Hi folks, good morning to you all. Another day, another digest. Let’s get to it.
Seems like the Russian advance in Ukraine has come to a halt. Now the shelling of civilian areas has become a focal point of the invasion strategy.
Russia bombed a maternity hospital in Mariupol yesterday. Several casualties reported. The cries for war crimes are growing louder and louder.
There was a media scare yesterday about Chernobyl being cut out of power. Here’s an expert opinion on the matter: By the year 2000 all of the reactors at the Chernobyl power plant were shut down. So the risk of a core meltdown is zero. When the Uranium pellets come out of the reactors, they still produce heat for years. That’s why they need to stay in a pool and be cooled down. They produce less and less heat as time goes by, reducing the need for cooling. In most cases this fuel is cool enough to be transferred to dry casks after five years. The spent fuel in Chernobyl has been chilling for over 20 years. Bottom line, you actually don’t need power because the spent fuel produces so little heat at this point.
Here are a couple of Ukrainian soldiers dismantling a Russian projectile:
The Russian and Ukrainian foreign ministers are meeting in Turkey today. Hopefully something positive will come out of this.
Here’s a Russian guy when he found out that McDonald’s would close yesterday:
Here’s Victoria Nuland, the former US envoy to Ukraine speaking about virus labs in Ukraine and their potential risks due to the invasion:
US is working with Ukraine to prevent biological research facilities from falling into the hands of Russians — Nuland(continued) Will Putin drop a nuke in Ukraine?
All the potential responses mentioned either box Putin in or they escalate. And the only way out of the box is backing down, or escalation. No good options for Putin here. All roads lead to uncertainty and perhaps “exceedingly” bad outcomes. That is why I am not exceptionally worried about this happening. Because I do believe Putin is “rational” in the sense that he wants good outcomes, BUT could he be deluded into thinking it would just cause the US/NATO to back down? Maybe, but I don’t think there is a high chance of this happening. There is a chance, but it seems rather unlikely to me. (Credit to: Alex Wellerstein)
Let’s talk about the status of the dollar as a reserve currency in light of the most recent developments.
The abolition of the gold standard by President Nixon in 1974 was swiftly replaced by the creation of the Petrodollar. In 1979, the US and Saudi Arabia negotiated the United States-Saudi Arabian Joint Commission on Economic Cooperation. They agreed to use U.S. dollars for oil contracts. Since every country in the world needs oil, they would need to hold dollar reserves to buy it, and therefore the global currency status of the dollar that we have today. Squashing challenges to the Petrodollar hegemony has been a priority of the American foreign policy for decades. Many believe that the biggest sin of Iraq was the fact that they started selling oil in Euros.
After the US recently froze the dollar reserves of the National Bank of Russia, the Wall Street Journal made this remark: If currency reserves aren’t really money, the world is in for a shock. In my opinion the latest SWIFT and currency reserve sanctions mark the start of the demise of the global currency status of the dollar. The fact that you can't use your dollar reserves in case of a conflict means that absolutely no one that possibly ends up in such a conflict will want to have any dollar reserves. China will take note of these events.
Furthermore, reports emerged yesterday that Saudi and UAE leader refused calls with Biden amid the Ukraine conflict. They spoke to Putin though. (This forced Biden to ask Venezuela to increase the oil supply and to push the deal with Iran.) The damage of the Saudi-US relationship seems not reversible. From an economic perspective alone, the Saudis don’t need the Americans anyway. Look below who their biggest clients are:
If the dollar becomes just a national currency, it will be catastrophic for the US. Inflation would soar as the dollar plummets. All the stimulus packages that the US pumped into its economy during the past two years were facilitated by the fact that the dollar was a global currency and burden of inflation could be spread globally. That won’t be the case any longer.
A Dallas company called Colossal Biosciences is trying to use ancient genetic material to create modern-day versions of woolly mammoths. It has raised $75 million from venture capitalists, the billionaire producer of “Jurassic World” and Paris Hilton. The animals would combine genetic material from modern-day Asian elephants with that of mammoth DNA frozen into ice and preserved for thousands of years.
The main hope is that reviving mammoths would help fight climate change. It may sound counterintuitive but here is a great video that explains the dynamics of how it would work:
And lastly, the usual pics, vids and memes from around the web:
Evolution.
Poor Mr. Pringles.
A blessed generation.
Come in.
It’s not dum if it works.
This is an actual marble quarry, not some toy excavator. Wait until you see the sheer size of it.
That was it for today folks. Enjoy the rest of your day. Peace.