Makk

I could believe that the dam was an accident, after trying to blow a small hole, because it was so badly timed. It is an advantage that can only be used once and the Russians were definitely premature with it. However I think more likely it was deliberate although more of a threat than a purely military move. They are demonstrating they are prepared to be completely ruthless and psychopathic after nearly endless empty bluster throughout the war.

Putin is claiming Russia paid Prigohzins catering company $2 billion usd over the last year. There will now be an investigation to make sure it was spent appropriately and nothing was "stolen". You wouldn't normally trust putin but I imagine the number is a public record. I don't believe wagner will be able to maintain it's remaining numbers while not actively engaged in mercenary work. I think this entire thing seems to have worked out well for Ukraine. It would have been nice to see some actual attrition but having wagner effectively removed and putin remaining in power is much better than prigohzin taking over. He is every bit as psychopathic but has a much tighter control of his underlings.

Wasn't Russian gas money largely funding wagner through "catering" contracts? Even after sanctions and price limits the Russian government has much much more revenue than wagner. They do have a range of shady business dealings but maintaining 25000 mercenaries probably costs around $5 million usd per day just in wages. I can't see how wagner can remain that size without Russian funding.

There are some people who are arguing that Prigohzin has the FSB in his pocket and the deal is all about a bloodless transition of power. Prigohzin will be on the ballet for the next election which is on the 17th of March and he will win because the FSB always rig it and they need a putin successor. Not sure I believe it but it's a plausible explanation. Whatever the case this isn't over yet.

The FSB has opened a criminal case against prigohzin for inciting a criminal rebellion. Has demanded wagner forces detain him. No going back from this now.

Depends whether they try to Storm or Siege it. I could buy the argument it may be advantageous if they go in with everything in a blitz. But assuming they do take their time and do it systematically then they should definitely be destroying it (if they can) to make all the attrition count more.

It happens frequently in warfare, always from the defending side though. Edit Also it wouldn't just be the Associated Press (not that I have read anything from them) that believes it was the Russians, it is pretty much 90%+ of any media, governments or specialist analysis on the war that isn't Russian.

The RBNZ rolling back the restrictions on low equity loans doesn't have anything to do with stabilising house prices. The restrictions were put in place to protect the banking system from stupid banks when interest rates were very low but expected to rise. That is the time you get a large number of defaults and I do think that was one of the RBNZs better moves but the conditions mean they are no longer as important (assuming interest rates have or are close to peaking).

When in the entire history of warfare has a dam been blown by the side about to conduct an offensive in that area? And these are not Russian villages, they are Ukrainian, they are nothing to Russia. If Ukraine was going to blow up that dam they would have done so in the opening weeks of the war to stop Russia capturing Kherson in the first place. While it is true this is not really that beneficial for Russia (it will only strengthen the defense in that area for a couple of weeks), Russia has time and time again performed stupid, inhumane and shortsighted acts that shoot themselves in the foot. Why anyone would even contemplate thinking this could have been Ukraine, let alone come to the conclusion that it probably was, staggers me. I do believe the main reason this was done was to appear ruthless and give all parties pause for thought when they make threats about nuking things or triggering other mass destruction events.

There is no doubt that Russia did it. It's a desperate move that has little military benefit outside maybe one or two weeks but is a massive ecological disaster. The river has flooded graveyards and burial grounds for slaughtered infected cattle the entire area has become unlivable for some time. I hate to think how many people couldn't evacuate in time. I do think what they wanted more than anything else is to make people stop ignoring their nuclear saber rattling, people have stopped taking their threats to nuke them seriously and they are basically saying they are prepared to trigger a Zaporizhzhia meltdown next. I hope China and India look at this action really hard and start to wonder whether providing even minor levels of support to this psychopathic administration is a good idea.

The Polish volunteer corps are apparently participating with the Russian liberation groups in the Belgorod raids, not sure how well this will go down with Putin. Also Russian civilians in Belgorod are complaining that the Russian military that came in to defend their cities are looting their homes.

No one understands what they could possibly want with the Chathams. The white pins indicate places with Wagner business interests rather than conflict zones which are the red pins. A theory was Prighozhin mistook the Chatham Islands for the Cook Islands (out by around 3000km) which have been known to sell their flag to register dodgy ships.

If Prigozhin is looking to get deeper into politics, he is definitely not going for the popular vote. He has literally claimed Russia should become like the proverbial North Korea and live this way for a number of years. Close all the borders and stop beating around the bush. Stop building roads and other new infrastructure, get everyone one making ammo and concentrating on the war. When asked about using nuclear weapons he explained that it was OK to go to your neighbors house and use your fists to beat him up but it was not OK to use an axe and hit him in the head. And an axe is a nuclear bomb. But then he said he was in favor of using the bomb but it had to be done earlier before we went around picking our nose for so long??? The guy is nuts. He could actually be even worse than Putin, hopefully they take each other down and someone more sane can take over.

It will be interesting to see what Prigozhin actually does now. He likely genuinely wants to leave Bakhmut, he has publicly said he will in a few days, but Putin will probably deny him that option. If Ukraine can keep pushing around the flanks tension between the two should reach breaking point pretty quickly. If he is allowed to leave Bakhmut could be liberated pretty quickly unless the Russian army risks a significant number of troops there.

The patriot system is getting priceless field testing at the moment. You can shoot down your own missiles to test but getting to try it out against the real things with opposition tactics to provide counter measures just cant be replicated.

Ilya Ponomarev claims that the drone attack above the Kremlin was conducted by Russian partisan's that he had personally spoken to and it was to scare Putin into calling off the victory parade.

It sounds likely the counteroffensive will begin quite soon, possibly the next few days. There has been some action in the south already.

The NZ inflation figures are just in and it is great news. Down to 6.7% for year to march (1.2% increase in first 3 months) where all the projections were going for over 7%. There should be a number of short term spikes in that figure as well so looking much better than I was expecting.

The oil shocks of 2022 followed completely normal demand and supply. Supply was reduced due to the Russian invasion plus a variety of other factors while demand remained strong. This naturally pushes up prices. So yes those suppliers who could maintain their usual supply chain were able to profit more in that period but this was a symptom of market, the cause in that case was 100% a supply issue. If the suppliers didn't raise their prices there would be shortages in various markets across the world.

What you are claiming, I believe, is that consumers expect prices to be going up while suppliers are rising prices more than they should because they can get away with it. But this doesn't really make sense. Prices are set by the intersection of demand and supply, for what you are stating to happen is that there is massive market failure, a highly inelastic demand curve, with no competition while competition existed previously (or prices would have already been higher). Basically money has been printed or borrowed while suppliers costs have gone up across the board for several years. That is always going to be inflationary. In NZ 15% of companies reported increased profit margins between 2019 and 2022 while 39% decreased (8% unknown, the rest staying the same). Evidence and economic theory point to there being nothing particularly unexpected in this inflationary cycle given market conditions and government policy over the last few years.

Going back to your previous figure, Aus inflation is down to 6.8% (not 7.8%) in the year to march and has dropped for 2 consecutive months. I also tend to think that the RBNZ was more aggressive than needed with a 0.5% rise given that the impact of the previous hikes is yet to come through fully. The RBNZ mentioned the recent storms will push food prices up but they really should be looking through short term inflation forces. However I don't think inflation has peaked yet so it is tricky. We have just had a minimum wage hike to go through and the wholesale mortgage rates were actually looking to drop in some categories (2+ years) as global inflation stopped creating more supply and overseas investment in NZ. And we are also entering an election year which these days means a lolly scramble from both main parties.

I wouldn't say there is a ton, but just looking it up now, the underutilisation rate is 9.4% in the December quarter. I would say wage growth was largely spurred by rapid increases in the minimum wage, wages rising for inflation, plus a very constrained labour supply about 6-12 months ago. And although wage growth looks OK, it is in fact only a little over half of inflation which is not good at all but understandable given outside factors. It's a complex moving picture. There are a lot of external factors largely beyond our control which will hopefully get better soon. The recent US bank collapses are another example of this which is exactly what we don't need.

I feel underemployment is almost a more important metric than unemployment right at the moment. Unemployment stats are amazingly good and have been for some time. I hope it is genuinely representative of economic strength but I can't help feeling there is a fair bit of missing data there.

If Winston Peters holds the balance, he will go with whoever offers him the most regardless of anything he says before the election... or whatever the people who vote for him actually want. Luxon has already effectively opened the door, when asked about Winston. He said he hadn't given it any thought and paid him a minor compliment (forget exactly what). This translates to "we are giving it a lot of thought and trying to work out if it is better to cut him out or whether we might need him." Winston Peters is hated by many of the national party members though and in the past NZ first has worked much better with Labour than they have with National. The Maori party has never, ever been national. The times when they were in government with them was when the numbers didn't matter and there were other political reasons to get them in. If they actually held the balance of power they will go with Labour as more than 80% of their voters prefer that. In fact a large proportion of their voters split their vote giving Labour the party vote and the Maori party the electorate vote. This is a nightmare for National as in theory it can give Labour an advantage of up to 7% if it was split perfectly because of the extra seats although the highest it ever got to was 2 seats.

Labour have been way down from their high and are actually now trailing at the polls. With the economy expected to get worse (it doesn't feel like a recession yet) it will be hard for them to hold on. But it isn't (wasn't?) completely bleak for Labour, NZ first is on the rise again and their leader Winston Peters has effectively picked the government 3 times out of the last 7 elections getting between 3% and 10% of vote (twice labour, once national). I think it will be quite a messy and somewhat dirty election later in the year, my guess is Ardern didn't really want to be involved with that.