Originally posted by: tom
But no, our resident Putin-lover says that the Russians are not being humiliated. Hey tom, maybe you should sell those Putin kneepads on eBay.
Never said I support putin; stop making stuff up.
Why isn't biden banning buying oil/gas from his friend putin?
That's actually an intelligent question, tom. Especially coming from you!
Excuse me for a moment, while I get over the shock.
[A few minutes later] Okay, I'm back. The answer is that it would severely harm the economies of much of the civilized world, meaning NOT Russia, and other things we are doing are proving tightly effective. For example:
NATO is united as never before.
Germany, which usually spends peanuts on its military, just upped their budget massively.
Switzerland!!, which is usually so neutral that they wouldn't criticize Hitler, is opposing Putin.
The ruble is down 30% over a weekend. That means that MOST RUSSIANS LOST 30% OF THEIR SAVINGS.
5,000 Russians were killed over a weekend. By comparison, Russia's disaster in Afghanistan resulted in 15,000 killed but in over TEN YEARS.
Russia has turned into something like North Korea, Putin is a pariah, and the president of Ukraine is an international hero.
Soccer-crazy Russia got booted by FIFA and lost a major tournament.
Germany has halted the construction of the Russian gas pipeline.
Gazprom down 28%
Sherbank down 68% and will almost definitely go bankrupt.
Aeroflot down 35%
Bank VTB down 50%
NK Lukoil down 41%
Yandex down 59%
BP and Shell divested their interest in Russian oil.
No more Netflix, Spotify, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Mastercard for you!
Kicked out of S.W.I.F.T., so international transactions are beyond difficult.
Oligarchs are fleeing with their yachts around the world so they aren't seized.
Russia's central bank interest rate more than doubled to 20%
And S&P Global now says that Russian debt is a junk bond, raising their costs of financing considerably.
And JP Moran says that the Russian economy will shrink 20% in just a few months. That's about half of what the US economy shrunk in the first four years of the Great Depression.
