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Papas Fritas writes:
"James B. Stewart writes in the NYT that there's one major difference between now and the last time Russia invaded a neighbor (Czechoslovakia in 1968): Now Moscow has a stock market that provides a minute-by-minute referendum on Putin's military and diplomatic actions.
On Monday, the Russian stock market index (RTSI) fell more than 12 percent, in what a Russian official called panic selling and the ruble plunged on currency markets, forcing the Russian central bank to raise interest rates by one and a half percentage points to defend the currency. On Tuesday, as soon as Mr. Putin said he saw no need for further Russian military intervention, the Russian market rebounded by 6 percent. With tensions on the rise once more on Friday, the Russian market may again gyrate when it opens on Monday. Russia is far more exposed to market fluctuations than many countries, since the Russian government owns a majority stake in a number of the country's largest companies and many Russian companies and banks are fully integrated into the global financial system.
The old Soviet Union, in stark contrast, was all but impervious to foreign economic or business pressure, thanks in part to an ideological commitment to self-sufficiency. By contrast, today "Russia is too weak and vulnerable economically to go to war," says Anders Aslund. "The Kremlin's fundamental mistake has been to ignore its economic weakness and dependence on Europe." Almost half of Russia's exports go to Europe, and three-quarters of its total exports consist of oil and gas. The energy boom is over, and Europe can turn the tables on Russia after its prior gas supply cuts in 2006 and 2009 replacing this gas with liquefied natural gas, gas from Norway and shale gas.
If the European Union sanctioned Russia's gas supply to Europe, Russia would lose $100 billion or one-fifth of its export revenues, and the Russian economy would be in rampant crisis. Other penalties might include asset freezes and the billionaire Russian elite who are pretty much synonymous with Mr. Putin's friends and allies are the ones who are being severely affected by visa bans, which were imposed by President Obama on Thursday. "The recent events were completely irrational, angering the West for no reason," says one Russian economist. "This is what is most scary, especially for businesses. Instead of reforming the stagnating economy, Putin scared everybody for no reason and with no gain in sight. So it is hard to predict his next actions. But I think a real Cold War is unlikely.""
(Score: 4, Informative) by LaminatorX on Sunday March 09 2014, @02:56AM
We're aiming, submissions permitting, to have about 70% solidly-nerd fare, with the remainder being a variety of other topics that our community might nonetheless enjoy discussing once in a while. We've had some hits and some misses on the 30% bracket, but that's how we're learning the community's tastes as we go.
Regarding the Russian market, years ago I used to work for some Russian business men. I'd be shocked if a number of short positions weren't taken by insiders and Putin's favored oligarchs before certain announcements were made and public steps taken.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by evilviper on Sunday March 09 2014, @03:10AM
30% sounds awfully high... Nearly 1 in 3 stories won't have ANY relationship to technology AT ALL? Even when the other 70% may be only incidentally related to technology in the most abstract? Ugg. I can't see that possibly working out. /.'s downfall was when it started doing the same thing... Posting tons of global warming, and whatever other inflammatory trash they could find. I'd hate to see this site copy all the same mistakes, and acting like the UI was the ONLY problem over there.
In this case, I find this story quite interesting... I certainly didn't know Europe's energy fortunes had changed so significantly. But 30% non-tech stories... That would be a mess.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by LaminatorX on Sunday March 09 2014, @04:45AM
Well, it's not like we did market research and focus groups and whatnot. We basically pulled that number out of the air on IRC, and the general consensus was, "Yeah, that sounds about right." If it's way off base, we'll certainly learn that from the results, both qualitative and quantitative.
Ultimately though, the best way to tell us the kind of stories you want to see is submitting them. :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by frojack on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:08AM
I think 30 percent is too high as well.
This particular story at least had some tech tie-in with the energy angle, but it has a big political payload as well.
Also the thesis seems to be one person's opinion and its not clear Putin gives a fig about the stock market.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0, Troll) by smellotron on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:23AM
I think the stock market drop was very predictable, given the decisions Putin made. I doubt he was surprised by the drop. I think it is clear that he doesn't care about the impact on the Russian stock market. The real question is whether his administration was able to trade on the decision before the troops rolled out...
(Score: 1) by smellotron on Monday March 10 2014, @04:37AM
I was entirely serious, what part of my statement looks like a troll?
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Monday March 10 2014, @09:58PM
don't take it personally, I keep getting modded funny when I'm being serious and troll when I'm being funny.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 10 2014, @08:43AM
Note the stories with the most comments--like this one. Your community is deeply interested in civils rights issues. Please keep it coming.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by smellotron on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:20AM
I don't see that as a problem, and I never saw it as a problem on /. . Stuff That Matters, matters.
Well, there's your problem (emphasis mine). An event like this is the sort of thing reshapes nations, it is not simply inflammatory trash.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Sunday March 09 2014, @01:07PM
While I agree with your first statement, there is no event in this story, it's just an (inflammatory) opinion piece.
(Score: 2) by Luke on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:36AM
Actually I don't mind - within reason - what the tech/non-tech mix is, it's easy enough to continue scrolling down the list if an article's not of interest.
The fact that it's probably been submitted by a techy person suggests it may be something that I might like to see anyway - and in this case it's certainly something that everyone should heed.
With luck a few non-tech articles might actually broaden the focus of a few resident nerds, sure not a bad thing?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Shub on Sunday March 09 2014, @01:56PM
Well there is a problem in that respect. If _every_ article were tech related then there would be a deficit or articles quite quickly as there simply isn't that much new material added to the interwebs each day to power a news site.
If there aren't new articles added on a fairly regular basis around the clock then the site will stagnate and people won't come back since there simply won't be anything to keep them here.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday March 10 2014, @04:17PM
Haha!
Hacker News posts far more stories each day than I could read. Throw in Ars, anandtech, and more, and you'll be inundated in no time.
Besides, I don't think "technology" is all there is. Plenty of stuff going on in various scientific fields every day.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Daniel Dvorkin on Sunday March 09 2014, @04:08PM
Depends on how you define "nerd," I suppose. This story is pretty much general-interest, I agree, and therefore doesn't need to be on a nerd site although I don't personally object to it. Global warming is inherently a scientific issue, and therefore ought to be of interest to nerds unless you define that category very narrowly. The only reason it's inflammatory is because a large portion of the community chooses to make it so; it's as though every time there were a story about databases, half the comments came from people working themselves into a lather insisting that such a thing as SQL doesn't exist, and another quarter were from people saying that yes, SQL exists, but humans have nothing to do with its existence.
Pipedot [pipedot.org]:Soylent [soylentnews.org]::BSD:Linux
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @10:47PM
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday March 10 2014, @04:13PM
That's only part of the AGW flame-fest. Just as much of it is heated debate about how significant it will be, why scientist X got results different from Y, etc., and most of all, the fact that the solutions being commonly proposed could destroy the word economy, or the planet's ecology... It's *inherently* going to be a heated debate.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mmcmonster on Sunday March 09 2014, @05:44PM
And yet this story has a bunch more comments than most of the other stories on the front page currently.
SN is a news site focused on discussion of the topics. As long as some of the people find it interesting, go ahead and post it!
I would love more economics and politics posts, so long as they're not flame bait.
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday March 10 2014, @04:09PM
Yeah, that's the same mistake /. made in choosing which stories to post... Page (and ad)-views rather than sticking to the it's core competency.
Rather than rehash the same points, I'll just direct you to my previous post on the topic:
http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=188&cid=380 8 [soylentnews.org]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Taco Cowboy on Sunday March 09 2014, @06:38AM
Talking about shorting the market ... here is a tip all of you can rake in a truckload or two of moolah tomorrow ...
Airline stocks gonna plunge - especially those in the Asia market.
Remember, you hear this first.
As for what I'm going to do ... hehe ...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 09 2014, @07:45AM
Don't be discouraged. This is an interesting article. The point of this site is to stimulate discussion, and the commentary here has been very informative, both on the subject of the article and peoples biases. Keep up the good work!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by TheRaven on Sunday March 09 2014, @09:43AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Sunday March 09 2014, @02:24PM
70/30 sounds fine to me. I just want to say you guys are doing great with the site.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.