Couple of random notes this Friday morning, mostly economics related, some silver news and my personal reaction to portions of the discusssion in Ian’s “Is Virtue An Advantage Or Disadvantage For Societies?” post.
First, econonomics. It looks more and more like we are heading into a 2008-style credit crisis/crunch.
Don’t believe me? Well, the FED flooded the US banking system with $18.5 billion to ease liquidity concerns during the week of Feb. 17 because cockroaches be busting out of just about every private equity/credit shop present. And we all know, if you just don’t turn on the lights, you don’t see roaches.
These kind of economic events don’t do what you think they are going to do. Many people assume any economic crisis in the US will lead to a rapid dollar hegemony collapse. But as I explain, the dollar will actually get stronger:
“[W]hen the credit crunch gets a full head of steam it won’t lead to reserve status collapse of the dollar. It will, counter-intuitively, but inexorably pump the dollar higher and stronger as NYC becomes a 2008-like Black Hole for cash allocated dollars world wide desperate to fill potential insolvency holes in banks and shadow-banks/private equity credit boutiques . . . . “
That’s what happened in 2008. As I conclude, “Dollar reserve collpase will be a result of national insolvency, not a global credit-crisis/crunch.”
Basically what End Game Macro is saying in this post is the following: the economy grew little to naught post-COVID to present. It basically did what equity markets sometimes do: trade sideways for years, decades even. For example, after the 2008 Financial Crisis the S&P 500 traded sideways for four years until it broke out in late 2012, early 2013. That’w what the US economy has done since 2020: move sideways, although Biden-inspired over-immigration skewed the growth numbers, as End Game Macro notes:
“From 2021 to 2024 the U.S. saw over 11 million arrivals, more than 3 million in 2023, and net migration around 2.4 million per year in 2021 to 2023. That can lift GDP and payrolls while masking weaker per capita momentum. As the surge cools, the masking fades.”
I’m not being anti-immigrant here, I’m just stating the facts. As Trump dug his heels in and unleashed his ICE goons, the econ surge faded, and fast. End Game Macro also notes, a lá 2008 that system-wide credit stress is popping up whack-a-mole like in almost every category:
“As of February 2026 serious delinquency is flashing late cycle strain. Auto loans 5.2 percent, credit cards 12.7 percent, student loans 9.6 percent 90+ days past due with estimates as high as 16.3 percent turning delinquent late 2025, and FHA delinquency 11.52 percent. Job quality also reflects strain.”
And I’m not even going to touch on the downward revisions to US employment except to say we’ve not gained a single job, but actually lost millions. The BLS hints at the size of the disaster in jobs “recovery.”
Last econ note: big move in India just confirms my thesis/argument/assertion that the combined wealth of the West is undergoing a multi-decade transfer back to the East:
“For decades, the price of silver in India—the “diamond hands” of the silver world—was dictated by a small group in London and USA. Indian ETFs used the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) prices, which often had nothing to do with the actual physical demand on the ground in India.
The Move:
On February 26, 2026, SEBI officially announced that starting April 1, 2026, Indian mutual funds and ETFs will no longer rely solely on London’s “AM fixing” prices. Instead, valuation will be based on polled spot prices from recognized domestic exchanges like the MCX.”
That’s one serious high hard one to the Comex and LBMA! This is a big fucking deal.
Next up: war in the Ukraine.
I’ve repeatedly argued that the Ukraine has lost all any and all possibility of regaining strategic initiative, and this reinforces it, way wickedly:
As I have noted ad nauseam for months now: the #Ukraine has lost any chance to sieze the initiative on the battlefield. All the #AFU can do is ineffectively counter-attack like a punch-drunk boxer. Trading lives for time will not work out for #Zelensky in the end and the end is coming sooner than he thinks.
On that note, the Red Cross confirms the Ukrainian to Russian KIA ratio. And it is bloody awful: 34/1. People often tell me that my belief in realism in foreign affairs is deeply immoral. Fuck that shit. International liberal hegemony is 100% at fault for all the deaths in the Ukraine. All. Of. Them. The denizens of Davos are uttely complicit.
In another grim note: Russia is in the initial stages of attacking The Big Banana. For the first time artillery shells are falling down with impunity on the city of Kramatorsk, like rain does on an average Portland Wednesday.
In regards to the conversation on Virtue and especially regarding the 800,000,000 number of Chinese lifted out of poverty. Well, Ian is correct. I did the numbers here back in September.
As regards Chinese leaders being better or worse than those in the West, especially the US: Ian, again is correct. The best way to view the argument is by winnowing it down to two prepositions. The Western view of liberty has its origins in peasant upward mobility in the aftermath of the Black Death and the clash of classes. Ergo: in the West we have the freedom “of” speech, assembly, bear arms, etc. . The Chinese view of liberty derives its origins from a long exigetical tradition of the origins and limits of dignity. In essences, the Chinese see liberty as freedom “from” poverty, warlordism, chaos, illness, crime, rapine, etc. . . Both views are valid. Both views are limited. But at present the Chinese view of liberty is more effective in increasing the common good than that of the West.
On the posssible, now looking more probable, war with Iran, the US has ordered the evacuation of its embassy in Israel. I don’t know what could make it more obvious, you?
More as it happens.
And more happens. This comment by Ray Dalio reminds me when I was a young broker I read Robert Rubin’s memoirs, In an Uncertain World, and took to heart many of his investment rules, going so far as to write many down on old fashioned white catalog cards–this was before the internet, btw! and memorize what I wrote down. Don’t judge me. I was young and dumb.
Love Rubin or hate him, like James Carville said, when I get resurrected I want to come back as thet bond market. Rubin knew how to invest and make consistent returns. So did Barton Biggs, long time chief investment strategist at my alma mater, Morgan Stanley. Those two men shaped my view of economics, markets and political economy more than anyone or anything else. And yes, I read Jesse Livermore’s memoirs. They did little for me precisely because at his heart Livemore was un-disciplined. And discipline is key to making money.
If you take your own advice you’ll do well. If you’re like me and stayed retarded longer than markets remained illogical, well, you’re fucked. If I’d taken my own advice I’d have a small fortune like a handful of former clients do to this day.
One of my key rules: if you want to get rich, speculate in the stock market, but if you want to be truly wealthy, invest in bonds. In other words, the real wealth, massive cash-flow comes from debt service. That’s just an ugly reality humanity has yet to escape.
Another rule to live by: if an investment goes more than 15% against you, cash out. You can recover from a 15% loss, but a 25% or 30% or even 50%? Not a chance in hell. Ever.
Last rule: if you double your money in an investment, sell half of your gain and let the rest ride. I guarantee you’ll never lose a dime on that investment if you follow that rule.
One last comment on Rubin: he was a ‘careful contrarian’ and being a contrarian has served me very, very well. It’s a painful and lonely place to occupy at times so be prepared to man up. In the end recognize when you feel the least amount of risk is the precise moment of the most risk, the instant before you lose your ass.
Maybe more, maybe not. Time dictates all.
So the muse is a fickle-bitch. This analysis of the transcripts of the Trump-Xi phone calls is brutally and hysterically accurate:
This time it’s particularly funny because the Chinese transcript (fmprc.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyxw/20) has Xi telling Trump: “It is always right to do a good thing, however small, and always wrong to do a bad thing, however small.” This proverb might not sound like much but it’s actually extremely meaningful when you understand the reference.
The reference comes from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, China’s Illiad and Odyssey plus the Aeneid and a smattering of Dante’s Inferno for good measure. It’s indicative of how urbane and historically literate the Chinese are. And a clear notice that China is what historians, anthropologists and others of such ilk refer to as a “high context” culture:
China is a High Context culture, a communicated message has different layers of meaning, While America as majority of the West is Low Context. The other culture/language that is High Context is Arabic. To understand the spoken words one need to be deeply rooted in its culture, its history and religious tradition.
Spoken like a true scholar and humble student.
I want the last word. Heh! But seriously, silver trading at the Comex closes the day sharply higher, firmly walking through a wall of resistance at $92, ending the day at $93.06, up 7%. A very bullish closing price for silver. Silver bugs should sleep happy tonight.
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I can tell you are purposely referring to Ukraine as “the Ukraine.” You’re an intelligent fella, so I know you know better and yet you do it anyway. This tells me you are not serious and certainly not objective when discussing Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine.
https://theconversation.com/its-ukraine-not-the-ukraine-heres-why-178748
Even Putin’s translators see the benefit of sticking with the official English-language name of Ukraine. Perhaps they hope it will make the content more palatable to a Western Anglophone audience. But make no mistake: Putin is arguing that Ukraine’s sovereignty is a historical fiction, and he is underscoring his point by referring to events happening “na,” not “v,” Ukraine. English speakers don’t have to follow him by saying “the.”
Carrying water for Putin is not a good look any more than it’s a good look for the American Olympic Hockey Team carrying water for Trump and the fascists and allowing themselves to be used as political pawns.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Like & Subscribe: you are absolutely correct. I call it the Ukraine because that’s how it was referred to during my formal education and when I was learning Year One and Two of Russian. Love me or hate me. I ain’t carrying water for anyone except myself, cuz it was 94* yesterday down here in Texas and I’m thirsty. Ponyal?
GlassHammer
The problem with a “sideways moving” market (a stalled market) is that each company has to plausibly sell “the story” that it can overcome its debts, expenditures, customer base, logistical constraints, etc…
And when they can’t sell “the story” the market starts measuring them and at the same time moves on to the next company that can sell “”the story”.
Soredemos
I know Ian finds the MMT crowd partially annoying (‘they’re technically right, but…’ sort of thing), but you cannot go insolvent in terms of something you solely control the creation of. It would have to collapse for other reasons.
The dollar isn’t going anywhere any time soon as the reserve currency, if for no other reason than that no one has any interest in wanting to replace it. Certainly not China alone, and not BRICS as a collective. The dollar continues to be the best sure investment on the planet, and has the most robust legal backing. Securities are essentially guaranteed payback. In spite of various efforts in recent years of effective self-sabotage. There’s a lot of inertia in the whole thing. Naked Capitalism has written a lot of perhaps tediously detailed info on this.
If it ever started to genuinely seem like no one was buying securities, aside from the fact that we can just sort of buy them from ourselves, Congress could just finally end the legalistic farce that government spending needs to be ‘paid for’ with security sales (this isn’t actually how the accounting works even now. The money is debited to government accounts before anything with securities ever happens).
DC
“It looks more and more like we are heading into a 2008-style credit crisis/crunch.”
Any tip/strategy to ride out the storm and, if possible, make some money that it isn’t the usual ‘buy the dip’ advice the fin bros usually give?
Sean Paul Kelley
@DC: I’d buy the bank stocks when they are trading in single digits at the height of the crisis. I’m dead fucking serious. I made several fortunes doing just that in 2008. Plus, we went hard long on zero coupon US treasuries. Zeros are US treasuries stripped of interest payments and are only principal. As bonds move in inverse proportion to rising or falling interest rates, the QE in 2008 catapulted our zero holdings into near 75% return territory. Last: I’d be buying stocks that represent things people absolutely need in a crisis, as they used to call them, Dry Goods stocks. Not want, but hard core needs. But this IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE. DYOR and be disciplined.
Feral Finster
Ukrainian strategy since 2022 has been to get NATO (read the Americans) to do their fighting for them.
This continues apace.
StewartM
I’m not being anti-immigrant here, I’m just stating the facts.
Did it ever occur to you that COVID and its country lockdowns caused a backlog of immigration cases to build up and that was the reason for the surge? (That’s from an immigration rights lawyer. Plus the Trump regime left US immigration in a mess.)
Sean Paul Kelley
@StewartM: you make a cogent point. One I won’t argue with, except to say that the volume of immigration at the height of the Biden Admin was obscene. And I’m pro-immigrant. I live in San Antonio and SA is one of America’s premier minority majority cities so immigrants and immigration influenced my worldview very seriously. But it got to a point that parks in SA were filled with migrants. It was too much, too many, too fast.
StewartM
“It is always right to do a good thing, however small, and always wrong to do a bad thing, however small.” This proverb might not sound like much but it’s actually extremely meaningful when you understand the reference.
Trump also believes, very strongly, in “right” and “wrong”. As do most of MAGA.
The problem is:
“Right” — “Something that helps me personally, or at least people I like, or hurts those I don’t like”
“Wrong” — Something that hurts me personally, or at least people I like, and helps those that I don’t like.”
See?
The difference is, that any notion of including anyone else outside at least one’s “tribe”, or even more so Ayn Rand-style, of just me/myself/I, is omitted. So what you have is two paradigms of “right” and “wrong” which are “talking past one another”, to echo Thomas Kuhn.
Of course, the perversion of Christianity by MAGA, which claims to be a creed which embraces all of humanity (there really is no “them” vs “us”), into a tribal cult religion is breathtaking.
StewartM
Sean Paul Kelly
One I won’t argue with, except to say that the volume of immigration at the height of the Biden Admin was obscene.
Two graphs:
https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional/insights/market-insights/eye-on-the-market/arrested-development/
Notice how US immigration visas dropped to near ZERO from 2020-2021.
https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional/insights/market-insights/eye-on-the-market/arrested-development/
This chart of historical immigration shows not only raw numbers, but proportion of the US that is foreign-born (itself a dicey metric, as in an era where premature death was common, such a metric undercounts past immigration compared to today). You see that there is no “spike” and that all the supposed “flood” of immigrants is still less than it was for entire 2nd half of the 19th century.
The thing is that most people compare today’s immigration rate to that of 1924-1980, where we had the overtly racist immigration policy. I would say that if all our immigrants were Swedes or English or Norwegians, then there’d be nary a whimper.
Sean Paul Kelley
@StewartM: well argued. Cogent and applicable facts marshalled in an admirable manner. I sincerely concede the point. I am always happy to be proven wrong with facts. If a man can’t change his mind, he can’t change a fucking thing.
KT Chong
StewartM: https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/institutional/insights/market-insights/eye-on-the-market/arrested-development/
“Notice how US immigration visas dropped to near ZERO from 2020-2021.”
International travel was practically shut down during the global pandemic lockdowns.
“… the volume of immigration at the height of the Biden Admin was obscene.”
If you actually look closely at the graph, it shows that the major surges occurred between 2014 and 2018 — before the Biden administration.
The article was written, and the graph was cut off, in 2022, so it does not show the probable migrant surges in 2023 and 2024 under Biden.
StewartM
Oops,
2nd Graph copy-and-paste link didn’t work:
https://www.migrationpolicy.org/sites/default/files/source_charts/pb-2024-1924-fig3.png
StewartM
KT Chong
The article was written, and the graph was cut off, in 2022, so it does not show the probable migrant surges in 2023 and 2024 under Biden.
What “migrant surge”? I’ve not seen any data more recent than 2022.
And moreover, again, when there was the Trump discouragement policy in Trump 1.0, and the COVID Lockdown, a lot of people who had previously applied for legal status found their applications in legal limbo One of the things that Trump 1.0 did was to require people applying for spousal visas to show proof that the spouse had adequate financial income and savings to *support themselves in the US* based on their income. This was a threshold that people who were middle-class or even well-off in their countries that was impossible to meet, given the differences in purchasing power between those countries and the US (i.e., some countries you are middle-class making $200 a month, and professionals make c. $600-$1000 a month, but that’s not even minimum wage here. It was pretty much designed to make nearly impossible immigration from non-European developed countries.
All Biden did was to restore the requirement that was always in place before Trump 1.0: that the US citizen show proof of sufficient income and wealth to support the foreign spouse, so that the spouse did not become a financial burden on the US public support system. But rules such as these caused a huge backlog of cases, and you can’t fairly compare a historically low point on a graph to a return to normal as a huge increase.
Mark Level
Excellent piece, SPK, things are converging and speeding up, no doubt, specifically regarding Ian W’s and others too numerous to list (but Michael Hudson, Glenn Diesen, Due Dissidence, the Duran and many others) prediction of rapid Imperial-Industrial-Economic decline.
My Ephemerides predicted today would be “low energy”, it’s kind of conformed so far to that expectation. After a good breakfast, I had an hour-long massage, then grocery shopped (on foot), exercised on the return trip by alternately curling the 45 bag in both hands, got coffee. Gamed a bit online, technology is having lots of “issues” today. . .
So I will respond to your many good points in a de minimis (for me) fashion–
I claim little expertise in economics, but think your calls are good. Yes, the Duopoly have neglected any economic growth beyond for the 0.1%, see all the billionaires at DJT’s 2nd inauguration, everything is rentier economics devoted to short-term profiteering, the Elites continue with Romney & McKinsey style takeovers, looting of assets, destroy the host and move on pillaging.
Trump’s criminality is motivating nearly everyone in other countries to back away from economic “deals” with the US, you know in advanced you’re going to get burned, so why would you do it? US Treasuries being slowly sold away by China (no rush, don’t need a panic to destroy their value immediately) and others, though due to weaknesses in BRICS nobody is challenging USDollar dominance at the moment, as Sorodemos notes. Lula is damaged, evidently they did something to him in prison, won’t defend anyone else in Latin America, as someone noted on a prior thread only Modi’s India is genuflecting to the Zio-US Axis of War and Serial Genocides, the I in BRICS now stands for Iran. However, nice to know India is standing up to their former Colonial Owner and setting their own trade rates, that UK shithole is sinking back into the sea, and most everyone knows it.
Which links to, a by-election in UK yesterday, the Legacy Parties got trampled, Farage’s extremist “Reform” and the Greens on the “Left” (to a point, it’s still the UK and not 1945) won bigly. Watched the Duran this morning, widespread voter disgust at Starmer’s enthusiasm for the Gaza Genocide gained Green votes; something that should please the Banderist-worshipping LAS however is that the “Greens” in the UK are fascist Russophobes who want to destroy Russia just as the German “Greens” were (though of course they can’t), despite turning against Israel. And the Elites in the UK will never abandon Zionism no matter who’s seemingly in power. . . . Mercouris & Christoforou concluded that the supposed “break” with the Brit Auto-Destruction is only cosmetic, the New Boss will continue just as the Old Boss did. Feral Finster is of course correct, the Ukrainian neo-Nazi losers imagine they can drag the Americans in, but (a) Trump is already tied down in wanting to attack Iran after Nutinyahoo goes in first, but it’s not looking good. The overwhelmed cannon-fodder on the Gerald R. Ford (could not find a better name for a doomed Aircraft Carrier, I remember GRF, famous in his era for playing football without a helmet in college, falling down stairs, banging his head and injuring others while golfing (Chevy Chase required surgeries after his early SNL Career emulating Ford’s pratfalls) evidently don’t want to die by drowning and have plugged up the GRF toilets with underwear and other bulky items after being at sea for a year straight (some say) and are now swimming in shit. See, when the Empire shits on its own Little Tin Soldiers, they can shit back in time rather than blithely bring on their own extermination. I’m usually not one to cheer for “the Troops”, but this time I will. Long may they survive, may they sail home in one piece.
As to Stewart M’s take on the dearth of immigration during Covid, he is correct (I actually wanted to emigrate to Spain when I retired, but it was impossible), but KT Chong is equally correct wrt Biden policies & thus wins the argument. Since they weren’t doing anything to actually reindustrialize or better Americans’ lives (beyond the donors) in office, they tried to game the system with mass immigration, hoping for future voters. It failed, of course, but did provide Trump with ragebait at more brown people and helped him win an election. (And ironically, Biden was so bad for non-white people that Trump gained votes among Muslims, Latinos, young men and the growing poor generally. And now we have the Miller Reich, I’m sure many are experiencing Buyer’s Regrets. As to the dream of US intervention for the plucky li’l Ukrainians, Zelensky said they just need to hold on for 3 years and voila, a new Dimmie Admin will save them. Well, they won’t. Odessa is currently under siege, and per the Duran today (didn’t watch it yet, just reading the headline), the Cocaine Comedian is so desperate he’s begging to talk to Putin!! Something they’d all been dead-set against after 4 years of losing men, women and territory to Russia.
Meantime, no reindustrialization under “Daddy” Trump, either. Job #s plunging, tourism lost, just lots of scamming and more eating the seed corn, just as McKinsey wants. I’m reading more of the March 2026 Harper’s a big piece by Maddy Crowell on a right-wing corporate consortium hoping “to reindustrialize & re-arm” the USA. D&D Dreamers (why are ‘Muricans so stuck in fantasies, Tolkien, D&D, Star Dreck? etc?), and putting out a “Techno-Industrialist Manifesto.” Well, as I’m sure astute readers will know, it’s not going well. You can’t rapidly industrialize when you’ve killed off and outsourced all the actual Industry, so for now this is the equivalent of Cargo Cult Economics. (Also, after writing about the AI Claude on the last thread, these idiots are focused on AI as a “savior” because they really do not (like Trump, or Antony Blinken, say) want to use their own brains, it’s too much work. The Lee guy who was running “Claude” told the reporter he would never read a book because it’s too much work, better to handle your agency over to a non-living delusional entity and do what it tells you. Dance on the Machine’s strings and all will be Uncle Scrooge Money piles to swim in . . . .Oh, and all the immigrant workers who Trump deports will not be replaced with American workers, but with Robots instead, as Treasury Secretary (& George Soros taught) Secretary Scott Besent promises.
Do currently unemployed Americans want to pick crops serially, or work dangerous construction jobs for a minimum wage? Data suggests not so.
SPK, thank you also for the literary Sinophilia you are pushing, I deeply appreciate it. Yes, these older cultures have leadership that is not empty-headed or looking for “wisdom” from a dead machine or a rapist-looter, thus in the “Battle of Civilizations” which the Elites long longed for, it’s clear who will come out on top.
Which leads me to wrap up with a little appreciation of LAS’s insane Banderist fantasies. Interesting that he wrote the very first post (is he being paid by NAFOStans? If so, he’s not collecting the $7,000 on offer for the Zionist Trolls). I clicked on his links, and the map of Ukraine’s size alongside Russia’s shows why Keaton Weiss’ 4-year old son correctly predicted which side would “win” in 2022 when Daddy showed him a map. I also enjoyed the link to the fascist passport cover for Ukraina (took 2 years of Russian in high school, can read Cyrillic phonetically, at least) with the Czarist Hawk plunging down onto some tasty smaller bird or land mammal. So inspiring that the Russia-banning Banderists have to go back to Czarist lore to demonstrate their “non-Slavic” claims of being the area’s actual “Aryans” alongside the Deutsche (who at least have a slightly more valid claim to that Superman bullshit), despite all the evidence of DNA, language, etc.
When I lived in Louisiana for 7 years in the 1980s, I heard a lot of Confederacy “The South Will Rise Again” bullshit from poor, semi-literate rednecks, and L&S’s endless supply of Hopium is good for a strong belly laugh. I’ve already made the point, but since LAS repeats himself endlessly, I’ll indulge him and reply this time. In 2 years or less, “Ukraine” will be a land-locked Hell with all the rich Eastern regions having rejoined Mother Russia, the looting Oligarchs such as Zelensky will be (if lucky) living in their villas in Tuscany, Israel (remember Zelensky promised Ukraine would be “Big Israel” in the region? now a dead dream.), the Riviera or elsewhere. Nobody from New York City’s Little Odessa is going back to save Ukraine, it is a dead letter. It’ll be interesting to see if Poland grabs Lviv, turns it back to Lvov. They certainly hate the obnoxious, Banderist flag waving Ukros by now, they haven’t forgotten the cheering for the 98 year old Yaroslav Hunka (2 standing ovations) in the Canadian Parliament, his Himmler-formed Waffen-SS Unit murdered at least 4,000 Poles, mainly but not exclusively Jewish. If you are getting paid, L&S, and you have any actual Ukrainian contacts, I recommend you invest in some Neo-Nazi regalia, there’s certain sectors that like to buy such stuff. Also I hope you are spending a lot of time at Lawyers, Guns, & Money, they’re outraged that Russia still exists, don’t mind Israel so much are okay with Palestinian Genocide. I did look at some of their stuff from a dude who took a 2 month sojourn in Ukraine on LG&fM and never saw a single Nazi. This is equivalent to my living here in New Mexico and never seeing a single indigenous looking person. (Recent discovery by anthropologists: a human footprint in New Mexico dated to 23,000 y.a., millenia prior to the oldest previous human relics.)
Sean Paul Kelley
@Mark Level: word.
responseTwo
Private equity – blood sucking leaches are not doing well per naked capitalism:
Private Equity Is Coming for Your 401(k)
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2026/02/private-equity-is-coming-for-your-401k.html
Sean Paul Kelley
@responseTwo: oh yeah, they needz thoze feez. 2 and 20 biatch.
Feral Finster
Since the Ukrainian language (which most Ukrainians don’t speak) doesn’t have definite articles, “The Ukraine” is as correct as “Ukraine”.
Russian doesn’t have definite articles, either, FWIW.
@ Mark Level:
The uk political class has two and only two interlocking goals:
1. Keep the Americans happy.
2. Get the Americans to fight Russia for them.
Everything that does not affect 1 or 2. can be jettisoned.
Feral Finster
More@ Mark Level:
Anyone who didn’t see a Nazi in Ukraine wasn’t looking, or rather, was looking not to find any.
I lived in Ukraine and saw plenty of self-proclaimed unrepentant Nazis and got into physical confrontations with more than a few. Hell, a friend of mine was murdered by them in broad daylight in downtown Kiev. Other people I know suffered worse.
Just we call those Nazis “freedom fighters” now.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Feral Finster: true, Russian does not have definite or indefinite articles. HOWEVER, Russian, like Latin and German, uses the partitive genitive as the declensional equivalent of a definite article–which is weird because German has articles, both definite and indefinite. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitive See what I did there? IYKYK.
KT Chong
Don’t get me wrong — I’m on Team China.
The China-bashing pundits and analysts in America (think Peter Zeihan) keep insisting China is doomed and collapsing because of demographics. But with immigration now being structurally curtailed — and Stephen Miller’s Project 2025 policies becoming institutionalized — America will face a sharper and sooner demographic crunch than China, especially given its massive fiscal liabilities.
God bless Trump. Do you guys know that Christians in China — mirroring Evangelicals aka Christian Zionists in America — also believe Trump was sent by God?
The twist: While Evangelicals believe Trump was sent to save America, Chinese Christians believe Trump was sent to accelerate America’s decline and clear the path for China’s rise.
Funny shit but true story.
And judging by the current trends, the Chinese Christian version seems to be the accurate one.
Sean Paul Kelley
@KT Chong: Christianity is just, totes weird in China, like the Nestorian Stele in Xi’an from 781 AD. Massively weird. Sui generis.
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There are Nazis in Russia too and they are welcome. Does that make Putin’s regime a Nazi regime? Hardly. Fascist regime? Absolutely.
Sean Paul Kelley
@Like & Subscribe: Putin’s regime is about as fascist as me farting the White Album all in one go. Gimme a break.
mago
I was waiting for Mark Level to do a takedown on L&S so I could be spared the effort. Kind of a lazy Friday for me. Thanks as always ML.
different clue
94 degrees in Texas in February? When is the first time something “like” that happened? What was the “breakpoint” year before which that just didn’t happen and at-or-after-which something like that did happen and could happen again?
And by the way, are the occasional deep freezes deeper than what they used to be in years or decades past? ( Except for North Texas and maybe West Texas which I should think had that sort of thing in the past as well . . . )
Sean Paul Kelley
@Different Clue: 94* is the all-time record for South Texas in February. 72 years since it hit 90* plus in February. This winter has been extremely dry and we had the hardest freeze since 1984.
I’m a keen observer, middle child so by necessity, and the weather now is radically different than it was for the first 35 years of my life. But by 2005 it was evident that the long term patterns had shifted, the baseline skewed way off the high end of the heat scale. Daily average temps are on order 10* higher than in the past. Yes, daily average temps. In 40 years the Texas triangle–Dallas, Austin, Houston, San Antonio–will be as desolate as Detroit is now than at its peak–but there will be no more water. We’re emptying the water table at an accelerating rate. It’s bad. Rivers I swam in as a boy no longer flow year round. Hell, the Guadalupe can hardly be called a river any more. Climate change is brutalizing our landscape. It’s tragic.
Jefferson Hamilton
Absolutely nobody in America gave a shit about calling it “the Ukraine” before 2022, and I’m not about to start giving a shit now.
Feral Finster
Nazis in Russia get sent to prison. Nazis in Ukraine get in government and make policy. Note how Russian Nazis and Nazis from all over flocked to Ukraine.
mago
Wanted to mention that I’ve known and worked for and lived with some mafia types: Jewish, Irish, Russian and Ukrainian.
It’s a subjective call to say who’s the worst in this Epstein world, but I’d give the award to the Ukrainians, Jew, Nazi and gentile alike.
edwin
The kill ratio cited by the red cross of 31:1 doesn’t seem correct. I’ve heard claims that the Soviet/Japanese battle had a kill ratio of 30:1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJJBGDLSOsU&t=1596s
Japan Had 1 Million Soldiers. Russia Destroyed Them in 11 Days
I’m no expert on military matters, but I am wary about such kill ratios. I would expect the Ukrainians to be disintegrating on the battlefield like the Japanese did in the battle with Russia just before Japan surrendered.
different clue
@mago,
Which of the four types of mafia types you worked for at least had the best taste in food, if any one of them did?
Joe
Does anyone have a link to the Red Cross report? I find the retweets from Mr Kelly to seem less than trustworthy. I can’t find the report itself or any other reference to it…my search skills fail me.
So, link please?
mago
@different clue
The new age Jewish.
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Absolutely nobody in America gave a shit about calling it “the Ukraine” before 2022, and I’m not about to start giving a shit now.
Thank you. This is a great example of what makes MAGA, MAGA. In the early to mid 19th century and for many decades beyond that, Americans didn’t give a shit about calling black people n*gg*rs and there were many like JH, for at least a hundred years subsequent to that time period, who would proclaim just as JH has here, despite the times they are a changin’, that they were “not about to start giving a shit now.”
Speaking of our formative years and how getting old is weird, when I was growing up in America, it was fashionable and perfectly acceptable to insult someone by calling them a fag. In fact, gay men were called fags without thinking twice about it. MAGA will have those days again even though many MAGA men, oddly enough or maybe not, are in fact gay. This crazy world.
Fyi, I was guilty of using fag as an insult until my late twenties when I began to give a shit. Describing black people as n*gg*ers was never part of my lexicon.
Considering that, I don’t understand why MAGA hates on Hispanics so much. Hispanics, like JH, aren’t about to give a shit either. They still call white Americans Gringos. They always have and they always will. Why? Because they don’t give a shit and never will. Respect!
Poul
Joe:
I think what is being referenced is the number of dead soldiers exchanged between Russia and Ukraine under RC’s supervision. But that is not the casualty ratio for the combined losses. My guess would be around 2-to-1 losses in Russian favor.
2026: First two exchanges this year
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/01/29/russia-returns-bodies-of-1k-ukrainian-soldiers-in-first-exchange-of-2026-a91811
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/02/26/russia-and-ukraine-exchange-bodies-of-soldiers-kremlin-official-says-a92052
Mark Level
Thanks to Finster and we agree fully (this time) on the UK and UKraine, & Fascists. And yes, your correction to LAS (he’s in full BadFace mode today, 100% wrong instead of his typical 50% right) is germane. The Nazi Navalny was thrown into prison, & mysterious claims that an uncontacted tribe in the Amazon killed him with frog poison in a blow dart @ “Putin’s behest” is ludicrous!! You’re welcome, mago, he is a broken record of not even a good song. As to KT Chong, you gave me a good laugh. Most Christians everywhere are bonkers, few are rational or grounded in reality. But yes, Trump may be God-given to destroy the USA, or more likely NeoCon given to do so with the war starting. (Oh, btw LAS, every country in the world has fascists, the Russians hate them; your beloved Nazis alongside the Banderists killed 23 million or more Russians, they haven’t forgotten.)
Listening to excellent coverage of Trump’s cowardly attack on Iran with the Zio-Masters by the Duran at the moment. The Trump regime will fall long before the Iranians, I predict, not too off topic. His Presidency’s pretty much on its last legs now, the MAGA base doesn’t want this, he promised he wouldn’t (like Obama’s Bush II) be Bush III, yet he is. Lindsay Graham is the real President since John McCain is rotting in Hell.
Lie & Suborn will be shedding tears soon– the Israel/US War on Iran means DoD will no longer bother with the Rump, failing fascist regime in Ukraine, even the Brits are too fucked to help much.
bruce wilder
@Joe re: exchange of remains between Russia and Ukraine
Unduly proud of my “search skills”, I thought I would be able to help you out, but all I accomplished was to confirm to myself how thoroughly the forces of propaganda are able to bury facts in the internet age.
I do “follow” the “progress” of the Ukraine War intermittently, so I have been aware of the exchange of remains under the aegis of the Red Cross and the dramatic shift of the ratio in favor of Russia during 2025. Two monthly exchanges have been reported in the news (e.g. BBC and Moscow Times, both Western sources) in 2026, which have continued the trend. The Russians returned 1000 bodies in each 2026 exchange and received 35 and 38 bodies.
It was a struggle to find even this report of the trend over time:
https://www.southfront.press/large-scale-ukrainian-losses-and-unequal-body-exchanges-with-russia-latest-exchange-and-trends-since-2022/
The explanations for the disparity offered at the above link cover the usual range of propaganda-tinged “analyses”.
For what it is worth, the BBC and Mediazona continue to try to count Russian fatalities.
https://en.zona.media/article/2026/02/24/casualties_eng-trl
Their estimates of total Russian fatalities to date recently topped 200,000, which is staggering even for a country the size of Russia. By their count, fatalities rose markedly during 2024, but have trended downward since the Spring of 2025.
The Russians shifted tactics dramatically beginning early in 2025. I am not qualified to describe that remarkable change, but it is commonly reported as featuring probing reconnaissance by very small squads (3-6!) lightly mobilized (motorcycles, ATVs) with drones in an expanded gray zone, backed by massive capacity for aerial and artillery bombardment. The idea that the Russians may have reversed the expectation of a defenders’s advantage in attrition is now plausible.
“The first casualty of war” and all that. . .
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Joe, here you go.
Link
You have to admit, five is better than one.
TheIronGreek
This is a very fine post SPK. I have a couple of minor quibbles, especially on eastern vs western concepts of liberty, but they hardly matter. It is absolutely true that Chinese leaders have helped raise the living standards of hundreds of millions of Chinese, and that is to their credit. Our so-called leaders are busy subjugating us to techbros and other oligarchs. The freedom of conscience that was central to western thought since the Radical Whigs is now undesirable to our “elites.” Either we replace our elites, or we continue to suffer.
As for investing suggestions, I couldn’t agree more with getting zero coupon strips. Those worked exceedingly well during the GFC. (I couldn’t bring myself to buy banks, and that was a big mistake, though I did buy Wells Fargo preferred, I think it was the J class, at a 55% discount to issue price.) Your assessment that a position that drops 15% should be sold (I look at 10-20%) is spot on. Selling losers quickly is absolutely critical, not just to my pocketbook, but to my mental health.
Finally, I want to add one more catchphrase to your list, “Get right, and sit tight.” I was several years early to the precious metals miners that I bought in 2019-22, but they are working nicely now, and I am glad I held. My three best investments have gone from $12.75 (bought in 2009 and doubled my position in 2020), $2 to over $38 (bought Dec 2019 and Feb 2020), and 60 cents to $12.5 (bought in 2023). As you can imagine most miners have gone up considerably during the last year plus. My father and I started buying physical gold in an allocated account in 2003. Gold is insurance, and it has the virtue of having no counterparty risk.
Mark Level
Thank you to bruce wilder for well-researched data on the Ukrainian cascade further down to defeat. I hope Ian is okay? Jared & Witkoff started WW III today, all the UAE and area Gulf aviation is shut down, Strait of Hormuz closed and market will melt down on Monday, gas prices will be up 3-5x initially, more in little time. (I tanked up this morning.)
And yes, Mercouris reported 2x that Drumpf said Jared and Witkoff would decide. He’s being blackmailed by the Zios with his Epstein pics, wants fall guys to blame when this breaks the Empire and the MAGA base. Ukraine not the only totalitarian junta going down the drain. WW III on the 3rd day the “Bored of Piece” is formed, deliberate coincidence?
StewartM
Mark
As to Stewart M’s take on the dearth of immigration during Covid, he is correct (I actually wanted to emigrate to Spain when I retired, but it was impossible), but KT Chong is equally correct wrt Biden policies & thus wins the argument.
I don’t know if you read my followup, about how Trump 1.0 created a huge backlog of LEGAL immigration cases:
If a dam is built under one regime, and years later the dam (predictably) fails and results in a catastrophic flood under a following regime, is it the fault of the following regime that there was a flood? A dam creates a lake, a huge backlog of water which will result in a more catastrophic flood compared to if there had been no dam built at all.
(And yes, the ultimate result of a dam is failure–either the water weakens and dam and it collapses, or the dammed-up lake silts up and creates a waterfall.)
But anyway, these were legal immigrants who had their cases denied or held up by Trump 1.0, and all Biden did was to restore the previous rules, which was indeed the right thing to do. That meant that like that lake of dammed-up water, you had a “lake” of nearly 6 years of pent-up LEGAL immigrants waiting. Like I said, comparing a historically low point on a graph to a normal point and claiming in to be a historic “flood” is either bad data interpretation or dishonest data interpretation.
Purple Library Guy
I think the figure given is an accurate figure, but I don’t think it means what Mr. Kelly thinks it means. It’s a figure that compares the number of Ukrainian bodies the Russians gave back, to the number of Russian bodies the Ukrainians gave back. But the steep ratio in those numbers is probably an artifact of Russia being mostly advancing on the battlefield. The point is, the Russians mostly get to keep their bodies because they advance past them, whereas the Ukrainians often lose theirs because they retreat away from them.
I am fairly sure that the ratio of casualties does favour the Russians, probably even fairly lopsidedly. But I doubt it’s 34:1.
Joe
To be clear, Mr. Kelly seems good, is a good storyteller, and I tend to agree with him on a bunch of stuff. His source on Twitter didn’t seem nearly as trustworthy and I really appreciate the others in the commentariat who helped me.
different clue
@Sean Paul Kelley,
Here is an article of tangential relevance to your observations about weather/climate trends in Texas. It is on a most recent Naked Capitalism links-roundup.
” Climate change is shifting growing zones so fast that the Midwest could look like Texas by 2050, new USDA projections show
New USDA projections and university climate models suggest the Midwest could experience growing conditions resembling present-day Texas by mid-century — with profound implications for crop yields, soil health, land values, and the future of the American food supply. ”
https://vegoutmag.com/news/vo-n-climate-change-is-shifting-growing-zones-so-fast-that-the-mi/
somecomputerguy
“People often tell me that my belief in realism in foreign affairs is deeply immoral. Fuck that shit. International liberal hegemony is 100% at fault for all the deaths in the Ukraine.”
Immorality isn’t an accusation leveled at Realists, it’s a proud boast made by them.
Here is the understanding of Realism I was taught;
All nation-states are the same and act the same, as isolated individuals in a Hobbesian state of nature.
The strong do as they like, and the weak suffer what they must.
Morality has no place in politics.
Treaties are words on paper that are only followed as long as convenient for the strong.
The Ur-text of Realism, is Hans Morganthau’s “Politics Among Nations”