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Vlad may know exactly what he's doing. I think the Russians had an ideal that Trump would win and then they could dictate American policy with Russia and get all their wishes granted. On the other hand I think their realistic plan was to help Trump disrupt American politics so much that Hillary would have a tough time governing. Trump would go out after the election and start his own news network which the Russian government would use to pump Russian propaganda into the minds of a minority of the American population who would then go out and cause trouble. Maybe even start a civil war.
I'm sure they are aware of how the Koch family has interfered with American politics with various fringe movements and they figured they could supercharge that into the mega Tea Party movement.
Initially it looked like their ideal plan came to reality and their candidate won, but Trump proved to be too squirrelly to be useful. Russia doesn't mind their puppets being personally corrupt and lining their pockets as long as they also do what the Kremlin wants. But Trump proved to be completely incompetent as a leader and got nothing on Russia's agenda done.
When Trump turned his back on Moscow to pursue wealth from Saudi Arabia and got Saudi Arabia to lower oil prices (which are already killing Russia), Trump Mod edit: that is, Putin decided Trump had to go. So he's burning his asset in the most spectacular way possible to try and achieve their first goal which is to rip the US apart.
When Maria Butina gave up everything, I became convinced Putin is still pulling her strings. Her plea agreement says she will most likely be deported when the DOJ is done with her. If Putin wasn't giving her permission to do plea, she'd be dead within 24 hours of returning to Russia and she knows it. It's still possible she will disappear into witness protection in the US, but even if she does, that may still be a play by Putin to leave a sleeper agent in place the US thinks has flipped.
The Russian government claiming their agents were acting as part of the Russian military in an op against the US I think was also part of the game trying to stir up the two sides in American politics.
I think it's also possible that MBS in Saudi Arabia has realized that Trump is too unreliable to be an ally and maybe he and Putin are beginning to work together to bring down Trump. Saudi Arabia has a number of business interests in the US and do not want to see Mueller seize any of them in a RICO case, so Saudi might be cooperating with Mueller now too. That may have been behind that high five between Putin and MBS at the G20. They were trying to signal to Trump that his former allies are teaming up against him.
They also know that the more rattled Trump gets, the more guilty he behaves and the more likely it is he's going to blurt out incriminating things, further causing splits in the US.
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adiggs
Well-Known Member
I read this @wdolson, and two realizations struck me almost simultaneously, and I'm not sure which is more incredible.
The first being that this sounds entirely plausible to me - it does a good job of fitting the facts as I see them being reported.
The second being that if I read this as a plot summary for a movie, I'd laugh and move on to find some serious fantasy. Like the Shannara Chronicles or something. You know - something believable
The first being that this sounds entirely plausible to me - it does a good job of fitting the facts as I see them being reported.
The second being that if I read this as a plot summary for a movie, I'd laugh and move on to find some serious fantasy. Like the Shannara Chronicles or something. You know - something believable
I don't think MBS is really collaborating with Putin, because MBS is showing signs of being WAAAAY out of his depth. He seems to view everything through a lens of hostility to Iran (which is dumb). It seems like a lot of the major factions in Saudi Arabia want to get rid of him but they all think someone worse would replace him... an unstable position.
If I'm right and Saudi Arabia is nearly out of hard currency, that would account for MBS's more erratic behavior. He must be furious that Iran is just fine with no hard currency while Saudi Arabia is dependent on it.
If I'm right and Saudi Arabia is nearly out of hard currency, that would account for MBS's more erratic behavior. He must be furious that Iran is just fine with no hard currency while Saudi Arabia is dependent on it.
Could it also be that as the US becomes the world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia will need to make friends with other oil producers to maintain some leverage over the US?
I agree that MBS and Putin currently have shared interests; but I don't believe MBS is capable enough to conspire with Putin and I think he's too arrogant to act as Putin's puppet.
Putin is doing his best to secure both Iran and Turkey into Russia's orbit. MBS is picking fights with both Iran and Turkey.
Putin is doing his best to secure both Iran and Turkey into Russia's orbit. MBS is picking fights with both Iran and Turkey.
The KGB during the Cold War were famous for elaborate plots.
The second being that if I read this as a plot summary for a movie, I'd laugh and move on to find some serious fantasy. Like the Shannara Chronicles or something. You know - something believable
It is pretty loony isn't it?
I have a friend who is now retired from the oil biz, but he was a Geophysicist in Houston for many years. About 15 years ago he said Saudi was showing signs that their oil was beginning to run out. They were quietly starting secondary recovery programs in some of their fields which is a technique used to get the last oil out when the easy to extract stuff is gone. Most Texas and California fields have been in secondary recovery for a few decades now.
Saudi Arabia has been trying to build infrastructure so they have something to fall back on when the oil runs out, but helping the US in the geopolitical game has probably not helped them towards that goal.
Quality of oil varies quite a bit from one field to another. Saudi Arabian oil has always been the cheapest to produce in the world. Their onshore oil costs about $3 a barrel to produce. They may be into secondary recovery now and are lying about it, but their prices are still very low. On the other hand oil shale oil costs about $73 a barrel to produce. Canadian oil sand oil costs about $90 a barrel and Gulf Coast deepwater oil costs about $57 a barrel.
Even if the US surpasses Saudi Arabia in total oil production, Saudi oil will remain far more profitable. They would have to be doing some pretty expensive secondary recovery efforts to get anywhere close to the US $57 a barrel from the Texas/Louisiana offshore rigs.
This isn't anything to do with government regulation or anything like that. It has to do with Geology. The cheapest oil is oil that gets trapped under ancient salt domes. The oil is under pressure down there and all you need to do is tap a hole in the top of the salt dome and keeping the oil in the ground becomes the problems. The classic oil gusher is a salt dome type blowout.
The Gulf of Mexico still has some untapped salt domes and the Deepwater Horizon was one of these. But the onshore salt domes in the US were mostly in Texas and were largely drained out by 1972. Saudi Arabia is the other place in the world where salt domes are common and they had even more than Texas to start with.
Offshore oil is fairly difficult to produce for obvious reasons. In shallow water like Santa Barbara or right on the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, it's not prohibitively expensive, which is why those places were drilled decades ago. As you get into deeper water it gets far more difficult and much more expensive to drill and produce oil. So even if the oil is relatively easy to produce once the well is drilled, drilling the well in the first place is very expensive.
Shale oil is also very expensive to drill and produce because shale needs to be fracked to produce. Shale has the oil locked away in sandstone and something has to be done to shatter the sandstone back into sand so the oil can be released.
Fracking has been around since the 70s in California with no problems because it's well regulated and was never done there on the scales done for oil shale. It was done in California not to make shale produce, but to open up old fields that had oil trapped in pockets. The fracking pressures and volumes were a small fraction of what needs to be done to produce in shale fields. They are also finding that shale fields are having reservoir collapse after a few years, which is shutting off the oil flow.
So while the US may produce a lot of oil for a while, it won't be as sustainable as Saudi Arabia has been and it won't be as profitable. At the current price of oil, many US fields are shut in because it costs more to produce and refine the oil than it costs to produce.
MikeQ
Member
I read an interesting article on the whole wealth inequity argument. It showed how the numbers can be misleading. For instance, most of the poorest people are in the U.S. It also shows that an uneducated rural farmer in China is wealthier than a fresh out of school doctor in the U.S. It also shows that my kids with zero income but money in a savings account are wealthier than 50% of the U.S. population. This is because personal debt is factored in. So if you're young, making a lot of money but have a large mortgage, you have negative wealth.
Also, the 5 people "that control 50% of the worlds wealth" have most of their wealth tied up in a business that employs hundreds of thousands of people. It's not like you could re-distribute that wealth without dismantling Amazon and putting people out of work.
Also, the money supply isn't finite, it's not like these people are hording a finite resource and keeping from anyone else.
The growing inequality is partially because people carry more debt because they don't want to live within their means and because people aren't willing to do the work it takes to get a high paying job. We have hundreds of thousands of H1-B applicants a year trying to get jobs in the high tech sector. Anyone in this country who is willing to get a degree in a number of engineering disciplines can easily land a $100k a year job right out of college.
I don't have a problem with a CEO getting paid 1000x what I do. I don't want the job and you literally couldn't pay me enough to want to take it. People who make it to that level on the corporate ladder are wired differently and are willing to make work their life. I'm not. I can still have a home, great income, retire early, put my kids through college and buy them all Tesla's without the stress of being responsible for 100,000 employees livelihood. At the end of the day I can go home, be with my family and not think about work. CEO's don't get to do that.
Also, the 5 people "that control 50% of the worlds wealth" have most of their wealth tied up in a business that employs hundreds of thousands of people. It's not like you could re-distribute that wealth without dismantling Amazon and putting people out of work.
Also, the money supply isn't finite, it's not like these people are hording a finite resource and keeping from anyone else.
The growing inequality is partially because people carry more debt because they don't want to live within their means and because people aren't willing to do the work it takes to get a high paying job. We have hundreds of thousands of H1-B applicants a year trying to get jobs in the high tech sector. Anyone in this country who is willing to get a degree in a number of engineering disciplines can easily land a $100k a year job right out of college.
I don't have a problem with a CEO getting paid 1000x what I do. I don't want the job and you literally couldn't pay me enough to want to take it. People who make it to that level on the corporate ladder are wired differently and are willing to make work their life. I'm not. I can still have a home, great income, retire early, put my kids through college and buy them all Tesla's without the stress of being responsible for 100,000 employees livelihood. At the end of the day I can go home, be with my family and not think about work. CEO's don't get to do that.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
It is if you expect it to have any value. We use money instead of trading physical resources, which would be cumbersome, but like resources money can't be infinite and still hold value.
Most CEO's don't work like Elon. They get to be with their families and not think about work just like you, only with a lot more money.
MikeQ
Member
I wasn't referring to Elon. I know several corporate officers and most of them are MIA at home. Some have great regret over it, some don't. Almost all of them travel constantly.
MikeQ
Member
I'm not implying that money is infinite. It's just not a pie. It's not like someone can take all the pie and leave nothing for anyone else. The pie grows as the economy grows and taking a bigger slice causes the pie to get bigger.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
MikeQ
Member
Sure, you didn't imply it, you actually said it
The money supply and money aren't the same. The money supply is infinite. There's no upper bounds on the money supply. It can go as high as the economy can support. There is not an infinite amount of money in circulation.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
To be useful money must have value, if it is in infinite supply it would have no value. Do you understand inflation? Your logic would mean we can just print enough money and make everyone millionaires, but that wouldn't work out too well would it?
MikeQ
Member
You wouldn't have an infinite money in circulation unless there was demand for it. So if we suddenly invented a warp drive and suddenly needed an infinite amount of money to expand the economy to a universal scale, we could have an infinite amount of money in circulation.
I'm not suggesting that you can print an infinite amount of money, I'm suggesting that there is no upper limit on the amount of money we can print if there's support from the economy.
If you disagree, tell me the exact dollar amount at which we can no longer print money no matter what the state of the economy is.
You're arguing a stupid point to avoid agreeing with the overall point that wealth inequity is a stupid measure when you consider that when some CEO takes a big slice of the pie, it doesn't mean there's less pie for everyone else.
JRP3
Hyperactive Member
That's exactly what it means but I'm obviously not going to be able to convince you of it. We'll have to disagree as to which of us is arguing a stupid point.
MikeQ
Member
So what's the dollar amount when we have to stop creating money? Ballpark figure would be fine.
MikeQ
Member
If we wanted to fix the wealth inequity in this country, the largest impact could be made by restricting credit to most people. Force them to live within their means, save money and build wealth. A large portion of the middle class has almost no 401k but they are mortgaged to the gills so they can have a big house, expensive cars and the latest I-Phone. The growing wealth gap is mostly due to easy access to credit. People are mortgaging their future to consume and not saving or investing. Investing is the single largest factor in the rich getting richer. It's not because their incomes have grown, it's because their stock portfolios have grown in value. Get the average person investing (and doing it early) and we'd have a much different picture.
My wife and I started out as enlisted soldiers in the Army. We are now the 1%. There's nothing special about us. We've just lived within (actually below) our means our entire life and planned for the future. When we could afford a $500,000 house, we bought a $250,000 house. When we could afford a $1,000,000 house, we stayed in our $250,000 house. Now in our early 50's we are enjoying financial freedom. It actually hasn't even been hard. We've enjoyed a very fruitful life. Most of the wealth inequity in this country doesn't come from a lack of opportunity. It comes from a lack of planning and putting the appearance of financial status above actually trying to achieve financial status. I've got one whole side of my family that lives on government handouts yet everyone of them owns the latest I-phone while I'm usually 2 generations behind on my android phone. They rent rims for their cars that are worth more than their cars. Fix that before you start taking money from the rich.
My wife and I started out as enlisted soldiers in the Army. We are now the 1%. There's nothing special about us. We've just lived within (actually below) our means our entire life and planned for the future. When we could afford a $500,000 house, we bought a $250,000 house. When we could afford a $1,000,000 house, we stayed in our $250,000 house. Now in our early 50's we are enjoying financial freedom. It actually hasn't even been hard. We've enjoyed a very fruitful life. Most of the wealth inequity in this country doesn't come from a lack of opportunity. It comes from a lack of planning and putting the appearance of financial status above actually trying to achieve financial status. I've got one whole side of my family that lives on government handouts yet everyone of them owns the latest I-phone while I'm usually 2 generations behind on my android phone. They rent rims for their cars that are worth more than their cars. Fix that before you start taking money from the rich.
MikeQ
Member
So when you take out a loan for a car, house, etc.. Does that mean there's less money for other people?
The vast majority of money creation in the western world is created by banks when they loan money. Banks loan money that didn't exist and then people have to work to pay it back.
I've always lived within my means too. The only loans I've ever had were for my mortgage. I still have a mortgage, but it's small and I'm throwing extra at it every month to pay it down as quickly as possible.
However restricting access to credit too much or too quickly would crash the economy. I don't like it, but just as the world is addicted to oil, it's also addicted to debt. The entire economy is built around oil and credit. Just like cutting off a drug addict cold turkey, it could kill the patient.
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