Posts by analogbear5

northernangler8 said:NATO presents itself as a defensive alliance, yet here we are, right in the middle of a war because of them. I guess it would probably help some people if they weren't quite so naive and actually used their own heads for once.

What was Ukraine missing all this time? They lived the Western lifestyle for as long as they wanted. They had their freedom. In fact, one Ukrainian even mentioned how both Russians and certain Ukrainians have been oppressing people within Ukraine since 2014, and how he misses the days when the Russian language could be spoken freely there. American policy pretty much tore all of that apart.
So, please don't lump what the Ukrainians want together with what politicians want—those are two completely different things.

Send me that statement from Putin—not a transcript, I want to see the actual video.

Man, you TikTok generation folks...

wiredseal7 said:More mess involving the split between Haas and Uralkali:
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/h...money/9889906/

Uralkali is demanding $13 million back for a contract they terminated BEFORE any sanctions even hit the fan.

Haas is hitting back—claiming they’re actually owed nearly $9 million due to lost profits. It sounds pretty wild, honestly—especially since things have been going great for them now that Mazepin isn't footing the bill and they've got a solid car this season.
Word is they haven't even settled the driver's salary (Mazepin's kid) for the time he was still with the team, even though he ended up getting sanctioned in the process.
😵

Everyone seems obsessed with looting money from Russia lately—these small-time thieves from the States jumped right on the bandwagon, trying to squeeze every cent out of it. If they've got all that extra cash, why not just toss it into a humanitarian fund for Ukraine?

oh Resurrected, always ready to play bodyguard for those poor Russian turbo-capitalist billionaires. 😁

Jeff Bezos can only dream of having anyone defend him like that—aside from his lawyers, obviously.

wanderingmaker3 said:They didn't send them; they're just planning to.
Huge difference.

Can someone explain why the Germans won't just ship the M2 Bradley IFV

Based on this, the Bundeswehr could hand over 30 units right now, and Raytheon would have new ones ready by late 2022.
But NO.
Wait until the end of the year just to sell new ones to Ukraine.

What's the logic with the Germans?

Ordnung muss sein!!

Timothy Nelson5 said:Is Paul Krugman just a political agitator at this point?
A former economist who basically failed upward... someone who probably should have just returned his Alfred Nobel prize?

I mean, does he even sound like an economist anymore, or is he just acting like a political activist?

🍿

So you're telling me Germany is right to refuse even a tiny fraction of what they demanded from the Greeks? And that they should just keep funding Putin the way they have been—basically making all the other sanctions useless? I think you've got it backwards, and honestly, this "failed" economist might actually be onto something this time.

Timothy Kim9 said:Look, I’m definitely no military expert.
But an S-300 system relies on radar—and once you flip that switch,
the Russians see exactly where you are. From there, they can probably
figure out if they're looking at an S-300 specifically.
That’s a pretty sweet setup for them to call in a strike using two or three
short-to-medium range missiles. Those few missiles alone could run
a couple million dollars. Meanwhile, an S-300 costs somewhere between 120 and 150 million.

For that kind of cash, you could buy roughly 100 Iskander missiles and just
level a Russian port in Sevastopol. No hard feelings—the Russians are combatants,
and the S-300 is a legitimate target...

Units aren't all bunched up in one spot; they're spread out with enough comms and control to cover, what, 40 kilometers or so, depending on how they're set up.

“What really stands out to me... is how Germany is dragging its feet on making even small sacrifices right now—despite all those horrific war crimes—when you look back at how much they forced everyone else to sacrifice during the European debt crisis about ten years ago.”

— Paul Krugman, The New York Times

Kyle Nelson2 said:How on earth do they plan to get gas to India?
What, by trucking it over the Hindu Kush? I guess they'll just load an LNG tanker up at Yamal and sail it all the way around Asia to Mumbai?

Or maybe just send it via elephants through Kashmir. Can't go wrong there, right?

Anthony Perez9 said:There's way too much defeatist energy on this forum lately, with everyone whining about how "Germans are going to freeze this winter"... as if that’ll somehow force them to just roll over and hand everything to Putin. 😵🤦

They wouldn't be defeatists if they weren't rooting for the enemy. Right now, they're just frustrated triumphalists.

David Torres2 said:Honestly, you can pretty much forget about every single one of those nine points right now. German politicians haven't even started moving on this, and there’s zero political will. They’re still sleeping on the job.

We need gas for heating, electricity, industry, and even food—since we need it for fertilizer—all while inflation (on paper, anyway) is already sitting at 7.5 percent.

Wholesale gas prices are 20 times higher than they were back in the spring of 2020, and electricity is up 8 times compared to 2020. The CFO over at Exelon just casually announced that those costs are going to have to be passed down to consumers,
depending on how much they manage to stock up on reserves this summer and what kind of price they grab.👍

Over here in Austria, electricity prices jumped another 20% starting back in May.

Since you're clearly sitting on the data, why don't you enlighten us? Who's actually most dependent on Russian gas? I'm talking specifics—how much of residential heating, which industries, or which power plants are hooked on it.

Geology is all over the place—super complicated and changes depending on where you're standing. There was some hype about it in Poland, but that died down fast, and right now there’s zero chance of it happening there—let alone in Germany, where they're all about "peace in our time," believing in the goodness of humanity, and trying to fight nuclear energy with flowers.

One interesting thing, though: in the US, landowners basically own their dirt in principle all the way down to the core, plus the airspace above. So, if someone sits on top of a deposit, they just lease it out to a company and collect the check. Over in Europe, the state owns all the natural resources.

I’m not exactly shouting from the rooftops about a total ban on Russian gas—it’s more about ditching that monopoly and making sure nobody can hold us hostage. At the end of the day, we just need options. Let Putin try his luck blackmailing the Chinese if he’s feeling brave enough.

We ought to talk about oil, seeing as it’s basically the backbone of Russian exports.

With newer oil fields creeping closer to the Arctic—where extraction and shipping are way more complicated, tech-heavy, and expensive—what’s the actual break-even point for selling Russian oil profitably? By break-even, I mean the price where the cost of getting it out of the ground and delivered matches the revenue from the sale.

Andrew Miller102 said:Look, the folks at BASF laid it out perfectly, though they could have just as easily said, "We got played." It’s been common knowledge for quite some time; there is nothing surprising or novel about this situation here.

The Americans couldn't care less; they are more than happy to sell their oil or gas at a premium. Profit is the bottom line, and at the end of the day, the US is fighting Russia through the much more painful proxy of Ukraine.☕

Is this just some oil companies playing games—trying to see if they can actually push prices above market value? And why the hell did they dump those oil reserves onto the market now just to tank the price? It’s not like they make more money by selling it cheaper, right?

I don't know—that's just some weird logic they're using over at Logic.com.

David Torres2 said:Nah, he was just trying to point out that a cubic meter of LNG isn't the same thing as a cubic meter of standard pipeline gas. We actually ran the numbers recently, and if Germany wanted to switch entirely to LNG, they'd need to have two massive tankers docking every single day for an entire year. So, yeah, there's no such thing as a "quick fix" by just pivoting to American or Middle Eastern suppliers overnight.

Plus, with LNG, you actually get the energy density you expect—methane concentration is controlled and you don't have to worry about impurities. That's why Joules are a way better unit for gas, but consumers are stuck being used to cubic meters, which don't always hold the same amount of energy.

Anyway, here’s the data for the US back in 2020. Source: EIA

wiredseal7 said:The rumors about paying for gas in rubles are starting to swirl:

https://www.tweet247.net/news/russia...er-russia-ties

Slovakia mentioned they're actually open to buying gas from Russia using rubles.

"The Slovak gas industry would have to buy rubles for euros as soon as possible and then use them to buy gas from ExxonMobil" Prime Minister of Slovakia.

Yeah, right—unless it's April Fool's Day.

It’s easy enough to find some random article online that tells you exactly what you want to hear. Honestly, that’s the core of today’s idiocy—just pick your own version of "truth" and find someone to validate it. They give you their "truth," and you give them either state propaganda or just cheap Western clickbait for the ad revenue.

Bryan Booth82 said:Can we just talk about those 20% interest rates on the ruble for a second?🤔🤔

lp

And despite those insane interest rates, annual inflation hit 15.66% according to the Russian Department of Commerce back on March 25th.

But hey, Americans aren't even allowed to trade currency—exporters are basically forced to buy up the US dollar—so everything's just fine and the economy is totally thriving.

Back to the USSR.🎉

Funny how nobody here has even brought up the 20% interest rate yet—everyone’s just obsessing over the exchange rate and those mandatory buybacks.

Lisa Nelson said:Doesn't Russia mostly sell its gas through long-term contracts with fixed pricing?

From what I understand, they insist on those terms, so I don't see how a spike in spot market prices would actually net them any extra cash.

Yeah. Once that ultimatum was rejected, Putin basically had two moves:

1) Cut off the supply entirely, breach the contract, and just pay the penalties.
2) Stick to the deal and keep delivering at the agreed price.

Our local fifth column seems to think all gas flows at spot prices when things get expensive (making Russia rich) and flips to long-term rates when prices drop (also making Russia rich). It's a funny way to look at math.

Bryan Booth82 said:I don't know; what you're suggesting sounds a lot like buying into the distribution of Iranian oil back in the '80s to me. I'm not so sure the person who "gambled" on something like that ever actually saw their money again.🤔 🤔

Unlike you (which doesn't necessarily mean I'm right), I see manual gas exports trending downward in the near future. I also anticipate that gas consumption will eventually drop off further down the road.
How much capital those assumptions will actually attract? That is anyone's guess.

Best regards,

The reality is, the loss in value for Nord Stream 2 is already baked in. Some debts have been written off as sunk costs, but the biggest hit is just the fact that its importance isn't coming back. Nancy Gomez26 is betting it will, but everything points to the contrary.

We'll see who's closer to the truth by watching how the creditors move.

Arthur Watson4 said:It's not actually that hard, ☕
to figure out.

Look at him getting all worked up 😁
Someone actually read it.