Posted on 08/05/2014 6:01:13 PM PDT by tcrlaf
But, the truth is that Putin is not intentionally turning his country into another North Korea. He's just incompetent.
It’s $300 million a year and that isn’t chump change —
http://news.yahoo.com/russia-may-restrict-trans-siberian-flights-eu-airlines-055120450—finance.html
“It’s $300 million a year and that isn’t chump change”
1) If it only applies to Euro airlines, it will be half of that.
2)
10-20 mil a month, in a game of billions, is chump change, and hardly worth talking about.
Link Please
10-20 mil a month, in a game of billions, is chump change, and hardly worth talking about.
Link Please
“If it only applies to Euro airlines, it will be half of that.
Link Please
10-20 mil a month, in a game of billions, is chump change, and hardly worth talking about.
Link Please “
Try reading the article. That would be a good place to start.
Comment #3 Removed by Moderator
LOL wonder who that was.
“Comment #3 Removed by Moderator
LOL wonder who that was”
six guesses...
When Mrs. Bill Clinton was Obama’s Secretary of Statements, (SOS) she had her RE-SET Button.
Now “Swift Boat” Kerry has her job and all he has are diplomatic tweets from SOS Spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
Without Women and their high tech gadgets, this Russian overflight problem would never get solved!
I did and it doesn’t say what you say it says.
So please post the exact words — or admit that you were wrong.
Math not your thingy, eh??
Let’s try some fourth grade math...
If you are getting X dollars for overflights, and then you aren’t getting half of it because you disallow half the flights, how much do you have left??
C’mon now, think really hard. You can do it.
The Russian economy is not doing well at all. A major cut in revenue will make things much worse. Anyone who thinks that Russia holds all the cards doesn't understand how vulnerable Russia is to sanctions.
The point is not how vulnerable the Russian economy is, it’s that this administration is trapped, ideologically.
If they move to lower energy prices, their radical base will go nuts when their hypocrisy is exposed, and the alternative energy cronies/Dem Party funders, like GE, will go bust, big-time.
We can do lots of things to lower energy costs, creating jobs, helping the U.S. economy, while hurting Russia.
But we won’t.
Not safe flying over Russia or any place Russians have invaded. Yes so close the airspace Putie and then Europe, Asia and North America can close airspace to all Ruskie planes ...squeeze the bloody bastards till they bleed to death.
Hell, why not go all the way to global thermonuclear war?
Will you be happy, then?
It is painfully clear that you have no idea what the economic consequences of that could be. Nor do you much care.
Squeeze the bloody Russian bastards till they bleed to death.
To be “Putin’ed” will become the new slang word for utter collapse and destruction.
Putin is charging into world war and utter collapse of Russia, even the coward in the WH won’t be able to stop it.
“Squeeze the bloody Russian bastards till they bleed to death. To be “Putin’ed” will become the new slang word for utter collapse and destruction.”
Pretty clear you have no idea what the hell you are talking about.
Putin’s popularity at home is far higher than any leader in Europe, or Obama’s. Russians are used to pain, and can/will endure far more pain than anyone in the West will.
Putin is holding the string to choke Europe, whose economy is quite fragile. If it starts to get cold early, it will be even worse. When the layoffs start, the Euros will be in the streets to “demand action”.
I’d tell you to do the math, but you won’t. Hate doesn’t do math. It doesn’t do much thinking, either. That isn’t your purpose here.
The time to “Stop” Putin was in November 2012. Now we have to deal with the consequences of Obama’s actions. It sucks, but there it is.
Close US, UK NATO airspace to any Russian flights.
And stop all of the above nation carriers to Russia.
“Close US, UK NATO airspace to any Russian flights.
And stop all of the above nation carriers to Russia.”
So, what happens to the employees of the bankrupted Euro airlines, that lost all of the profitable Int’l biz to Asian/Middle Eastern carriers from nations that have no intention of getting involved in this?
Euro Corp.’s Mr. Big Cheeze isn’t going to take kindly to being forced to do a 24 hour trip to get to his factory in Central China, and will likely call the Prime Minister to whine about it, reminding him who gives the money to his campaign coffers.
Even worse, he isn’t going to like it when his supply chain gets stretched out to 45-60 days for product, because Russia closed the “Silk Road”, and he has to ship by sea now.
THIBK....
Every action has a reaction.
“then Europe, Asia and North America can close airspace to all Ruskie planes ...”
What makes you assume Asia wants to get involved in this?? Japan is honoring SOME US sanctions, but not all, and China doesn’t give a tinker’s damn about them.
This is simply not true. Go to flightradar24.com and compare how many flights you see going over Siberia (in particular, Eastern Siberia (which some articles say is to be the focus of the proposed ban)), versus elsewhere. Almost nobody flies there, passenger or cargo.
Setting aside the issue of the fact that blocking it would be cutting off their nose to spite their face (overflight fees), Europe would very likely retaliate by blocking Russian access to their airspaces. And a large majority of Russian international flights *do* go over European airspace. The impact would be grossly disproportionally negative to Russia.
The key aspect in all of this is proportionality. Europe and the US begin with a huge advantage over Russia, in that their combined economies are 16 times larger than Russia’s. So if they cut off X dollars worth of trade with Russia, if that makes up Y percent of the GDP of the US + Europe, it’s Y times 16 percent of the Russian GDP, if all else is equal.
That’s where multipliers come in. You want to make cuts on things that will be hard for your opponent to replace, making them have to pay high prices on purchased goods / sell their goods at lower prices. If they can find replacement sellers / buyers at all.
Russia’s “energy weapon” is often talked about like that because, while oil and gas are commodities, the quantity being talked about is so large that it’ll take major, expensive efforts on the part of the EU to displace consumption and increase imports to make up for it. But the issue is, Russia doesn’t want to use it. It’s the cornerstone of their economy. Can you imagine willingly writing off half of your economy? Yeah, you’ll hurt Europe’s GDP by 5-10% if you totally cut it off, but you’ll send yourself into third-world status. So while of course they want to threaten it, they really, really don’t want to do it.
All other issues, however, are weapons that work in Europe’s favor. With a few exceptions, Russia sells commodities and imports (apart from food) specialty goods. Russia threatened to stop buying apples from Poland? Big deal, apples are fungible. If Russia would threaten to stop selling diamonds to Belgium? Big deal, diamonds are fungible. There will be costs, of course, but they don’t have any serious multipliers. However, Russia buys tons and tons of not just consumer goods, but industrial equipment - their domestic production is way undersized and outdated. If you have, say, a refinery built to take a particular custom-built German catalytic unit and it breaks, and the German company that designed and built it is no longer allowed to replace it for you? Yeah, good luck with that one. Restrictions on high-tech industrial goods can have massive multipliers. Russia only has one relevant export field of this nature (rocket engines), and it’s way smaller than their imports that are affected suchly. And their multiplier on rocket engine exports has been greatly weakened by the rise of OSC and SpaceX’s private launchers anyway.
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