Russia brings chaos, but to what end? Wise men’s takes on financial markets.

Every morning the past month has been chaotic.  The buses don’t run during air raids, and they have happened every day.  Eddie could not leave for school today because there was a 2 ½ hour alert that ended at 8:50.  He left – and there is another one that just started at 9:10

The policy is that city buses and above-ground metro, also libraries and post offices do not work during air raids.  Subterranean metro, regional electric trains and jitney buses do.  Why the policy I do not know of any public transport of any kind having been hit in Kyiv throughout the war. 

Whatever the logic, since he boarded a bus, Eddie should be able to ride to the center, Livoberezhna, and from there continue by foot or jitney to school.  However, the school itself isn’t open for kids if there is an air raid at starting time.  Since this one was a 9:10 they will probably admit him. 

Oksana drove the girls to kindergarten and 2^nd grade.  I had been planning to take them by bus and then walk home.

These air raids do not post a vast danger.  Putin is mostly out of his most dangerous stuff, ship and air launched missiles.  He uses swarms of cheap, slow Iranian Shahid drones.  Though these have improved over time, our air defenses have also gotten better.  Instead of expensive air defense missiles we are now able to shoot most of them down with machine guns. 

A few escape.  Every day there are civilian casualties, mostly from Shahids hitting apartment buildings.  It is sheer terror.  They serve no military purpose.  Yesterday they killed a mom and her three kids in Kryvyi Rih, Zelenski’s hometown.  We are fortunate to live far from any high rises, and in any case, few get through Kyiv’s more effective defenses.

Putin is stepping up the pressure on all fronts.  The news yesterday was that Russia had lost 1700 soldiers in a single day, a record.  They have been getting more reckless all year.  As their store of first-line tanks and personnel carriers, and their ranks of experienced soldiers dwindle, they simply throw everything they have at us.  Motorcycles, light trucks, and foot soldiers.  Attackers suffer more losses than defenders in any case.  Ukraine has been strategically retreating, conceding land grudgingly as we inflict heavily disproportionate (it is reported) losses on the enemy.

The speculation is that Putin’s goal is to capture as much as possible of the oblasts he has claimed before the change in the American administration.  He already has most of Lugansk, but we hold most of Donetsk and about half of Zaporizhia and Kherson.

Whatever the goal, he is putting enormous pressure on Russia.  The ruble is tanking.  Interest rates are at 22%.  He does not have the political strength to impose conscription, and enlistees are getting harder to find.  China, India, Belarus and Kazakhstan are backing away, leaving only Iran and North Korea as hardcore supporters.

Winter is slowing down the fighting, and Trump will take office before the spring thaw. I expect some sort of change.  Meanwhile, our family situation is livable.  One barometer is our electricity.  Despite Putin’s summer threats, outages have become quite rare.  Construction of our new metro connection proceeds apace.  There are still young men on the streets.

When he took office in 2016, Trump took a long time to make his key appointments and made several mistakes. This time he knows the players.  Most importantly, he is surrounded by trusted advisors such as Vance, Musk and Kennedy.  Things are going much more quickly.  I expect his first weeks in office to really jolt the system, like Millei jolted Argentina.

The financial markets have reacted strongly to Trump’s election.  Undue elation, in my opinion.  Gold and silver have tanked, but Bitcoin has soared.  The guys whose analysis I like most, Don Durrett and Quoth the Raven, had opined that metals could take a breather but remained good prospects long term.  Financial manager Ed Dowd came to prominence via his book “Died Suddenly,” about the excess mortality and morbidity associated with the Covid injections.  His take on the economy is similar to theirs and mine.

All three agree that precious metals are a good long-term bet but probably not so good short-term.  Middle term, Dowd would be more pessimistic than the others.  The question I ask myself is, “what else?”  My calls on small nuclear reactors, OKLO and SMR, have proven extremely timely.  But aside from them, I do not see too much in the way of stocks.  All of the Magnificent Seven names are highly dependent on government support.  I would be nervous at this point in time.

Dowd says that the degree to which the current administration has corrupted government statistical reporting is extreme.  You cannot trust employment and unemployment figures, GDP, inflation or any other government statistics. He says that we are probably already in a recession.  Government manipulation has kept the stock market looking good, but it cannot continue forever.  His advice to Trump would be to restore integrity to the reports as early, strongly and loudly as possible, so that responsibility for the coming economic collapse falls where it belongs.

John Williams and his “shadow government statistics” have not been mentioned during this campaign.  Another wise move for Trump  would be to put him, or another such honest man, in charge of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  Retroactively correct the many years of phony reporting, stretching back through several administrations, including Trump 45.

When asked by  interviewer Greg Hunter about the impact of the Covid vaccines, Dowd said it is like a funnel.  At the bottom are the dead.  Above them in the funnel are the permanently disabled, several times more numerous.  And above them are those who were merely injured, suffering from brain fog and other inconveniences.  About one in seven. Much of the damage is permanent.  Dowd says that excess mortality remains about 10% above the norm in the years prior to 2021.  These are people suffering from turbo-cancers, premature dementia and all sorts of other adverse effects.  Dowd’s team continually updates its findings.  He said that soon to come is some work on the impact of Covid injections on fertility.  In any case, follow his work at Phinance Technologies.

That’s the news from Lake WeBeGone, where I seem  to be sidelined by coughing and sneezing every time I resume my exercise routine. Yesterday I held it to five minutes, just enough to get breathing hard, and it seemed to work. The rest of the family is in good health.

Graham