Is Crimea Payback For Cyprus?

I haven't heard anyone say this yet, but Russians lost a lot of money when the EU "bailed out" Cyprus by bailing it in. More to the point, the EU confiscated 40% of deposits in Cyprus banks in excess of 100,000 euros, which hit a lot of rich Russian depositors pretty hard. It was another example of EU overreach in the opinion of Russians, something of which the West has been very dismissive but which Putin has indicated will not fly anymore as early as 2008, and proved it when he annexed South Ossetia during the Olympic Games in China.

Crimea was a perfect opportunity for a little payback for Cyprus, considering that the US has been trying to push Ukraine into the arms of the EU, most recently when Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy visited Ukraine in December and threatened the country with sanctions if it did not ally with the West.

From Putin's perspective, the EU means losses for Russia. American policy isn't taking that seriously enough, because if it were Putin wouldn't need to resort to arms.

S&P500 Vaults 14 Points Above The Last High One Day After Crimean Invasion By Russia

War is the father of everything.

Drudge Is Just A Sensationalist Tabloid, Not In The Grocery Story Aisle But On The Internet

Everyone who reads the stories Drudge links to can perceive instantly that Drudge's headlines often are purely sensationalist and sometimes down right misleading, often in the extreme.

Today is a good example.

The story Drudge links to here via Reuters clearly states up front in the second paragraph that the US knew in advance of today's test. The test was not an exclamation point added at the end of the sentence about the Crimean invasion:

A U.S. official said the United States had received proper notification from Russia ahead of the test and that the initial notification pre-dated the crisis in Crimea. The Russian Defence Ministry could not be reached for comment.

Russia performs due diligence and informs us of these tests well in advance. Today's test was a good example. But Drudge plays it up differently nevertheless, as if Russia were sending us a message.

Wikileaks proved Russia has been warning the West about expanding NATO too closely to Russia's borders since at least 2008. Russia's action in Crimea should not have come as a surprise to anyone who has a sense of history or pays attention to the long record of Russian protests against European encroachments on its borders since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The sad part of this is that the radio talkers like Laura Ingraham, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and even Michael Savage take their lead from Drudge's headlines. At least Savage often brings a critical perspective to bear upon these stories, as does Ingraham to a lesser extent. But overall the tyranny of Drudge over the news cycle on the right is plain for anyone to see. Its memes become the fodder of the juggernaut of uninformed opinion to which we are all now hostage in the age of instant everything.

Stock Markets Are Casinos Of Sentiment Easily Swayed By Important Global Events Like The Crimean Invasion

Markets tank less than 1% on Russia's Crimean invasion . . .

. . . then they recover all that and then some the day after.

Separated At Birth: Hillary Clinton Looks Strangely Similar To . . .

The Russian Invasion Of Georgia In 2008 Was A Warning To The West To Stop Expanding NATO Into Russia's Backyard, But We Ignore This Up To The Present Day

US foreign policy under Bush and Obama has ignored Russia's intentions to reassert its influence and control in regions populated with Russians.

Bloomberg reports here:

Putin has been warning the U.S. and other North Atlantic Treaty Organization states for at least six years not to impede Russian interests in Ukraine, particularly in Crimea, where the Black Sea Fleet has been based since its founding by Catherine the Great in 1783 after the Ottoman Empire ceded the peninsula.

Putin told a closed NATO summit in Romania in 2008 that the military alliance was threatening Ukraine’s very existence by courting it as a member, according to a secret cable published by Wikileaks. Putin said Ukraine’s borders were “sewn together” after World War II and its claims to Crimea, which belonged to Russia until Nikita Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in 1954, are legally dubious, Kurt Volker, the U.S. ambassador to NATO at the time, said in the cable.

Four months later, Putin demonstrated his willingness to back up words with actions by sending Russian troops to war against Georgia, another former Soviet state, over two Russian-speaking regions seeking independence.

Cold Temps Plunge South Into Texas To Start The First Full Week Of March 2014

The coldest temperature of the winter so far in Grand Rapids, Michigan was -12 degrees F on February 28th, and today Dallas, Texas at 21 degrees F was just 4 degrees warmer than Grand Rapids at about the same hour.

Story here.

Sarah Palin Blames Obama Indecision For Russian Invasion Of Ukraine When She Should Be Blaming Bush

Sarah Palin thinks she's making "I told you so" news, quoted here criticizing Obama in October 2008 when it was already clear George Bush was never going to do anything to stop Russia in Georgia:

"After the Russian army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama's reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence – the kind of response that would only encourage Russia's Putin to invade Ukraine next," she said in Reno, Nevada on October 21, 2008.

George W. Bush did nothing but talk at the time when Russia invaded and occupied South Ossetia in August 2008, which did more to encourage Russia to invade Ukraine next than anything Senators Obama or McCain might have said or not said at the time or now:

"Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century."

"Russia has invaded a sovereign neighbouring state and threatens a democratic government elected by its people."

"Such an action is unacceptable in the 21st century."

Six years later Russia remains in South Ossetia and America has had to accept it, just like it will have to accept the occupation of Ukraine. America looks stupid and weak when it doesn't back up its words with actions. George Bush made us look stupid then, and Obama is doing it now.  

Scholar Who Sniffed Out The Libor Scandal Now Smells Manipulation In $20 Trillion Gold Market

Bloomberg reports here:

Unusual trading patterns around 3 p.m. in London, when the so-called afternoon fix is set on a private conference call between five of the biggest gold dealers, are a sign of collusive behavior and should be investigated, New York University’s Stern School of Business Professor Rosa Abrantes-Metz and Albert Metz, a managing director at Moody’s Investors Service, wrote in a draft research paper. “The structure of the benchmark is certainly conducive to collusion and manipulation, and the empirical data are consistent with price artificiality,” they say in the report, which hasn’t yet been submitted for publication. “It is likely that co-operation between participants may be occurring.” ... Abrantes-Metz advises the European Union and the International Organization of Securities Commissions on financial benchmarks. Her 2008 paper “Libor Manipulation?” helped uncover the rigging of the London interbank offered rate, which has led financial firms including Barclays Plc (BARC) and UBS AG to be fined about $6 billion in total. She is a paid expert witness to lawyers, providing economic analysis for litigation. [Albert] Metz heads credit policy research at ratings company Moody’s.

Bank Failure Friday: Vantage Point Bank, Horsham, Pennsylvania

Vantage Point Bank, Horsham, Pennsylvania, failed today, the fifth bank failure in 2014, costing the FDIC $8.5 million.

Bank Failure Friday: Millennium Bank, National Association, Sterling, Virginia

Millennium Bank, National Association, Sterling, Virginia, failed today, the fourth bank failure of 2014, costing the FDIC $7.7 million.

S&P500 New High Today At 1859.45

Polar Vortex Slams Northern Tier Of States With Well Below Zero Temps

Janet Yellen Is Not Certain That "Too Big To Fail" Has Ended

Quoted here:

“I'm not positive that we can declare with confidence,” she said, “that ‘too big to fail’ has ended until it's tested in some way.”

Just peachy.

Gasoline Has Been Above Obama's 2008 Crisis Prices For The Last Three Years

Average annual gas prices April 25, 2008 to present

Gasoline at $3.60/gallon was a crisis to Barack Obama in 2008 (here, April 25th in Indy), but the average annual price nationwide at the time was about $3.20/gallon. Now it's $3.50/gallon and has been for three years.

Pathetic Obama GDP: Not A Single Year Above 2.8%, Worst Performance Ever

Despite today's 25% revision down of Q4 2013 GDP from 3.2% to 2.4%, 2013 GDP remains unchanged at 1.9% in the report.

If the final estimate for Q4 confirms today's number a month from now, it's entirely possible the 2013 total will be revised down as well.

But even so, Obama's record remains the worst in the post-war just as it is: an average annual report of just 1.24%.

Truly pathetic. 

Huge Revision DOWN To Q4 2013 GDP, 25%, From 3.2% To 2.4% In Second Estimate

From bea.gov here:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013 (that is, from the third quarter to the fourth quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the third quarter, real GDP increased 4.1 percent. The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month.  In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 3.2 percent. With this second estimate for the fourth quarter, an increase in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) was smaller than previously estimated . . ..

Obama Regime Doubles Down On Using IRS To Silence Political Opponents

Kimberley Strassel for The Wall Street Journal, here:

Democrats are instead fully vested now in using the IRS to shut down criticism by outside groups of ObamaCare, overspending or (ironically) the IRS targeting. Even liberal groups are howling about the White House's use of the IRS to silence political speech, and the House on Wednesday passed a bill to delay the regulations. The White House's response? A veto threat.

Monica Lewinsky Said In 2004 That Bill Clinton Completely Desecrated Her Character

Quoted here:

"Instead, he talked about it as though I had laid it all out there for the taking. I was the buffet and he just couldn't resist the dessert," she was quoted as saying. "That's not how it was. This was a mutual relationship, mutual on all levels, right from the way it started and all the way through. ... I don't accept that he had to completely desecrate my character."

Ten years later that's exactly what he did, so that now she's just a verb to a black female popstar.

No one gets Rosa Parksed last time I checked, except for Republicans on Barack Obama's bus.

S&P500 Makes New High Of 1854