We like the Telegraph's International Business Editor, a lot (some of his market calls in 2008 looked like inside information). However...however, a steady diet of his take on financial goings-on can leave one almost terminally depressed. Not kidding, he makes the Mars Rovers* sound like Chamber of Commerce boosters. Here he is on the geopolitical beat.
From The Telegraph, December 10:
Russia’s resurrected military industrial complex is cannibalising the rest of its economy
Ukraine is slowly losing the three-year conflict on the battlefield. Russia is slowly losing the economic conflict at a roughly equal pace. The Kremlin’s oil export revenues are too low to sustain a high-intensity war and nobody will lend Vladimir Putin a kopeck.
Russia’s overheated, military-Keynesian war economy looks much like the dysfunctional German war economy of late 1917, which had run out of skilled manpower and was holed below the waterline after three years of Allied blockade – as the logistical failures of the Ludendorff offensive would later reveal.
Putin’s strategic victory in Ukraine was far from inevitable a fortnight ago and it is less inevitable now after the Assad regime collapsed like a house of cards, shattering Putin’s credibility in the Middle East and the Sahel. He could do nothing to save his sole state ally in the Arab world.
“The limits of Russian military power have been revealed,” said Tim Ash, a regional expert at Bluebay Asset Management and a Chatham House fellow.
Turkey is now master of the region. Turkish forces had to step in to rescue stranded Russian generals. Even if Putin succeeds in holding on to his naval base at Tartus – a big if – this concession will be on Ottoman terms and sufferance. “Putin now goes into Ukraine peace talks from a position of weakness,” said Mr Ash.
When Trump won the US elections in 2016, corks of Golubitskoe Villa Romanov popped at the Kremlin. There were no illusions this time. Anton Barbashin from Riddle Russia says Donald Trump imposed 40 rounds of sanctions on Russia, belying his bonhomie with Putin before the cameras. He has since warned that Putin will not get all of the four annexed (but unconquered) oblasts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia.
The Kremlin had banked on a contested election outcome in the US, followed by months of disarray that would discredit US democracy across the world. The polite interregnum has been a cruel disappointment.
Barbashin says Russia’s leaders expect Trump to issue ultimatums to both Kyiv and Moscow: if Volodymyr Zelensky balks at peace terms, the US will sever all military aid; if Putin drags his feet, the US will up the military ante and carpet-bomb the Russian economy.
That economy held up well for two years but this third year has become harder. The central bank has raised interest rates to 21pc to choke off an inflation spiral. “The economy cannot exist like this for long. It’s a colossal challenge for business and banks,” said German Gref, Sberbank’s chief executive.
Sergei Chemezov, head of the defence giant Rostec, said the monetary squeeze was becoming dangerous. “If we continue like this, most companies will essentially go bankrupt. At rates of more than 20pc, I don’t know of a single business that can make a profit, not even an arms trader,” he said....
....MUCH MORE
*And the Mars Rovers?
Are You Feeling Too Chipper? Afraid You Might Lose Control And Buy The Dip? Talk To The Curisosity Mars Rover
Cheerfulness can be a killer so it might be wise to take heed of the between-the-lines-message of this eleven-year-old post:
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Ask the Curiosity Rover
The press release from Curiosity on Tuesday (yes, it is handling its own p.r.) that there was one last leg of the Yellowknife Bay traverse before the Holiday break got me thinking about what else the rover was up to.
I mean besides the whole "I'm so into myself" self-shot thing:
December 11, 2012 - Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Lo and behold it turns out the rover is filling its spare time in a constructive manner.
From the New Yorker:
Q: My boyfriend has been dropping hints about wanting a “more open relationship.” If I’m completely honest I have to admit this creeps me out a little, but I love him and don’t want to lose him. What should I do? —Allison F., Grand Rapids, Mich.
A: This is an excellent question, Allison, and it reminds me of something that happened the other day here on Mars. Maybe this will be of some use to you.
I was performing my usual sequence of boot diagnostics when suddenly, without warning, the solar wind blew in. I don’t know if you have any experience with solar wind, Allison—I’m guessing you don’t, because you’re back home on earth, safe and sound. Let me tell you about solar wind. Solar wind blows in at about six hundred kilometres per second, peeling chunks from the Martian atmosphere like you’d peel the skin from a tangerine, and if you’re not paying attention, if you’re performing a complicated matrix of computational chores or something, it can catch you unaware and really knock you back on your treads. When something like this happens your first thought is to look around, as if someone will be there and you can say, “Wow, did you feel that?” Or, “Hey, are you O.K.?” And then you realize that you’re all alone three hundred million miles from home and unless things take a very unexpected turn you’re going to remain that way until your plutonium core depletes and you slowly freeze to death in a sand pit.
Q: My wife and her mother talk on the phone at least three times a day, and sometimes I walk into the room and my wife will stop talking and wait for me to leave before she continues. I know they’re close, but it makes me uneasy to think my wife may have things to say about me that she doesn’t want me to hear. Should I bring this up with her? —Frank D., Philadelphia, Penn.
A: Boy, that’s a tough one. Women, huh? As the old saying goes, “Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.” But the thing is, Frank, that’s just an expression. It’s not literally true. To take just one example, I’m living quite without women, and also men, and if you really want to pull that thread, the fact is I’ll never again know the affectionate touch of the human hands that built me. I’ll just continue doing their work in a silent, diligent fashion until the tiny distant speck that is earth winks out of existence for the final time and I slowly freeze to death in a sand pit....MORE
I am a bit worried about the transcriber of this piece, Bill Barol.
Back in October he translated one of the funniest things I've ever seen on the web, "Le Blog de Jean-Paul Sartre".
I fear however that Barol has internalized Sartre's dictum "We are left alone, without excuse"
and, combined with a too-close reading of Albert Edwards' recent
output, is descending into the pit formerly occupied only by Ambrose
Evans-Pritchard, with writing that
Here's Curiosity's homepage.
And yes, it is still trundling along, making the odd discovery here and there:
Curiosity rover finds 'tantalizing' signs of ancient Mars life
—LiveScience, January 19, 2022
But we all know how this ends. It will join its sister rover, Opportunity (Oppy):
....Deputy Project Scientist Abigail Fraeman spoke about what it was like when they realized the June [2018] dust storm was going to be particularly bad, and that Oppy’s life was in danger. They told it to conserve energy.
“It’s hard, because you know [the storm’s] coming … but there’s nothing you can do to stop it,” Fraeman said.
“By Thursday, we knew that it was bad. And then by Friday, we knew it was really bad, but there was nothing we could do but watch. And then it was Sunday, we actually got a communication from the rover and we were shocked,” she said. “It basically said we had no power left, and that was the last time we heard from it.”
John Callas, the project manager, offered another poignant detail about the final communication with Oppy: “It also told us the skies were incredibly dark, to the point where no sunlight gets through. It’s night time during the day.”
“We were hopeful that the rover could ride it out. That the rover would hunker down, and then when the storm cleared, the rover would charge back up,” he said. “That didn’t happen. At least it didn’t tell us that it happened. So, we don’t know.”
