The Russian economy (catch all)

[OUTLAW 09]

I don't agree with AP on the negotiation side; I doubt that negotiation would achieve much without the deployment of significant carrots and sticks.

What I'm missing from you, despite your efforts to position yourself as an omniscient authority, is any hint of a practical policy suggestion. What, specifically, do you think the US and EU should do at this point? Surely your self appointed authority puts you in a position to make a suggestion, and if it doesn't, what good is it?

If you're talking of "red lines", what exactly should they be and what should be done if (when) they are tested? If we're talking of prices, what specific price do you suggest and how is that price to be imposed?

See Dayuhan--this is the problem--if you had been following my comments and those of JMA then you would have seen the red lines and the suggestions.

I am for one really waiting for the 90 day bank lines of credit to be halted and the halting of sales of stocks for all Russian oligarch companies as well as the halting of all Sovereign fund bonds as well as Russian company bonds sales.

Then the red line is seriously stated to Putin.

Only when he clearly sees the financial abyss will he pull back as he cannot regardless of how much propaganda he throws at the Russian population ---there are way to many of the middle class that sees , hears, and understands the west from their many trips/vacations and they fully understand the propaganda---Putin has totally established a dictatorship using "legal democratic" means and they are now afraid to say anything out of fear of landing in prison. Just listen to the voices of the young Russian generation that is here in Berlin in large numbers---anti Putin to a person--but then totally nationalist Russians in their love of their country. There is the disconnect.

Remember what drove them in 1994---the realization that there was another economic developmental/growth model out they and they knew they wanted a part of it. Yes the average yearly income of 7K has been risen to 14K but it has been on the credit pump from the west and there still is no real serious internal development that can sustain Russia when the raw resource turn down---then what? Remember Russia is still the same old Soviet style state capitalism just with "former communist" now "democratic" oligarchs.

Just look at the food sanctions ban--it did not really hurt the west---actually Europeans were startled by his remarks as they know it will hit the Russian consumer far harder---but Putin needs to drive his population backwards in order to survive the isolation that is now there---the problem is and he totally forgot--Russia is tied to the globalized world thus cannot drift back into economic isolation without truly damaging his own economy for the next 20 years.

Putin is struggling to get reelected nothing more nothing less and if it means crossing with little green men into the Ukraine in the end he will do it---the question is just how hard will the west push back on against a ethnic national imperialist bent on reestablishing the Russian Empire?

He has already crossed two serious red lines and that has been signaled to him a large number of times and yet he does not respond---and all AP wants to do is what----to negotiate?

So in the end if his economy totally tanks it is not the fault of the west which he so often blames for everything--- it is then his own fault---but right now he is in an "ain't my responsibility---it is yours" mindset.