United States — the most powerful military in the 28-member alliance — will participate.


Stars and Stripes:

Published: September 8, 2014


Sea Breeze 2014
Three NATO ships take part in the multinational Sea Breeze 2014 military exercise, which started on Sept. 8, 2014 in the Black Sea.

The USS Mount Whitney leads a formation during exercise Baltic Operations (BALTOPS) in June, 2013. The U.S. is crafting plans to deploy rotational ground troops and naval forces into the Baltics as part of an effort to reassure allies shaken by Russia's intervention in nearby Ukraine. Josh Bennett/U.S. Navy
Biden signals plans for more US military drills in the Baltics

The U.S. is crafting plans to deploy rotational ground troops and naval forces into the Baltics as part of an effort to bolster the capabilities of regional allies and reassure nations shaken by Russia’s intervention in nearby Ukraine, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said.

The U.S. Navy began a three-day exercise in the Black Sea with Ukraine and several other militaries on Monday.

Exercise Sea Breeze 2014, a long-standing U.S. European Command exercise, will focus on maritime interdiction operations as a primary means to enhance maritime security. Other components of the exercise focus on communications, search and rescue, force protection and navigation, according to EUCOM.

The Navy’s USS Ross is one of the vessels participating in the drill, which was planned before relations with Russia soured over Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine earlier this year.

About 280 U.S. servicemembers will participate in the event.

This year’s exercise, now in its 13th iteration, is being co-hosted by the U.S. and Ukraine.

The other participants are Georgia, Romania and Turkey. Three ships from the Standing NATO Maritime Group Two Task Unit also will participate: Canadian Halifax-class frigate HMCS Toronto, Spanish frigate ESPS Almirante Juan De Borbon and Romanian frigate ROS Regele Ferdinand.

Next week, troops from the Vicenza, Italy-based 173rd Airborne Brigade will also be taking part in more training with Ukrainian forces when soldiers head into Yavoriv, Ukraine, for the multinational ground forces exercise Rapid Trident.

Some 1,300 troops from 15 countries will take part in the exercise, the first to be held on Ukrainian soil since Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea Peninsula.


We still have that pesky treaty guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity in exchange for her giving up her nuclear weapons...

Putin can make things very difficult for the West if he wants (UN vetos, jacking up military spending and provocations, etc.), but he's not going to invade NATO states or make overt moves in Ukraine.

My $0.02.

Cheers,
Scott.
New I do hope you're right!
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New This entire situation is YAN "gift" from the corrupt Clinton Administration.
New Yup. Putin had no choice. Nobody has Agency but the USofA. Of course... :-/
New Of course, NATO expansion East had nothing to do with it. :-/
New Last expansion was April 2009. What year is it now?
New So, if a LIE is old enough, it doesn't count anymore?
New All those countries west of Russia are -- and were, in 2009 too...
...free and sovereign members of the UN.

They can join what-the-fuck-ever organisations they want, and that doesn't give that fucking little Westentaschenführer THE LEAST fucking right to start invading them. What's so fucking hard to understand about that?!?

You still a fucking Stalinist, or what? I always knew growing up in Russia did couldn't have been good for you... Holy sheee...eesh!
--
Christian R. Conrad
Same old username (as above), but now on iki.fi

(Yeah, yeah, it redirects to the same old GMail... But just in case I ever want to change.)
New What I learned from a year in the Soviet Union.
Never trust the West.
What the US secretary of state said on Feb. 9, 1990 in the magnificent St. Catherine's Hall at the Kremlin is beyond dispute. There would be, in Baker's words, "no extension of NATO's jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east," provided the Soviets agreed to the NATO membership of a unified Germany. Moscow would think about it, Gorbachev said, but added: "any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable."

Now, 20 years later, Gorbachev is still outraged when he is asked about this episode. "One cannot depend on American politicians," he told SPIEGEL.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/nato-s-eastward-expansion-did-the-west-break-its-promise-to-moscow-a-663315-2.html

If I had truly "grown up" in the Soviet Union, my views would be even more extreme to Western eyes.
New That's one interpretation...
Foreign Affairs:

[...]

Contrary to the view of many on the U.S. side, then, the question of NATO expansion arose early and entailed discussions of expansion not only to East Germany but also to eastern Europe. But contrary to Russian allegations, Gorbachev never got the West to promise that it would freeze NATO’s borders. Rather, Bush’s senior advisers had a spell of internal disagreement in early February 1990, which they displayed to Gorbachev. By the time of the Camp David summit, however, all members of Bush’s team, along with Kohl, had united behind an offer in which Gorbachev would receive financial assistance from West Germany -- and little else -- in exchange for allowing Germany to reunify and for allowing a united Germany to be part of NATO.

In the short run, the result was a win for the United States. U.S. officials and their West German counterparts had expertly outmaneuvered Gorbachev, extending NATO to East Germany and avoiding promises about the future of the alliance. One White House staffer under Bush, Robert Hutchings, ranked a dozen possible outcomes, from the “most congenial” (no restrictions at all on NATO as it moved into former East Germany) to the “most inimical” (a united Germany completely outside of NATO). In the end, the United States achieved an outcome somewhere between the best and the second best on the list. Rarely does one country win so much in an international negotiation.

But as Baker presciently wrote in his memoirs of his tenure as secretary of state, “Almost every achievement contains within its success the seeds of a future problem.” By design, Russia was left on the periphery of a post–Cold War Europe. A young KGB officer serving in East Germany in 1989 offered his own recollection of the era in an interview a decade later, in which he remembered returning to Moscow full of bitterness at how “the Soviet Union had lost its position in Europe.” His name was Vladimir Putin, and he would one day have the power to act on that bitterness.


FWIW.

Cheers,
Scott.
New I wouldn't cheer to gleefully for another collapse.
One thing Putin can do, and has already begun to do, is pivot East. No doubt about it, he and Russia are in a very bad way (just imagine the World of Shit we would be in if there was a call on our debt! We're the world's leading debtor and have been for decades). But there is this straw Putin has that was not available in 1989:

http://thediplomat.com/2014/08/why-chinas-love-for-putin-is-dangerous/
New Interesting.
Dunno how well the "pivot" is going though.

Foreign Policy:

China hopes to project a squeaky-clean image while international attention centers on APEC’s host. But that’s not the only reason why the Putin-Peng Coatgate has China’s censors on high alert. China’s tightly controlled state media carefully protects the reputation of its top government leaders, and the names of China’s top leaders are frequently some of the most heavily censored terms on Chinese social media. In addition, the sweeping anti-corruption campaign Xi himself directs specifically targets infidelity as both a sign and a symptom of graft. And given China’s growing economic and military ties with Russia, even the hint of less than squeaky-clean behavior involving Russia’s president and China’s First Lady is certainly strictly verboten.


Whoops!

;-)

Being a debtor in one's own currency isn't a huge problem. China needs to buy dollars to keep its currency weak. They know they would be in a world of hurt if the Yuan rose to too high a level. FT.

We'll see what happens. And keep our fingers crossed...

Cheers,
Scott.

New Fsck him!
And the horse he rides on. :)

Lets see if financial pressure works in the new world of interdependence.

Although the local yokels have no idea Putin is the cause. Total media control has its consequences.
Alex

"There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

-- Isaac Asimov
New now every russian unhappy, central bank is now at 17%
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free American and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 59 years. meep
New Diplomat-LRPD: Duck, and cover.
New Lather, rinse, repeat.
--

Drew
New 77.5:$1 before falling back today. So much for 17% interest helping...
New Bloomberg: Ruble fell after Putin's pals got $10B.
Bloomberg:

DEC 15, 2014 12:35 PM EST
By Leonid Bershidsky

Both the Russian government and the broader markets have seized on the decline in oil prices to explain the rapid drop in the ruble's value. Yet it now appears that the actions of the Russian Central Bank and other financial institutions may be playing a more important role than oil.

Consider what happened today: Oil bounced back on news of supply disruptions in Libya, even as the the ruble plummeted, losing 2.8 percent of its value against the dollar:

If, as a top Russian Central Bank official told me last week in Moscow, the relationship between the currency and oil was universally accepted -- built into trading algorithms, for example -- the ruble should have appreciated along with the oil price.

It would be easy to dismiss the divergence as an anomaly, yet evidence emerged Friday to support the counter-narrative.

Russia's state-owned oil company, Rosneft, raised 625 billion rubles ($10.8 billion at that day's exchange rate) with a bond issue that had a lower yield than Russian government bonds of similar maturity. The Central Bank quickly added the bonds to the list of securities it would accept as collateral from banks seeking liquidity. The deal was opaque, and it's not clear who bought the bonds or how Rosneft would use the proceeds. There are, however, three distinct possibilities for what could happen now:

First, the banks that bought the Rosneft paper -- probably big state-owned ones -- could use the bonds as collateral to borrow foreign currency from the Central Bank, and then would provide the cash to Rosneft through a currency swap. That would allow the oil company to refinance a $6.88 billion loan from foreign banks. Under this scenario, however, the Central Bank would need to draw on its foreign reserves, which it doesn't want to deplete.

Second, Rosneft could invest the rubles in production. The company announced that it would distribute the money to several subsidiaries. Each, however, would get as much as the others, suggesting the money isn't earmarked for investment.

Third, Rosneft would use the rubles to buy dollars for debt repayment on the market. That, however, would severely erode the ruble's exchange rate.

[...]

Central Bank technocrats have been worried that the government would force them to print rubles for the direct funding of industries, primarily the military industrial complex and the state companies run by Putin friends. The Central Bank's obvious complicity in the Rosneft deal means the pressure is on, and the Central Bank is caving. It cannot prevent the funds loaned to corporations in special deals such as Rosneft's from destabilizing the currency and fueling market panic. Besides, the Rosneft deal sends a clear signal to market players that some of them are more equal than the others. That is a sure way to foster distrust and send the ruble into a speculative tailspin regardless of what happens to the oil price.

[...]


(via a comment at Balloon-Juice).

As Box says, the little people are going to get crushed. Putin and his pals? Not so much, if things go according to their plans...

Cheers,
Scott.
     Vlad must be unhappy. - (Another Scott) - (22)
         Not good - (hnick) - (15)
             There is that... - (Another Scott) - (14)
                 If the Russians march on Kiev, then what? - (mmoffitt) - (13)
                     He won't do that. - (Another Scott) - (12)
                         I do hope you're right! -NT - (a6l6e6x)
                         This entire situation is YAN "gift" from the corrupt Clinton Administration. -NT - (mmoffitt) - (10)
                             Yup. Putin had no choice. Nobody has Agency but the USofA. Of course... :-/ -NT - (Another Scott) - (9)
                                 Of course, NATO expansion East had nothing to do with it. :-/ -NT - (mmoffitt) - (8)
                                     Last expansion was April 2009. What year is it now? -NT - (Another Scott) - (1)
                                         So, if a LIE is old enough, it doesn't count anymore? -NT - (mmoffitt)
                                     All those countries west of Russia are -- and were, in 2009 too... - (CRConrad) - (5)
                                         What I learned from a year in the Soviet Union. - (mmoffitt) - (4)
                                             That's one interpretation... - (Another Scott)
                                             Drum: More echos of 1989. - (Another Scott) - (2)
                                                 I wouldn't cheer to gleefully for another collapse. - (mmoffitt) - (1)
                                                     Interesting. - (Another Scott)
         Fsck him! - (a6l6e6x)
         now every russian unhappy, central bank is now at 17% - (boxley)
         Diplomat-LRPD: Duck, and cover. -NT - (Ashton) - (1)
             Lather, rinse, repeat. -NT - (drook)
         77.5:$1 before falling back today. So much for 17% interest helping... -NT - (Another Scott)
         Bloomberg: Ruble fell after Putin's pals got $10B. - (Another Scott)

We can probably skip drugs and prostitution, but the mortgage business looks good.
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