sburke

Like these guys? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-16/russia-crisis-hits-pimco-fund-wipes-out-options-as-ruble-sinks.html Pacific Investment Management Co. (PEBIX) is facing mounting losses on its Russian bond holdings; almost every bullish ruble option contract registered in the U.S. has been made worthless; and foreign-exchange brokers in New York and London told clients they’re no longer taking ruble trades. Sergey Shvetsov, a first deputy central bank governor, expressed astonishment at the scope of the collapse during a conference in Moscow. Pimco’s $3.3 billion Emerging Markets Bond Fund has been one of the hardest hit. It held $803 million of Russian corporate and sovereign bonds at the end of September, equal to 21 percent of total assets, an amount that’s more than double that of the benchmark it tracks, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The fund has lost 7.9 percent in the past month, trailing 95 percent of its peers. One interesting item in this article is they attribute the prevention of a route to the reassurance that Russia would not institute capital controls. The ruble sank beyond 80 a dollar, a record low, as panic swept across Moscow’s financial markets before it rebounded after Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev denied speculation the government would impose restrictions to stop Russians from converting cash into dollars. However in the same article it re affirms that everyone is still expecting them “Our traders are informing me that we see no bids to buy rubles,” SEB’s Hammarlund said. “I thought 17 percent would give them at least a month of breathing space. We next have to look at the experience in 1998-1999. We are also one big step closer to capital controls.” Interesting perspective if one looks back at WSJ article in October. They were warning about December when a large pile of debt becomes due and that was when the Ruble was trading at 40.... Russian companies are clamoring for dollars to repay and refinance debt, adding to the relentless pressure on the crumbling ruble. Debt repayments from companies and banks are light for now. But markets are anticipating the hump that comes in December, when around $34 billion in debt and interest repayments fall due, according to data from the central bank. With sanctions in place, many firms are largely frozen out of international debt markets and unable to roll over that debt. That leaves them turning to the open market for dollars, jacking up the cost of buying them. Mixed in with a sliding oil price, signs of Russian economic weakness, and persistent outflows of banking deposits, that keeps the ruble—already stuck at record lows—under heavy pressure. “The pressure on the ruble is now coming from the corporate sector. Several Russian companies have a lot of maturities coming up and can’t roll this debt,” said Viktor Szabo, emerging-market investment manager at Aberdeen Asset Management, a company which manages £331.2 billion ($535.48 billion). Russian oil giant Rosneft, ROSN.MZ -4.79% which has been sanctioned by the U.S. and the E.U., has one of the largest short-term debt loads to manage. It needs to repay about $13 billion in foreign-currency denominated debt this year, and a further $18 billion in 2015, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Russian gas producer Gazprom, SIBN.MZ -2.11% which is prohibited from raising finance in the U.S. but not in the E.U., has to repay almost $8 billion this year, Bank of America data show. Russian firms as a whole, excluding banks, have about $52 billion of loans and bonds maturing over the next six months, according to Russian central bank data. “The rollover cliff is on,” said Luis Costa, an emerging-markets analyst at Citigroup in London. Some of that thirst for dollars will be met by overseas parent companies, or from countries that haven’t imposed sanctions on Russia. But that will still leave an overhang, the size of which is tough to guess.

I am sensing a trend here. Are you wanting to mud wrestle me? Is that thought getting you all hot and bothered?

Uh oh, disaster has struck!! Dec. 16 (Bloomberg) –- Apple has halted online sales in Russia due to “extreme” ruble fluctuations, the company said. Bloomberg’s Tom Giles reports on "Bloomberg West.” (Source: Bloomberg) Actually that is really bad, but just funny to see Apple being the critical item Bloomberg is looking at.

no not the clip, but the fact that he could embed the clip. You are missing the fortest for the tress...or the trees for the forest...or the splinters in your fingers because....

The debt is higher than the assets and the profits that were supposed to pay that debt have vanished. Yes Russia has money, but that money is fast disappearing when the financial controls are being used to try and protect oligarch friends and poor foreign policy versus the Russian economy. It gives me no satisfaction to see that millions of Russians are again going to suffer from a leadership that doesn't care about them. It is true pretty much everywhere, but I think Russia is going to be the poster child next year for disaster economies. More stuff. Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, a consulting firm, summed up the financial dangers facing Russia in one tweet: "Yesterday the ruble had its biggest drop in 16 years. Today, its biggest drop in 16 years again. 16 years ago Russia defaulted." Bremmer was referring to Russia's economic meltdown in 1998, when interest rates reached 100 percent annually, Russia defaulted on its debt, and its economic woes spread to other developing economies. There's one big difference today. Back then, Russian President Boris Yeltsin was on good terms with the West, which came rushing in with billions of dollars to help stabilize Russia's economy. It was a painful period for Russia, but eventually the crisis eased, and the following year Yeltsin named a new prime minister — Vladimir Putin. Putin's antagonistic relationship with the West means no such help is likely this time. http://www.npr.org/blogs/parallels/2014/12/16/371167500/has-vladimir-putin-just-overplayed-his-hand

I believe the embedded youtube clip

Well the Ruble just jumped to 80 to the dollar so I think it is not as overstated as you think. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/business/russia-ruble-interest-rates.html?_r=0 The economic slide is picking up speed and is approaching terminal velocity. Stuff like this doesn't help. An offensive by Kiev in the spring is the least of Putin's problems now. Rosneft, for example, had been clamoring for months for a government bailout to refinance debt the company ran up while making acquisitions when oil prices were high. Because of sanctions, those loans cannot be rolled over with Western banks. Debt payments are coming due later this month. Relying only on the company’s own cash reserves would disrupt oil development projects on which Russia is relying for future revenue. With the oil giant in a bind, the central bank ruled that it would accept Rosneft bonds held by commercial banks as collateral for loans. Rosneft issued 625 billion rubles about $10.9 billion at the exchange rate at the time, in new bonds on Friday. The identities of the buyers were not publicly disclosed, but analysts say that large state banks bought the issue. When these banks deposit the bonds with the central bank in exchange for loans, Rosneft will have been financed, in effect, with an emission of rubles from the central bank. The deal roiled the ruble on Monday, according to analysts. The reason for Monday’s currency crash is “well known,” Boris Y. Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister who is now in the political opposition, wrote on his Facebook page. “The central bank started the printing press to help the Sechin-Putin business, and gave Rosneft 625 billion newly printed rubles. The money immediately appeared on the currency market, and the rate collapsed.” Rosneft, in a statement, denied it had exchanged funds raised from the bonds for hard currency.

Nice pic you heavy metal hippy. BTW this is my real pic for the company yearbook. I keep getting told I have an uncanny resemblance to some other guy, but I am not worried.

now that's odd, I just got a pop up to allow this forum to continue using Nvidia 3D vision, now where the hell are my glasses?

i figure one a day and eventually someone will say, hey Stuka is a doofus W/O actually having to experience your... Stukaness. Consider it my contribution to humanity...maybe not much, but better than what your parents foisted on us all. Besides, I needed a test subject and it was clear you wouldn't be missed...other than the joy of noting your absence if something went disastrously wrong...or right depending on how you look at it....crosseyed in your case.

oh wonderful, I've already got a neutral reputation point. ROTFLMAO oh this is going to be just sooo charming. Hey everybody LIKE me quick..... gawd no wonder I hate social media.

It was that or a village idiot from Monty Python.

Okay let's see if BF wised up and just banned all the Ozzies. Starting fresh with a new forum, time to clean house. Or the outhouse as it were.

They had a shale oil deal in the works with Chevron, but it looks like that is falling through. Either because Shale is simply getting too unprofitable or the drilling areas are too close to occupied territory. Shell apparently is still in the deal for now.

what site is this I have stumbled into somehow from a favoite link that somehow went wrong? Dang it shows my one warning point which is long expired. Either that or I got on someone's s**t list again. There that's better enough of my status making me feel old.

Like announcing it on a public internet forum? EVERYONE knows the White House is reviewing the decision and when they make up their mind they will announce it to the whole world. They will either veto it or not. Thank god these brave Americans risked their lives to tell me something that the whole world will know in a couple days. whew. And if he doesn't veto it you will say....... whatever. In a word, YES. That would be a very concise and exact summation. But I'd say impossible, not simply difficult.

Raptorx7 and I can not reveal our super secret sources.

Oops. padding

doesn't a BMP qualify as a breach kit? I once used a Tiger for that... was rewarded with a Churchill kill.

Nice deal. I went with an i7 but a smaller SSD. Sooner or later I will get a larger one, just really don't feel like rebuilding/reloading yet. Maybe over the Christmas holiday. The liquid cooling is a treat. It is sooo much quieter than my old set up. I haven't ventured to Win 8 so maybe I'll do the SSD and that at the same time.

Sorry, am not able to discuss that yet.

walls by their nature sit mid way on an AS. If you want to stay on one side, you have to pretty much be one AS over. Running along it is basically telling them to possibly run on either side. The terrain in the AS and adjoining AS can influence that movement. Also if you watch really closely as they jump over it frequently their "jump" point is actually closer to the edge of the AS than the wall. There are a lot of little idiosyncrasies about pixel truppen movement and objects in their AS. Walls, hedges, building edges, craters etc can alter movement in unexpected ways. If you are forced into a position of having to need movement go exactly as you'd hope, it is probably better to either find another way or pop so smoke to assist your survivability.

I'm betting a few more bones is more likely to do that than anything else. We go off topic when there isn't something better to keep our attention.

in CM you kind of have to look at your orders as telling your men your intent. Once you hit the big red button all bets are off as to what they will actually be able to do as they react to the enemy. I have seen them 1. do exactly what I told them to and it succeed brilliantly...okay that one is rare 2. do exactly what I told them and get butchered mercilessly...more often than i care to admit 3. react to events and do something else...and get butchered mercilessly 4. react to events and do something else and succeed brilliantly 5. react to events and hunker down so not much actually happens, but now I have more intel. That for me is what makes this game. The variability and uncertainty is what I find so immersive and brilliant. and it happens all the way down to the individual pixeltruppen level. This is a description I recently sent someone else describing a very minor incident in a scenario I was testing. It had no real impact on the larger battle, but was so fascinating it was the first thing I watched on replay each turn. Tale of a firefight. I have a scout pltn 2nd lt and the XO for the HQ support team both with AT 4s in an OP. At one point two BMPs rollup and destroy one of their vehicles. Both guys fire destroying both BMPs. The XO gets nailed by a tank so now the 2nd Lt is in the woods on his own. He gets into a firefight with some of the BMP crew, one of whom is trying to surrender. His ride armed with a 40 mm grenade launcher tries to assist, but the gunner gets hit. Then two dismounts from the BMPs show up so now my 2nd Lt is fighting several guys and is running low on ammo. He runs out, so the driver of his ride grabs some more and dashes (while grenades are bouncing off nearby trees) over to his position and I hear the satisfying metallic click as he reloads. Assistance is on the way if they can hold out. Eventually 4 more guys show up in two separate teams and after that a Stryker carrying two mg teams. The enemy force is eliminated. The moment that 2nd Lt reload his weapon was so satisfying and then I thought. I am in this major battle with forces scattered over a couple kilometers and one guy loading a clip in his M4 has me jazzed... damn. This game just friggin rocks.

but if they crash on map they make a huge hole in the ground. You do not want that happening anywhere near your troops. and yes I have had it happen, also an F 15. There is no missing it when it occurs.