Xerxes

this one from 2013 ?

Agreed. one cannot change one parameter in the past while holding everything else constant. Nowadays when I listens to a podcast I always fast forward when I hear a host making these types of comments: - FB would have suffocated under Yahoo! - Google would have been suffocated under Ballmer’ MSFT. - Blockbuster would have destroyed Netflix if it had bought it. - Instagram would have been totally different if not owned by FB and has not leveraged it’s scale. Things happen they way they did precisely because a unique sets of circumstances. the only business that one can make these hypothetical “what if” are businesses where cash machines that didn’t not require much investment. Maybe See’ Candies if not acquired by Berkshire would have remained the same as independent.

https://ca.yahoo.com/news/nato-papering-over-cracks-zelenskiy-153040460.html You got to give the Zelenskyy credit. He fights tooth and nail for his flag. Not the same clean shaven junior statesman who got stuck between H. Biden and Trump on weird allegations.

John I was born in Iran during the Soviet time. And was on the receiving end of Iraqi invasion and Scud missiles when lived in Tehran. I am more aware than most people on this thread about living life during war. I live it for 8 years. Wasn’t as bad as being on a frontline city like Khoramshahr. And historically am well aware of Russian aggression and expansionist policy toward Iran and Europe. I should say that I trust Kremlin even less than the fools in DC when it to foreign policy. That said, I don’t believe I (myself) have any special ability to predict the future just because I like history. Or taking a snapshot of today as things are and making CAGR projections like it is some sort of investment. Hence the comment: “we don’t know what will happen”. There has been simply too many twist and turns.

ehhhh I thought the ticker was $USSR and I also thought several years ago that Zelensky was a comedian who was going to be eaten alive. And I don’t think i was in the minority. we don’t know what will happen. Everything we say is just an aggregate of our historical biases. how many people here keep contrasting Bakhmut with the battle of Verdun and then to Stalingrad. It was neither. It was the battle of Bakhmut.

One can make a list of how ridiculous Sir Winston Churchill career was up to the eve of Second World War. Including the Dardanelles expedition disaster, his feud with Lord Fisher etc. One can make a list of how awesome Putin achievement was in pulling Russia out of the Yelstinfestation, taming down the oligarchy and the jolly years of prosperity when he had the tailwind of hydrocarbon (you may think it was the price of barrel, more important was production increase)if a snapshot was taken in 2007. Like the compounded growth rate of a stock that highly sensitive on entry and exit point, the geopolitical cycles are also sensitive to when one take that snapshot and makes the list.

so. People flip flop all the time. Rumsfeld and Bush were kissing Iraqi asses before flipping on them. Saddam was kissing Saudi asses before flipping on them. Hitler was in bed with Stalin before flipping. I wanted to be a doctor before I flipped into engineering Italians flipped in both world wars. God may have mercy on their souls !

I listed to this episode in my car this morning. A good one. I was looking at different options of funds our pension offers. (My employer) There is a Canadian Fund, US Fund, Global Fund, there are bond funds etc and interestingly there is an “international fund” that as it happens happen to have +94% of its allocation to the Japanese stock market.

Another solid example is how House Corrino transferred the mining concessions of Arrakis from House Atreides to House Harkonnen. It was an asset-light business, with Arrakis itself belonging to the subjects of House Corrino (if not mistaken)

Any talk of NATO membership (and with it the coveted Article 5 clause) for Ukraine, in current state (or even in a cease-fire scenario), can potentially be dilutive to Article 5 itself, and what it represents. Kremlin’ red line were shown to be phantom lines, NATO’ vaunted Article 5 should not (must not) turn out to be a phantom. A premature induction of a war-torn Ukraine could easily dilute that if turn out to be a phantom or a dud. There was a time and place to do that, like decades ago. Whether it was right to do it then or wrong, that is water under the bridge. Today however it is a mistake.

Congrats @RedLion you got lots of hands on work but that is the fun part !

How about Montreal, Canada. Just try to dodge the smog. No beach though.

Certainly. That said we are just having conversations, shooting different scenarios, challenging different points of views, going down the rabbit hole for the hell of it etc. if you want to be absolutely factual, than 90% of what has been said in this thread is mostly speculation and “what ifs” and throwing in stuff from recent and past history. I dare say, this thread itself is a piece of history in some ways, capturing the different points of view, different biases, etc as events unfolded over now 450+ or so days.

On the cluster munitions, the view that Ukraine can cleanup their own land, after the fact so it is their choice to use or not is based on the view that Ukraine will be able to eject +180,000 Russian troops from its territory by force or through treaty. Another way to think of it, if they are unable to eject all Russians (very highly plausible scenario), these weapons are really intended for Ukraine to “scorched earth” what it cannot have. And U.S. DoD can finally clear its inventory and release some constrained cash flow on paper to the delight of its accountants. Got to tidy up that DoD balance sheet. —— In any case, the Wagner episode has shown the cracks in the Kremlin regime, it is no surprise that Biden administration is leaning into it hard. Got to lean in, and lean in until something breaks. The old man wants its legacy. Definitely above my pay grade.

@Castanza Kennedy and this Russian guy, who thankfully was not a complete idiot like the overexcited “patriotic” General Lemay https://amp.theguardian.com/science/2017/oct/27/vasili-arkhipov-soviet-submarine-captain-who-averted-nuclear-war-awarded-future-of-life-prize

yeap. And so did Joseph Stalin, the non-Russian leader of the Kremlin. Russian national interest does not equal what is good for Russian people. It does however reflect what is good for the Kremlin and the elitist. who am I to argue with Sir Winston anyway ? in any case, on Pregovign ‘ case, I think the CNN interview with Bill has it right. His connection to Africa is paramount for “Russian national interest” or however you might want to call it.

….. but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest” ~ Sir Winston concludes after making the quote the quote came about or after the signing of Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in 1939

Here are some infamous quotes from Sir Winston. Most of which we need to pretend to not know in this day and age. https://amp.theguardian.com/theguardian/2002/nov/28/features11.g21

No need to be puzzled John. This is infact highly consistent. "Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma" ~ Sir Winston Churchill

^^^ my gut feeling/hope is that Ukraine does know what it is doing (somewhat) and US intelligence has credible information that it knows what it’s doing otherwise they wouldn’t have transferred or ……the reverse of that is that US intelligence has credible info how bad is the ammunition shortage in the offensive that they are betting the house and lean in hard. Either war, signing or not signing the ban, this is a new low. But then again it is what it is in what is becoming fast a zero sum game Edit: meaning it has not nothing to do with Russian hitting that low first, this would have happened because they want to make the Ukrainian offensive successfully and clear the battlefield

Looks like cluster weapons are green lighted to transfer to Ukraine as of today. Word on the street is that the US deputy defence point man himself was in Kiev to deliver the goodies Oops wrong picture. That is Rumsfeld in 1983 in Baghdad fuelling the Iraqi war machine against against Iran. The same Rumsfeld that got so cute with this unknown-unknown mumbo jumbo when the Bad Guys list was updated: Bad Guys circa 1991: USSR, Iran, Saruman, Sauron, Gollum, Saddam

If I am not mistaken some of that Russian hydrocarbon piped through Ukraine is refined and used by Ukrainian military fighting Kremlin’ war machine … the irony in that to think of it, this is probably to put pressure on the pro Russian states (I.e Hungary etc)

I feel that Pioneer is more advance than Occidental in its “capital return” program, with its variable dividend on top of base-dividend. For now Occidental is still in de-leveraging mode with the preferred. If we can call it de-leveraging.