Arguing Semantics

The Weirdness of Eastern Europe

I used to know a Czech at high school. He was always up for an argument. When I ran into him some years after high school, he wanted to take up on some argument that we had back at high school, as if only days had passed. He wanted to re-prosecute his arguments and then drive home some arcane conclusion that he wanted to push for back in the schoolyard.  

I knew another Czech. He played dungeons and dragons with us. He would drink quite heavily and by 8:30 pm, he would argue anything and everything. He once argued that there were no such things as medieval townships, just "potential cities". He wouldn't let that pass even when we begged him to. Like that guy in the meme who wants to be argued around a difficult point, he demanded we argue with him.

When I got to AFTRS, I kind of hit the motherlode of East Europeans. Hungarians, Poles, Lithuanians, Latvians and so on - and they all loved a good argument. Even the laconic ones would be loquacious when it came to the true nature of Marxism or the unbearable lightness of one's libido. At some point you would find yourself in a deep argument with them. It just was the way it was.

What I did notice about the way they argued, was that they liked to argue semantics. In the English speaking world, we don't like to argue semantics. When somebody who is a native English speaker says "I'm not going to argue the semantics," it usually means "fuck off with your bullshit." However, if you ever found yourself in a surreal never-ending argument with an Eastern European, you usually found yourself arguing the nuances of semantics like they mattered. It doesn't to us, but to them, it seems to matter a lot.  

I don't know why Eastern Europeans love semantic arguments so much. Our disdain for semantics must seem barbaric or anti-intellectual to them, but there really is a divide in how and what we argue. My own theory about this is that Eastern Europe was so much more boring than the rest of Europe, so to devise some entertainment, East Europeans developed arguing semantics into an art form. To endlessly argue semantics is not only a virtue, it is also a great way to pass time living under tyranny and with no rock music, movies, or books. Arguing semantics endlessly is, a kind of performance art over there. I suspect that over time, Eastern Europeans have created a consciousness where arguing semantics endlessly is just the way life goes. It's a bit sad that this passes for philosophical thought in some parts of Eastern Europe. 

Take Alexander Dugin, the alleged ideologue of Contemporary Russia. He seems to be nothing but a demagogue selling tawdry race theory claptrap. And yet he lands in Vladimir Putin's orbit as a great thinker on the back of reams and reams of bullshit. And by bullshit I mean semantic crap woven into more semantic crap. Hardly any of Dugin's 'thought' would pass Philosophy 101 in the West, but there he is, advising Putin. It'a all semantics built up into something that it shouldn't be. 

And this phenomenon, more than anything else would explain Vladimir Putin's penchant for long speeches about nothing. They're "about nothing" to us exactly because a lot of what he's banging on about are semantic arguments which we dismiss instinctively, or as second nature. Putin on the other hand thinks he has crafted some incredibly intelligent argument arguing the most nuanced semantics. He would be dead wrong in thinking any of those semantics would persuade anybody in the West. And so he wonders why we don't understand him. It may well come as a shock to him one day when somebody explains to him that the great effort he puts into arguing semantics is totally meaningless to an anglophone world. 

The cultural schism is a lot bigger than people are giving it credit. 

View From The Couch - 07/Aug/2022

Six Problems Over Which To Lose Sleep 

As the war drags on in Ukraine, we're starting to see all kinds of problems poking their heads over the horizon. These problems were latent problems of the world, but thanks to the war, they have become blatant problems of the world. 

No.1 with a bullet for the Europeans is what they're going to do for heating in winter. Too many European countries are dependent on natural gas from Russia. This used to be a vague hypothetical problem, but this northern winter, it's going to be very real, front and centre. There are no easy answers for this because it's not like there are substitute sources, and it's not like there's an alternative fuel to replace it. 

No.2 is the grain export problem. Both Russia and Ukraine were major exporters of grains. Now those exports have been hampered by the war. The last time there were major issues with food in North Africa, it brought about the Arab Spring. That is to say, if you're a dictator in North Africa and your country is dependent on imported grains for food, then this is not a good situation at al. 

No.3 on the list is fertilisers. Russia is the biggest exporter of potash and now that's off the market. Agricultural inputs are pretty unforgiving so growers the world over will make changes to what they plant next year which means globally speaking, we might not have enough food sometime soon. China would be in the shit if that happens because, they are major food importers. And as with the dictators sitting on a hungry population in No.2 above, Xi Jinping's China stands to be in trouble the most over this problem, when it has the problems of its own (more on that below at No.6). 

No.4 is crude oil. We've already seen the oil prices sky rocket and with it inflation. While the immediate peak has passed, oil is going to remain high because Russia was the largest exporter of crude just before the Ukraine invasion. now with sanctions, Russia theoretically can't sell their oil. In practical terms, they're probably keeping their pipelines open to North Korea, but if they stop the oil pipelines, that's it. The pipeline is dead. Meanwhile the world without oil can try and accelerate towards alternative fuel sources but are we geared towards accomplishing that? If we're relying on China to produce the cheap solar panels going into the future, we might be in for a rude shock. 

No.5 is the new model of war that America seems to be trialling in Ukraine. After spending 20 years fighting in Afghanistan, trying to bolster any kind of state there only to see it fall in a week, it is clear the Americans were leery of fighting anywhere to bolster any state. If you add in the chances of a nuclear war, America has had the best reason not to engage in direct fire with the Russians. That said, unlike the Afghans, the Ukrainians have fought hard to keep their state and sovereignty, which has given the world a window to operate. What the Americans have opted to do is give arms to the Ukrainians to fight their war, but have decidedly kept their troops out. This may work well for Ukraine and in the end if they do defeat Russia, it will have worked very well with America. Because success in this model means America will have a new way of managing their wars - they don't send troops and ships, they just send the weapons. It signals a retreat from Pax Americana. 

No.6 is China. China probably deserves an entry all of its own but it can be broken down into three components. The first is political. The concentration of power Xi Jinping has managed to accrue makes China a dictatorship with no checks or balances. China might make the unfortunate call to invade Taiwan and if they do, it would be because one person wanted it, and not necessarily the polity of China. The second is its management of Covid where it is still in the Zero Covid method that was more common before there was the vaccine. China is still doing these because their Sinovax doesn't work. The third component is the property bubble bursting. It's so bad there have been bank runs. China is not going to be the growth engine of the world economy as it has been for the last 30 years. It's probably not even going to stay as the underpants factory of the world. Globalisation is retreating and the combination of the above three component problems mean it is leaving from China the fastest. In this global context, the rise of Xi Jinping, unreformed-Maoist-Totalitarian, is most unfortunate.  

View From The Couch - 27/Jul/2022

EVs With Lithium Batteries For Everybody?

What's been on my mind a lot in recent weeks is this notion that our automotive transportation is going to change over to a fleet of EVs with Lithium batteries. Electric vehicles to begin with are commodity-metals-intensive. They use a lot more copper cable than an ICE vehicle would, and they use things like raw earth magnets for the motors. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation tells you that if you wanted to replace very gasoline/petrol ICE vehicle with Lithium battery EVs, there wouldn't be enough of a Lithium supply to fill the need. 

I hold shares in some Lithium mines in Australia so I'm biased - I think if the world decides EVs with Lithium batteries, I'll stand to make some money in the mid to long term. Yet the little environmentalist in me is a little uncomfortable with the prospect of crappy manufacturers filling the world with crappy lithium batteries in their crappy electric vehicles. It's the stuff of nightmares just as bad as global warming. Maybe the whole world should have a deep think about whether this is indeed the way we want to go in terms of vehicles. There's no point replacing one catastrophic global problem with another one. 

Toyota is apparently the world leader in patents for batteries. So you would think Toyota would be leading the way with EVs but they are not. If you listen to the corporate communications coming out of Toyota, they seem to think hydrogen fuel cells are a better option than Lithium batteries. Indeed, they're pretty big on hydrogen in general. It stands to reason that if we could connect up the hydrogen economy to renewables, and ran vehicles with hydrogen fuel cells, we would be lessening the overall impact of lithium mining on the world. 

Of course, Elon Musk thinks Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a mind-bogglingly stupid idea. He's very deeply invested in Lithium batteries. All I'm saying is, there are real arguments for not going entirely with Lithium battery EVs. 

End of Globalism

There's a bit of talk lately about the end of globalisation. The salient argument being, America has been withdrawing from the world, and as it withdraws, it is leaving power vacuums on the world's high seas. The eventual picture maybe that there will be a free trade blocs built around NAFTA, EU, and CPTPP. Only liberal democracies need apply - because those blocs can and would trade with one another, but it deliberately leaves out China, Russia, Pakistan, Myanmar, the Middle East, and Eurasia, as well as Africa. 

Of course, the Middle East will likely hang on as long as oil is needed, but if the world moves on to running vehicles and planes without fossil fuels, the Middle East will likely lose its purchase on the economic relations involving these blocs. It's remarkable really - especially for us Gen-Xers because our generation was the one that felt globalisation was this inexorably, irresistible economic force that would wash away tariffs and protections and lower our standard of living (instead it imported deflation from China and we ended up with ore stuff than we need for dirt cheap, but that's another story). Naomi Klein was all over this space with her books and the big protests in Seattle in the late 90s was in opposition to globalism. Now we find less than a generation later that globalism is surrendering to history, and that our world is going to move back to trading blocs of the sort that existed pre-World War II. 

It's a bit sad that America's withdrawal from Afghanistan has been interpreted as America's weakness rather than loss of interest in global affairs. The invasion of Ukraine and the sabre rattling by China in the South China Seas is all a little disconcerting misreads. It's not the America is weak now; it's more that it doesn't care what the rest of the world does to beat itself up. It's still invested in the status quo, and more importantly, it will look after its allies. That said, it feels a little weird that we have to start building institutions like the Quad and AUKUS to fill in the power vacuum. 

In an ideal world, Russia and China come in from the cold instead of trying to impose their will on their surrounding countries. Nobody really shares in the grand vision of a Great Russia or a Great China if it means their sovereignty gets compromised. There is some level where the onus is on Russia and China to play nice instead of play these dominance games. The long term prognosis for both those countries is not good thanks to their ageing demographics. They are going to need more friends in the future, not less. Making the whole world your enemy is not proving to be a good move by Russia. You kind hope China gets the message but alas it's run by another dictator. 

If globalisation really is in retreat, you would think it would stop these countries dead in their tracks and make the reconsider their place in the world. The history where Russia had few friends or China had few friends were not good for either country. 

Quick Shots - 26/Jul/2022

The Reserve Bank Gets A Review

I guess there is some kind of informational osmosis going on. about half a decade ago I was complaining about how the Reserve Bank of Australia miscalculates inflation deliberately in order to suppress interest rates. After all, most central banks benefit from political support if they err on the side of lowering interest rates. Ben Bernanke totally missed the GFC coming his way but once it was underway, he dropped interest rates to maintain liquidity in the market and rode that to the cover of Time magazine. The next time there was a major threat to the economy, central bankers around the globe slashed interest rates and in the case of our own RBA, they made noises to the effect that they didn't see rates going up until 2024. 

Now, to be fair they didn't anticipate the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and also the supply shock of China which is still trying to fight the pandemic with a Zero Covid policy which has delivered unto the world a supply chain shock. These things combined have created the kind of inflation that not even the statistical gimmickry can hide. 

All the same it's been a solid decade of ultra-low interest rates, and house prices have gone stratospheric. In the same decade, the RBA has been struggling to see wages rise, and so there is an affordability crisis that has supplanted the Global Financial Crisis itself. You can understand that as the bill for the GFC has been handed to the Millennials and nobody is taking responsibility. And, as you know, I'm not a Millennial and even I think it kind of sucks for them.  

What really sucks in this turn of events is that the inflation in question still not a demand-driven inflation. It's not like people got massive pay rises and they've gone to spend their pay rises en masse. It's not even all the printed money of quantitative easing because the benefits of those tend to go to banking and other financial institutions and not the regular folks on Main Street. So much for the notion that the RBA wanted to wait to see wages increase before raising interest rates.  

Worse still, companies are using the inflation as cover to rase their prices exorbitantly. "oh there's inflation, our costs are up," they say and somehow they're turning in a truck load of profits in their announcements during this reporting season. It all seems like the central banks of the world rig the markets exactly so the ordinary Joe and Jane can't get ahead. It really is worth asking if the RBA really working towards making people's lives better if the outcome is out of control house prices and stagnant wages. If the exchange is that people have to lose jobs to tame inflation, you sort of wonder who exactly it is that is benefitting from this lowering of inflation through raising of interest rates. i.e. If I have to lose my job so interest rates can go up and then inflation gets beat, who is getting ahead here? 

In that light, it is unsurprising then that the ALP government has decided to review the RBA's role.  It's about damn time somebody looked into this racket. 

Russia Ukraine War Drags On Still

The dumb war without any hope of a Russian victory drags on in Ukraine. Still, the deposit in the Kremlin does not accept he doesn't  hold a hand resembling a winning hand. The world awaits for the penny to drop (maybe, maybe not), or for a coup to happen (less likely) in the Kremlin. A lot of people are needlessly getting hurt and killed all because Putin has lost touch with reality. Worse still he has insisted on his army proceeding with World War II era tactics and the casualties on the Russian side have been spectacular/ horrifying (depending on how you view it).

A basic comparison of the USSR army that invaded Afghanistan in 1978 and the Russian Army of February 2022 shows that the Russians are weaker now than then, and that they waded into a war with an opponent who is quantitatively and qualitatively much better than the Afghanis they faced in 1978. When you factor in the global first world support for Ukraine, there is not a scenario in the conventional war sense that Russia can win. 

None of this couldn't have been how the war was conceived in Moscow. Now that the Russians are finally culminating, it's worth asking if Putin actually has any kind of exit plan. Because staying on in Ukraine is going to kill a lot of young people, and Russia's demographic can't afford that. So really the only question that remains is when the hell is Putin going to realise what we've known for some time? 

I guess we're going to have to wait and see. Whoever replaces him is going to have to give up on they 'Greater Russia' horseshit just to get back to the negotiating table. 

End of an Era for Stupidity

And Boris Is... Going

So say the news. 

It truly is some kind of an end of era. First it was Trump not winning in 2020, followed by the January 6 Capitol mess. Arguably, it took a while but Australia corrected itself at the electorate and removed the mendacious Scott Morrison and his government of corrupt miscreants. Not importantly it marked the end of Australia's time that started with the election of Tony Abbott, the most incompetent PM in Australia's short history. Finally, we're seeing Boris Johnson being tuned out by his own party who can no longer abide his zero-governance style of government. 

What they all have in common is that they are all governments pushed upon us by the Murdoch press and TV. Any rational mind could see Tony Abbott had no idea - no fucking idea - about how to run a country, let alone a chook raffle, but somehow Australia ended up with him just so the hard right nut job brigade could run a solid defence against actually doing anything about Global Warming. Compared to the decade of travesty that followed, perhaps Boris Johnson is not as bad. But then a pile of steaming poo is not as bad as a lake of diarrhoea. As for Trump and his entourage of corrupt minions and family, hoo boy. 

Jeez y'know, it makes you wonder about all kinds of things like the efficacy of all that private school education and bullshit if it yields leaders like these. It's hard to tell where all that money went. It also makes you realise that you can deny reality only for so long. You can pray and make a song and dance out of your religiosity like Scomo but ultimately Black Summer Fires and a bunch of once-in-a-hundred-year flooding events will put you squarely in the context of not knowing what you're talking about. Equally, if 40 of your own side ministers quit on you, maybe you don't know just what the fuck you're doing as Prime Minister of UK. It begs all kinds of questions about a society that gives rise to a process that allows this kind of thing to happen. If it were only America or only Australia or only the UK, you're be forgiven for saying it's a cultural quirk. But for these 3 Anglophone countries to all be beset by this kind of anti-intellectual incompetent troglodyte governments does make you search of answers. 

And really, it's staring in your face if you're a news junky. It's the collective effort of the Murdoch press that delivers these terrifyingly stupid outcomes for so long. Perhaps it is the sign that demographics are shifting - the greying nut-job Murdoch-press-consuming dickheads are dying out, and this is creating just enough of an edge for sanity to prevail. I guess we'll see. 

The Other Stupid Keeps Hanging On

Goodness. What the fucking fuck are we going to do about Russia and Poo-tin? The unhelpful answer is that we should somehow come up with a way to talk him off the ledge of history. 

The West is “blindly” marching towards World War 3, one expert says, and warns one act could trigger a “disastrous” global war. 

Henri Guaino, a French politician and senior advisor to the former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, says an “all-out” war could be triggered by treating Putin like Adolf Hitler – an act which would make Russia “the most dangerous country in the world”. 

"The moment we compare Russia to Nazi Germany and Putin to Hitler – we must be prepared for an all-out war,” Mr Guaino told Israeli newspaper Israel Hayom. 

“It is impossible to stop the war against Hitler. If we are facing someone like Hitler – we have to go all the way, at any price, and we will be walking into a disaster. Alternately – we must find ways out. This is the responsibility of politics.”

Look, I know it scares people to sobriety that Poo-tin might just go for the nuclear launch codes. It needs to be said that it's also true that whoever goes for the launch codes first invites the other to do whatever the hell they like, up to and including Mutually Assured Destruction. 

So the Russians bleating about how they have nukes and if they keep on getting mistreated by the world, they might just go for them, is just show. They keep talking about nuking London, but the moment they let off that sucker, it invites NATO to surge across the border and head for Moscow in a conventional war. And given how depleted the Russians are, the West can win that one without nukes. Therefore, the Russians can't just let off one as a warning or do proportionate damage if they go first. The only option once they decide to go nuclear is in fact Mutually Assured Destruction. Now, the Mutually Assured Destruction scenario is where everybody loses, but that everybody includes Russia at the front of the queue. Any World War III of the nuclear kind would guarantee Russia loses. The rest of it leading up to World War III is a pantomime to see if Poo-tin can be made to wear the responsibility all by himself. 

Poo-tin is not as stupid as say, Boris Johnson or Scott Morrison. He understands this calculation. This is probably why he is getting other mouthpieces that are not him to put these ideas out and about. Yet it still has to be said, the dumbest guy in 2022 isn't Boris Johnson or Scott Morrison - it's the guy who ordered his army to invade Ukraine. What an idiot. 

View From The Couch - 11/May/2022

The End of Globalism

Not so long ago - well it doesn't feel that long ago - Globalism seemed set as the way of the future. There would be more coming and going of goods and trade and ideas and education. Like it or lump it, we were all set to compete on a global stage and there was no escaping its tendrils as goods and services put together with global supply chains and global transportation made its way around the world. Globalisation looked like the kind of end point of history that say Francis Fukuyama might approve of; even allowing for these pockets of global players who didn't quite fit into the club of liberal democracies. You could argue Russia was coming along ever slowly towards seeing things the way the west sees them, and even China under the CCP seemed to prioritise making money over ideological purity thanks to Deng Xiao-Ping-ism.

Now in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the bellicosity of Xi Jinping's China, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, some things have come into very sharp focus. The first thing on the list is that China under Xi - so China since about 2012 - has been a really crappy participant in the global order. The second is that Russia has also been a crappy participant in the global order. And between the two of them, their contributions have lessened to the point of making the first world wonder whether there is any merit in extending the welcome mat to these countries. 

To be sure, China is a big market that seemingly promises future growth except for the gigantic property bubble that has just popped. Russia, for its part is  tremendous exporter of oil, gas, wheat and fertilisers - so much so that the sanctions to remove Russia from the global markets is in a sense flirting with mass starvation scenarios. 

It's kind of amazing things have come to this, but the last decade has been to put it mildly a shit show for globalism. It is no wonder it is in retreat. For a while there, globalism looked so locked in, the people protesting against it in the late 1990s looked like ideological crazies. Now, globalisation is forced to being rolled back by the simple reality that you can't do business with countries with dictators like China and Russia. It may profit you in the short to mid term but in the long run, they're sure to screw you over. In that sense, there's not much daylight between Saddam Hussein and Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping. 

The End of Deflationary Pressures

For some time we've been in this weird loop since the end of the Global Financial Crisis around March 2009. Governments have spent lots of stimulus money in the hopes of stoking inflation but all these quantitative easing and printing money did not lead to the kind of inflation they taught in schools. Part of the reason is that as the world went global, so did the money, so all the money printed by the US Fed or the RBA seemed to just flow out into the wider world and did not come back as inflation.

It's a complicated area but the bottom line is that even faster than the US was printing money, China had been exporting deflation to the world through its cheap labor. I think I've covered this phenomenon somewhere in the past so I'll skip going into it here. Suffice to say China's labor costs have been going up over the last decade, and so there probably has been less deflationary pressures that China was exporting, leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic. If the last 30 years of gentle economic growth for the first world was founded on Chinese manufacturing being so cheap and easy, that context is coming to a rapid end. 

Worse still China is the most indebted nation in history both in absolute terms as well as per capita, and for political reasons of the CCP needing to stay in power - or perhaps it's just Xi who needs to stay in power - they have blown up their property bubble. We have no idea how this is going to play out in global markets. Judging from the ructions of April and May, global markets do not like what is going down in China. Markets might approve and accept the US Federal Reserve raising interest rates, but it does not like the figures coming out of China. The supply chain issue that we have come to understand isn't just about the fact that China is in lockdown across its most productive cities. It's the fact that China itself has become this gigantic counter-party risk in the last few months. 

Some of the manufacturing the Chinese had been handed by foreign corporations is now being on-shored back to those very foreign shores. The reason we're seeing such stubborn inflation in the first world is simply because the deflationary pressure China brought to the world economy has been cut out of the loop. This means we can expect inflation to keep rising, and for interest rates to keep rising until those inflationary pressures are tamed. In turn this means we will be having that recession we had to have back in 2008-2009 that we didn't quite get because China took on the greatest debt in history to keep the punch bowl swirling. All of that, on top is about to get unwound out of China. 

Brace yourselves. This ride is going to be a bit rough.

Can Global Capitalism Even Be Fixed?

I'm sure people will make every effort to revive it, but right now, the forces are arrayed against it. 

  

Cosmic Orphans

Sunken Dreams In The Black Sea 

The amazing news of the last day or two is how the Russians had to concede they lost their flagship, the Moskva. At first they said they had a fire near the armoury and the ammunition blew up. Then it came up that the Ukrainians managed to successfully launch a missile at the ship and this had caused major damage. The Russians flatly denied it had been attacked, but conceded it had been sunk later on. Which is to say, they were happy to admit they were incompetent over admitting that they had in fact lost their flagship to a country with no significant navy. Their flagship went down without exchanging fire with any other ship, its demise resembling more of a gangland hit than say, Battle of Trafalgar. 

And now the Black Sea Fleet is down to 10 ships. For some reason I thought of Admiral Nikoai Nebogatov. The Russians really suck at this war thing. 

Panspermia

We are all cosmic orphans, if you believe the theory of panspermia. 

Come Join The Fun!

Quick Shots 28/Mar/2022

When One Out of Three is Bad

We're into well over a month of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. A lot of it hasn't gone the way some people expected - namely that it has gone on this long. The fact that it has gone this long seems to indicate it has not gone as Putin and company had hoped, so in one sense it means Russia has already lost. At any point in time you can analyse that Russia strategically could be winning, be in a stalemate or losing. Of the three, only winning can lead to a political win. Losing is bad, obviously but it is this condition whereby they are in a stalemate which gives the most political view that Russia is losing. So out of the three, 2 out of 3 give rise to bad political outcomes for Russia. Only winning can lead to a better political outcome for the Kremlin. Because we are not there, or there yet, depending on who you ask, we have conclude that Russia is losing the politics as the war is beginning to harden into a stalemate. 

The hurdle for winning for Russia is as high as it is for Ukraine. Ukraine has to remove all the invaders to have resounding win - this is a flat out mathematical problem. Russia has to remove the current Ukrainian government, and then install another, and hope like hell the international community accepted the new government in Kyiv. This, looks unlikelier by the day. So a protracted stalemate is in essence the expression of the limits of Russia' power and ability to impose its will on Ukraine and the world. 

The question then is just how long is this reality going to take to sink into Vladimir Putin's thick skull? 

The problem for the West is that Putin is so set in his views that reality checks are just going to bounce off his pre-formed prejudices and preconceived notions (and I didn't mean that sentence to be so alliterative). The sanctions, as severe as they are alleged to be, may take weeks and months to make an impact on Russian political thought. The war grinds on every day, costing USD 20 billion a day for the Russians. We think something has got to break,  but so far Putin has resisted common sense reappraisals of just what his war has wrought, and how badly it is going. For the record, if it were me playing a strategy game on a computer and it was going this badly, I would quit the game, reboot the machine, go back to the last save and not invade. Of course Putin has no such options - he has to live with the consequences of his bad decisions just like everybody else on the planet. 

We kind of hope he puts up the white flag soon. 

Long Comic Book Movies

The trend for blockbuster movies is more length. I finally got to watch 'Spider-man: No Way Home' and was amazed at the 2 hour 28min opus. It felt quite long. Then I watched Zack Snyder's 'cut' (That cut could be a misnomer) of 'Justice League' and this thing runs for 4hours and change. It is a lo-o-ong motherfucker of a movie. Honestly, that was like 3 90minute movies crammed into one. 

It's not necessarily a good trend but you do feel like they delivered quantity if not quality. 

I've long complained about this barrage of movies based on comic books. I've also complained ab out the people who complain about movies based on comic books. At this point in history of cinema, it doesn't much matter. The world has changed, the demographics have changed, and there is no sensible discussion about cinema going on anywhere any more. In light of that, I kind of think I'm okay with more Spider-man movies, and less so with Batman. They'll make more of both but I do have the option to put the Batman movies to the back of the viewing queue. At the end of the day, one's own taste is everything in critical analyses.

Slap Seen Around The World

Even if we hate watching the Oscars and don't watch them, we got to see Will Smith slap Chris Rock. Chris Rock's joke did seem a little tasteless - but then Chris Rock is a guy who talks some serious rude language in his own shows so compared to that, it was tame. I don't think it warranted being slapped on stage by Will Smith live to the world. Props to the man he didn't even go to feel his cheek after the slap. He kept his show biz face going and kept it together without major recrimination. I gotta say Will Smith looked worse in that interaction. He might have won the Oscar but he sure lost me with that act. 

Question

If Russian soldiers sick of Vladimir Putin have a mutiny, would it be a Putiny?

 

Quick Shots - 14/Mar/2022

Dissatisfaction At The RBA

You read the news long enough, you do get educated into weird things. One of the things I've been taught over the years is that the RBA is independent of politics - that it operates apart from executive and legislature branches of government in order to be impartial. To that end it has a charter and it works to control inflation and work towards full employment. And now the RBA is getting reviewed because something really wonky has happened to our economy as result of the RBA doing its thing. 

The bank’s charter, which includes a commitment to full employment, is unchanged since it was formally established in 1959. Its inflation target of 2-3 per cent, which it failed to meet in the 7 years leading up to the COVID-19 recession, was established in the early 1990s.

Apart from failing to meet its inflation target, the RBA now holds $356 billion in state and federal government debt as part of its quantitative easing program and has official interest rates at 0.1 per cent while households are carrying record levels of property debt.

KPMG senior economist Sarah Hunter said given how many unconventional monetary policy tools were used to deal with the coronavirus recession, the time was right for a review.

One of the things I might offer up is how the RBA uses the Consumer Price Index instead of the Cost of Living index to make its decisions on interest rates. The thing is, it is well known that for 3 decades now CPI has under-reported the inflation figured compared to Cost of Living. This has led to an overall easing bias over the 30 years, and amazingly (or not) this has led to the current state of affairs where interest rates sit at 0.1% and there is record private sector debt locked up in housing. I mean who'd a thunk it, right?

If the RBA had not decided to calculate CPI differently to how it did it back in the early 1990s, maybe CPI would not have under-reported inflation and consequently interest rates would not have been as low as they are today. Are low interest rates a problem on of themselves? No, but the accumulated byproducts of this low inflation regime is startling. There is the record private sector debt in mortgages; there's the housing crisis in general that is so problematic, governments cannot devise policies of sufficient aces to combat them; then there is the general problem of people not being able to save enough for retirement. A whole generation of people's retirements have been compromised by the regime of low interest rates that have followed the Global Financial Crisis, which in turn has forced their money into riskier assets late in life. Equities are at a historic high in spite of negative sentiment in such areas as the pandemic, accelerating Global Warming and associated natural disasters and generally low growth across the developed world that dates back three decades as well.  

As well meaning as RBA Governor Philip Lowe is, we've seen a radical accumulation of paper wealth for the rich. Arguably, had the RBA followed the Cost of Living numbers over the CPI for the last 30 years, there might not have been the insane frenzy for real estate that suddenly seems to define the economy. So if nothing else, there's ample evidence the RBA needs to be reviewed. I'm certainly for doing it.  

The 4th Dose Is Coming

I got my booster shot back in early January. I actually managed to get my Moderna shot a day before proper eligibility - the chemist wasn't really going to argue the toss at a time when they wanted everybody to be getting the booster anyway. I figured on the law of averages we would likely be doing yet another booster around May to June, given that even when properly motivated my shots seemed to take place 4-5 months apart at a time. During those months the politics would gyrate and new variants would come and go but the net effect was this thing where we needed to get another shot. 

Now the chatter is that a fourth dose is inevitable. 

“The protection that you are getting from the third, it is good enough – actually quite good for hospitalisations and deaths. It’s not that good against infections, but doesn’t last very long.

“But we are just submitting those data [on fourth doses] to the [Food and Drug Administration] and then we will see what the experts also will say outside Pfizer.”

Dr Bourla said Pfizer needed to be well-coordinated with US regulators the Food and Drug Administration, Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, and the wider industry, so “that we are all providing to the American people and to the world a cohesive picture rather than confusion” on whether four doses were necessary.

I am guessing that the Deltacron hybrid discovered in the UK and France recently is going to pose a problem. Basically, the mRNA vaccine Pfizer and Moderna have been making is based on the spike protein of the original. Omicron spikes are sufficiently different so render the vaccines much less effective. The Deltacron seems to have the spike of the Omicron but the pathogenic capability of Delta which means it's the worst of both worlds.  It was bad enough when Moderna's boss said current vaccines would not terribly useful against Omicron back in December. If we don't get vaccine against the Omicron spike, we're kind of sitting ducks all over again. Amazingly, just as when Omicron started to break, the government is carrying on like living with all variants of COVID is like living with the Flu. 

I'm also guessing that in roughly 2 months time we will find this current approach of relying mostly on the vaccine was way too loose. So I peg that we'll be doing our 4th boosters around May.

A Weird Take on Putin's Russia

So Big had this link wherein it is argued that Putin has won. It's a take based on the assumption that Putin is a psychopath and is acting accordingly (plausible) and therefore the outcomes he would be aiming for would be psychopathic outcomes. As such he is likely to get whatever it is because in all our sanity, we cannot fathom the depth of Putin's psychopathic goals. 

It's an interesting take except a lot of psychopaths that do terrible things in public at least tend to end up imprisoned and incarcerated. Serial killers tend to hide their tracks and do their dirty deeds in secret but the public psychopaths tend to meet the pointy end of law and order. If Hitler's psychopathic outcome of his dreams was the destruction of European Jewry, then he sure did accomplish that outcome but he also ended up in the bunker shooting himself (if officials versions of events are to be believed). The same applies to any number of Nazis, Fascist dictators and unhinged royals of many a family in history.

It is true Putin is sitting on a good supply of wood, oil, grains, fertiliser and aluminium. It is true cutting off those supplies would hurt the world economy. Yet it is also true none of those commodities are exclusive to Russia, so it remains to be seen if these sanctions really will hurt us more than it hurts Putin's Russia. I'm inclined to think that in the 21st century commodities market, it's impossible to corner anything to be able to wrest control of the markets. I still think Putin is holding a bunch of losing cards right now. 

PSA - New Album Coming

Just a quick note to let you know my new album 'Cosmic Orphans' is due out through digital only release on 17 March 2022. 

Pink Floyd pulled all their tracks from Russia on Spotify because of this Russia Ukraine thing. I thought I might do the same but I realise none of you listeners are from Russia so it would be redundant. 

Anyway, this one is my 'pandemic lockdown rock-down'. All of the songs were written and produced during this pandemic. Most of it was in fact recorded and mixed in the second half of 2020 and first half of 2021 - but lining stuff up for a release can be a bitch. I think just about everybody sent home to work from home worked on their album so the logjam must be intense. Some people wanna fill the world with digital audio information. And what's wrong with that? 

Anyways, do be good, stay tuned. Go to Spotify and keep an eye out for it this week. 

View From The Couch - 10/Mar/2022

The Unit Cost Is Too High

One of the stranger spectacles of the Russian invasion into Ukraine has been the armoured column stuck on the road to Kyiv. All those vehicles trying to advance and somehow they've managed to get themselves stuck on the road. A lot of it is probably the abysmal logistics from back home in Russia via Belarus, but also the horror of being attacked by modern anti-tank missiles. Even the forces trying to break into Kharkov and the other force pushing towards Odessa seem to have advanced rather slowly, and more to the point have failed to take their objectives. When it gets right down to it, it's been anything but a Blitzkrieg. 

When you see images of Russian tanks all smashed up on a road blocking the progress of tanks to follow, you start to get the picture that this whole World War II sort of image of an advancing armoured division thing is not working at all. The reason it is not working  is of course the modern anti-tank missiles provided by NATO. The UK NLAW for instance is all of $40,000 per unit, but it takes down a tank per missile at a 94% rate. That's roughly 19 out of 20. You take a batting average like that any day. 

A quick scour around Google says each of these T-90A tanks that are being blown up are worth USD 2-3 million to maybe 4.5million. It's hard to tell with any accuracy, but basically you have a multi-million dollar vehicle - kind of priced like a top-shelf Ferrari or Lamborghini - trundling down the road with 3 fully trained guys operating it. 2 Ukrainian soldiers pop up from the top of the building and fire an NLAW - and 19 times out of 20, the tank blows up with the 3 Russian dudes inside. 

The Russians have been putting their forces through this process for 17 days. Even without sanctions and frozen accounts and the rouble collapsing, I don't think Russia can afford to be fighting this war on the ground in this manner. This is possibly why they have resorted to indiscriminate bombings of civilian areas, but apart from being a war crime those bombings and missile strikes to civilian areas do not help get them closer to their objective of taking Ukraine and holding it. 

Too Many Lives Either Which Way

Just how many Russian troops have been killed since the invasion commenced on 22 February is up for debate:

Russia claims that the number of its soldiers killed and injured in the first six days of its invasion of Ukraine is a fraction of what Ukraine has said to be more than 5,000 dead and many more wounded. While neither side’s claims can be verified, even if we rely on official Russian figures, they are proportionally much higher than what the Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan over a decade in the 1980s. This raises serious questions about the ability and efficacy of the Russian military under Vladimir Putin in comparison to the forces his Soviet predecessors commanded during the Afghan war.
            <edit>
Moscow has officially put the number of its soldiers killed and injured during the first week of fighting at about 500 and 1,600, respectively. These figures exceed the Soviet loss of about 28 troops on average during a comparable period in Afghanistan. If Russia continues to suffer troop casualties at this rate, and if the war drags on for weeks and months, Russia’s Ukraine performance will fall substantially short of the Soviet operations in Afghanistan.

The Ukrainians think they killed more like 11,000 so far, and that's from 4 days ago. That number is closing in on the 15,000 killed in Afghanistan during the Russian campaign there during the 1980s. 

If indeed the casualties are already at 10,000 out of a force of 190,000, they've lost over 5% in just 2 weeks. This is not some computer game where you can order your forces to keep going even with 50% casualties. At 10,000, somebody is reckoning with the loss of a division's worth of troops. 

Oh, and they lost a Major General in the field. 

Even if the Russian claims were accurate they're doing badly. If the Ukrainian claims are accurate, they're doing disastrously. There doesn't seem to be an interpretation of the casualty numbers that gives a sense that the Russians are doing well in any aspect of this war they started. 

How Long Will The Money Last?

All of this, apart from the simple costs of tanks being blown up by missiles and troops dying n droves, is costing money. It was calculated by some economist in Japan that Russia really only had 2 weeks' worth of money to be running a campaign of this size.  One way we looked at it was that the war was costing Russia $20 billion a day. Russia had $630 billion in sovereign wealth funds, saved from all that oil money and set aside for this very day. A back of the envelop calculation says that in isolation, the campaign can run 30.5 days with that money. This of course totally denies that Russia has other obligations such as running its various other state apparatus as well as the rest of its military. 

16th of March will bring up roughly the 3 week mark of the invasion, and it is also the day that Russia will default on its debts. Now that Russia is cut off from SWIFT, and all the international businesses have headed for the door, and in fact people are clamouring to get out of the country as their businesses are now in a shambles, maybe about now is when the army runs out of food and pay. 

So what will the army do when it finds out there's no pay and there's no food and their heads are getting blown off with these anti-tank missiles? Maybe they'll rewatch some 'Battleship Potemkin' and go topple their government? Am I being optimistic? Yeah maybe. But you tell me what you would do if you were the Russian general in the field getting your ass kicked in Ukraine, under-fed, under-supplied and then your pay stops? Would you politely take an IOU from Vladimir Putin and keep on going about your losing business of getting kicked in the pants?  

How's It Going Vlad?

Well D'uh

This war thing isn't going as promised by Vladimir Putin. A friend of mine alerted to this bit floating around the internet:

Pulled this from Twitter - from a European parliamentarian named Riho Terras

Doesn't sounds promising for the Russians - in fact this could end in complete humiliation for them.

Intel from a Ukrainian officer about a meeting in Putin’s lair in Urals. Oligarchs convened there so no one would flee. Putin is furious, he thought that the whole war would be easy and everything would be done in 1-4 days.

Russians didn’t have a tactical plan. The war costs about $20 bln/day. There are rockets for 3-4 days at most, they use them sparingly. They lack weapons, the Tula and 2 Rotenberg plants can’t physically fulfil the orders for weapons. Rifles and ammo are the most they can do.

The next Russian weapons can be produced in 3-4 months – if even that. They have no raw materials. What was previously supplied mainly from Slovenia, Finland and Germany is now cut off.

If Ukraine manages to hold the Russians off for 10 days, then the Russians will have to enter negotiations. Because they have no money, weapons, or resources. Nevertheless, they are indifferent about the sanctions.

Alpha Spec Ops have been near Kyiv since the 18th February. The goal was to take Kyiv and instal a puppet regime. They are preparing provocations against innocent civilians – women and children – to sow panic. This is their trump card.

Russia’s whole plan relies on panic – that the civilians and armed forces surrender and Zelensky flees. They expect Kharkiv to surrender first so the other cities would follow suit to avoid bloodshed. The Russians are in shock of the fierce resistance they have encountered.

The Ukrainians must avoid panic! The missile strikes are for intimidation, the Russians fire them at random to “accidentally” hit residential buildings to make the attack look larger than it really is.

Googling the text got me this. Who is Riho Terras? Looking at the Wikipedia entry at least, he seems to be somebody who would know a thing or two about the Russian military machine. Last night the news was how Kyiv (got to get used to that spelling now LOLz) had not fallen, and a quick glance through the headlines shows it still hasn't fallen as I write this entry. 

What's amazing is that the Russians seem to have blundered into Ukraine thinking they might be welcomed by the panic-ed arms of its citizenry. Just the formulation of that idea seems incredibly stupid, but it seems that was what they were expecting. How wrong were they to be facing fierce resistance?

What is also astounding is that in this day and age they went marching in without a great deal of thought given to logistics. There are reports the tanks have run out of fuel. They had this issue in the Chechnya  war in the 90s. 20 years later under Putin, they haven't improved upon their weaknesses in the least bit. It is a complicated thing to run a modern war with all these components. Doing it without the requisite logistical support is impossible. What on earth were they thinking? 

We had the report the troops were selling off their small arms and ammo for vodka during the long encampment, and there are even reports in the NY Pot no less, that these low morale troops are also trying to hook up with Ukrainian women on Tinder. I mean, that, in isolation, is no big deal; however it seems to indicate the months of training at the border hasn't instilled a tremendous sense of mission in the invading troops. There going in with the mindset of The Abduction of the Sabine Women, rather than say, Ride of the Valkyries.   

So to Ukraine we say hold on, hang in there and fight for as long as you can. Putin can't keep this up. The world is with you. We just can't send troops in fear of outright nuclear war, but short of that, we're with you in spirit.   

And Now The War Is On

Vlad The Imperialist

In the end Vladimir Putin couldn't pull back from his own rhetoric. I don't think he's exactly drunk on his own words, but he's certainly dancing to his own misshapen tune as he sends in his forces over the borders into Ukraine. 

The global markets were a bit perturbed by all this. Why wouldn't they? Everybody thought a shred of sanity would prevail, but no. Vladimir Putin is doing the kind of thing we haven't witnessed since the middle of the last century - an ideologically framed war with zero regard to collateral damage. 

Because he denied his intent to invade Ukraine for so long as he amassed his troops along the borders, it is actually quite hard to figure out how he sees the endgame. If he wants Ukraine to come back to the fold as a nation that is part of a greater Russia, he's sure failing to win friends and influencing people in Ukraine. If he is hunting down his political enemies who would see Ukraine join Western Europe, then he might be in for a lot of resistance. For every historic reason Putin might cite as to why Ukraine belongs with Russia, the Soviet experience has been plenty for a lot Ukrainians. Can you really blame them? 

As the history of capitalism amply demonstrates, if you start a war against the capitalist hegemony, your reputation suffers greatly and maybe even get whacked. No matter which way you dice it, invading Ukraine was the worst option for Putin, no matter how much he might try to spin it otherwise. And let's not forget he lied about his intention for months so what credibility does he have left anyway?

The Spy Who Can't Come In From The Cold

Having watched Russia turn into this rather silly caricature strongman state over the last 25 years has been a bit of a drag. It's not like it's the fault of the Russian people. They're as much a hostage to history as anybody living under a tin pot tyrant. It's just that it's kind of weird to see what once was the high-minded Soviet Union reduce itself to the kind of state Saddam Hussein was running in 1991 when he invaded Kuwait. 

Now, we're not putting together a big coalition to push Russian forces out of Ukraine like we did with Kuwait, but we likely will send weapons and supplies to the Ukrainians and we have no idea how this all plays out. In light of that, one has to wonder ho all this came to pass, and essentially, it comes down to the inability of the US led hegemony to talk Russia off the cliff edge when the Soviet Union collapsed. Somehow we didn't manage to shepherd Russia back in to the fold of a capitalist Europe. We didn't woo Russia back to civilisation - we let it wander off like an orphan, still equipped with nukes. Essentially, the West let Russia meander into this dictatorship and let the paranoia fester. That very paranoia has now manifested itself as this political will to take Ukraine like some re-run of World War II. 

So there's Vlad Putin, the ex-KGB guy who just can't get rid of his ideological framework and mindset. He climbs to the top of Russian politics and he's still largely informedly his experience as a spy. For years and years he was presented as this weird Russian guy who may or may not be a psychopath. it turns out, he was exactly the kind of bad guy you would expect from an ex-KGB spy allowed to run a country. Wo's fault is it exactly that Russia ended up with him as their de facto dictator? I sure don't want to pin that on the Russian people. Some of that responsibility lies with the west.

And so here we are today. 

When A War Is Not A War

Putin's Shuffle Step

As soon as I put up the last post, Vladimir Putin went and delivered a speech decrying Ukraine's role in its own self defence. He then declared Donetsk and Lugansk as independent People's Republics, which is a bit like declaring the Eastern Suburbs and North Shore of Sydney as 'independent people's republics'. With that he proceeded to move troops into the Eastern parts of Ukraine which have been in dispute since 2014. 

Ukraine decried - because decrying is the verb of the day - that Russia's declaration was verbatim the one they used when Russia invaded Georgia. 

Mr Kyslytsya says the Russian statements of independence for Donetsk and Luhansk are word-for-word copy and pasted from Russia's statement preceding it occupation of Georgia in 2008.

"The United Nations is sick. It has been hit by the virus spread by the Kremlin. Will it succumb to this virus? It is in the hands of the membership.

"Who is next among the members of the United Nations?"

Pretty funny if you have a dark sense of humour. I can hear Vladimir's evil laugh all the way from the Kremlin. 

By Mid-morning over here, Russian troops were finally on the move and arrived in the freely declared peoples' republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. Surely that's war, now that Russian troops were officially inside Ukraine. Even the secretary of Health in the UK thought it was an invasion:

The UK Health Secretary Sajid Javid says "the invasion of Ukraine has begun".

Speaking with Sky News UK, Mr Javid said people were "waking up to a very dark day in Europe".

"President Putin has decided to attack the sovereignty of Ukraine," he said.

But no. Joe Biden demurred and said the Russians were merely in territories they had taken by subterfuge already. He's ready for his summit. t's enough to make one wonder how many more hairs he intends to split with Putin. The script is supposed to show this is the bit where Biden and Boris impose heavy sanctions on Russia. The fact that hasn't seems to indicate that Biden wants to have the threat of sanctions as a bargaining chip that is still alive. One tends to think that perhaps Putin does not care about the sanctions. Putin has had to hold still while the Olympics rolled on in Beijing. now that they're over, he has a free hand. 

Does Biden really think the threat of sanctions is still a viable negotiation card?

Maybe This Is Just A Dance?

Going back about 10 days, it appeared that Putin was readying his army to march into Ukraine en masse on the 16th February. When the news broke from America that their intelligence apparatus had identified that date, it quickly became a joke that Putin would do exactly as predicted. For whatever reason - probably many - the Russian army did not invade that day. In the six days since, Vladimir Putin has essentially had two endure the speculation of when exactly he would order his army into Ukraine. If he started out trying to bluff Zelensky, he might have over-reached already. Instead he found himself being goaded by the world's press into invading Ukraine. 

Consider for a moment the troops Putin has amassed is about 190,000. The Ukrainians have 200,000. It's not like they have a significant advantage over the Ukrainians. While they are spread right across the north and eastern border, they don't have the best lay of the land to take on 200,000. If I were running this on a computer game, I don't think I would want to be sending in my 190,000 against 200,000 who know I'm coming. 

I also covered the general low discipline and low morale of the Russians army in Belarus in the previous post. They're not exactly the best, even on their best days. If you add in the general lack of desire to engage in a fratricidal war amongst the Russian officer corps, maybe invading Ukraine is not an action they want to take. While Putin might rant on about how Ukraine belongs to a Greater Russia because they share slavic roots in ancient Rus, it sort of rings hollow when you have your troops on the border trying to put together a Russian Anschluss. 

It's all enough to make you wonder if Putin in fact wants to follow this trajectory. Maybe, just maybe this has become all too much. So yesterday I had this thought that what Putin might go for was a quick PR victory for his own people, declare a 'Mission Accomplished' moment for himself and just send his troops home after all. How could he do that? Well he might just send his army into Donetsk and Lugansk, declare the crisis over and make himself appear victorious. So far, he seems to have gone in that direction. 

Shadow Boxing History

I've also been thinking there's something of a re-run of the Cuban Missile Crisis in all of this. It essentially starts because Russian generals get this idea that maybe JFK is a very weak President because he's so young, and America could be pushed around with the threat of an all out nuclear war. So they send missiles to Cuba and of course the CIA spots the missiles and this precipitates a blockade of Cuba by the Americans. 

This time Vladimir Putin has got it into his head that maybe Joe Biden is a weak President because he is so old, and so perhaps he could be pushed around. Putin could try throwing his weight around and re-annex Ukraine with the threat of World War III on the European continent. So he amasses his troops on the border with Ukraine and of course the CIA spotted it and told the world. 

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, it turned out Khrushchev himself did not want to go to a Mutually Assured Destruction scenario, and so back-channeled his desire to defuse the crisis to the White House. This is not to say somebody in the Kremlin today is definitely back-channelling to the White House, but it seems likely that somebody on the Russian side with some influence might want to de-escalate this mess. 

Here's something for Vladimir Putin to think about. He's already one of the richest men on the planet. He's been running Russia across 3 decades. For better or worse, he's even had an Olympics in Sochi, he's run a few wars, and he's still standing. He might be looking for a big win that would put him in the history books as some kind of national hero, but he's already in the history books as another strong man leader of Russia to rival Stalin. Does he really want to risk going down like Hitler, fighting the Americans and the British and the assorted countries of Europe? Or worse still, lose access to his bloated Swiss bank accounts over all this Ukraine business? Is Ukraine really worth risking all of it? 

I'd be a bit leery of losing all of it over Ukraine. I'd also be leery of a coup. 

View From The Couch 22/Feb/2022

Happy Palindrome Day

That is, if you're into this thing and you go by DD/MM/YYYY format. If you don't, it is not. 

The next palindrome day would be 23/02/2032 and we'll have one every decade up to 29/02/2092. That last one is kind of amazing because we get a leap year exactly where we need it to get that palindrome day. One hopes civilisation does not wipe itself out in the 2040s so that we can get there. Heck, I'm hoping they cure death and ageing so that I myself can see that day. 

You certainly hope Putin doesn't start World War III and wipe us all out. Speaking of which...

Putin In The Boot?

It's been a few weeks now of this will-he-won't-he business of Ukraine. It's hard to miss, but Vladimir Putin has been running training camps for his troops all along the North and East borders of Ukraine, perhaps to send the not-so subtle message that he still considers Ukraine to be Russia's bitch. 

The reports seem to swell the numbers of the Russian troops each day and by now there are between 140,000 and 190,000 depending on whom you count amongst the military, all amassed along the border. Joe Biden even announced last week that 16 February was the most likely date of invasion, but obviously, announcing it took out the sting from that plan. 

His troops according to the Belarus press does not appear to be in good nick:

"The first thing that catches your eye is the situation with COVID-19, which, according to official statistics, is breaking all sad records, and Omicron has begun its “victory march” around the country, everyone has already begun to infect each other.

Russian and Belarusian officers and soldiers are getting sick, followed by local residents; and so on in a circle. But a particularly alarming situation is observed in the Gomel region, and not all military men end up in hospitals, some of them are treated in field camps, especially if the case is mild.

In addition to the possibility of getting sick, there is fear among local residents, and not even war, but firstly, occupation, because no matter how much they say that the Russian military will leave the country at the end of the exercises, doubts about this still remain."

Right. So Covid-19 seems to be subtracting form the sum total of that mighty force. The article goes on to deride the Russian troops as being mostly horny drunks from who one must keep one's daughters and pets safe - even if they are ostensibly on their side. Worse still, the demographic of the Russian troops is described as resembling the Mongol and Tartar horde of old which indicates the units were pulled out from the Far East. The article goes on to conclude:

"Against this background, you believe more reports that you don’t want to believe at all, that “under the guise” of exercises, now you can get hold of weapons, allegedly even a Kalashnikov assault rifle can really be bought, you just need to know how and to whom to approach. And the fact that they sell rations, diesel fuel, uniforms is no longer news, it is already a business, including barter for alcohol and cigarettes.

And - it's true, with such a number of troops, equipment, equipment that is now in Belarus, no one will notice the loss of any pistol or machine gun, hundreds of boxes of rations and several tons of solarium, how can this be written off as expenses during the exercises? The “rear front” knows perfectly well, there is definitely no doubt about this.

In general, the mood in Belarus now is approximately the same: everyone is waiting for the end of these exercises, which look more like a Mongol-Tatar invasion. And in any case, one thing can be said: this has definitely not happened in our country yet, and it would be better if it did not happen."

It doesn't sound like the Belarus are terribly excited about the prospect of the Russian army staying or for them to wade across the border into Ukraine. It just doesn't sound like General Norman Schwarzkopf assembling a force of 400,000 in Desert Storm - the picture of a modern, integrated, technological military might - if they're getting compared to the Mongol horde of yore. And that leads one to suspect that maybe the invasion will be beset by the same kind of bungling friendly-fire-filled nightmare that was the Georgian excursion back in the 1990s. 

Of course, one thing that can be said about Vladimir Putin is just how stupid he looks if he lets this circus continue. You either do this with the full knowledge your moves have been telegraphed, or you cut your losses before you lose even more in the debacle that is about to break loose. By now the Ukrainians are ready for the Russian drive towards Kiev. If that drive gets bogged down, the Russians are really going to be like that monkey with its fist in the jar holding a cookie, but unable to pull out. When that happens, there would be no sugar-coating the mounting death toll.

As Dirty Harry says, a man's gotta know his limitations. At this point, it's more like "make my day."

That Weird Interest Rates Discourse

The markets this year have been a bit of a bumpy ride, thanks to the above Ukraine business, but also the looming interest rises that are expected to be made by the US Fed. I've explained before how it is unlikely in the context of global supply chain issues that raising interest rates will be taming the price spikes. A lot of them are because oil has shot through prices unseen in a very long time. Of course, in normal times, when oil gets closer to $100 a barrel, the US shale oil business starts looking viable again, so the OPEC price manipulation tends to head that off. Now with the pandemic, perhaps it has become a bit harder to keep oil prices low for Russia and Saudi Arabia, the two biggest fish in OPEC.

Even so there are other people who are not fans of the US Fed raising interest rates - like Xi Jinping. Having started his own property market debt bubble pop in China, the markets are in a precarious state in China. Considering the towering debt that is out there in property and elsewhere, just trying to deleverage has been a nightmare of defaults from major firms in the property development sector. As such Xi issued a warning that the US Fed raising the interest rates would be a terrible thing for the world market. Of course he woulds ay that because China would have to service its debt in US Dollars and they would become more expensive. In the olden days it used to be, America sneezes and the world catches a cold. Xi is saying if China sneezes we'll all catch COVID. Which, essentially, we have.  

Jokes aside if the US Fed wants to make it their thing to target inflation once more, then 7% inflation probably needs rates to go as high as 14%. That's kind of what Paul Volcker did as Chairman of the US Fed in the early 80s in order to tame inflation. Let's say Jerome Powell is not as hawkish and lifts interest rates to only 5%, that would still be a right punch in the face of the debtors out there in the emerging economies. I'd love to see him do it, but I don't think the global economy can take it. There's a reason why interest rates got so low even before the pandemic and thanks to the 'Taper Tantrum' of 2013, came back down again. 

All of this is to say, if Jerome Powell raises rates and China's economy goes into reverse, the world will suffer and the world economy outside of the US is now big enough that America would suffer from that event and so Jerome Powell will be back to lowering interest rates just to protect the US economy. It's almost not worth going through the dance of raising rates, only to lower them within 3 months. Perhaps it's this kind of damned-if-you-do- damned-if-you-don't nature of things is contributing to the market volatility.  

 

   

Quick Shots - 06/Mar/2017

Vikings Season 4

This series keeps delivering on its product. The cinematography and production design remain top notch. It doesn't quite feel like the sagas because the emotional lives of these characters are so much more intense and seem to have more in common with bikie gangs than say, Njal or Guunnar from 'Njal's Saga'. All the same, the violence is great, and the battle scenes glorious. The action cues really pump and the stakes are always abstract as well as practical. The writing is pretty snappy and in many ways the cast are hiding their stride playing these characters. In some ways I think this series appeals to me more than even 'Game of Thrones'.

Some of the events the series is based upon is beginning to overlap with events sourced for 'The Last Kingdom' which is Netflix's own series about medieval England around the time of the Viking invasions. 'Vikings' is inevitably aiming at showing us the Great Heathen Army, while 'The Last Kingdom' is working towards the reign of King Alfred in defiance of the Vikings who settled in England. It's all so interesting viewing if you're into medieval history.

The thing is, when i was studying medieval history back in high school, I never really got just how much blood guts gore, violence and sex there was in all of this. I wish I'd known - I'm sure I would have paid more attention.

Bullshit For Everybody

Trump is spreading the love. Okay no he's no, he's spreading evermore bullshit, possibly in avid to distract the world from probing further into his Russian connection. His current flavour of bullshit is that President Obama was wire-tapping him in Trump Tower, which sounds as preposterous as... oh I don't know, Area 51 housing alien corpses.

Of course, if President Obama had used the powers of his office to do so, there would be a trail of paperwork to make it so, and of course there isn't; the FBI have said they've done no such thing, and you'd think that would be the end of it, but no. The Donald is pushing for an inquiry, which is a bit like asking for people to officially sniff his butt to see if his bullshit indeed stinks.

There are days where I wonder where the world is going.  Today I know I don't have to wonder at all,  it's obvious it's going straight to hell in a hand basket full of deplorables.

The Vested Interests Of Politicians

The government likes to talk out housing affordability but isn't willing to actually do anything that might make a difference. Yes, that's right, they won't because all the gyrations of the RBA combined with shoring up the banks during the GFC (and including the debt-monster Macquarie Bank in that set) had everything to do with shoring up asset prices, and in most instances, those asset prices were homes. Why on Earth then would the government feel an incentive to knock down housing prices when the incentives are pointed in the other direction?

Here's an article that lays it all out.

The federal government's problem with making housing more affordable is that it becomes, by definition, cheaper. And that's not something that the federal government wants to see happen for some very understandable reasons. 

Back in the Howard era Australians were encouraged to invest in housing as a form of wealth creation, partially as a way of addressing rental strain and mainly as a way to ensure people had assets and therefore didn't go selfishly claiming pensions later on. That's when the negative gearing and capital gains exemptions were introduced that made buying property such a sweet deal. 

So now there are a lot of Australians who have put their retirement eggs in the basket marked "leveraging the hell out of my mortgage to buy more investment properties" for the last couple of decades and who will be therefore disadvantaged if the value of housing drops. 

And then there's pure self interest at work too, since between a third and half of all our representatives have investment properties - the PM himself owns seven properties, for example. How keen would you say that our parliamentary representatives are to make their portfolios drop in value, especially for something as stupid as the greater good? 

Also, as well we know thanks to the efforts of the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption, the NSW Liberals are so beloved by property developers that the party went to some effort to find a way of accepting donations from them despite those donations being completely illegal. If they suddenly become the party that makes property less lucrative, there'd be no donations to justify the creation of opaque entities like the Free Enterprise Foundation.

Yes, they are part of the vested interests do with the Property Bubble. No, they won't be doing what needs to be done so that too will be left to the market.

There's Something About Donald

On The Eve of Trumpageddon

Nothing about a world given over to billionaires is all that comforting or comfortable. We underestimate just much the 0.1% enrol the wealth of the world and by extension the media and information flow. In most instances we choose not to look into it because in most cases a misguided sense of modesty forbids us to compare ourselves to the stupendously wealthy. but then of course Donald Trump comes along an pecan't but help compare our commons sense against the man and find him wanting. And so it is with his choices for education secretary and chief of EPA and so on. The amazing thing is that the trump Presidency hasn't yet begun as of this writing and already it is feeling like a tired, failed administration.

In that spirit, I'd like to show you a small paper trail on the internet that's been bothering me for the last fortnight.

Here's the first link, sent to me by somebody who reads Russian. I know it's all in Russian, but one can resort to Google Translate and thesis what we get:

Взятка на 10,5 млрд. евро? Путин и Сечин подарили Трампу 19,5% акций «Роснефти»? 

Google Translate: Bribe to 10.5 billion. Euro? Putin and Sechin gave Trump 19.5% of shares of "Rosneft"?

The other entries go:

Доклад отдела разведки, 2016/134, 18 октября 2016, с. 30:
2. Что касается содержания разговоров, то помощник СЕЧИНа сообщил, что президент «Роснефти» настолько заинтересован в снятии западных личных и корпоративных санкций, наложенных на компанию, что он предложил помощникам ПЕЙДЖа/ТРАМПа в обмен брокеридж на 19 процентов (приватизированного) пакета акций в Роснефти. ПЕЙДЖ выразил интерес и подтвердил, что если ТРАМП будет избран президентом США, то тогда антироссийские санкции будут сняты.

Google Translate: The report of the Intelligence Department, 2016/134, 18 October 2016, p. thirty:
2. With regard to the content of conversations, the assistant Sechin said that the president of "Rosneft" is so interested in the removal of personal and corporate Western sanctions imposed on the company, he suggested assistants Paige / Trump exchange brokerage by 19 percent (privatized) stake in Rosneft. PAGE expressed interest and confirmed that if TRUMP will be elected president of the United States, then the anti-Russian sanctions are lifted.

Company Intelligence Report 2016/134, 18 October 2016, p.30:
2. In terms of the substance of their discussions, SECHIN’s associate said that the Rosneft president was so keen to lift personal and corporate western sanctions imposed on the company, that he offered PAGE/TRUMP’s associates the brokerage of up to a 19 per cent (privatised) stake in Rosneft in return. PAGE has expressed interest and confirmed that were TRUMP elected US president, then sanctions on Russia would be lifted.

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/3259984-Trump-Intelligence-Allegations.html

If that's not interesting, here's another block:

Москва, Кремль, 7 декабря 2016 г., 22:00:
В.Путин: Игорь Иванович, хочу Вас поздравить с завершением приватизационной сделки по реализации крупного пакета нашей ведущей нефтегазовой компании «Роснефть» – 19,5 процента. Сделка совершена на восходящем тренде стоимости нефти, соответственно, это отражается на стоимости самой компании.
В этом смысле время очень удачное, да и общий объём сделки значительный – 10,5 миллиарда евро. ...это крупнейшая приватизационная сделка, крупнейшая продажа и приобретение в нефтегазовом секторе в мире за уходящий, 2016 год.
Очень рассчитываю на то, что приход новых инвесторов... приход в органы управления будет улучшать корпоративные процедуры, прозрачность компании и, соответственно, в конечном итоге будет приводить к росту капитализации.
В целом это очень хороший результат. Хочу вас всех, ваших коллег, которые работали по этому направлению, поздравить с этим результатом…
Мы с Вами знаем, что у компании «Роснефтегаз», которая в конечном итоге и должна перечислять деньги в бюджет, есть значительные ресурсы в рублях.
В.Путин: И наших инвесторов, новых участников и акционеров компании «Роснефть», пригласите в Россию, мы их примем на высоком правительственном уровне.
<…>
http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53431

Google Translate: The Kremlin, Moscow, December 7, 2016 22:00:
Vladimir Putin: Mr Sechin, I want to congratulate you on the completion of the privatization process for the implementation of a large block of our leading oil and gas company "Rosneft" - 19.5 percent. The transaction was executed on the upward trend in oil prices, respectively, is reflected in the value of the company.
In this sense, time is very good, and the total amount of the transaction significantly - to 10.5 billion euros. ... It is the largest privatization deal, the largest sale and purchase of oil and gas sector in the world in the outgoing year 2016.
I very much hope that the arrival of new investors in the coming ... controls will improve corporate procedures, transparency of the company and, accordingly, will ultimately lead to an increase in capitalization.
In general this is a very good result. I want all of you, your colleagues, who have worked in this area, congratulations with this result ...
We both know that the company "Rosneftegas", which ultimately must transfer the money to the budget, there are significant resources in rubles.
Vladimir Putin: And our investors, new members and shareholders of the company "Rosneft", was invited to Russia, we will take them to the highest levels of government.
<...>
http://www.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/53431

Anyway, the fragments are leaks from inside the Kremlin according to this journalist Andrey Illarionov:

On 3 January 2005 Illarionov resigned from his position as presidential representative to the G8.[2] On 21 December 2005, Illarionov declared "This year Russia has become a different country. It is no longer a democratic country. It is no longer a free country". The Washington Post reported that he had cited a recent report by the U.S.-based and government sponsored Freedom House.[3] On 27 December 2005, Illarionov offered his resignation in protest against the government course, saying that Russia was no longer politically free, but ran by an authoritarian elite. "It is one thing to work in a country that is partly free. It is another thing when the political system has changed, and the country has stopped being free and democratic," he said.[4] He also claimed that he had no more ability to influence the government's course and that Kremlin put limits on him expressing his point of view. Illarionov was openly critical to such elements of the Russian economic policy as the Yukosaffair, increasing influence of government officials on large companies such as Gazprom and Rosneft, and at last the Russia-Ukraine gas dispute and the energy policy of Russia in general.[1] Illarionov has also been a proponent of secession of Chechnya.[5]

You get the feeling he's trying to get all this stuff out. According to the original person who sent me the Russian link, Illarionov's contention is that based on the leaks, the Kremlin has had Donald Trump as an asset going back 5 years. It may not have been purely Donald Trump's sea to run for President, and that the 19.5% stake in Rosneft is ear-marked for the Trump family business should he succeed in lifting sanctions on Russia - a sanction designed to hit Putin and his cronies.

Since the new year, this business Trump's dossier has grown, but what seems to have gathered the most traction is not that Trump might be in the control of the Kremlin but that he is being blackmailed by a bit of video showing him participating in Golden showers with Russian prostitutes. Vladimir Putin himself has dismissed the dossier (and also told us that Russian prostitutes are undoubtedly the best in the world) which further muddies the already murky puddle.

All the same, there's a carrot (10.5billion euros from the 19.5% sale of Rosneft); there's stick (the KGB have something on Donald Trump); and the likely cui bono of Putin getting his sanctions lifted. In other words, this is serious boys and girls. Now, maybe Trump was coerced into running, but didn't want to win -which would explain the bizarre flip flops on all the things that would have killed other candidates' chances like the support of the KKK or denigrating a disabled journalist on nationwide TV. They're not things a candidate wants to win goes about doing. but the purpose was not to win, then it makes more sense.

I ran all of the above past somebody else who has Russian links, and they came back with this link which is a compendium of various links that seems to point at shady dealings surrounding Rosneft.

Even with all the conflict of interests going on and the likelihood of early impeachment (what an amazing phrase to be typing I tell you!) Donald Trump may go full steam ahead with lifting sanctions on Putin and his mates in order to collect that 10.5billion euros, just waiting to be paid into Trump Corporation's Swiss bank accounts or wherever he has a tax haven bank account.

I'm telling you, we've never seen anything like this. The world will not end with a bang but amidst laughter from all the gallows humour this man will beget.