Goldman Sachs cut its 2022 growth estimate from 2% to -7%. I visualize the level of GDP thus:
Category Archives: Uncategorized
“Cabaret of Shadows”
A chamber opera with music by Laura Schwendinger, libretto by Ginger Strand, in Houston this weekend.
Not “No Exit” – Just “One Exit”
Risk, noon March 1st
Figure 1: Geopolitical Risk index – Acts (blue, left scale) and VIX (brown, right scale). 3/1 observation for VIX as of noon EST. Source: CBOE via FRED, Caldara and Iacoviello, accessed 3/1/2022.
Risk and Uncertainty Measures
VIX, Economic Policy Uncertainty, and Geopolitical Risk:
Thirty One Months Ago – Transcript/Shakedown for Javelins
As declassified by the President, a transcript of the July 25, 2019 telecon between Mr. Trump and the President of Ukraine:
“The Day of Infamy”
A post on VoxUkraine by Yuriy Gorodnichenko (Dept. of Economics, UC Berkeley):
…
February 24, 2022 is the day of infamy too: Russia attacked Ukraine, bombed Ukrainian cities, killed innocent Ukrainians on the Ukrainian soil. It can’t be clearer: Russia is the aggressor; Ukraine is the victim. Ukraine has only one threat to Putin: Ukraine can be a free and successful country and thus give hope to Russians to become one day a free, successful country too. As I said before, this is the war with far reaching consequences for the global order, for the free world, and for the security for each of us no matter where we are.
It is a test for all of us.
Entire post here.
Counterinsurgency Ratios
One rule of thumb is that a successful counterinsurgency requires something on the order of 20-25 troops per 1000 population (Goode, 2010). Ukraine’s population is 44 million. Simple division and multiplication yields 880,000 to 1,100,000.
Odds
No prediction markets on an expanded incursion (remember they already have the Crimea and de facto Donbas) into Ukraine, but here’s the market on how many mentions of “Russia” or “Putin” in the State of the Union address – a proxy for prominence of the Ukraine issue.
A Continued Russian Invasion of Ukraine – Six Scenarios in Three Maps
From Seth Jones/CSIS (mid-January):
1. Redeploy some of its ground forces away from the Ukrainian border—at least temporarily—if negotiations are successful but continue to aid pro-Russian rebels in Eastern Ukraine.
2. Send conventional Russian troops into the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk as unilateral “peacekeepers” and refuse to withdraw them until peace talks end successfully and Kiev agrees to implement the Minsk Accords.
3. Seize Ukrainian territory as far west as the Dnepr River to use as a bargaining chip or incorporate this new territory fully into the Russian Federation. This option is represented in Figure 2a.
4. Seize Ukrainian territory up to the Dnepr River and seize an additional belt of land (to include Odessa) that connects Russian territory with the breakaway Transdniestria Republic and separates Ukraine from any access to the Black Sea. The Kremlin would incorporate these new lands into Russia and ensure that the rump Ukrainian statelet remains economically unviable.
5. Seize only a belt of land between Russia and Transdniestria (including Mariupol, Kherson, and Odessa) to secure freshwater supplies for Crimea and block Ukraine’s access to the sea, while avoiding major combat over Kiev and Kharkiv. This option is represented in Figure 2b.
6. Seize all of Ukraine and, with Belarus, announce the formation of a new tripartite Slavic union of Great, Little, and White Russians (Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians). This option would involve operations represented in Figure 2a as “phase one,” with Figure 2c representing “phase two” of this option.
Here are the relevant maps.