The European Union is ready to give Ukraine 11 billion euros ($15 billion) in loans and grants over the coming years to help stabilize its economy, the head of the bloc's executive arm said Wednesday. Read the full article here.
Coincidentally, the headline figure of $15 billion for the EU's aid package is the same amount that Russia was prepared to grant Ukraine in loans until the government of President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted last month.
Yanukovich took the Russian loans instead of a wide-ranging trade and economic agreement with the EU, a move that fueled the protests that led to his ouster.
Barroso said that an agreement was still on the table, and the EU is prepared to provisionally grant Ukraine the benefits deriving from it before a full ratification. Ukraine's industrial and agricultural exporters could save some 900 million euros annually through reduced tariffs, the Commission said.
"The situation in Ukraine is a test of our capability and resolve to stabilize our neighborhood and to provide new opportunities for many, not just a few," Barroso told reporters in Brussels. "We need to be up to this challenge."
What are your thoughts on the situation in the Ukraine? Below are several polls to vote on and of course we would love to hear your thoughts on the matter.
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Stunning, as usual, that something like this from "jeremy lutz" generates an absolute truckload of comments. Conversely, something industrial strength that can actually impact someones entire life and that of her family, as in a trading article and how to improve, normally gets 1-3 comments. Wondering if Heweson and contributors do this for kicks in some crazy psychology game.......
Whether the Ukraine situation is going to affect the markets is a legimitate question. Since thepost Mr Market has answered that it won't....that is I believe, provided the crisis doesn't unexpectedly get out of control.
Bull markets can't climb without a wall of worry. This one is as good as any.
Good luck to all!
I dont think Putin will take over Ukraine. The US market wont be effected by Putins moves. Its more effected by the big Investors. If the stock market goes down, the media finds an excuse - Putin is an available excuse. If the market goes up, the media finds a reason - the economy. The markets up or down move depend on the Big investors and they will determine the trend - your best friend.
None of them are "strong" they are all "Bullies, gutless, self absorbed, or misguided dictators. Sadly they are all "intelligent". That's what makes them all dangerous.
It is so disappointing to see how many folks rated Putin as a strong leader. He may be a strong bully, He may be a strong manipulator and He may be strong henchman, but a Leader? No, a leader is someone who gets want he wants and needs by getting people to follow him, not by forcing his will on other people.
The US and Russia each maintain enough launch-ready nuclear weapons to destroy civilization, as well as most of humanity. Risking a direct military conflict with Russia is playing chicken with the lives of every person on the planet. As long as we allow huge arsenals of nuclear weapons to exist, we continually run the risk that some madman or fool will allow them to be used in conflict. There are no political or national goals that can be served by creating a mass extinction event, called nuclear war.
Good post.
I think there are parallels of Putin to Hitler. Take what I want and see if anyone can stop me. We're in a slippery slope time and we need to stop him before he starts annexing the former soviet satellites. Just like Mein Kampf, Putin is not hiding his desires. Obama get a backbone!
Amen. In 1938 it was the Sudetenland section of Czechoslovakia that was taken by the Nazis under the excuse that the Czechs were abusing the German-speaking people in the region. Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.
Dustydon
Come on, Putin has written nothing like 'Mein Kampf'! He's playing geopolitical chess and is just very good at it. This quiet occupation of Crimea was obviously planned a long time ago, just in case. Putin has very strong interests in the Ukraine, specifically in Crimea (black sea fleet), and will not let them go for nothing. He's placed Russia in a strong bargaining position. Nothing that should surprise anybody. In the end, cool heads - and his is the coolest of the lot, the other being Merkel's - will prevail and come to an agreement. There is no other choice: Europe and Russia, whether we want it or not, ar essentially joined (economically) by the hip (Russian oil and gas versus German exports)
OK, but Russia doesn't need Crimea for access to the Black Sea: they already have plenty of coastline along the northeastern and eastern coasts.
North eastern has problems with ice in the winter.
Far east is thousands of miles away from Moscow and supply manufacturing.
Black sea is Pivital for Russian access to the seas
...northeastern and eastern coasts of the Black Sea.
Russia will control Ukraine, It is a necessity for the defense of Russia, They Must have influence over Latvia, the Balkans and expansion to the west due to geographical concerns.
And Why not, Europe won't defy Russia, They need Russia's energy and trade, and Europe's banks are tied up with Russian Bonds and vice versa. The US will rattle it's sabres and cry and moan, but realistically, they couldn't take on Granada and Win. America is a diminishing force in the world, due to weak leadership, and bullying tactics of the past.
So Russia will control Ukraine and then start moving it's influence west in Europe. And No one will try to stop it.
Ukraine will be a de facto divided country, with EU and US wasting billions of dollars supporting the West side, and Russia controlling the East side (of-course including Crimea) via a weak proxy. Russia is in such a strong position, that whatever EU and USA threaten to do is just empty gesture, Putin does not need the love the West, and will continue his creeping approach to get control of its former colonies.
The Ukraine may end up divided or as a lose federation with some states looking West and the others towards Russia, but as far as Russia getting back the former Warsaw pact states, no way! Russia's justification for it's behaviour is that it needs to protect the Russian and Russian speaking populations, as was already the case in Abkasia, South Ossetia and now in the Ukraine where Russians are regional majorities in the East and in Crimea, No such excuse in Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, nor in the Baltic states, although the Baltic states have strong Russian minorities, which tend to be discriminated against. These countries are also mostly Nato members and therefore completely off limits for Russia.
I think Russia is doing a masterful job of theatre.
Russia and Ukraine have a 1997 Friendship Treaty whereby Russia pays an annual fee for the right to operate a naval base in the port city of Sevastopol. This treaty also extends rights for Russian bases in other parts of Crimea. Although Russia is pushing the limits of the treaty, the current troop movements may be considered legit under the current lease.
So, basically they're having a war party in the their own yard.
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/01/world/setting-past-aside-russia-and-ukraine-sign-friendship-treaty.html
will be interesting to see if Russia stops trading their energy in $ US
Seriously who cares, America has invaded 22 countries over the past 20 years. For what ? Just adding trillions of dollars to Americas debt. Russia invades one country and the world loses there mind.
Has Americas military involvement fractured the markets in the past ? Not enough that caused fear or devastation.
If anything getting in the way with Russia will affect the markets even more. Russia supplies the European Union with huge amounts of oil, natural gas etc. if America places sanctions on Russia. All they have to do is turn a valve, and lights out for Europe.
There's no question that Ukraine has enormous economic, social and political issues. The west has opportunistically and covertly fermented conflict of those issues within the population. Destabilizing governments is as old as the cold war, and it's signature of CIA methodology. We routinely engage fascist goons as surrogates, abundant in western Ukraine, to undermine weak governments. The US, for all its lip service to competition is singularly supportive of corporate monopolies. The Russians have little better to offer than entrenched oligarchy to offer struggling Ukraine, but they do share ethnicity and substantial Russian developed infrastructure.
So, there's now an illegitimate government packed with west-leaning oligarchs willing to play the IMF game incurring debt that the country has no good prospect of succeeding with as an EU member, and a determined Putin to insure both established Russian economic interests as well as protecting ethnic Russians in the east. and its Crimean military bases. There's no chance that things will stabilize short of division of Ukraine, just like the former Yugoslavia.
The US wants to use this as political leveraged pretext for the inevitable EU collapse and further tightening of its own controls over both the EU, its remnants and its own home grown surveillance/police state here.
This isn't about good guys/bad guys, it's about victim nations of predatory, financially driven corporate hegemony, and surviving its own criminality under a threadbare pretext.
Markets, societies, the future of free nations be damned. They will succeed in their dystopian nightmare. JUST LOOK AT UKRAINE. That's our future.
Gazooks, you're closer to the truth than most, but I think there is still a lot of hope for Ukraine to come out of this mess better than than it was before. I'm currently in Ukraine, and now in Crimea, on holidays.
Putin's action in Crimea is clearly peacekeeping and is fully supported by the local people who will now hold a referendum at the end of March. They were a completely autonomous region before, so had their own government although they had few rights, especially regarding language in schools and movie theatres, being forced to use Ukrainian rather than their native Russian.
It's extremely unlikely that Russia will extend it's action to western Ukraine and the Western governments are fools to be 'sabre rattling'. The western extremists ousted a democratically elected government. Sure, it was corrupt, but name me a government in the world that isn't. They did lower several basic living costs for the people compared to the previous elected government lead by Timychenko who supports closer ties with Europe.
The next election was scheduled for 2015, but instead of waiting for that, they decided to use force. Of course, that's not the way things should be done in a democratic country but, what's done is done. Now the interim government and the governments of the world, simply need to prepare for the new elections in May.
Unfortunately the interim government is trying to extend its authority, recruit new military troops and has cancelled a new language law which is what really sparked the Russian speakers in the east and in Crimea to take action. I have no idea who's pulling the strings of these new puppets in the government, but they definitely do not have the best interests of Ukraine at heart. Have you read the conditions from Europe in order for Ukraine to receive aid? That's an invasion of Ukraine!! They are dictating all kinds of things and impoverishing the people and stealing their land on the cheap.
what a fascinating , brainy bunch of commentary i just happened upon!
everyone seems so well informed, even the emotional ones. ''hitler techniques'' not withstanding, for me this is more a replay of how russia acqired crimea in the first place from turkey after the crimean war (1853-5). nicholas I forcing the issue with a pre- invasion of lesser border areas to test the waters -putin's georgia ploy- to protect russian christians in muslim territory, then the big prize of crimea. in fact chechnia and other border republics were acquired then, and have been nothing but a bother since, with russia seeding these areas with a population of christian slavs to protect. (as in the baltic states and former territory, finland). putin is no hitler; he is trying to restore czarist glory days.
lets hope he doesn't ''protect'' the ukranian population of canada!
BTW: all commentators should read 'bloodlands' a70 year history of a swath of territory from the baltic to the black sea. no one in it should want anything to do with big brother slav.