Ague Proof posted:

For non-British people:

Cpt.Americant posted:

I just realized.. that means if he was able to post instantly like most of the other cartoonists in this thread, this would have been the thing he posted the day after. The DAY after. This is what he judged would be a valid point to make right away. And yet he's supposed to be writing in the funnies.

Apple Pie Hubbub posted:

Wales Grey posted:

muslim depictions of Mohammad

Duckbag posted:

Can we get a moratorium on sociopathchat in this thread?

Zetsubou-san posted:

euclidian88 posted:

One of the few cats to lead a political party would seem to imply that there have been others.

WarpedNaba posted:

Thought this was a genuine article, you fucker

Cat Mattress posted:

I'm pretty sure the world would be a better place if all political parties were led by cats.

euclidian88 posted:

Well fat cats seem to lead/control quite a few...

LordSaturn posted:

Political Cartoons 2015: If you want a really bad opinion, wait two weeks.

quote:

Remember Russia? It’s still doomed.
The Washington Post
Matt O'Brien
January 27, 2015

quote:

President Obama might have a future as a credit rating analyst. During his State of the Union, you might remember, he took a victory lap of sorts when he declared that, as the price of its aggression, Russia's economy was "in tatters." Well, S&P agrees: the rating agency just downgraded Russia to junk.

quote:

Now, normally I wouldn't pay any attention to what a credit rating agency says about a government. That's just, like, their opinion, man, and often a poor one at that. But this time is, well, different, because if Russia is rated junk, then its companies will be too—which will increase the borrowing costs on their existing debt. It could also trigger earlier bond repayments, which, together with the higher interest rates, could, according to one official, cost them as much as $20 to $30 billion.

quote:

And that's $20 to $30 billion it really can't afford. Russia, as I've said before, doesn't have an economy so much as an oil-exporting business that subsidizes everything else. But it can't subsidize much when prices are only $50-a-barrel. That leaves Russia in a world of bad, worse, and Dostoevskian choices. Cheaper oil, you see, means that Russian companies have fewer dollars to turn into rubles, which is just another way of saying that there's less demand for rubles—so its price is falling. But it can't fall too much or Russian companies, who have a lot of dollar debts they can't roll over due to Western sanctions, won't be able to pay back what they owe. Even worse, Russia banks could face a run on their foreign currency holdings, as people try to turn rubles they think will lose value into dollars that won't.

quote:

Russia can't wake up from this economic nightmare, though, because they're not asleep. This is their reality. After falling in almost perfect tandem with oil for most of the year, the ruble started free falling in December. In under a week, it went from 55 to 75 rubles per dollar—a 36 percent decline—and the panic got so bad that the bank run turned into an Apple and Ikea run. People decided that if they couldn't ditch their rubles for dollars, then they'd settle for the latest smartphones and assemble-it-yourself furniture instead.

quote:

Faced with this catastrophic loss of confidence in their currency, Russia did the only thing it could do: everything. First, it jacked up interest rates from 10.5 to 17 percent to try to get people to hold their money in rubles that would pay them a lot of interest rather than dollars that wouldn't. Then it started spending its $400 billion-ish war chest of reserves to prop up the ruble directly. And when that wasn't enough, it, well, "convinced" exporters to sell their dollars for rubles and made oligarchs bring their overseas money home to pay taxes. In Putin's Russia, this counted as kinder, gentler capital controls. After all, as one official explained, "there were no threats of sending anyone to Siberia."

quote:

The result, as you can see below, was a short-lived ruble rally that has since dissipated. The problem, as Lars Christensen of Danske Bank told me, is that the ruble "should" be worth 75 per dollar as long as oil is around $50-a-barrel. What makes that even trickier, though, is that a currency doesn't fall to its fair value, but rather to the point at which it's expected to move up to its fair value. Markets overshoot, in other words, because nobody wants to buy rubles right before they hit bottom. That means, absent Russian intervention, the ruble would probably be trading around 80 or 85 per dollar, and maybe even lower.

quote:

So the Russian government can keep spending its dollars and forcing its companies to do so too, but whatever boost the ruble gets will fade away as long as its fundamentals are weak. Low oil prices, you see, are like gravity pulling the ruble down. It just the S&P downgrade to remind everyone of that, as the ruble fell another 7.5 percent on Monday.

quote:

It's an economic catch-22 called "Not Enough Dollars." Russia, you see, hasn't had to just bail out the ruble. It's also had to bail out its banks, including, it looks like, another one on Monday, that have been hit hard by the ruble's decline and declining earnings. And, after it made its companies sell their dollars, it's had to bail them out with new dollars too, so they can pay back their dollar debts, a financial shell game meant to hide how much of its reserves the government is really spending. Finally, though, the government might have to bail itself out. Its budget could go from surplus to deficit now that oil revenues have halved, and it can't borrow what it needs because sanctions have cut it off from international credit markets. It's no wonder, then, that Russia's reserves are already down to $379 billion from $414 billion a few weeks ago. That's a pretty high burn rate.

quote:

And it's only going to get worse. Russia's economy, its central bank says, will shrink 4.5 to 4.7 percent this year as long as oil stays at $60-a-barrel. It's under $50-a-barrel now. And its sky-high interest rates will only add to that by keeping people from borrowing. So will its oil-induced austerity, as the government announced it will cut all non-defense spending by 10 percent. But the biggest negative for them, aside from still-cheap oil, is that the EU is getting ready to introduce new sanctions after Russian-backed rebels attacked again in Ukraine. That'll put even more pressure on Russia's companies to pay back what they owe, which isn't easy when the collapsing ruble is making foreign currency debts more expensive and the collapsing economy is making the rest more expensive too by crushing earnings.

quote:

Russia, in other words, is doomed as long as oil is cheap and sanctions are in place. It could survive either alone. But together, they destroy Russia's economy and its ability to borrow to cover that up. And unlike, say, 2008, when oil prices rebounded rather quickly, this crisis could last awhile. After all, if you think Putin is going to back down in Ukraine anytime soon, well, think again: he's already pushed pro-peace oligarchs who've lost a lot of money the past year to his outer circle, if that.

quote:

The government, for its part, is trying to put a brave face on this bleak economic picture. One Kremlin official went so far as to say that the Russian people are prepared to "eat less" to support Putin. Maybe that's why Putin doesn't allow real elections—because that's not much of a slogan.

quote:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/27/remember-russia-its-still-doomed/?tid=sm_fb

Cat Mattress posted:

I'm pretty sure the world would be a better place if all political parties were led by cats.

quote:

Between dogs and cats my degree of choice is so great that it would never occur to me to compare the two. I have no active dislike for dogs, any more than I have for monkeys, human beings, negroes, cows, sheep, or pterodactyls; but for the cat I have entertained a particular respect and affection ever since the earliest days of my infancy. In its flawless grace and superior self-sufficiency I have seen a symbol of the perfect beauty and bland impersonality of the universe itself, objectively considered; and in its air of silent mystery there resides for me all the wonder and fascination of the unknown. The dog appeals to cheap and facile emotions; the cat to the deepest founts of imagination and cosmic perception in the human mind.

vyelkin posted:

vyelkin posted:

DJ Turbo Punch posted:

So what's the point these shitheels are trying to make, anyway? Is it literally "Obama won't declare all-out war with Russia and instead imposes sanctions?! He just made us miss another great war AND he made me Google the word sanctions? THANKS OBAMA!"

Kegluneq posted:

Want an overly verbose and exceedingly racist essay in favour of this argument? H.P. Lovecraft has you covered!

DJ Turbo Punch posted:

So what's the point these shitheels are trying to make, anyway? Is it literally "Obama won't declare all-out war with Russia and instead imposes sanctions?! He just made us miss another great war AND he made me Google the word sanctions? THANKS OBAMA!"

PassTheRemote posted:

These are people who only see power in terms of military might. They laugh at the sanctions being impotent measures.

vyelkin posted:

JaggerMcDagger posted:

Presidential Insecurity

The U.S. President's apparent insecurity is an embarrassment to America. The attempt to portray a congressional invitation to Israel's Prime Minister as a political ploy while the U.S. tries to stop the potential development of Iranian Nukes is disgusting.
* * *
Due to popular demand, we've re-opened our indiegogo site. We reached (and went beyond) our fund-raising goal but so many people have asked if they can still contribute and receive our "perks" (Dry Bones Haggadahs, dvd's, etc.) that we've been forced to comply. To check it out go to http://igg.me/at/drybones
Labels: Bibi, Congress, Israel, Netanyahu, Obama, Sanctions, Shuldig

vyelkin posted:

Markovnikov posted:

Still, I don't think sanctions on their own would have done that much. It's mostly the price of oil that is loving them up. Which if the analysis I've read is accurate, actually started when the US started producing oil again from fracking and such, causing the petrostates to panic and dump oil into the market. So, uh, good indirect job America.

vyelkin posted:

I've read at least one analysis that says the US and the Saudis (good allies, don't forget) may be conspiring to drop the price of oil to hurt Russia. It hurts the US too because fracking is so expensive, but it hurts Russia way, way more.

Markovnikov posted:

Well it does hurt a lot of known US enemies. Iran, Venezuela, etc. Seems sort of far fetched/conspirational to me tho'. Wouldn't it hurt Saudi Arabia too? Albeit if they are like any other petrostate, it'll be just the rich sheiks living off their savings while the people writhe in poverty (aka, business as usual).

DJ Turbo Punch posted:

So what's the point these shitheels are trying to make, anyway? Is it literally "Obama won't declare all-out war with Russia and instead imposes sanctions?! He just made us miss another great war AND he made me Google the word sanctions? THANKS OBAMA!"

vyelkin posted:

Saudi oil is some of the cheapest oil to extract in the entire world. They stay profitable pretty much no matter what, which is why so much of the global price of oil depends on just how much of it they decide to pump up at any given moment.

Even if it does hurt them, they're so rich that it's like the predatory pricing of a big box store moving into town, dropping its prices to put all the independent stores out of business (and operating at a loss temporarily because they can afford it) and then jacking prices again once all the competitors are gone.

Jedit posted:

You could blank that extra box and make a pretty good caption contest.

"'Scuze me, ma'am - I didn't sign up to defend no right. My girlfriend got knocked up and gettin' hitched didn't sound so much fun as shootin' Mooslims".

Apple Pie Hubbub posted:

loquacius posted:

Today's Bennett is a local thing



I don't really know what Insure Tennessee is, but the cartoon communicates it well enough!