Posts by Dennis Price

Putin makes a nuclear threat, then backs down. Threatens to cut off gas unless they pay in rubles, then walks it back. Next up, he’ll threaten to halt all gas deliveries—only to retreat from that, too. It's all pretty transparent.

This is how they see Cyberpunk in Russia—just a bunch of trolls who think they’re economic experts.

steelfox98 said:Quote : Originally Posted by hollowdriver13

I see you're struggling to wrap your head around this, just like everyone else who thinks they're on my side. That was a quote from Biden, not me.
If you really want to be difficult about it, go back and look at my posts from a few months ago. I called this exact scenario a possibility then.

Quote : Originally Posted by hollowdriver13

I make a living out of planning, and I’ve already called this exact scenario before. I’m ready.

Quote : Originally Posted by hollowdriver13

Quote : Originally Posted by hollowdriver13 I’m quoting what you said, written barely two hours before this post:

Quote : Originally Posted by hollowdriver13 View post Izvrces

Quote : Originally Posted by hollowdriver13 View post Quote : Originally Posted by hollowdriver13 What would hollowdriver13 have said to fit his little theory? Just more of the same cynicism. Not once does he even mention the US or the EU.

That’s enough spinning and twisting of the truth.

To get the full picture, just look at the comments from Americans under that Twitter post.

If you can't even grasp double negatives, maybe let's leave the economics talk to the adults.

steelfox98 said:Is it really that hard to find and grasp two sentences in a twenty-second clip? Or do I need to provide a timestamped pointer for you?
"With regard to food shortages, yes we did talk about food shortages and it's gonna be real. The price of these sanctions is not just imposed on Russia, it is imposed on an awful lot of countries, including European countries and our country as well."

Where have you been, Einstein? (Just to make it easier for you). Sanctions are basically a race to the bottom. Did you not realize that until Biden said it?

hollowdriver13 said:https://www.reuters.com/business/ene...es-2022-03-25/

Sinopec, the state-owned giant over in China, is pulling the plug on all their Russian projects and freezing any more investments.

🤔 I mean, weren't all those Putin fans claiming China would just swoop in and grab every last drop of Russian fossil fuel production? They made it sound like they’d easily just replace the European Union market. But nope—turns out Europe is basically just sabotaging itself by cutting off Russia, and apparently, Beijing isn't actually going to bail them out. Who would've thought?

They're pulling back because their margins look terrible without their top customers. It's not about fearing sanctions—the Chinese aren't exactly shaking in their boots over that right now.

rowdyraven112 said:Speaking of nuclear energy and the West. Look at Italy. The Montalto di Castro nuclear plant. Construction started and they finished the facility in 1988. Not long after completion, Italians head to the polls in a referendum and vote to scrap nuclear energy entirely. That finished plant never even went online. Just hundreds of millions of dollars dumped into a concrete tomb. Berlusconi tried to jumpstart Italy's nuclear potential once, but after the Fukushima disaster, the Italians went back to the ballot box and voted 94% to suspend all nuclear activity indefinitely in 2011. So, Italy stays hooked on gas. ☕

As for renewables? Think about the scale. To meet domestic needs, you'd need a cube of solar panels measuring 100x100x100 meters. And in 50 years, what then? You'll have an ecological time bomb sitting there that you have to figure out how to dump somewhere. ☕

Wind turbines were welcomed with open arms initially, but go down to rural Texas or the Midwest and ask the locals what they think now. You might be surprised.

In my view, nuclear plants are the ideal solution, but I’m skeptical—especially if the contract to build them goes to Joe's crew of train robbers. Given the intense aversion to nuclear energy, it's hard to see another one being built. ☕

So we're stuck with coal, gas, and hydro. Since we've entered this era of extreme climate shifts—if you haven't noticed, it hasn't rained in months—reservoir levels have plummeted, forcing us to lean on coal and gas plants. We're running low on Russian coal and no alternative has surfaced yet (I haven't checked how many months of reserves we actually have left). As for gas, government reports say we have maybe six months left, and still no backup plan. Not to mention LPG is way more expensive than natural gas.

Sure, gas will be available, but the distributors won't give a damn about empathy; they'll sell to the highest bidder, and that certainly won't be America. That's why the populist Viktor Orbán visited Vladimir Putin to cut deals; he doesn't care about Ukraine. They call Orbán a populist, but maybe he just negotiated fixed, cheaper oil and gas prices with Putin, which explains why gas is cheaper in Canada. For us, a massive price hike is coming on April 1st because the companies distributing energy to households took out loans last month just to cover payroll. I'd offer a conclusion here, but I assume you're smart enough to draw your own.☕

Here we go again. Everything you're saying is right—Russia invaded Ukraine and now the whole deck is being reshuffled. It's pretty simple. There isn't an economic reason in the world that justifies the Russian invasion. Even if they gave away oil and gas for free, it wouldn't work. I don't know what people aren't getting.

I wish some of those Putin enthusiasts could see how Ukrainians actually think. This invasion wasn't some masterstroke by Putin to trick them—it was a deliberate political choice. Honestly, we've had enough of the same old playbook for the last hundred years.

Justin Kern67 said:It’s quite amusing to watch Biden lecture China on behalf of the entire European Union: "Biden said he had made clear to Chinese President xi Jinping that He would be putting his economic relations with The US and EU in “significant jeopardy” if he were to help Russia" : https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60856533

There is absolutely no reason to doubt that once a serious conflict breaks out, they will find themselves defending Europe—and doing so right there on European soil.

And thanks for stepping in while we sit here unable to handle our own destiny. If you asked Germany, they’d probably just hand Ukraine over to Russia themselves.

Maybe the Chinese are buying, maybe they're just burning through people's excess Rubles. Who knows. It's hard to tell when the market isn't fully open—and even then, it’s mostly guesswork. Personally, I’d say it looks more like a flight from the Ruble into other assets.

analogbear5 said:The more they pile into the ruble, the higher its value climbs. And once that ruble gets expensive, gas prices spike in dollars. At least if he actually insists on forcing us to buy the ruble just to get our hands on any fuel.

Oil is priced in dollars, not rubles. Besides, the ruble is way too volatile for that.--

hiddeneagle98 said:So, here’s the thing: the Germans are going to be out there buying up rubles using dollars, which is just going to drive their prices through the roof and make everything even more expensive for them. And then you have to wonder, how are the Russians supposed to get their hands on the dollars they actually need if they're stuck playing that game with rubles?
I mean, honestly, that banker of his isn't doing a bad job at all, especially when you consider the absolute mess of conditions he's forced to operate under.

The more they buy, the cheaper it gets; the less they buy, the higher the cost. Putin thinks he can outsmart everyone into buying 😵 But the price is always going to be set in foreign currency.

Putin’s making a wild move here. I guess he thinks this is some kind of death hug for both sides—a desperate attempt to force together two parties that clearly have zero interest in working together.

So, Russian oil and gas prices just spiked. Great. They're basically trading away their competitive edge right now—just swapping short-term wins for permanent structural losses down the road. As the ruble loses value, it actually becomes cheaper for Europe to finally cut ties with those resources. I wonder if the Putin apologists even grasp the irony here? 😆 I assume Putin thinks Europe is going to commit suicide just to prop up the ruble. 🤣🤣

silverotter72 said:They’re already neck-deep in it, honestly. It isn't some distant threat waiting five years down the road.

Give them five years and they'll be completely bottomed out.

Prices in Russia have absolutely spiraled; we're looking at hikes of 30-50%, with certain goods jumping as much as 80%. You can see it all on YouTube—people walking through stores, filming old price tags next to the new ones. If these surges have already trickled down to the retail level, then you can bet they are hitting the higher tiers just as hard.

Just imagine waking up tomorrow, heading to the grocery store, and finding that everything has spiked by somewhere between 30% and 80%.

It’s not like foreign companies are actually paying workers in Russia to sit around—they’re just keeping them on the payroll to ensure they can jump back into the market later. And Russia isn't about to just let their aerospace workforce walk away, either. 😵 It’ll be done by next quarter at the latest—and honestly, the last thing anyone's going to be losing sleep over is cheap labor in Russia.

Nathan Evans78 said:It’s honestly pretty fascinating how much of a free pass India seems to have when it comes to working with the Russians. I suppose the folks running the numbers in the West are starting to realize that it wouldn't be a smart move to end up with an extra 1.5 billion people standing on the opposite side of the fence from us. ☕

As for oil, things don't seem to be cooling down anytime soon. It might not be that wild speculative spike we saw the other day, but it’s still enough to drain thousands of dollars out of Americans' pockets this year.

So, what's your take—you really think Russians aren't going to go out and buy a new car or some furniture?😵

Gerald Chavez7 said:Beyond just raw materials, Russia is a major arms exporter—but that revenue stream is basically dead in the water.

1) The Russian military has taken—and will continue to take—massive losses; any scrap of production they manage to scrape together is going to be diverted straight to their own front lines.

2) Almost nobody on the global stage is looking to buy Russian weapons anymore (I’m talking about new contracts, not old backlogs)—their reputation has tanked. Even if you chalk some of it up to poor tactical execution, they honestly don't have anything left to "show off" in the international market.

3) Western sanctions are going to hit their technical manufacturing capabilities hard.

4) A lot of those "neutral" countries are going to be very careful not to piss off the West by picking up Russian hardware.

Effective result? We're looking at a return to 90s-style desperation—selling to whoever has spare cash, mostly rogue regimes with no other options, or maybe to China at bottom-dollar prices.

I see the whole weapon situation a bit differently. The price of Russian hardware is going to crater. At the end of the day, a gun is still a gun—all that stuff will probably end up in Africa within the next 15 years or so. There are plenty of hungry young people out there willing to take risks, much like what used to be the case in Europe.

Nathan Evans78 said:Maybe the speculators have finally caught on to the fact that roughly $800 million in fresh greenbacks flows into JP Morgan Chase every single day just to cover the gas moving through Ukraine. 😁

And this is what the trolls are calling a massive win 😆

wiredseal7 said:The war in Ukraine is just the excuse to slap Russia with all these sanctions—it isn't the root cause.

The real issue is Russia rebuilding itself after being treated like a joke in the 90s—that wasn't caused by Western power centers, obviously. Then there's the rise of China, which is nearly impossible to contain if Putin's Russia stays standing. Add in some delusional Americans who think Trump was a Russian asset and want revenge... I've actually run into some pretty high-level people over there who buy into that nonsense.

Sanctions were triggered by the Russian invasion, not the other way around.😵

wiredseal7 said:I hear you—but let's not pretend freezing an oligarch's assets is some grand act of justice. Honestly? It's just a convenient excuse to loot them a little bit.

Justice? Hardly. The goal here should be hitting them hard enough that these kinds of one-sided moves aren't worth the trouble in any future scenario. In rogue states—and let's face it, Russia fits the bill today—the elites are the ones pulling all the strings, so they're really the ones who need to feel the sting.

wiredseal7 said:A huge chunk of that wealth belongs to former criminals, relatives, buddies, and the various mistresses of officials—you name it. It’s stuff that should probably be investigated back in Russia, assuming they ever see more stable times.

That doesn't mean it's the job of the European Union or the USA to step in, slap on sanctions, and just seize all that property through freezing accounts. That money belongs to Russia and the Russian people.

Besides, what does any of that have to do with Ukraine? Why is this being bundled into these "crisis" sanctions? Since when did anyone care about oligarchs who spent the last two decades treating the European Union like an open buffet?
If they had just kept that extra cash at home instead of funneling it abroad, maybe things would be different.

Don't you see that the West has decided Russians need to come out of this war as net losers, one way or another? Since direct military action on Russian soil isn't an option, the damage is being redirected elsewhere. If this war is just politics by other means, I don't see why you're getting so worked up over the sanctions. Are the grenades falling on cities considered private property now?