Random Rant Thread

[miscmisc]

This kind of mindless wishful thinking is exactly the sort of thing that sent the US heads-first into the Iraq debacle.

All signs point to the eventual collapse of Putin’s regime.

Although 85 percent of Russians currently support the president,

[snipped]

... and he lists some scenarios/factors that could topple Putin's regime.

I mean, the "Although 85 percent of Russians currently support the president" premise would require very strong evidence to support the notion that the asshole's days are numbered, wouldn't it?  Yeah, there could be a coup in the making, Dagestan could go completely out of control and destabilize Russia to a significant degree, the Crimean Tatars could revolt, etc.  But the question here should be how likely any of those events that he lists there is, much less all of those things happening all at once.  Alas, he doesn't give us any hard evidence or even semi-plausible argument on that front.

So, basically, he means "I hope for" by "All signs point to".

Then he says this:

He has no way to erode Ukraine’s economy without simultaneously destroying Russia’s.

... throwing away the little credibility he might've had.

Russia accounts for more than a quarter of Ukraine's foreign trades; Ukraine does 6% of Russia's.

Ukraine relies heavily on the raw material from Russia; Russia only imports goods (many of which can be realistically replaced with domestic products) from Ukraine.

Ukraine is important for the Russian economy, but no more so than many other countries (even Italy is more important); Russia is absolutely crucial for the Ukrainian economy - in fact, utterly irreplaceable unless its trade pattern drastically changes.

Russia for Ukraine is both the source of raw material/energy and the biggest customer of industrial products.

On the other hand, Ukraine for Russia is not much more than an outsourced factory.

In conclusion, his statement is absurd, and untrue.  Ukraine has virtually no economic leverage against Russia.  It's two pair against straight flush.

Hell, forget about this moron, and let's get serious.  They are arguing over whether the "West" should supply Ukraine with arms, but the Ukrainian currency has lost half of its value in two days(!).  Its foreign currency reserves are down to $6.5 billions now, which shouldn't be even enough to cover the cost for one fricking month.  The Ukrainian economy is imploding, and they are talking about weapons, with those morons on the sideline talking nonsense like Ukraine having economic leverage against Russia.  No one is seriously thinking of how to actually help Ukraine.

It's all pretty ugly and sad stuff.

[miscmisc]

Oh man, so it seems that Greece can't even get to the thick skulls of the stubborn Germans, as it has to deal with their pals first, most notably Finland, whose ruling parties have been even more hardcore than their German counterparts pretty much throughout this ordeal.  Absolutely obsessed with so-called "fiscal soundness", on a pathological level.  Some people tried to explain Syriza's victory by arguing that "smaller countries tend to go extreme", but I would say that phrase is far more applicable to the countries on the other side, again most notably Finland.

And then, they also have to deal with those other struggling countries, too.  The governments who swallowed everything that Frankfurt/Berlin/Brussels shoved into their throat under the name of "European solidarity", at the expense of their own societies, they have all the reasons in the world to prevent Greece from scoring any kind of a victory, because, well, obviously Greece's success would make them look like spineless, conniving, ridiculous fuck-ups of the highest order, particularly to their own citizens.

I don't know how on earth Greece could win this one.  Many European citizens may be with them, but the entire European elite class are so definitively against them that they might not mind the thermonuclear option, figuratively speaking.  If I thought the Grexit would be good for Greece, as so many people on the left seem to think so, I would be more optimistic.  I would even declare a Greek victory right now if that was the case.  But the Grexit would be horrible for Greece (and for all Europeans eventually, as I've explained a million times here), especially since the "rescue packages" and "haircut" and all that.  Many seem to predict that Greece would have a fairly chaotic year or so after the exit, and then start recovering rapidly after the financial system got stabilized under the new independent monetary regime.  Even if (which is a not-so-small "if") they are more or less right on that, I think they totally forgot the nature of the new Greek loans.  I stressed in this thread the fact that all the new debt was denominated in the English law.  That means that if Greece leaves the euro and starts issuing the new drachmas, the debt will stay in the euro.  They won't be able to redenominate it in the new currency.  The new drachma will be enormously cheap, but the debt won't be; so, it will be twice the burden that it already is.  And the creditors will be entitled to all kinds of assets in Greece that should belong to Greeks.

One hope, however big/small it is, is that the US Treasury is clearly very concerned about what's going on in Europe.  Reportedly, Jack Lew practically urged Europe to reverse its austerity-uber-alles nonsense, and pay attention to the obvious demand shortfall in its economy instead.  He is also strongly against the Grexit.

Anyway, I don't know.  Such a message from the US will be undoubtedly interpreted by the majority of the citizens in the northern bloc as yet another piece of nonsense from credit-cards-carrying braindead zombie consumer Yanks, even though this is actually one of those rare occasions where the US Treasury is right.  The whole thing still doesn't look good to me.  Yanis Varoufakis is obviously a much better game theorist than me, so I hope he still has an ace or two up his sleeve.  Have no idea what they are, though.

[miscmisc]

Cultural Explanations Are Usually The Mother Of All Dumb Arguments - Exhibit F:


Top US analyst: We made 5 dangerously wrong assumptions about China
www.businessinsider.com/the-hundred-year-marathon-excerpt-2015-2

In the 1940s, an effort was funded by the U.S. government to understand the Chinese mind-set. One conclusion that emerged was that the Chinese did not view strategy the same way Americans did. Whereas Americans tended to favor direct action, those of Chinese ethnic origin were found to favor the indirect over the direct, ambiguity and deception over clarity and transparency. Another conclusion was that Chinese literature and writings on strategy prized deception.

Yeah, so different from the "Western" tradition.  Remember Machiavelli saying, "Being honest is the key to defeating your political adversaries", and Clausewitz saying, "Make your intentions and next moves as clear and transparent to your enemy as possible?"  No?  Well, me neither.

[miscmisc]

Dear American taxpayers,

The "top US analysts" blow millions of your dollars every year, month, week to come up with these brilliant paradigm-shifting "conclusions". I can assure you that you are in good hands.


Sincerely,
miscmisc

[miscmisc]

Schaeuble is letting his mouth run off too much, but you shouldn't think he is Germany.  He actually has this rather comical routine of saying "I draw the line here, and won't give it away even by a centimeter!" only to be soon forced by reality to see the line move away from him by 10 centimeters.  It's no secret that he wanted the Grexit way back.  Waaay back, but he was vetoed by Merkel and other Europeans (and even by Jens Weidmann!).  When he says that it's all over for Greece, which he did, you shouldn't take it too seriously.  That old man is often just senseless noise.

Like I said, I'm not very optimistic about this thing, but wanted to remind you of that.   The fool may have been voted as the second most popular politician in Germany, but I think this whole thing is way over his wheelchair at this point.

[miscmisc]

You know, several European government bonds now have negative interest rates.  That means the market pays you to borrow money.  If you are a lender, you are to lose money instantly.  You still take that transaction because you think losing 1% of your money now is better than losing 10% with other "risky" assets.  You've just given up on the idea that you make any profit off it.  You are just going for the least of all evils.

And people see no problem with that.  Then why are the same people adamantly against the idea of reducing Greece's debt burden?  The Greeks are saying that they can't and won't pay anymore unless the terms change, and all the economic data support their position.  It should be pretty much losing most of your money vs. losing just a little bit now, from the lenders' point of view.  Why is it any different?

Sadism I think is the only explanation there.

[miscmisc]

LOL@Die Welt's headline Was Janis Varoufakis zur Sex-Ikone macht (What makes Yanis Varoufakis a sex icon)

But yeah, I must say that every one of the grey suits Europols/crats who has had a meeting with Yanis so far looked utterly miserable next to him.  I'm not just talking about looks here.  Those grey suits look so incredibly dead and indeed impotent when they stand next to Yanis.  If "sex" means "life", I think I must agree with that silly headline.

[miscmisc]

The Putin-Poroshenko-Merkel-Hollande talk is still going on in Minsk, and damn does Hollande look like he's completely out of it, like he just doesn't belong there.  The fact that he's the only one, of the four, who can't speak Russian at all certainly doesn't help, but he just looks so irrelevant.  Painful to see.

[miscmisc]

Why am I pessimistic re: Greece and Europe?  Well, because even now, I have to read shit like this on a major newspaper:

The historical and cultural differences that divide Europe’s union
www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e08ec622-ad28-11e4-a5c1-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=intl

The truth is that, in contrast to many eurozone countries, Germany has reliably pursued a prudent economic policy. While others were living beyond their means, Germany avoided excess. These are deep cultural differences and the currency union brings them to light once again.

Would you ever feel like discussing the existence of a supreme being with a religious fanatic? Because that's how you would feel if you had to deal with this kind of people.

That is Jürgen Stark talking, and even now - seriously, even now, even after all the things that have happened, all the arguments that have been made everywhere, one gazillion times, this idiot is STILL talking about "living beyond their means" and a "prudent economic policy" like a broken robot, as if nothing whatsoever has happened in the last five years.   And what's worse, he has the audacity of bringing up "deep cultural differences".

This is almost incredible really.  So many empty phrases, one after another, all assertions and virtually no arguments.  It's just a religious creed, at best.  In case you don't know, this parrot-man is someone who has a massive influence in Germany when it comes to economy.

Can you believe this guy's nerve?  Of course I didn't expect him to change his stance, but boy.  When people are seriously worried about the future of Europe, he thinks now is a good time for being patronizing in the stupidest, grossest way imaginable, self-congratulating the oh-so-wonderful German qualities in such an obscene display of astonishingly misguided national pomposity.

"Germany Is The Best - Fuck Europe" would be a more appropriate title for this one.  What a stupid wanker.

The job of these people, these Germans, absolutely depends on not learning anything from the events.  What Jürgen Stark thinks is pretty much what Wolfgang Schaeuble thinks, too.  You should assume that the majority of German elites are complete tossers like Stark.

This is what reason and common sense are up against in Europe now.

[miscmisc]

Obviously, I disagreed with Jon Stewart on a number of issues.  I was at his Rally to Restore Sanity, and thought that it was a bummer, a fail; it rather eloquently displayed the political impotence of our generations.  I also rather strongly disagreed with his comment on the Charlie Hebdo attack.  He said that comedy shouldn't be an act of courage, but I think it should.  Actually, I think it is.  I guess the fact that he managed to hide into the supposedly "safe" territory of comedy, despite his enormous political influence, time and time again in the face of criticism made him feel that way.

He has been certainly overrated, particularly by the "liberal" crowd, but then, that's not really his fault, but the audience's.  He was certainly part of the culture where the fear of looking/sounding "lame" transcends ideologies and social values, but he didn't create it.  He couldn't control how his show was perceived by the viewers in the context of that preexisting culture.

With that being said, I'm grateful that he turned his show into what it became.  What I appreciate the most about him is that he was never a "centrist".  Anyone who criticizes the partisan culture of politics the way he did is liable to turn into a worthless centrist, but he didn't.  The biggest failure of the Rally was precisely that it gave the average person the impression that Jon was asking for more (smug) centrism in the society.  In actuality, though, he usually made his ideological position plain and clear (to me, anyway), which was a bit to the right of yours truly, and criticized the partisan hackery and ridiculous theater of all from where he stood.  That's different from a typical centrist position, like throwing bombs at both houses and angrily imply that the truth is "somewhere in between those two evils", without ever articulating where and what it is.  Jon never did that, because he didn't believe in that bullshit.

And that's no small thing in today's miserable media circus world where if you are a typical voice, you are most likely a partisan hack of some variation, and if you are a "unique" one, you are probably nothing but an angry centrist who scores cheap brownie points from the viewers with the pretense of being "neutral".

So, farewell, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.  You were one of the few things that maintained a bit of sanity during the crazy times.  I'll probably miss you at some moments.

[miscmisc]

If you figured out that the previous post was basically saying in a veeeeery euphemistic way that I liked Jon but didn't like his fans very much, you are an expert RRT reader/commenter.

[miscmisc]

Everyone is talking about the new Ukraine ceasefire agreement that was reached in Minsk yesterday.  I had expected it to be a vague, nearly unfeasible one, sort of like a mere one-minute break before the next round.  Well, it looks a little better than that, but still indeed seems like a typical "easier said than done" borderline non-deal.  We will see how serious the parties involved are.

To be honest, I paid even more attention to the IMF, and what kind of a bailout package and how much money it was coming up with for Ukraine.  And here we have it - $22-23 billion, with calls for an "expenditure-led adjustment to strengthen public finances" and "structural reforms" to be accelerated.  The former means "Austerity, big time!" in a plain language that everyone can understand.  The latter means all kinds of wonderful neoliberal things that you've already seen enough of in the euro crisis, but I'm pretty sure that in the context of Ukraine, that will simply amount to the local oligarchs and foreign companies stripping even more assets off the public sector and other citizens.  The chair of the parliamentary "privatization" committee - the most important committee outside the war-related ones given the precarious condition of the Ukraine economy and its total reliance on the IMF - is Borys Filatov, Kolomoiskiy's sidekick.  Kolomoiskiy is a notorious, notorious corporate raider/vulture/grifter, and Filatov became rich by basically copying his way of doing business.

It's wonderful, isn't it?

And here is something as wonderful: the IMF is demanding pensions and nominal wages be fixed at a certain level.  And basically no discount on the energy bills, as the price increases will be front-loaded.  What do you think that will mean to the average Ukrainian, when the whole country is struggling with a high inflation?  Yup, their real wages, which are already very low, will shrink like there is no tomorrow.

This deal will break Ukrainians' back three times as hard as in the Greek case.

[miscmisc]

Ah, Ukrainian president Poroshenko made a brilliant move: he appointed Mikheil Saakashvili, a former Georgian president who lives in Brooklyn, NY now, as an "aide".  He will be in charge of "reform".

LOL

I had to mention it because this thread turned the way it did largely because of him and his "war" in South Ossetia.  He's a total neocon tool who was stupid enough to believe the empty words of his American neocon friends (he built his career in the US as a lawyer/think-tank guy), marched into South Ossetia, and was quickly routed by the Russian troops stationed there.  The help from the "West" that he had anticipated didn't come, because, well, even the neocons had to throw him under the bus as his action was un-spinnable.  They launched the "Let's fight the Russian aggression" media campaign to make it up to him when everything was already too late, and the likes of John McCain and Hilary Clinton seem to still believe that Russia invaded Georgia, but the international consensus was the opposite, and still is.

Today, no one likes him in Georgia.  Despite his "Western" demeanor, his rule was passive-aggressively authoritarian, and a prison torture scandal pretty much ended all the enthusiasm for him among Georgians.  In 2013, he was barred from seeking another presidential term, and fled his country for the US, where he's been screwing around as a lecturer living in the hippest part of Brooklyn.

Oh, and last year he was officially charged by the Georgian court for abuse of power and misappropriation of public funds.  He's a wanted man in his own country.

So, if Poroshenko wants to learn how to lose a war, get kicked out of the office, and generally be a complete loser, that's a great appointment!

Seriously, I know the neocons in America tend to feel they should make up for their total non-help for Saakashvili, so it's no surprise that he found a new employment in Ukraine.  But what's damning about this story is that it's the clearest proof that the US neocons still largely run the show there.

Poroshenko and his people are probably fucked.

[miscmisc]

So, judging from the draft statement prepared by the Eurogroup, led by that idiot Dijsselbloem (I refuse to get rid of the "idiot" tag when it comes to this guy, because he's possibly the biggest fool in the euro world I've ever known), their basic message to the Greeks is: Fuck you, pay me.  Real Goodfellas stuff going on there.  Of course Greece rejected to sign on such fucking nonsense.

That's a very clear proof that like I said, those Eurocrats and politicians still think Greece 2015 is the same as Ireland 2010.  Quite astonishing, really.

Dean Baker called what the Troika/EU are doing "creationist economics".  I think that's a very good term to describe it.  They are a bunch of creationists with that mafia attitude.  Gross.  Really gross.  With such horrendous asses as finance ministers, Europe totally deserves what's coming, and it ain't going to be pretty.

[miscmisc]

To all the fools screaming, "But Greece agreed to cut and pay in 2012, and must honor its commitments!":

A government is in principle not bound by the commitments of the previous ones.  It's called democracy. 

Basic.  So basic.