Free Republic

Rand Paul Breaks With Rubio and Bush Over Cuba Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is the latest potential presidential candidate to weigh in on policy changes to Cuba and the libertarian leaning Republican's position splits from other Republicans who are also considering a presidential run. Paul told Tom Roten of News Talk 800 in West Virginia that the 50-year embargo "just hasn't worked" and normalizing relations with the island nation is "probably a good idea." "If the goal is regime change, it sure doesn't seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime because the regime...

The West shouldn’t stoke the fires engulfing Russia’s wounded economy. Talk in Washington and Brussels this week of levying further economic sanctions on Russia seems counterproductive and will only make matters worse for all parties involved. Like it or not, Russia’s economy has grown simply “too big to fail,” and its political and military might is too dangerous to ignore. The West might have better luck in advancing its goals in the region by helping, not hurting, the Russian bear in its time of need.

The ruble weakened against the dollar and euro on Thursday with traders saying President Vladimir Putin had so far offered no concrete measures to pull Russia out of a crisis at his end-of-year news conference. At 0954 GMT (04:54 a.m. EST), the ruble was around 3 percent weaker against the dollar at 62.04 RUBUTSTN=MCX after opening more than 1 percent higher. The rouble was also around 2 percent weaker versus the euro at 76.50 EURRUBTN=MCX on the Moscow Exchange.

One of the more outrageous conspiracy theories about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 surfaced in the days following the destruction of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 last week. The theory, which originated in Russia, holds that MH17 and MH370 are actually the same plane and that the U.S. military arranged for the second flight, filled with corpses, to be blown up over eastern Ukraine. This theory was described in a widely read account in the New Republic on Sunday by Russian-American Jessica Ioffe, which argued that Russian civilians were being fed a uniformly skewed interpretation of the events that brought...

The ruble collapsed by 10 percent against the U.S. dollar Monday earning the Russian currency the dubious laurels of the world’s worst-performing currency this year. The Russian currency has now fallen 49.3 percent against the greenback since January, according to data from the Moscow Exchange. The drop takes it below the Ukrainian hryvna, which has weakened 47.9 percent in 2014. Monday’s plunge was the largest single-day fall for the ruble since the financial crisis of 1998 when Russia was forced to default on its debt after exhausting its reserves in a fruitless bid to prop up the currency. In evening...

Russia's economy is crashing and its currency appears to be in free fall. The ruble plunged by about 12% Monday, meaning it's lost nearly 50% against the dollar this year. Early Tuesday in Russia, the central bank hiked its key interest rate for a sixth time this year to 17% from 10.5%.

A funny thing happened on the way to Vladimir Putin running strategic laps around the West. Russia's economy imploded. The latest news is that Russia's central bank raised interest rates from 10.5 to 17 percent at an emergency 1 a.m. meeting in an attempt to stop the ruble, which is down 50 percent on the year against the dollar, from falling any further. It's a desperate move to save Russia's currency that comes at the cost of sacrificing Russia's economy. So even if it "works," things are about to get a lot worse. It's a classic kind of emerging markets...

Russia has lost control of its economy and may be forced to impose Soviet-style exchange controls after "shock and awe" action by the central bank failed to stem the collapse of the rouble. “The situation is critical,” said the central bank’s vice-chairman, Sergei Shvetsov. “What is happening is a nightmare that we could not even have imagined a year ago."

What would you do if you were Vladimir Putin? What would you do if you were a Russian citizen? Russia's economic problems -- slowly incubating in recent months -- are about to get a lot worse. And that should make all of us nervous.

Vladimir Putin is suddenly feeling the squeeze. The Russian president, earlier this year a swashbuckling land-grabber who seemed to confound the West, finds himself in a three-way economic vise — tumbling oil prices, punishing sanctions and now a collapse in his country's currency. "He really is going to be hit by a perfect storm," said Andrew Kuchins, director of the Russia program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "Although much of it is his own making." The value of the Russian ruble plunged by as much as 20 percent on Tuesday despite a desperate attempt by the central...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Russia's suddenly escalating financial crisis risks spilling beyond its borders and endangering parts of the global economy. With economies in Europe, Japan, China and Latin America already ailing, fresh threats have emerged from Russia's shriveled currency, its move to dramatically boost interest rates, the damage from plummeting oil prices and Western sanctions over Russia's action in Ukraine. The alarming 10 percent drop in the ruble over the past two days has amplified the economic turmoil in Russia. Investors fear that Russia may default on its foreign debt obligations - a move that would inflict hundreds of billions...

Having almost touched $59 overnight, WTI crude has collapsed back to a $55 handle, smashing the Ruble lower and high-yield credit spreads higher. US financial stocks are starting to weaken back towards the credit market's warnings as counterparty risk concerns spread...

The Russian ruble fell below 57 to the dollar in trading on December 12, continuing a slide that has cut its value nearly in half this year. The ruble's value against the dollar and the euro has continued to decline despite Russia's effort to shore it up by raising a key interest rate by one percentage point on December 11, the fifth increase this year. The ruble was trading at about 57.31 to the dollar at midday on the Moscow exchange and later fell below 57.5. One euro was buying more than 71 rubles. The Russian central bank raised its...

Russian President Vladimir Putin is so easy to dislike because he really is a bad guy and there are few things more pleasurable than contemplating his fall from power. It is reasonably clear that might just happen. Even though he continues to be widely popular in his own country, there are several reasons why he could be brought down. The principle ones are the fall in oil prices and the financial crisis brought on by the sanctions imposed by the West. There are many others: a 40 percent decline in the value of Russian currency; an impending recession; the cost...

<p>The internet troll army’s selling of the Kremlin’s parallel universe to the Russian people and to a skeptical Western audience is a matter of life and death for the Putin regime. If the Russian people do not buy their story, Putin loses the high “ratings” on which his regime rests. If he cannot convince his Western audience, Europe and the United States will take actions that spoil his Novorossiya ventures and threaten his regime. Trolling is a high stakes business that Putin takes seriously and the West must not underestimate.</p>

Recently, the House passed, by an overwhelming margin, a resolution to condemn the Russian Federation for actions considered hostile and aggressive within its sphere of influence, specifically with regard to the politically torn country of Ukraine. Ten Members voted “nay,” myself among them. I wish to explain why I took this unpopular position. Above all, while Vladimir Putin’s government may well have engaged in questionable behavior toward neighboring countries, Resolution 758 was nothing more than gratuitous, needlessly provocative and shortsighted. Moreover, reasonable observers the world over can see it as tantamount to a declaration that Russia is America’s enemy. The...

Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said Wednesday that the sharp fall in global oil prices is the result of “treachery,” in an apparent reference to regional rival Saudi Arabia, which opposed production cuts. Oil prices have plunged by more than 40 percent since June to around $65 a barrel, placing severe strain on Iran’s economy, which is already hobbled by international sanctions imposed over its nuclear program. An OPEC meeting last month failed to reach agreement on production curbs, mainly because of Saudi opposition. Rouhani told a Cabinet meeting Wednesday that the fall in prices is at least partly “politically motivated,”...

F-16's from RNAF (Royal Netherlands Air Force) operating from Malbork airbase in Poland. Read more at http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1b2_1418215345#Efxk1rGWZmuVFsAM.99

'Buckwheat panic' Grips Russians As Economic Sanctions Bite World | Agence France-Presse | Updated: December 07, 2014 10:31 IST Moscow: With its warm, fluffy brown grains, buckwheat is the ultimate comfort food for Russians and as sanctions hit home, it is flying off the shelves in a shopping frenzy dubbed the "buckwheat panic". Hard-hit by falling oil prices and Western economic sanctions imposed over the Kremlin's role in the Ukrainian crisis, Russia is seeing a catastrophic depreciation of the ruble and steep inflation. But while Russians grumble about the rising price of chicken, cheese or sausage, it was only when...

Mr Gorbachev said there was still time to defuse the standoff between Moscow and the West, as he and his western counterparts had done during the Perestroika period. “Now there are once again signs of a Cold War,” he said in an interview with Tass, the state-owned news agency. “This process can and must be stopped. After all, we did it in the 1980s. We opted for de-escalation, for the reunification (of Germany). And back then it was a lot tougher than now. So we could do it again.” Mr Gorbachev, 83, who has run a civil society foundation since...