Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[BrentWilliams]

This was the news on the WSJ this morning.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/ukrai...ast-1404644564

Pro-Russia Rebels Prepare Last Stand in East Ukraine
Ukraine neared a final showdown with pro-Russia rebels, after Kiev forced insurgents to retreat to the last major cities they control and Moscow showed no signs of intervening to help them.

On Sunday, Ukraine said it plans to lay siege to Donetsk, a regional capital of one million residents that is the political and economic center of eastern Ukraine, and pursue rebels who fled there from Slovyansk, which had been the base of rebel military resistance in the region until government forces recaptured it over the weekend.

With that, one has to ask, was this largely right?

http://www.vox.com/2014/5/16/5717674...elf-is-working

Obama's strategy of letting Putin hang himself is working
...
Most of this is economic. Russia's self-imposed economic problems started pretty quickly after its annexation of Crimea in March and have kept up. Whether or not American or European governments sanction Russia's broader economy, the global investment community has a mind of its own, and they seem to have decided that Russia's behavior has made it a risky place to put money. So risky that they're pulling more money out.

A lot of that may have come from the targeted sanctions that Obama pushed for against individual Russian leaders and oligarchs. Those targeted sanctions did not themselves do much damage to the Russian economy. But, along with Russia's erratic behavior in Ukraine and the lack of clarity as to whether Europe and the US could impose broader sanctions, it appears to have been enough to scare off global investors — the big, faceless, placeless mass of people and banks who have done tremendous damage to Putin's Russia, nudged along by the US and by Putin himself.
...