Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Hmmmmm

[Dr. Strangelove]

Russia raises interest rates from 8.5% to 12% in an emergency meeting. Doesn't reverse ruble's slide so far.

Russian central bank jacks up interest rates to 12% at emergency meeting after ruble plunge (cnbc.com)

[klondike]

Russia's economy has been a boon ever since the sanctions. Most the world are more than happy to do business with Putin. Their economy has grown at twice the rate of the U.S. just shows you how our media totally ignores the real world and how ridiculous the so called sanctions are.

[Hannibal]

TBF those numbers are coming from the office of El General Putinissimo and likely are garbage.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Russia's economy has been a boon ever since the sanctions. Most the world are more than happy to do business with Putin. Their economy has grown at twice the rate of the U.S. just shows you how our media totally ignores the real world and how ridiculous the so called sanctions are.

lol, no. GDP was projected to grow by 1.5% this year by the IMF, and that figure is from July. The ruble has retreated a lot since then. They had overall -2.0%+ GDP growth in 2022. I don't fully understand the populist rightwing need to fetishize Putin and Russia but jesus christmas, my sweet summer child, it's no paradise.

Russian Federation and the IMF

Inflation is currently higher in Russia than in the US and the ruble is down 35% on the year.

Ruble: Russia's central bank raises interest rates to 12% after currency plunges | CNN Business

[THE_WIZARD_]

BIDENOMICS!!!!!! BOOM!!!!

[Jeff Buchanan]

At the very start of the war in Ukraine - not counting the part from 2014 to February 2022 that Ukraine counts as Russia's war against them - the west collectively developed a two part strategy to punish Putin for his misguided imperial aggression. Keep in mind, Putin has embarked on 4 wars since he assumed the Russian Federation's presidency (technically) in 2012. So, the west and in particular the US and Germany are late to the party.

Sanctions, one of the two parts of the strategy to punish Putin, were not undertaken, by anyone paying attention, to have an immediate impact on the consumer part of Russian's economy. So, IMO, it's a hackneyed and mostly uninformed POV to argue "sanctions have had no effect." First, sanctions targeting gas and oil imports did have the immediate affect of roiling the energy markets and ultimately produced an agreement to cap the price of a BBL of oil users were willing to pay Russia at $60.

According to the Russian Ministry of Finance, federal government oil revenues from January–March of 2023 were over 40 percent lower than a year prior. Before the war, oil revenues constituted 30–35 percent of the total Russian budget. In 2023, oil revenues have fallen to just 23 percent of the Russian budget.

https://home.treasury.gov/news/featu...ssian%20budget.

The Kremlin has done a very good job of insulating Russian consumers using a massive propaganda campaign and restricting access from inside Russia to western news sources, as the tool to accomplish that. The average man on the street in Russia has this sort of "what-me-worry" attitude if approached by a journalist and asked how they've been affected by the war in Ukraine. State TV floods the news with the statements of supportive figures and wildly inaccurate assessments of what's going on at the front. Muscovites and generally the upper class in Moscow and St. Petersburg are starting to feel the pain associated with the availability of western consumer products that before Putin's invasion filled stores and shopping centers. Inflation is crippling the buying power of this class. The flight of money out of Russia has become a major concern of Russian economists.

Putin is facing some difficult choices going forward as the appearance of normalcy within the consumer economy is fading with the risk of sharply rising citizen discontent. Sure, Russia is a police state with Putin able to continue to access the levers of power regardless of a failing economy. OTH an economic collapse of the scale and shape it appears to be taking are going to strangulate military spending - and that was the initial intent of sanctions.

Analysts I'm reading have noted that Putin can continue to prosecute his war aims in Ukraine at the low level he is currently pursuing them, choice one, but he can't accelerate it (choice two) lacking an economy that produces sufficient revenue to do that. He needs to be able to do that to show progress toward his objective of securing control or the Crimea and Ukrainian Donbas. You can see that on a day to day basis the UAF is demonstratively threatening that security as well as facilitating a global view of Russia and Putin as losers further isolating Russia from the world at large. Obviously, not Putin's intent. He's gradually getting boxed in. Sanctions, despite Putin's attempts to subvert their impact, are starting to bite. As well, the true Ukrainian strategy in using it's western supplied and equipped military to fight a war is emerging. The popular view of Ukraine's "summer counter-offensive" where Ukraine will liberate a lot of Russian occupied territory, likely misses the true, longer range objective Ukraine is pursuing of strangulating Putin's ability to further prosecute his war.

[lineygoblue]

Regarding all the indictments against Trump.

What's going to happen if he beats all the charges?

I mean, those who have brought these charges are all in on destroying Trump.

If they fail?

[THE_WIZARD_]

Doesn't matter. Their goal is to cripple him. They know most of these charges are bound to be eventually overturned anyway. The goal is to get The Chairman across the finish line.

bananafuckingrepublic

[THE_WIZARD_]

Meanwhile...Hillary, Joe and Hunter roam free and no accountability for their clear criminal acts.

This country is fucked.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Regarding all the indictments against Trump.

What's going to happen if he beats all the charges?

I mean, those who have brought these charges are all in on destroying Trump.

If they fail?

The Georgia stuff is the most serious of the bunch (so far), although they pretty much have him dead to rights on the classified info. That's more a matter of whether you think that's important enough to prosecute or not.

All of this would have been rendered much less significant if just 10 more Republican Senators could've found some spine in Feb. 2021. Instead Trump will win the nomination, destroy DeSantis' career, lose the general election, and STILL dominate your party's politics till 2028 at least.

[THE_WIZARD_]

I agree the GA indictment is a different animal...and the most serious one for Trump. His only hope there is if he can get it moved out of Fulton County...

[Dr. Strangelove]

Trump's best chances in Georgia are maybe to get it moved to Federal court and maybe get a more favorable jury pool with a Trump-appointed judge. But even if it's tried physically in a Fed courthouse, they're still state charges and he can't pardon himself if he's elected President. Not even Kemp can pardon him. Pardons in Georgia are handled by a board.

[Whitley]

Regarding all the indictments against Trump.

What's going to happen if he beats all the charges?

I mean, those who have brought these charges are all in on destroying Trump.

If they fail?

The classified docs and the GA election deal are going to be extremely hard Trump to beat legally. That is why Trump is going so hard politically at them.

Even the stuff Jack Smith brought against Trump. The conservative media is making the case it is all 1A. Never mind on page 2, Smith says Trump has a right to say whatever he wants about 2020 election. And that he can believe whatever he wants. And that he has every legal right to contest the 2020 (which he did around 60 times) election.

It is when Trump goes beyond that is where the illegality (alleged at this point) occurs.


However, the cumulative effect of the indictments are two fold: 1) It helps him in Republican primary because it causes his opponents to bend the knee. And the Republican base is all about the vibes these days. 2) It turns the normies off to Trump and makes him weaker in the general, if Biden actually was more than a 4/5 zombie he would use this opportunity to push for some very popular ideas and demonstrate he is trying to deal with the plethora of insecurities Americans find themselves in.

[Dr. Strangelove]

And speaking of Kemp, this man ain’t doing favors for Trump. He’s proven he can win without him.