changegonnacome

Yep its a very strange time in terms of the divergence between the stock market, the bond market & the Fed (1) SPY7 is saying blue skies forever - Apple has added, this year alone, a trillion in mkt cap at the same time both its REVENUE & EPS have been going DOWN. SPY7 is by most measures expensive- don't even start with NVDA (2) SPY493 is saying things are ok to pretty good & priced normally as if we are early to mid-economic cycle & one should expect some high probability earnings growth over the short to medium term (3) the Bond market - is forecasting cuts and a recession & not a mild one soon....earnings for equities you'd imagine should be hit here.....so quite a large divergence here between (1), (2) stocks and (3) bonds (4) the Fed (which of course has the poorest forecasting ability) - says higher for longer, two more raises, one in July, maybe another in Sept and nothing bad happening to the economy really until 2024 when they might modestly cut

Exactly - I almost break my heart laughing when i hear people talk about international law and UN conventions........if you are a nation on the UN security council YOU are effectively the law (judge, jury & executioner). You disagree show me Russia's indictment and punishment by the United Nations. There isn't one - cause Russia vetoed the indictment against itself There is no world police force.......the international system above nation states is by definition anarchic...there is the illusion of one........ask the folks in Rwanda......there is no 911 number you can call as a nation......you can call the UN HQ in Manhattan if you like, Rwanda did that - but it called on the weekend and nobody was there to answer the phone....and even if somebody answered nothing would have happened anyway. It's but its the reality. The UN does good work in aggregating collaboration across nations on certain issues but it isnt anywhere near to what some folks seem to think in terms of actual influence or power - at best you can say the UN is all bark and no bite when it comes to matters of aggression from the great powers. To the extent the 'laws' on the books are ever enforced they are enforced on small nations.

Thanks @dealraker I hear you. Ironically while I'm sure everybody bemoaned the high trading costs back then - they were a blessing in disguise.......they weren't high trading costs, they were cheap trading costs (in the final accounting). I'm also sure calling or physically visiting your broker or financial advisor to buy/sell had friction & was a hassle too back then- even that hassle was a blessing in disguise...it led to inertia/friction....plus if you had a good broker/financial advisor maybe he would tell you - "this too shall pass" - and help you hold the line. 'Free' mobile app trading - isn't free at all....on the execution side and on the behavioural side....and it sure isn't 'convenient' for 'long term' you to allow monkey brain/short term you....to so easily act out base instincts.

Seems to be a Kuppy fan club on here - looking at you @Gregmal see below: Personally i don't give two shits about energy inflation & either does the Fed....by definition it moves around alot & it is not made in america inflation.......it is made in saudi arabia inflation.....you control what you can....and the Fed can control supercore........and so it has a responsibility to do so under its mandate. If he's correct however - it chimes, for different reasons with my thoughts for later this summer or H2 more broadly.......rubber is hitting the road on this sticky, made in American, underlying supercore inflation in the next few months.......maybe Kuppy is right...and we get some scary headline flare ups....headlines wake folks up I guess and change the narrative.....but like i said I've got my eyes trained on only one thing.....nominal spending growth & productivity....and not really productivity at all....you can take it to the bank thats its sub-2%

Well.......good guys v. bad guys narrative is kinda an ancient trick...we wont credit netlfix or CNN or Fox news with it...that would be giving them too much credit!.........the ruling elite of any powerful nation........and certainly one engaging in an offensive war in a different region or when it itself has not been directly attacked by another nations.........requires a much better narrative to sell to its populous than simply the truth...which is this is a war concerned with the long term strategic maneuvering of our position in the world's security architecture......see Vietnam, the Korean war, Iraq, Ukraine etc......these things require a much grander & emotive narrative of good vs. evil.... especially when dollars AND US lives are at stake......such that they can be packaged and sold effectively to the electorate. Political consensus in D.C. for forevers wars is kind of a function of (1) knowing that a great power should play in foreign regions to thwart or slow the rise of others powers - its kind of in the job description of global super power to do so! & (2) its a function of being so intertwined with the military industrial complex......at worst distant foreign wars are like juiced up military exercises where your defense industry gets to try out new killing toys on the battlefield, drum up some demos & case studies....and sell the tech to allies.

Yeah underneath the BIG 7....things aren't crazy expensive.........I'd prefer to buying the stuff underneath the big 7.....but only while the big 7 is ALSO getting killed too.....and I think they'll have another moment before this cycle is over.....I'll go shopping more aggressively in the US then. Greenblatt's crew Gotham, certainly see value in the value/magic formula bucket as they define it....this is the cheapest 700 of a 1400 US stock universe......average forward return for this bucket is 50% over two years...not too shabby...which puts it at the 83rd percentile of the historical US opportunity set (updated daily) - https://gotham.com/ AQR/Cliff Asness talking about the same in terms of the growth-value trade. Big tech has been great this year........but like last year.....I believe your asking for heatbreak or at least sub-optimal fwd returns in many of them.......rummaging in the value bucket is the way to go.......multiple contraction heartbreak is not fun.

Yep for a great many it is....the trading I mean in terms of being stupid......fretting and posting are FREE and I don't mind so much Maybe I channel all my bearishness here so I dont touch my portfolio - I do think you need to sanity check yourself sometimes........if over rolling say 5,7 or even 10yr periods your involvement in YOUR portfolio isn't adding Alpha....be honest with yourself.......and step away from the keyboard....or certainly give yourself another rolling 3yr period to do better with an ultimatum that if it fails to measure up again....that 90% of your investable assets are going into SPY ETF or whatever.....and the 10% remaining is fun money cause you enjoy thinking about business problems and all that.

Yep Britain, was a highly unusual global superpower in 1800 & early 1900’s when it dominated the globe …..in that it chose in some respects not to first completely dominate & consolidate power in its local region (Europe) first before playing further afield in Asia, Africa & the Americas. This is not the global hegemon playbook….America is an example of the standard playbook….dominating and putting down anything approaching a peer competitor in North America before embarking on expansionary influence adventures in different regions (Europe first, then Asia). China of course at the start of its power journey first must dominate & control Asia….which is what makes Taiwan a kind of inevitability over time. Imagine a USA that never expelled the French from the South - it’s unthinkable that a rising global power wouldn’t be a regional hegemon first and it’s simply unthinkable that China could be regional hegemon without complete and utter control of an island that sits 100 miles of its coast. I digress - back to Britain…..Its navy, ocean power and island geography made it regionally secure at a high level even though its region contained a number of peer competitors. Its security shield was both the ocean/navy….but also that those peer competitors on the continent were constantly warring with each other anyway and constantly destroying one anothers military capability. They rarely through their various cycles of destruction did France or Germany ever rise to a level that truly threatened Britain's security in this period. However In World War Two what emerged in Germany was the potential for a single regional hegemon in Europe, that through its consolidation of European nations resources & war machines had aspirations to cross the channel and conquer Great Britain. In short Britain had no choice but to enter WWII & likewise again in WWI….this type of self-interest is propagandized & alchemized by nations into acts of bravery and valor but every historical account of the people in the room that declare war on another nation do so from a place of deep deep self interest and are recorded doing so by historians when they check the primary records.….what comes AFTER these acts of deep self-interest that result in wars almost immediately are the JUSTIFICATIONS for war aimed at gaining public and moral support......you know the ones, you've heard them before tales of liberation & spreading freedom and democracy. There are small notable exceptions to what I just said ("just wars") but there are no big exceptions....…it’s realism, pragmatism and dogged self-interest that drive the big moves in major international conflicts. The British hate the French yet ended up fighting two world wars beside them. Not because the British love French Onion soup but because like all nations they love themselves. End of story. I see Ukraine and Americas involvement there in the region through this prism.

I'll change, when the data I look at changes....zero has changed to my fact based thesis....the only thing shifting is the narrative above it....my data set is simple.....nominal spending growth against productivity growth...where BLS payrolls is a good proxy for that spending growth in real time given the US consumer, on average, spend every penny of every paycheck & productivity growth continues to fail to exceed 1 or 2% The output of that data set is what we now all call 'supercore' . I called it 'made in american' inflation back in the day, ya know like wayback in 2022 That's it. I've been super consistent on this since H2 2022.......and if I were to give myself the world's smallest pat on the back.....this supercore, domestic made in america inflation problem we have now.....i was flagging in late 2022 when nobody was talking about it. Go back and have a look at my posts. In regards to how I'm positioned. I stand ready to go 112.5% long as soon as I'm comfortable to do so....I'm only 75-80% long today.....I've always said that I'm always net long....history demands it....how long I am is kind of cycle thing....but a cycle thing driven by bottoms up with some top down overlay....stuff just isn't screaming outrageously cheap to me when you take the median companies FCF from 2019 & inflation adjust it up & certainly not screaming cheap such that I'm excited about it. @Parsad is right some retail stuff looks or did until recently look cheap.....but I just hate retailers...I've no real insight there...i hate shopping. I pick my spots as Kuppy says for sure. I dont sit on my hands. There are always places to play just not in places where the wind is at your front - As regards my portfolio performance - YTD I'm up 13%...last year I sidestepped the carnage being up 15%.....so this year so far I'm kinda in SPY territory so ya know I'm participating with a beta of 1 if I take SPY as my benchmark (which I should).....of course I'd like to be in QQQ territory, I'd prefer a portfolio beta of 2 right now who wouldn't its been a wonderful rally. I stand ready & anxious to pivot to bullish/aggressive....the only reason you'd subject yourself to the IBKR interface, as I do, is cause you stand ready to ask Grandpa Peterffy for a loan - I just think the opportunity set is gonna be better,later in the US which is my preferred hunting ground. I know I can be wrong but needless to say I've a hunch I'll be right. I'm super concentrated in individual LSE value names (HSW, GLV) since Jan 1 both absolutely cheap with effective US dollar shorts built-in......in some respects when they start working (and they have been already) will be the time to get more US focused. Why? The thesis is simple the EU/UK is more rate sensitive than the USA....the EU in recession territory now is evidence of that....the EU is going to resolve its inflation issues relatively quickly vs. rate insentive US......the EU will be easing & stimulating sooner......I suspect the EU will be coming out of a recession when the US is heading into one.........dollar weakens against the Euro.......and I re-deploy & re-focus into the US. I guess you could say my portfolio is on holiday in the UK/EU but anxious to return to the USA asap. That's my playbook. Let's see how it works out.

Yep I am for sure - I think that's one answer to the puzzle of ineffective tightening.....in aggregate however if you hurt housing enough, you hurt autos enough (both a function of growing credit fueled spending) & you delay/pause enough capital investment out there.....it crowds out the interest payment uplift. I'm in total agreement with you.....make me King for day.......and the solution to the blunt tool which is monetary policy....is to actually have a Federal Reserve that is given a FISCAL override. Which is to say that in times of inflation or indeed deflation....let's call it a scenario where inflation is a full 100bps over or under the target range...the Fed gets to instruct/command/expand or constrict Congress & the White House spending based on inflation. The 2010's showed how ineffective monetary policy & even QE was......fiscal was asleep during this period........given monetary policies inability to find its way into the real economy........it completely failed.....monetary policy is hugely effective in affecting financial instruments but wholly useless, except at the margins, to affect day to day economy. The next generation/evolution of the price stability/inflation targeting.....I believe....is some type of "fiscal override".....do i think it will ever happen even though its the right thing to do....no I don't, not a chance....I think it's a miracle, in a democracy, if we manage to hold onto independent monetary authorities, never mind giving them a fiscal override ability - for example a fiscal overside in the early 2010's...forcing cash into congresses hands to deficit spend...would have brought us out of the GFC coma way way quicker than we did.

call me when inflation is dead & buried & cold in the ground What we got today from the inflation print is: - a guaranteed July Fed funds raise - another v likely raise in September - we are headed into a period of time now where headline is converging with core......moving forward we are likely to see (if unemployment doesn't budge) some surprising spike ups in MoM supercore inflation. I suspect/predict starting in late summer/early fall due to a monster summer services demand - another round of - price taking & wage gouging doing just that to supercore MoM.....something like July to August or August to September a disappointing spike up. The US economy is overheated heading into summer 2023. - Fed funds is headed to ~6%.....5.75% for sure......it could be v surprisinging how high this gets....to Kuppy's point lots of folks live in an interest rate protective cocoon (I completely under appreciated this rate insensitivity).....which means, all things being equal, you have to go higher on rates than an ordinary cycle.......what you need to happen doesn't change from a Fed perspective, you need nominal spending growth to fall......how you get there in this new rate insensitive world has to change....you have to HIGHER ....to hit those not in the cocoon harder than you would ordinarily, that you end up with the same level of rising unemployment & nominal spending falls......CRE watch out, new home buyers watch out, homebuilders watch out, autos watch out......and banks up to gills with HTM treasuries.....expect another round of deathsquads hunting for the next First Republic. - SuperCore or Made in America monetary inflation......which lets be clear is a proxy for the delta between nominal spending growth & productivity growth is effectively FLAT for 15 months....in the same 15 month period when the Fed has been "fighting" inflation aggressively....the failure to budge this is concerning....but also enlightening & positive....America is an economy that cant be brought down easily.....the consumer loves to consume....it bodes well for the resuscitation efforts that characterize the period after a Fed induced recession. - stocks aren't concerned.......but the bond market is........the 10yr & the 30yr over the last three months on each reading of stubborn supercore are slowly & relentesley climbing higher......the Fed does not control these....these are market participants......and they are saying that this is beginning to look like a monetary authority that is struggling to fulfill its price stability mandate.....we need to incorporate higher inflation expectations moving forward before we will transact in 10yr & 30yr instruments. Repeat after me - 2% inflation & 3.4% unemployment (as a proxy for the delta between nominal spending growth & productivity growth) is like fire & ice. They cannot co-exist contemporaneously. The Fed wont cut & cant cut until unemployment is driven up to at least 4.5% wherein it will likely go on to hit 5.5%....which will indeed fix inflation. In terms of 'market' gazing..........I think the pavlovian dog will misread the pause tomorrow......& buy the pause......no matter what JPow says about the pause, no matter how hawkish he is....this is a market of 1981 babies.....successive cycles have seen rates failing for them for 40 years straight...their whole life, their whole career.....they are salivating, they are good dogs...they have been trained well

also @Parsad can we open up the "bottom" thread again once we go through the Oct 2021 lows, lets call it SPY 3500? Asking for a friend

As a bank CEO up to his tonsils in treasures with MTM losses......that could really benefit has balance sheet by getting some rate cuts and therefore has a huge incentive to declare inflation DEAD such that his balance sheet would instantly be repaired.....the fact Moynihan isn't singing from the rafters that inflation is toast means that (a) he actually really believes it isn't & (b) he's honorable enough not to go out there and talk his & BOA's book and say something isnt so.

Right so much of this crypto-debacle seems like a poor re-run of 1920's & 'blue sky' securities scam era with some techno utopianism & libertarianism thrown in to make it not seem a 100yrs old.......... in the 1920's the various scams that evolved were numerous when hucketers discovered that somebody could now literally sell a piece of paper (stock certificate) of zero inherent value but with a bunch of promises & a story attached to make that piece of paper more valuable over time to the gullible public. That ended with all our laws on the books re: securities......and this debacle is ending up the exact same way. Just with some additional techno babble & utility nonsense attached - 99.9% of these tokens are EXACTLY the same as blue sky securities.....or just securities. There are very few arenas in life where you can sell inherently worthless pieces of paper or in this case of what's old is new again....'tokens' .....to a person and where that person will hand over ten of thousands of dollars of REAL money for essentially a bunch of promises about what is going to happen next. Like the 1920's.......so much harm can come from that opportunity for skullduggery that the space has to be regulated to within in an inch of its life......and even then what we have isn't perfect when you see so much of the promotes carried out in regulated public markets. Cant help but feel now that we are at a turning point.........crypto/blockchain hype was a child of its time & a function of its ability to self-generate/self-fund hype that came from a profit pool rooted in securities offerings that relied upon regulatory arbitrage & a not insignificant amount of fraud...........everybody wants to know what the next big thing is that's gonna make them rich...the hot new thing!.......c.2015 after mobile internet & web 2.0 was done.....crypto filled the void of the next big thing from c.2015 to 2022........but the REAL next big thing just showed up and it's called A.I. and it already has products and use cases........christ even my mom has started using Bard at her job to write docs.......crypto/blockchain had like 13 years to get a product or service into my mother's hands.....and completely failed to do so. That is not the next big thing IMO. From hype-cycle to real products and services, at scale, should not take 13yrs....or being kinder lets date the hype to 2015...so lets call it 7 or 8 years. Crypto/blockchain is the future & maybe it always will be. For sure at this stage....I think we can say it wasn't the next big thing that it promised....maybe a much smaller 'thing' but not the earth shattering.....I don't see blockchain/crypto powered products anywhere in my day to day life...most likely the crypto era 2015-2023 (RIP).....was a very very old thing....a speculative mania driven by dreams of getting rich quick....enabled by the sale of unregistered securities. It amounted to very little real value creation relative to was expected.....just a bunch of trading profits, scams & heartbreak. *I reserve the possibly that BTC....is a new form of digital gold.....an inherently worthless thing that through collective psychic agreement (delusion even) gathers enough people to make it so that it does become a good storehold of purchasing power in time akin to gold.

More detailed run through of why the “SEC approved us to IPO” is Coinbase FUD:

I see that argument everywhere on twitter and this is why it doesn't work: (1) IPO prospectus go out of their way to say that SEC approval for IPO does not constitute an endorsement that underlying companies activities have been checked and therefore arent endorsed to meet the legal requirements in every jurisdiction in which the company operates. That isn't the SEC's job in an IPO process. They go out of their way to put that on every initial public offering approval disclosure. An IPO process is a rules based process which is chiefly concerned with disclosures between a company and the would be investors in that company......it requires disclosures of risk etc. In advance of the IPO to get approval and then it requires disclosures on a go forward basis (10k, 8k, form4 etc.)......IPO approval and continued public company listing is not an endorsement by the SEC that said company is NOT doing anything ilegal. End of story. Indeed Coinbase in their actual S1 risks section.....said that what they are going to sell could be deemed to be securities by various regulators around the world! This was in their high risk disclosure category - turns out they were right!!! Surely if your point has any merit ......they should have put in their S1 instead - "there's a risk this S1 wont be approved cause what we are selling could be deemed to be securities by US regulators/SEC - however if we do get approval to IPO it means the SEC has blessed all the assets on our platform & investors can consider this risk factor to not apply anymore" (2) Even if you could argue that an SEC IPO authorization was in some sense a legality channel check ....on the underlying activities of a business ( it isn't see (1) above)....but lets pretend it is.....it does not preclude the reality that the day after SEC approval for an IPO - a company begins illegal activity....the list here is long....Enron, was a public company that was approved by the SEC for IPO....it likely began as a legit operation and morphed over time into criminal affair. In some respects Coinbase might be like this......if you've read the SEC compliant against them.....it appears in an effort to grow the business Coinbase (POST-IPO) began to add incremental more 'assets'/tokens on to the platform.....each incremental wave of tokens added pushed further into securities territory. I guess they had to grow that topline....and their 'rigorous' howey test compliance process got loosened up......the only way to grow a casino is to add more slot machines......Coinbase in an effort to grow....started getting cheeky with the slot machines they let in....and they getting whacked for it now.

Enjoyed the back and forth @Spekulatius @Viking @John Hjorth we wont flog it anymore.....I'm playing devils advocate here a bit for sure......but whats the Munger phrase....."Tell me what your problem is and I’ll try and make it more difficult for you" This problem in Ukraine/Russia is way more complex than the good guys (us) and the bullies/monster (them)......the commentary you see in the press completely divorces the difficult question I've raised of superseding sovereignty of powerful nations over less powerful ones ...the fact that we in the West have our own versions of Puppet regimes I know can anathema to hear......I know you guys get that......and let me sign off on this topic for a bit with my hope......that Ukraine crushes Russia in this counter-offensive & the Russians are begging for a peace deal by year end.

Indeed as I said - you can pull lines from that July paper totally consistent with the invading & swallowing Ukraine whole theory. But you've got two problems. The first is a math problem - 250,000 men is not sufficient to capture & occupy a city the size of Kyiv let alone Ukraine....when folks start positing the plan was to take Ukraine whole with 250,000 men I question the very fundamental basis of that idea. This theory collapses in relation to the standing armies size End of story and irrefutable. Ukraine's territory is 233,000 square miles, it is a vast country. The army of Feb 2022 was not assembled to invade, occupy & conquer Ukraine whole...if i was to guess its job was shock and awe tactic to Ukrainian electorate and attempting to topple Zelensky's government with a rapid drive to Kyiv. Installing a Russian puppet administration is what everybody says was the plan.....which maybe it was....I guess if I continue to play devil's advocate here.....Russia would say the aim first step was to remove the US's Zelensky puppet government. We in the West always fail to think that we too can be the owners of puppet governments. We are the good guys. We don't have or have never had puppet governments in foreign places furthering our strategic aims in any region? The second problem with the July 2021 Putin document that nobody talks about & is never mentioned on your Wikipedia link for example because it introduces complexity into 'our' narrative are things in it like the concluding paragraph: "Today, these words may be perceived by some people with hostility. They can be interpreted in many possible ways. Yet, many people will hear me. And I will say one thing – Russia has never been and will never be ”anti-Ukraine“. And what Ukraine will be – it is up to its citizens to decide." You've also got in that document - lets call it the 'Cuba argument' below.......that Ukraine, on the doorstep of Russia, was slowly becoming a puppet regime for the USA......I wonder what a puppet regime would look like?......perhaps one when where the President of the United States (Trump) was so confident in the asymmetry of the bilateral relationship that the US President felt comfortable instructing a President of another sovereign nation to investigate his US political domestic rival? This is EXACTLY what a puppet regime relationship looks like? No? "Russia is open to dialogue with Ukraine and ready to discuss the most complex issues. But it is important for us to understand that our partner is defending its national interests but not serving someone else's, and is not a tool in someone else's hands to fight against us." I'm playing devils advocate here to a certain extent for sure. I totally agree with you @Viking whatever Putin's intent he completely miscalculated on just about every front possible...its been a disaster. It will go down as one of the great strategic blunders of any nations leader. However, I believe I'm right in one central point, Ukraine (& Belarus) are Putin's redlines in regards to Western 'encroachment' into Russia national security.....for through Ukraine & Belarus territories..as my WWII map shows......is how Russia on its Western flank would ever lose its sovereignty to an invading land army. Ukraine & Belarus's neutrality (neutered even) is Russia's equivalent of the Monroe doctrine. I can't put it more simply than that. Ukraine is never joining NATO no matter what the politicians say......cause Russia's NATO redline is backed up by existentialist survival & paranoia underpinned by a credible threat to escalate beyond where the EU/US would ever be willing to take it.....you dont win in those types of escalation cycles....ask Khrushchev.........the stakes are higher for Russia.......the EU/US's desire to see Ukraine join the EU/NATO is based in liberal ideals. Then there is the question of Ukrainian agency & self-determination in all this I hear you say....which is true....but these ideas are routed in a kind of western liberalism idealism too......for example can I ask where was Cuba's right to its own agency, freedom & self-determination when it agreed with another sovereign nation (USSR) to a security arrangement to provide weapons/nukes to it. Idealism is a currency spent in distant places.......realism, like when US security & sovereignty took precedence over Cuban security & sovereignty....is a currency spent at home.

http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 Yep I linked to that very white paper above your reply......a primary source......wikipedia link unsurprisingly is omitting the section where he speaks to Ukraine's self-determination.......we all suffer from propaganda problems wherever you are .......have a read of the primary document from the Kremlin.....and translated into English by them for accuracy. That wikipedia link is a great example of primary sources being put through a Western intreptation meat grinder....all the qualifications are removed and the article portrayed in its worst light......the Wikipedia article on the essay and the essay itself....suggest you give it a read

I gave you the motivation for the invasion...counter to the consensus narratives of Putin the imperialist............to say it hasn't worked out is an understatement.....clearly.....my thread has been focused on the cause, motivations and reason for the invasion on Feb 21st....and what precipitated it. Have a read of what I wrote...you've misunderstood what I've said.....and mischaracterized it. Can I ask @Viking do you think that the West courting Ukraine to be a close alley, even hanging out NATO membership might have played even a small part in antagonizing Russia, its 800ilb gorilla neighbor with nukes. Might't I also explained why Belarus/Ukraine.....remain a special case and a redline re: NATO....Finland/Sweden joining NATO would not have triggered an invastion the same way a pathway to Ukraine joinig NATO would.....and its to do with a land invasion from Central Europe.....its how Russia dies, if it ever dies....its certainly how Russia most recently nearly died in WWII:

Yep I referenced that famous quote in my original post and excluded it from the 'challenge' - its hearsay......George Bush said he said that......wouldn't stand up in a court of law But even that quote - speaks to a territorial claim......aligned with the East of Ukraine.....the 40% ethnically Russian part.......swallowing Ukraine.....the Western part that hates Russia....would be like trying to 'swallow a porcupine' The "Mearsheimar challenge" on Putin desire to invade and take back Ukraine whole back into Russia prior to Feb 2022.......is to find a primary document - a speech he gave, verifiable speech transcripts and/or essays or recorded pronouncements from Putin's mouth/pen......... I played the game, did the challenge - I used Google..I'm pretty good...I couldn't find one.......every ambiguous reference to the 'oneness' of Russia & Ukraine's history....was followed later in the same speech by a reference to Ukraine's sovereignty & right to choose....with a strong bias obviously suggesting to Ukraine to respect their 'shared brotherhood'. The below essay by Putin from July 2021....is effectively a re-run of the position he has spoken & written about since 2008 when the NATO accession train began. Everything I found in the Mearsheimar challenge was like this.....a line or two when you say.....I got you Putin but then its qualified later.......so in short you will find lines you can quote out of context even in the below.....but a paragraph later it qualified. http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 I'll just, as I always do, go back to the facts of the invasion.......if the plan was to invade, occupy and re-absorb Ukraine back into......doing with only 250,000 men.......ranks as one of the largest miscalculations relative to history around what it would take to occupy/control a country of that size. It so nuts....it strains credibility as a theory....except in the Putin has lost his mind theory...which I cant rule out but find very unlikely.

I'm not saying nukes were heading into Ukraine imminently and that was the plan.....of course not......but if you think of a PROCESS whereby US nukes COULD end up in Ukraine....and think about it for a sec as Putin, as a Russian. Quite honestly to grapple in an intellectually robust way with these problems of sovereignty and nationalism you've got to put yourself in your opponents shoes. We did this the whole time in my International relations masters course....split into debate teams where you took the opposition side. Walking a mile in another nations shoes.....turns once unreasonable demands into understandable ones. We are shaved apes......you've no concept of the scale by which your monkey brain with its tribalism/nationalism/troop-ism 'sub-routines' messes up your thinking. Its one of the key things I took away from the Master's I did......and I've applied it to every negotiation I've ever been in to good results. People's brain's get turned to mush by nationalism & tribalism - just ask the German people........half that country went mad with it. You think your immune to what drove a half a nations as outstanding & logical as the German's into madness. Nationalism/tribalism is a gift and curse....it puts men on the moon.........and women and children into gas chambers. But back to the nukes in Ukraine problem........and think about the process by which nukes could end up in Ukraine. See Turkey joined NATO in 1952........by 1961 the USA and to this very day TODAY.......there are about ~50 USA produced nukes sitting in Turkey armed and ready to roll and under pentagons control I dunno a couple of 1000's miles away from Moscow? - https://fas.org/publication/nukes-out-of-turkey/ Now when George Bush walks out of the Bucharest summit in 2008.....and says Ukraine is going to be allowed to join NATO......just like Turkey is a member of NATO....ya know the same Turkey above with the 50 US nukes sitting inside its borders......& just ya know the fact that Ukraine which is even closer to Moscow......you dont think alarm bells go off in the Kremlin? You dont...if you walk a mile in their shoes....feel a little threatened, a little outraged that worlds superpower is inching up closer to your doorway. That this NATO Ukraine may actually be step one in a process whereby nukes could end up in Ukraine? Then you actually go look at a map and then it dawns on you that the North Eastern Ukrainian border is not 2000 miles away from Moscow like Turkey but god damn 300 miles away as the crow/ missile flies! Dont know about you - but generally an ounce of prevention is worth a tonne of cure........to ensure US nukes never end up in Ukraine......the best strategy is to ensure Ukraine never ends up in NATO. No? That not a good strategy you think as the temporary Russian leader you currently are in your imagination? Its hard to conceive off....because of course you would say that we would never launch nukes at Russia unprovoked.....to which a Russian would say of course we would never launch nukes at the USA unprovoked.....we were simply moving nukes to Cuba as nuclear deterrent....these were not OFFENSIVE nukes, they DEFENSIVE nukes.......the problem with nukes......is that they are both.....and the problem with international security as it pertains to national actors & survival......is that the correct posture always.....is to assume the worst of intentions in your enemy.......in international security the paranoid survive.....every seemingly defensive move must be interpreted as offensive.....the survival of your DNA demands.......so NATO expansion into Ukraine....we know and believe here in the West to be of benign intent it is a defensive alliance after all........however if your Russian you've got to assume the worst of intentions. Remember the golden rule - in international security the paranoid survive In the exact same way that Kennedy, rightly, assumed the worst of intention when Kruschev put those nukes on ships heading to Cuba. Kennedy brought the world to nuclear armageddon......on the principle that ounce of prevention is worth a tonne of cure......and on the principle that sovereign leader must ALWAYS assume even defensive positioning by your enemy may actually be an offensive maneuver. Kennedy had his red lines........and I know, because Putin has written and spoken about it, he has his red lines......Belarus & Ukraine will never be members of NATO......the world had its Cuban missile crisis.....if things keep moving the way we are now our generation wiill have it owns 'Ukraine NATO crisis'.......and my guess is Putin and his successors will be bring the world to nuclear armageddon to maintain that red line & like Krushev & Kennedy....the question will become whom has the greater resolve in the battle of wills around the Ukraine/NATO question......and I'd posit to you if/when that time comes.....Russia will have the greater resolve to keep Ukraine out of NATO, than the West has to let Ukraine into NATO......like Kennedy & Cuba nukes......Russia has deemed it to be of existential important & a red line in the sand, one willing to bring them close to hit the red button......& like Kruschev with Kennedy the West will realize a credible threat when they see one........and will ultimately turn the NATO membership ships around.

Put another way - and let me help with a visceral image here designed shock and stir folk in the US's sense of safety......what would happen if Canada & Mexico were considered joining the Sino-North Korean-Russia Partnership for Peace & Trade......pivoting to the East...such that in the populations mind the map started looking a little like this:

I think thats the case for sure.........his territorial aspirations articulated prior to the invasion of Feb 2022....only ever really extended to the Oblasts he occupies now in Ukraine + Crimea obviously......regions where 40% plus of the population identifies as ethincally Russian. These are/were complicated regions where national identity is concerned.....akin to Northern Ireland or the Basque or Catalan regions of Europe. The UN's national border framework gets complicated when you get into the reality on the situation on the ground in these places.....your ideas of national sovereignty and identity get a little warped......its very hard for most people, cause most people are used to identifying strongly with the country written on the outside of their passport....they find it hard to conceive of situation where that isn't so. Anyway in terms of Putin's territorial aspirations of the past or in the short/medium & long term..........I think we can all agree that its the Western consensus and narrative that he is an imperialist & land hungry......the counter argument and non-consensus view is that Putin is not interested in re-creating the old borders of the the old USSR...he has neither the capability or the desire to do so...........but that ultimately he is chiefly concerned with Russian security....as it pertains to NATO/EU/US/West satellite regimes ending up on his doorstep.......but what about Finland already on on his doorstep or Latvia or Estonia? he never invaded Finland etc.......to that I say go get a map & especially one from WWII.......armies marching through Belarus & Ukraine....as they did in WWII......are the land borders through which Russia's existence could ever actually be threatened....exactly as it was in WWII.........Russian security in a very real sense demands a neutral Ukraine & Belarus.....you go a long way to securing your Western borders from an attack that could ever hope to topple or blitzkrieg to Moscow. See map below......nations are chiefly concerned with their survival.....Russia's survival on its western flank is secured by ensuring Belarus and Ukraine as buttress.....it was through Belarus & Ukraine that the Nazi's got within spitting distance of Moscow (see below)......if your Russian, if your sitting in the Kremlin you never forget that. Moscow-Russia topples via an invading land army that marches through Belarus & Ukraine......whats the phrase "tells me how/where I'll die and just wont go there".......well this is how Russia (dies) gets invaded, occupied and conquered.......100,000's of military boots & tanks walking and rolling across Belaurus & Ukrainian fields......in the same way that the USA would only ever truly be invaded, occupied & conquered via an army coming down from Canada or up from Mexico (sea invasions just hardly ever succeed.....D-day is an amazing outlier event) Mearsheimar has a challenge in all his recent lectures to those out there that hold the imperialist view about Putin and his historical designs on Ukraine which I think @Spekulatius holds and many others do too........which is to find a direct source, prior to the invasion of Feb 2022, where Putin in his speeches or essays said that he believed the whole of Ukraine should not exist and should instead be part of Russia. Mearsheimar's report after years of offering this challenge to the Putin imperialists is not a single person has delivered any primary evidence of Putin saying anything akin to this prior to Feb 2022........to the contrary there exists primary public pronouncements about the Ukrainian people right to sovereignty.......what exists is hearsay from George Bush Jnr......in which Putin reportedly said "Ukraine is not a real county"........what else exists are speeches/articles in which Putin talks of the Ukrainian & Russian peoples shared histories......in some of these articles you can see him speak of them as 'one' but in the same article he talks about partnership & sovereignty of the Ukrainian people to decide. Ambiguous sure.....but not a raging outwardly imperialist pronouncement like China is in regards to Taiwan...there the aims are clearly stated July 2021 essay with some of the Putin languange that characterized his 'position' prior to Feb 2022- http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 I dont want to sound like a Russian apologist - I'm not - what they've done is disgusting especially the war crimes & bombings of innocent children & civilians.....war is never the answer.........but I'm also not willing to accept always at face value exactly what I'm told by my government & my 'news' stations. The world is way more complicated than headlines & 30 minute news programs with 7 minute segments separated by commercials.....I suggest folks go look at the recent Mearshiemar lecture I linked too....I'm not saying he's 100% right, but I can assure you having reflected on his arguments, having done a Masters in International Relations....and worked on the fringes of diplomatic interactions between nation states.......he is not 100% wrong either. Putin is guilty as charged as the aggressor......has the US/EU/NATO mis-steps & mis-calculations compounded by domestic Ukrainian political miscalculations contributed to the mess today or put another way is their alternative reality where Ukraine wouldn't be in ruins today, its borders in-tact & four hundred thousand casualties to date on both side uninjured......yeah there was pathway there.......and there's plenty of blame to go around......when problems bedevil me in life I usually start the man in the mirror before I go looking for villains.....I think the future trajectory of this situation would benefit from 'our' side reflecting a little more such that it can aid in the solutions to this moving forward. That reflection it feels like might be a decade away.