Streetwise Professor

The invaluable Christopher Balding has been tracking closely the massive financial support the Chinese government has been injecting into the banking system, the shadow banking system, local governments, and the stock market. In a blog post earlier this week, he estimated that this support totaled at least $692 billion, rising to $933 billion if the Reserve Ratio cut is counted as a subsidy to the banking system.

These funds went to the local government bond program I wrote about in June, an  investment in pension funds, PBOC 6 month loans to banks, and PBOC loans to the Chinese Securities Financing Corporation, which in turn will lend these funds to buy stock on margin.

But it’s hard to keep up! Christopher kindly shared with me his most recent calculation, which shows that the Chinese government keeps pumping in the money, most notably an additional $200 billion in loans to intermediaries who will use these funds for margin lending, and a rumored (but not yet confirmed) $160 billion in additional support for provincial municipal bonds. This brings the total to $1.3 trillion.

In RMB, that totals over 8 trillion (with a “t”, boys and girls). To Sinofy Evertt Dirksen: A trillion here and a trillion there, and pretty soon you are talking real money.

Another metric: $1.3 trillion is approximately three TARPs. Maybe we should start using that as a new unit of measurement, as in, “Chinese authorities intervened in the market and banking system today, providing an additional .5 TARPs in state funding.”

Yet another metric: $1.3 trillion is almost exactly $1000 per Chinese citizen. TARP was about $1500 per American. But China’s per capita GDP is (depending on whether you use exchange rates or PPP) about 1/5th or 1/7th of US GDP per capita. Thus, a low middle income country is spending roughly 3 to 5 times more per person as a percentage of per capita income than the high income US did. (Given that Chinese GDP is likely overstated-another issue that Christopher has analyzed in detail-the true multiples are even higher.)

Such massive spending-arguably the most gargantuan stimulus package ever-is not the sign of a confident leadership. It is a clear sign of panic.

Remember the extreme panic in DC and Wall Street in the post-Lehman period that culminated with TARP? Even in that hysterical environment, people questioned the need for and advisability of TARP. But in the end panic won out. That is the only reason TARP passed: people were scared stiff at what would happen if it didn’t.

Now think of how panicked the Chinese must be to implement measures that dwarf TARP. That’s what economists call revealed preference. Or, in this instance, revealed panic.

This gives the lie to official statistics, which showed a (patently unbelievable even absent this massive stimulus) .1 percentage point decline in the growth rate. Also giving the lie to the official statistics is the collapse in China-driven commodity prices, notably iron ore and coal, and oil as well. The slowdown in commodity economies further discredits the official Chinese data.

The Chinese stock market is getting most of the attention. This is the drunk-looking-under-the-streetlamp-for-his-keys phenomenon. The stock market is visible, and people can relate to it: this is why the government is using massive carrots (notably the support for margin lending) and even bigger sticks to try to arrest the decline. This would suppress the most visible manifestation of crisis. But the real dangers are lurking out of sight, in the leveraged sector (most notably the rats’ nest of non-bank lenders, but the banks are concealing a lot too), SOEs, and a real economy whose performance is masked by dodgy official statistics.

I’ve long referred to China as the Michael Jackson Economy, kept going by intense dosages of economic/financial drugs, cosmetic surgeries, and stimulants. The Chinese authorities are now administering the biggest dosages ever. This is an indication that the patient is doing quite badly. Further, although such actions may delay the inevitable, they make the end all the more horrific.

The Treasury, Fed (Board of Governors and NYFed), SEC, and CFTC released a joint report on the short-lived spike in Treasury prices on 15 October, 2014. The report does a credible job laying out what happened, based on a deep dive into the high frequency data. But it does not answer the most interesting questions.

One thing of note, which shouldn’t really need mentioning, but does, is the report’s documentation of the diversity of algorithmic/high frequency trading carried out by what the report refers to as PTFs, or proprietary trading firms. This diversity is illustrated by the fact that these firms were both the largest passive suppliers of liquidity and the largest aggressive takers of liquidity during the October “event.” Indeed, the report documents the diversity within individual PTFs: there was considerable “self-trading,” whereby a particular PTF was on both sides of a trade. Meaning presumably that these PTFs had both aggressive and passive algos working simultaneously. So talking about “HFT” as some single, homogeneous thing is radically oversimplistic and misleading.

But let’s cut to the chase: Whodunnit? The report’s answer?: It’s complicated. The report says there was no single cause (e.g., a fat finger problem or whale trader).

This should not be surprising. In emergent orders, which financial markets are, large changes can occur in response to small (and indeed, very small) shocks: these systems can go non-linear. Complex feedbacks make attribution of cause impossible.  Although there is much chin-pulling (both in the report, and more generally) about the impact of technology and changes in market structure, the fundamental sources of feedback, and the types of participants in the ecosystem, are largely independent of technology.

Insofar as the events of 15 October are concerned, the report documents a substantial decline in market depth on both the futures market, and the main cash Treasury platforms (BrokerTec and eSpeed) in the hour following the release of the retail sales report. The decline in depth was due to PTFs reducing the size (but not the price) of their limit orders, and banks/dealers widening their quotes. Then, starting about 0930, there was a substantial order imbalance to the buy side on the futures: this initial order imbalance was driven primarily by banks/dealers. About 3 minutes later, aggressive PTFs kicked in on the buy side on both futures and the cash platforms.  Buying pressure peaked around 0939, and then both aggressive PTFs and the banks/dealers switched to the sell side. Prices rose when aggressors bought, and fell when they sold.

None of this is particularly surprising, but the report begs the most important questions. In particular, what caused the acute decline in depth in the hour leading up to the big price movement, and what triggered the surge in buy orders?

The first conjecture that comes to mind is related to informed trading and adverse selection. For some reason, PTFs (or more accurately, their algos) in particular apparently detected an increase in the toxicity of order flow, or observed some other information that implied that adverse selection risk was increasing, and they reduced their quote sizes to reduce the risk of being picked off.

Did order flow become more toxic in the roughly hour-long period following the release of the retail number? The report does not investigate that issue, which is unfortunate. Since liquidity declines were also marked in the minutes before the Flash Crash, it is imperative to have a better understanding of what drives these declines. There are metrics of toxicity (i.e., order flow informativeness). Liquidity suppliers (including HFT) monitor it in real time.  Understanding these events requires an analysis of whether variations in toxicity drive variations in liquidity, and in particular marked declines in depth.

Private information could also explain a surge in order imbalances. Those with private information would be the aggressors on the side of the net imbalance. In this case, the first indication of an imbalance is in the futures, and comes from the banks and asset managers. PTF net buying kicks in a few minutes later, suggesting they were extracting information from the banks’ and asset managers’ trading.

This raises the question: what was the private information, and what was the source of that information?

One problem with the asymmetric information story is the rapid reversal of the price movement. Informed trades have persistent effects. I’ve even seen in the data from some episodes that arguably manipulative (and hence uninformed) trades that could not be identified as such had persistent price impacts. So did new information arrive that led the buyers to start selling?

A potentially more problematic explanation of events (and I am just throwing out a hypothesis here) is that increased order flow toxicity due to informed trading eroded liquidity, and this created the conditions in which pernicious algorithms could thrive. For instance, momentum triggering (and momentum following) algorithms could have a bigger impact when the market lacks depth, as then smallish imbalances can move prices substantially, which then triggers trend following. When prices get sufficiently out of line, these algos might turn off or switch directions, or other contrarian algorithms might kick in.

These questions cannot be answered without knowing the algorithms, on both the passive and aggressive sides. What information did they have, and how did they react to it? Right now, we are just seeing their shadows. To understand the full chronology here–the decline in depth/liquidity, the surge in order imbalances from banks/dealers around 0930, the following surge in aggressive PTF buying, and the reversal in signed net order flow–it is necessary to understand in detail the entire algo ecosystem. We obviously don’t understand it, and likely never will.

Even if it was possible to go back and get a granular understanding of the algorithms and their interactions, this would be of limited utility going forward because the emergent ecosystem evolves continuously and rapidly. Indeed, no doubt the PTFs and banks carried out their own forensic analyses of the events of 15 October, and changed their algorithms accordingly. This means that even if we knew the  causal connections and feedbacks that produced the abrupt movement and reversal in Treasury prices, that knowledge will not really permit anticipation of future episodes, as the event itself will have changed the system, its connections, and its feedbacks. Further, independent of the effect of 15 October, the system will have evolved in the past 9 months. Given the dependence of the behavior of such systems on their very fine details, the system will behave differently today than it did then.

In sum, the joint report provides some useful information on what happened on 15 October, 2014, but it leaves the most important questions unanswered. What’s more, the answers regarding this one event would likely be only modestly informative going forward because that very event likely caused the system to change. Pace Heraclitus, when it comes to financial markets, “You cannot step twice into the same river; for other waters are continually flowing in.”

This is, alas, likely to be a long running saga, hence the title: if we are lucky, the chronicles will end no later than 16 months from now. We can only hope.

Today Hillary gave a Big Speech on the economy. She channeled her inner Elizabeth Warren, and blasted Wall Street, big banks, hedge funds, short-termism and other easy targets.

You knew it was Kabuki, not conviction, from the very first: Hillary was introduced for her bankster bashing speech by leading bankster Lloyd Blankstein of Goldman Sachs. If Blankfein was truly threatened by Hillary, he wouldn’t have been embracing her, literally.

And of course, for all of Hillary’s leftist red meat, she has long been quite intimate with Wall Street. She has long milked The Street for campaign contributions and other boodle like it was a prize holstein. Most notably, Hillary was a very solicitous junior senator from NY, and in exchange for very generous financial support, she did Wall Street’s bidding. No Warren-esque rhetoric then, in those halcyon pre-Crisis years.

Further, Hillary has personal experience with hedge funds. Her son-in-law (about whom she presumably corresponded on her secret server in now-deleted emails) runs a hedge fund. More tellingly, Hillary held a million dollar investment in a hedge fund which just so happened to short medical stocks while she was on the campaign trail blasting the pharmaceutical industry and promising thoroughgoing health care reform. In other words, Hillary was an investor in hedge funds before she was against them.

Hillary declaimed today against Too Big to Fail. I guess I will have to give her a pass on this: her experience  is with small, crooked, insolvent ditchwater S&Ls in Dogpatch, not big banks in Gotham.

And insofar as short-termism is concerned, who can forget the Miracle of the Cattle Futures, in which Hillary turned some short-term profits totaling around $100 grand, based (in her telling) on her discerning reading of the WSJ? Which has always had crappy commodities coverage.

Hillary, in other words, is wildly implausible as an anti-Wall Street crusader. It is transparently the case that this is something that polls well, especially among Democratic primary voters, so she will play that part.

Hillary’s complementary theme is that she will fight for middle America. Yet more kabuki. You know Hillary detests her middle class upbringing in Park Ridge, IL, and has spent her entire life distancing herself from it. The years in Arkansas were like purgatory. Whenever Hillary subjects herself to the actual presence of middle class Americans, it is plainly evident that she would much rather be undergoing a root canal, but for the fact that a root canal won’t advance her vaulting political ambitions. The trials she endures!

Insofar as policy is concerned, Hillary served up a dog’s breakfast of tedious progressive proposals. The most amusing of these was a swipe at Uber and Airbnb, further evidence that alleged progressives are actually the enemies of disruptive technologies that undermine (politically-connected) incumbents: they are the party of stasis, not progress. (The losers from Uber are not working stiff cabbies, who make their reservation wage, but the owners of government-rationed taxi medallions.) She also paid obeisance to the sacred cow of “infrastructure,” advocating the creation of an infrastructure bank (which would direct resources to the politically connected rather than the economically productive). She also had a flashback to the 60s-70s infatuation with corporate profit sharing, which she said her administration would “encourage.” If profit sharing is indeed mutually beneficial, Hillary’s encouragement is hardly needed. If it isn’t, such encouragement would be detrimental.

All in all, a paint-by-progressive-numbers performance intended to shore up her left flank. It was classic Hillary-banal, and as authentic as Velveeta.

And just think, we have at least a year to put up with the tripe. Just pray its not 5 plus-or 9 plus-years.

Trying to staunch the bleeding in the stock market, China is unleashing the full power of a police state. A Securities Execution Commission, if you will:

China’s police ministry is teaming up with the securities regulator to probe short selling, as the government works to stem a stock plunge that has erased $3.9 trillion in market value.

The Ministry of Public Security said it will help the China Securities Regulatory Commission investigate evidence of “malicious” short selling of stocks and indexes, according to a statement on its website Thursday. Vice Public Security Minister Meng Qingfeng visited the regulator’s offices in Beijing on Thursday, the official Xinhua News Agency said earlier on its microblog.

The move comes after the securities regulator pledged to “strictly” punish market manipulation and China’s state-run media blamed short selling, rumor-mongering and foreign meddling for fueling the stock slide. The ruling Communist Party has announced an unprecedented series of measures to boost shares, including banningmajor shareholders, executives and directors from selling stakes.

Whenever a police ministry “teams up” with securities regulators, watch out. You can bet-and it wouldn’t be speculation!-that some poor schmoes are going to do hard time for manipulative short selling. And China being China, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that some really unlucky bastards will wind up in front of a firing squad or inside a mobile execution van.

And isn’t it always the way? Stock price declines are always blamed on short sellers. Always. And with stocks, manipulation accusations are thrown about on the way down, but never on the way up.

If the Chinese authorities want to find a market manipulator, they need to look no further than the nearest mirror.  Which is precisely why they are so intent on finding someone else to blame.

Surprise, surprise, surprise. The vaunted Russia-Turkey gas pipeline deal is not really a deal. The reason-brace yourself against the shock-is that the two sides can’t come to an agreement over price:

Russia’s plan to build a new $15 billion pipeline to Turkey is at risk of delay because of a fight over gas prices, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

State-run OAO Gazprom and its Turkish counterpart Botas had a six-month period to agree on prices for gas supplies between the two countries, which expired on Monday. The Ankara-based company now has the right to take the matter to international arbitration, three of the people said, asking not to be named because the information is private.

The dispute over prices means there’s no immediate prospect of signing a binding pact for the new pipeline, the second between Russia and Turkey. An agreement could now be delayed until at least October, two more people said, also asking not to be identified.

I was about as surprised about this as I was to see the sun rising in the east this morning.

Remember: Gazprom consummates maybe one percent of the “deals” that it announces. And the deals founder on price. Almost every time.

By the way, this totally demolishes the alleged pipeline deal between Russia and Greece, because the Grecian pipeline was intended to carry gas that Russia had shipped to Turkey on to Europe.

Not that the $2-odd billion pipeline deal would have been more than spit in the ocean of Greece’s debt problem: the Greek government would only realize a fraction of the $2+ billion, many years from now. And as things look now, never.

In other Gazprom news, apparently the company is stiffing Turkmenistan:

Turkmenistan, irked by falling natural gas exports to Russia, hit out at Moscow’s gas export monopoly Gazprom on Wednesday, saying the energy giant had not paid for gas purchased from the Central Asian country so far this year.

“Since the beginning of 2015, OAO Gazprom has not paid for its debts to state concern Turkmengas for the shipped volumes of Turkmen natural gas,” Turkmenistan’s Oil and Gas Ministry said in a statement on its official website (www.oilgas.gov.tm).

Could be worse. Gazprom could have blown up the pipeline.

This suggests that Gazprom is having some major cash flow problems.

And who says there is no good news?

In the very early days of this blog, I told the story about what Chief Economic Advisor Beryl Sprinkel said on Black Monday, 1987, when a panicked Treasury Secretary James Baker wanted to close the stock market: “We’ll close these markets when monkeys fly out of my ass.” No monkeys flew, and the markets stayed open, eventually stabilized, and then recovered.

But many monkeys are flying out of many asses in China. Although the authorities have not closed the stock markets, individual companies have halted trading in their stocks: trading in more than one-half of the listings in China is currently suspended.

Halting trading more than for a short interval in order to resolve information asymmetries and permit the flow of liquidity to stocks that have just experienced an information event (as during a temporary stock halt in the US) is in general a bad idea. (Post-87, Greenwald and Stein wrote a paper published in the JOB laying out this argument.) An uncoordinated and extended halt of many stocks is a really horrible idea, because of the negative externalities. That is, uncoordinated flying monkeys wreak even more havoc than coordinated ones.

Halting trading in a large number of stocks increases selling pressure on stocks that are still trading. This happens for at least a couple of reasons. First, individuals who need to raise cash (e.g., to meet margin calls) are forced to concentrate their sales in the stocks that keep trading. This tends to concentrate selling pressure, rather than diffuse it. Second, individuals who want to rebalance their portfolios away from equity into cash or bonds have to concentrate their sales in the stocks that continue to trade. Again, this concentrates selling pressure.

This creates a vicious feedback loop. A number of companies halt trading, which forces selling pressure to spill over with greater force on other stocks, which leads some of these companies to halt trading, which intensifies selling pressure on other companies, and so on. The ultimate likely outcome is a protracted lockdown of the entire market. Protracted because who is going to be the firm to restart trading first, and risk having everyone sell the hell out of them?

The vaunted Chinese economic managers (ha!) have well and truly bungled this one. They should have prevented open-ended trading halts, or had a coordinated stoppage and restarting of trading. The coordination failure at work now is manifest.

Again, I believe that the sharp selloff is more of a symptom of a deeper economic problem than a potential direct cause of such a problem. The main adverse spillover that the stock selloff could cause is through the margin debt channel. Margin calls could lead to fire sales of illiquid assets. Again, the more stocks that are not trading, the more severe these fire sales in non-equity assets will be: this is another adverse consequence of uncoordinated monkey launches. Moreover, failures to meet margin calls will saddle the lenders (themselves often highly leveraged) with losses. Both of these channels could have adverse consequences in the brokerage, banking and shadow banking sectors. Their balance sheets are not that hale and hearty to begin with, and this kind of shock could spark broader financial distress throughout the sector.*

In other words, the stock market decline is less of a crisis in itself, than a potential catalyst to a crisis via informational and fire sale channels. And perversely, uncoordinated trading halts in the stock market are more likely to intensify than mitigate any such catalytic effect.

But the Mandarins know everything, so I’m sure it will turn out swell.

In the meantime, the Mandarins have a message for all investors in China. Good luck with that!

* Perhaps one could argue, as Michael Brennan did when trying to explain price limits in futures markets in the JFE in 1986, that halting trading could ease pressure on margin credit. I am skeptical though. Even if stocks stop trading, margin lenders are likely to demand additional security in current conditions. Indeed, trading halts that reduce the informational content of stock prices create a source of uncertainty to margin lenders which they are likely to compensate for by demanding additional margin based on their estimate of the stock price once trading recommences, plus a premium to compensate for the uncertainty.

The People’s Bank of China is effectively funding an effort by a group of brokers to buy equity (to the tune of about $20 billion) in an attempt to stem the massive selloff in Chinese stocks. The news barely checked the relentless decline, which I will expect will resume with a vengeance.

In other words, China is panicking, and attempting to catch a falling knife, as the phrase goes. And that almost never works out well.

Actually, I don’t think that the equity market decline is China’s big problem, except to the extent that it is a harbinger of a dramatic slowing of the growth in the economy, or perhaps an absolute decline in the economy. Countries survive equity market meltdowns. It is the leveraged sector that is the concern. In China, that includes not just banks, but the plethora of shadow banks, trusts, and local government funding vehicles, all with murky interconnections with the banks.

There are pronounced signs of economic stagnation besides the shuddering equity market. The lack of growth in electricity generation is one. The sharp declines in China-sensitive commodities, notably oil, iron ore, and copper are another: oil was down 8 plus percent today. (Cheers, Vlad!) If it was oil alone, one could write it off to the market deciding that a generous Iran deal was imminent. The broad fall suggests that it is China, China, China.

The equity market, and the government’s response to it, is therefore a symptom of this broader economic problem. What the Chinese (and those long energy and metals production) need to be especially concerned about is if a decline in growth sets off a banking or shadow banking crisis. Then the Chinese central bank and government will be in the unenviable position of catching a barrage of plummeting arrows.

Hit Number 1. One of Krugman’s stock arguments to defend deficit spending and the accumulation of massive amounts of debt is “don’t worry!: we owe it to ourselves.” (I will pass over in silence at the Ricardian implications of that statement, which undermine Krugman’s argument that deficits are expansionary.) Krugman is also cheerleading for a Grexit.

It is therefore beyond ironic that a major reason that Greece faces Armageddon is the debt Greeks owe to themselves. The immediate source of Greece’s peril is the impending collapse of its banking system. The banks hold about €11 billion in Greek government bonds and about €14 billion in Greek Treasury Bills, money, per Krugman’s formulation, that Greeks owe to themselves. Greek banks are scraping by only because the ECB has agreed to fund these bonds. If Greece defaults, this funding goes away, and the banks will collapse. And it’s not just sovereign debt. The remainder of the nearly €400 billion on Greek bank balance sheets is loans to Greeks, i.e., money Greeks “owe themselves.” Many of those loans are underwater too.

In other words, money Greeks owe themselves will almost certainly bring down the banking system, and with it the Greek economy, once the ECB safety net goes away. But I’m sure Krugman will find a way to say that’s a good thing. Or that the problem was that they didn’t borrow enough from themselves. Or something.

Hit Number 2. The game theorist likely behind the let’s-play-crazy referendum and negotiating strategy, Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, has resigned. But don’t get excited. His replacement is a hardcore Marxist. But no worries. The FT assures us that he’s a pragmatist.  As if it really makes a difference whether a Menshevik or Bolshevik is in charge of economic policy.

Forget the debt issue. That will be resolved, for worse or for worser. The real reason that Greece is well and truly screwed is its statist, leftist, and frequently Marxist political culture. Greece needs to grow. Replacing one Marxist with another Marxist ensures that it won’t.

But look at the bright side. Now Venezuela has company.

The Greeks voted a resounding No! in today’s referendum, thereby rejecting a deal that had been taken off the table.

Figuring out the Syrzia plan is something of a puzzle. It reminds me of the old South Park Underwear Gnomes bit, hence the  title of this post. One can see the desired objective (a more prosperous future liberated from a crushing debt burden) and one can see the initial move (referendum), but the middle steps are a complete mystery.

At first blush-and second, and third-it appears that what the Greek government is doing is crazy and self-destructive. This suggests two alternatives:

1. The Greek government is crazy and self-destructive.
2. The Greek government is pretending to be crazy and self-destructive for tactical reasons.

I say crazy because the Greeks are claiming that they are willing to accept economic Armageddon instead of making far less costly concessions to the Europeans. But if there is even a small probability that people are of this type (i.e., they much prefer to die on their feet than live on their knees), pretending to be this way and getting a reputation for being this way can be an effective way of extracting concessions from an adversary. It is often rational to defer to craziness.

This gambit works best if a repeat player is matched against a series of one-shot players: the repeat player benefits from creating a reputation, the one-shot players don’t. That’s not the case here, though. The solvent Euros (e.g., the Germans and Dutch) also have an incentive to build a reputation for being tough in negotiations, because they are repeat players. They reason that if they concede to the Greeks, the Southern Euros (Spain, Portugal, Italy in particular) will try to extract concessions as well. So they have an incentive to play tough with the Greeks even though if this was a one-off situation it would make sense to make more concessions.

Which all means that I have no idea how this will play out.

Furthermore, this is primarily a game about redistribution rather than creating wealth. This maximizes the potential for conflict, and increases the incentives for rent seeking and rent dissipation. The exact outcome is difficult to predict, but the basic contours of this outcome are pretty predictable: everybody ends up poorer and miserable.

It is hard to have sympathy for either side. The Greeks have a corrupt and bloated state, and its people have a socialist, welfare/entitlement state mindset, and they borrowed lavishly to achieve a lifestyle that their productivity could not support. The Europeans gladly lent more to a corrupt and bloated state, and a people with a socialist-tinged, welfare/entitlement state mindset than they could afford to repay. They jointly made their bed, and now they have to lie in it. So be it.

The least likely outcome is that Greece makes fundamental changes and conjures up a growth miracle, like postwar Japan or Germany, or Taiwan or Korea. The socialist/statist/welfarist impulses are too deeply rooted, and its interlocutors-the Euros-are also too statist to compel or persuade the Greeks to change their ways.

A couple of years ago I said that Europe had a choice between amputation and gangrene in dealing with Greece. They chose not to amputate. They now have to live with the consequences.

Apologies for the light posting. Some travel (to Sweden, Denmark and London), work, and a need to decompress for a bit account for the absence.

I have kept a watch on things, though, and some Putinsanity has caught my eye.

For instance, VVP has accused cursed furriners of luring, Pied Piper-like, talented Russian youth away from the glorious Motherland:

A network of [foreign] organizations has ‘rummaged’ through the schools in the Russian Federation for many years under the guise of supporting talented young people. In reality, they simply hoover everything up like a vacuum

Note to Vlad: the reason that “talented young people” want to leave in droves is less that “foreign organizations” attract them, but that the state and society that you have constructed repel them.

Note the rampant insecurity here. I think that Putin knows that Russia has little to offer. But he can’t admit that, so he rages agains the West.

Item two: Surprise, surprise, surprise. The Russia-Turkey gas pipeline project is stalled because of a failure to communicate on price. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so:

Russia’s plan to build a new $15 billion pipeline to Turkey is at risk of delay because of a fight over gas prices, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

State-run OAO Gazprom and its Turkish counterpart Botas had a six-month period to agree on prices for gas supplies between the two countries, which expired on Monday. The Ankara-based company now has the right to take the matter to international arbitration, three of the people said, asking not to be named because the information is private.

The dispute over prices means there’s no immediate prospect of signing a binding pact for the new pipeline, the second between Russia and Turkey. An agreement could now be delayed until at least October, two more people said, also asking not to be identified.

The Russians think that you are stupid enough to believe that this is due to Erdogan’s defeat in the recent parliamentary elections, but that’s just a face saving cover story. Truth be told, the Russians are masters of vapor agreements. By my rough estimate, two of the last 100 announced gas deals have come to completion. And I’m being generous.

Anyone who believes anything Russia/Gazprom say about any pipeline project, deal, contract, etc., please contact me! Have I got a deal for you!

(As an aside, Erdogan and Putin are doppelgängers in a competition for the coveted titled of Most Insane Wannabe Autocrat Obsessed With Restoring Lost Imperial Greatness. May the best nut win!)

Next comedic moment: the Russia-Greece pipeline vapor deal, which is effectively contingent on a (non-existent) Russia-Turkey pipeline vapor deal. (BTW: Why is everybody freaking out about Russia courting Greece? Let Putin have them! Just what he needs. Another economic basket case, to join Abkhazia, Transnistria, South Ossetia, Donetsk, Luhansk. May the Orthodox nations enjoy every happiness! They deserve one another!)

Item three: Russia blasts the new US defense doctrine, which (realistically) identifies Russia as a threat to the sovereignty of its neighbors due to its willingness to use force as “confrontational.”

This is a perfect illustration of Pirrong’s Principle of Putinist Psychological Projection. Whatever the Russians say about the US is a pitch-perfect description of what the Russians are doing. They are the masters of projection.

This leads to my last observation: what will Putin do in Ukraine? He can’t go back: that would be a humiliating climbdown which he is psychologically incapable of, and which could actually threaten his power. Maintaining the status quo is the lowest risk, but offers the least potential for gain, and creates the real potential for a creeping collapse as the economic drain of sanctions and militarization saps the economy. Going forward and attacking Ukraine presents serious risks. Ukraine might be able to deny him a quick victory and impose serious losses. Even if he prevails operationally, the costs of occupation will be steep. These include the direct costs, which will be especially high if Ukrainians resort to historical precedent and wage a grueling guerrilla war (remember the Greens?). They also include the indirect costs of almost certainly escalated sanctions.

He’s in a fine mess, and I don’t know how he will react. Time is running out for a summer offensive, but time is not on his side generally. My fear is that he will follow Eisenhower’s dictum: “If a problem cannot be solved, enlarge it.” The question is: where? The Baltic-Finland, Sweden, Denmark, as well as the Baltic States-is a real possibility. Putinsanity is hard to predict, but nothing is beyond the realm of possibility.