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No probs, always happy to help.

Huh? I believe I have stated my view on the whole issue a number of times. You have clearly not been reading the same thing that I have been writing. At any rate, whatevers, dude...

+1

This is also a pretty interesting and more nuanced view of the situation: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/05/opinion/what-putin-really-wants.html

Well, like that Ukrainian soldier yelled, "America stands with us!"

Depends on what sort of debt is included in the tally. 30% or thereabouts is the sovereign debt/GDP, i.e. it's what you get when only the central govt's obligations are included. If you start including the debt owed by the local govt's, the figure is probably arnd 2x that. If you want to get...

It's not too helpful, unfortunately, since, obviously, we have no way of knowing what Reagan would do in today's situation. Here's my view of what "peace through strength" ultimately means. It's summarized by Teddy Roosevelt's famous principle: "Speak softly, and carry a big stick". The US...

Yeah, you want to perform "stress" simulations, as well as go through the more probable scenarios. As to news/events, the only way I know how to incorporate those is by looking at the past reactions to such events. Once you have that, you really don't need more simulations. It's just offers...

Why anyone in their right mind would want to listen to Glazyev is beyond me... He's a total nutter and has always been.

Time series methods are occasionally useful as initial inputs into your decision process. Specifically, you can generate signals using time series methods that could tell you whether something is historically rich or cheap. However, that can only serve as the starting point for further...

Could be, although I find it hard to imagine that intelligent foreign policy and peace start by designating people as your foes. Also, what does "peace through strength" really mean? Iraq and Afghanistan, I'd argue, were demonstrations of genuine strength that have achieved no peace. Putin is...

I find this to be a really very well-balanced and sensible point of view: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/eugene-robinson-with-ukraine-crisis-the-us-has-a-credibility-problem/2014/03/03/f8f6a58a-a311-11e3-8466-d34c451760b9_story.html BTW, the New York Times interpretation of the Merkel...

Absolutely... There's no doubt whatsoever that the Russian media panders and offers convenient narratives, but, then again, it's supposed to be par for the course, innit? Given that Russia is a backward benighted dictatorship and all that jazz... The fact that it appears to be happening in...

http://bls.gov/home.htm http://www.bea.gov/ For charting this stuff, you can do a lot worse than FRED here: http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/

That comes with being relatively rational about it. I am not an American and it depresses me.

It's a convenient narrative that allows the American people to continue to feel good about themselves. Pandering, I believe, is the appropriate term...

Romney and Palin are both full of sh1t in this case and/or are pandering to the old neo-con, chicken hawkish part of the American electorate. Of course, Russia can and will be America's "geopolitical foe number one" if you antagonize them and insist on implementing your foreign policy...

So I just saw something rather funny, but quite sad as well... There was live coverage on Sky of a bit of an altercation between the Russian and Ukrainian soldiers arnd the Belbek airfield in Crimea. The Ukrainians wanted to return to their post, while the Russians weren't letting them. There...

This is exactly right.

Well, it was dramatic at times and inspired some famous poetry, but I don't think it did anything to the British Empire other than make it stronger. More generally, blah does have a point, in a sense that it is a bit of a melting pot, ethnically. Also has a pretty notorious history, what with...