Xerxes

General “mud” might be coming before General “February”

Clearly I don’t know what I am talking about. A pile of garbage indeed. Pls proceed with your discussion

U.S. cannot be close to Iran (at the moment), but it has nothing to do with the mumbo jumbo posted here by the Westerners about Iran interefering in the region etc. Everyone intefers with everyone in the middle east. If you do not know that or dispute that, that means you do not know anything. You only survive by fighting tomorrow' war outside your borders, before it gets into your borders. In that regard Iran is no different than Israel, Turkey, UAE, Saudi Arabia, and the mother of all spoliers : the United States of America. Saudi Arabia launched a full scale of war against Yemen, same as Moscow did with Ukraine. There is no shortage of reports of schools and hospitals being bombed by the Saudis (for those who actually have eyes & interest). That is called terrorism. The Saudi Air Force was systematically supplied and refueld by the U.S. CENTCOM. What does that make the United States => a state sponsering terrorism ? It just happens to be U.S. and Iran are not on the same page. Iran' revolutionary regime wants to expand its influence and that comes head to head with other power brokers, expanding their own view. Turkey and Saudi are at much in comeptition as Iran is with the Saudi. Specifically on Iran's regime, they draw their power from isolation, and draw their legitimecy and brand from it. So, naturally as long as the bearded elders are alive in Tehran, that rapproachment will take time. The 1979 revolution that brought us this regime was not an islamic revolution. It was just a revolution with many stakeholders who opposed the Shah. It was the Iran-Iraq war, very much sponsered by the West, that really helped solidify the regime control in Tehran. The decades long sanctions gave new life and power to the revolutionary guards. Isolation has been the source of power. On 9/11, if it suited Washington to draw distinction between Saudi goverment and the 9/11 hijackers they would have. It served no purposes and it did not suit them, rather they went with the Iraqi idea and capitalize on it and as it happens the American population just needs a little "nudge" and they fall in line with the narrative-of-the-day. Seriously, how can Bush go head to head with one his best friend, the Saudi ambassaor in Washington. (rhetorical question - no answer is required) Now, if half of this forum are brainwashed posters who cannot understand these things and prefer a cartoonish bad-guy-good-guy point of view. So be it. At least keep the discussion outside geopolitics and stick to the subject in the thread: Energy. --------------- Maybe that is too much for you guys in one day. But do i need to add that Iran was a democracy in the 1950s and that democracy was overthrown in a coup, paving way for the Shah returning as a absolute monarch, and the counter-revolution to it in 1979. Guess who were the main sponsers behind that coup that ended a democracy in Iran which has brought us all this misery: it was known as "Operation Ajax" at the CIA and "Operatio Boot" in the MI6. Hopefully you can guess the countries. 1953 Iranian coup d'état - Wikipedia

I have the PDF copy of this book saved on my desktop for almost a year now. It remains unread, I keep trying to browse through it really fast, but I keep getting discouraged by all the pictures. Would apperciate any comments, from folks who had read this book. Is it just a promotional 25th anniversay book, or are there insight to be gained.

Jeffrey Saches will no longer be invited to Bloomberg. Next time professor, stick to the narrative !

To raise short term interest rates the way they recently did would have required (using only balance sheet open market operations) an incredibly massive and accelerated pseudo-liquidation of the Fed balance sheet, a potentially destabilizing move? What you are descirbing is actually contrary to my understanding: My view has been that the short term interest rate can largely be influence by Fed fund rate. Whereas QE influence in the cost of money really shows up in the long term yeilds (i.e. 10-year treasuries), because the money created is used to buy 10-year bonds, pushing up prices (and inversely pushing down long-term yield), and thereby influence mortgage rate etc. etc. while at the sametime injecting new money into the overall system Running that in reverse as QT, therefore would mean, Central Bank selling 10-year bonds (or not re-investing when they come due). Selling means bond prices sholuld go down (pushing up yields). Money that is taken from the bond market goes back to the Central Bank (i.e. un-printed or otherwise removed). Yet, the interest rate curve is falling in the back end, which would mean, based on the logic described, that the Fed is more aggressive with its short term Fed rate increase than it is with QT.

Can I ask why interest rate hikes seem to have a outsize impact as oppose to QT when it comes to commentator on TV. everyone talks about the next Fed meeting but what about the $95B rolling off the b/s every month. why is that the so-call pivot is firmly fixed on the idea of Fed slowing rate hikes and eventually pausing. But no one talks about the un-printing

@Spekulatius Let's have it. What were your thoughts on the latest on Rings of Power and House of Dragon ? HOD kept my on edge, but at the end as it was prophesied in the last episode "he had to lose an eye to gain a dragon"

Is having the A-share for him is of any major significance ,,, as oppose to the equivalent B-share ?

While the Collective Mind in this thread is correct about ZH, your second statement is probably incorrect. The ability to read cash flow statement and being a good investor/financial analyst etc has nothing to with being able to keep an independent view. In the 1930s, you had an entire generation of people from all walks of life in Germany (a modern & educated Western country) that decided to wrap themselves in the flag and swear alligence to a madman. I am sure they had great doctors, great scientists, great strategists, great lawyers, all of whom were great in what they did, and yet clearly did NOT see through bullshit and lacked corresponding ability for critical thinking when it came to the concept of patrotism. Intelligent people think it never happens to them. They think of themselves as too august and too good, to fall for such crap. Yet that very pride can seal their downfall. I would say that none of you (including me) here have really been tested.

listen to the professor going wild on CNBC

Powell !! Did someone said Colin Powell. it is a joke folks. No need to get all worked up.

For what it is worth: U.S. Accuses Zero Hedge of Spreading Russian Propaganda - Bloomberg For me, it is simple, I wait for the books to come in some years later, telling me what happened or what should i think it happened ... lol At least with financial news, it is number driven, less mumbo jumbo

In my view, you are giving too much credit to the U.S. State Department and the White House. They could not even withdraw in an orderly fashion from Afghanistan. And beside U.S. politics is more partisan than ever. This is not the days of Nixon and Kissinger, when foreign policy was truely being excerised with a long term view. The country has been run by jokers since the second Bush took over. In the current conflict, U.S. has a high ground, needs only to feed the beast with weapons and it only needs to react should the war goes off rail into a potential nuclear. Moscow is well isolated and Europe is already paying for its past mistakes. I would say U.S. planners are probably spending more time in looking at those "potential" left-tail what-if catastorphic scenarios than anything else. If I were to give you a set of data and then a second set of data that is completely not related, it is high chances that there is a non-zero correlation between those two completely unrelated sets of data. My point being, we can build a correlation between anything we like, and depending on our personal biases lean toward the ones that we associate with.

It is the English subtitles that you need to read. My understanding is that the English subtitles are just added in for jokes, whereas he actualls says totally different things. I dont speak Russian.

Anybody remembers how the 2nd Chechnya’s war started https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/daily/sept99/moscow17.htm If you were to ask a Westerner back then in 1999, who done that, immediately the finger would have been pointed out to “Muslim Chechens”. The Islamic jihad. “They after everyone. US and the Russian are both targets. This is a new age !!” After all this was in the wake of the US embassy bombing in Africa. Understandable that the only thing a Westerner can see straight was Muslims. Lingering question however remains of what really happened and what role FSB had in it on a critical event that led to Putin rise to power. But at that time the blame was clear and the rest is history. Now something happened this past week with these pipelines. The same biases are now reversed. Immediately => this must be Russia. Anything else is “conspiracy theories” Maybe it is. Maybe just an accident. Maybe the Poles throwing a little sand in other people’ gears in the middle of firework hoping no one notices. Who the hell knows. The one thing we know however is that we do not have any proof. Your theory, your gut feeling does not equate proof. Vladimir Putin is not interested to create division on a message board. I personally think it is either Kremlin, Poles or an accident. No way this is U.S., since they are operating from a position of strength. They don’t need this shit. These statement however reflect my uneducated “opinion”. Not facts.

^^^ Kremlin already committed an act of war when it interfered in U.S. dometic election. For all we know, the explosions in Urals could have been the work of U.S. (or NATO) intellgence agencies, which is also an act of war. There is no shortage of items that can be considered an act of war in this conflict, by either side. These are just legal terms, what matters is the "threshold point". I dont know who did this (without proof). But I would say that blowing up own' stranded asset to divert military asset to the area, or to signalng a potential for a wider conflict, seems to be a logical approach. But I cannot equate logic with proof. Two different things. Could the Poles have done it on their own. Using the same logic ? we would never know. We know how much they like to poke Germany for North Stream and Moscow as well.

Call of Duty: Kremlin Strikes Back -- Coming to you Dec 2022 Campaign 0: Blunt the Spearhead: Hostomel Airport Campaign 1: Javeline, Stingers and the Seige of Kiev Campaign 2: The fall, re-capture of Snake Island & Sinking of the Moskva Campaign 3: Behind the line: Belgorod & Urals Campaign 4: Artillery-HIMAR Duels in the Donbass Campaign 5: The right hook feint at Kherson; left hook at Kharkiv Campaign 6: The Little Green Men in the Baltics

This is really funny

Pretty good analysis. If it was indeed the Kremlin, might have made more sense to do it on new line from Poland. There hasn’t been any posturing yet in the Baltics between the West and the Kremlin and they could have scored and gotten away.

A nice steak + few drinks cost me $145 (1 person) in Montreal in a steakhouse with friends. tax/tip included. The streak wasnt that good. Next time, i ll go back to TheKeg

This is really good episode with Jeff Currie, who belives (maybe not suprising) that the situation in Europe is like in the U.S. 20 years ago or so with NG prices at an all time high. Meaning that with the industrial demand collapsing, the rally is very much overblown (in Europe). Really enjoyed his thought on the 10-12 year supercycles. From in the late 60s from Johnson era through the 70s, another from ascenation of China in WTO, in the early 2000 that went through 2014-15 and a third one we are now. He is the only that i heard that talks about the volumertic aspect of commodities as oppose to price-dollar aspect of financial assets (based on expectations). And that the former is really driven by policymaker impacting low-middle class. He also makes the point that Volker interest rate hike really worked only because it came on the back of large investment made through the 1970s super-cycle. Said differently, raising interest rate does not create "excess commodity supply" out of thin air. It just takes the symptoms away. Episode #445: Jeff Currie, Goldman Sachs – Why ESG May Make This Commodity Supercycle Different From Past Cycles - Meb Faber Research - Stock Market and Investing Blog

The last few years, the uncertainty seem to really peak (and with it share price bottom), few days before the Q3 earning call.

But we had no problem kicking them off UN 5 decades ago as Nixon and Kissinger dined and wined with Mao, who had under his belt by then had tens of million of chinese deaths. I get that it makes sense to be close to Taiwan now. But passing this as some moral thing, there I disgree. We didnt join forces with Stalin to defeat Hitler because of idealogical disagreement. If Stalin and his horde were based in what is called today as Germany, and if Hitler and his Nazi legions were located in what is now Russia, we would be allying with Hitler to crush Stalin. It is just a matter of who was the closest threat to the Western civilization. And in that alternate scenario, in this picture it would be Adolf Hitler sitting alongside Churchill and FDR. And not Stalin.