Ukraine War... How much will S&P drop this week?

[Dusn]

Agree, and also agree that if we intended to give Ukraine $40B we should have voted publicly to give them $40B last January, to further dissuade Russian invasion. What's done is done. Even a great number of Russia and Ukraine experts were surprised Putin went in the way he did, and most experts are also surprised by the poor performance of his military. So there were surprised all around and everyone has to adapt on the fly. Welcome to war.

I’d guess that we would have voted against giving Ukraine more aid before the actual invasion. That would have sent the wrong message to Russia. Then it might have even locked the politicians who voted against the aid into a strategy of defending their vote and never supporting Ukraine. Getting people to admit that they were wrong is hard.

Unfortunately human beings seem to be really bad at prevention. We usually go with denial. Then blame.

[nastle]

We are trying to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian man
Europeans need to oppose this myopic and dangerous policy
peace in Europe ASAP
We surrendered all of Eastern Europe to communism without a fight now giving even half of Ukraine to Russia is too much ?
Russia needs to be tamed and defanged yes but not at the cost of every Ukrainian male

[CordMcNally]

Yeah that off ramp is going to be hard to find when: We have a prominent politician who vows U.S. support until "victory is won". And you have a politician who requested a special inspector general to ensure oversight of the $40B (this to me seems like it should be a no brainer), only to be chastised by his fellow senators.

Another big issue is that we're apparently going to give $40B but what are other countries doing? I think Canada gave $100M in humanitarian aid, another $620M in LOANS, and some tanks. I see where the EU has given $4.1B in LOANS and other humanitarian aid. Loans. We're not the only country/entity that can just print money. Like the old saying goes, "$40B here and $40B there and pretty soon we're talking about real money".

[HikingDO]

Another big issue is that we're apparently going to give $40B but what are other countries doing? I think Canada gave $100M in humanitarian aid, another $620M in LOANS, and some tanks. I see where the EU has given $4.1B in LOANS and other humanitarian aid. Loans. We're not the only country/entity that can just print money. Like the old saying goes, "$40B here and $40B there and pretty soon we're talking about real money".

Europeans nations freeloading again on the back of the US. Sounds a lot like NATO.

[FIREshrink]

You can blame me for today's declines, i had some rebalancing and new money investments the last two days so the market was bound to crater.

[Kamban]

Europeans nations freeloading again on the back of the US. Sounds a lot like NATO.

Don't worry. The free loading will worsen with rich nations like Sweden and Finland joining NATO and free load off USA while paying their measly minimal share. USA is really stupid in this respect and we have only ourselves to blame.

[Kamban]

American mothers are rationing baby formula and the congress with little debate is falling over themselves to approve 40B in aid to a country known for corruption. I’m surprised with the lack of dissenting voices but on the other hand I’m not.

Inflation is rising with rising prices of fuel and groceries and we are handing over $40B to a corrupt nation with no oversight. Are we out of our ***minds?. It is shameful that we moan and fight over few millions to help in combating poverty in this country but have billions to fund a war machine going on far away.

And Ukraine is no angel, it is a corrupt money laundering machine. And people on both sides of the aisle have used it. And the president of that country is playing our senate and POTUS like a fiddle while his goons have also carried out atrocities. Russia and Putin have been terrible in this war but Ukraine is no knight in shining armor. It takes two to tango.

It will be a long drawn out mess with finally Ukraine being divided into an Eastern segment aligned with Russia and a broken, damaged western part. If we had any sense we would be engaging Russia in a diplomatic solution that will keep Ukraine intact and the war to end but it is easier to just supply arms and have a proxy war. And it will make our war machine and defense manufactures and contractors profitable till we transition into out next skirmish, most likely in Asia.

[dataentryspecialist]

We are trying to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian man
Europeans need to oppose this myopic and dangerous policy
peace in Europe ASAP
We surrendered all of Eastern Europe to communism without a fight now giving even half of Ukraine to Russia is too much ?
Russia needs to be tamed and defanged yes but not at the cost of every Ukrainian male

So we should stop selling arms to Ukraine as we were doing before war broke out? It’s not really our war to stop or start. Russia invaded, and Ukrainians are choosing to fight for their own survival.

[CordMcNally]

So we should stop selling arms to Ukraine as we were doing before war broke out? It’s not really our war to stop or start. Russia invaded, and Ukrainians are choosing to fight for their own survival.

Are we getting paid for these weapons now? I was under the assumption that we’d been basically giving them to Ukraine for free since the Russia fiasco started.

[nastle]

So we should stop selling arms to Ukraine as we were doing before war broke out? It’s not really our war to stop or start. Russia invaded, and Ukrainians are choosing to fight for their own survival.

Being merchants of death when we want to be so defence companies benefit from it

flawed foreign policy of great leader caused this we needed to create a rift between China and Russia way BEFORE this crisis started

now the first thing is to evacuate as many Ukrainian males to Europe so they are not caught up in the conflict and killed

[nastle]

Are we getting paid for these weapons now? I was under the assumption that we’d been basically giving them to Ukraine for free since the Russia fiasco started.

Dump old weapons so your enemies keep killing each other
lend lease 2.0

[nastle]

Inflation is rising with rising prices of fuel and groceries and we are handing over $40B to a corrupt nation with no oversight. Are we out of our ***minds?. It is shameful that we moan and fight over few millions to help in combating poverty in this country but have billions to fund a war machine going on far away.

And Ukraine is no angel, it is a corrupt money laundering machine. And people on both sides of the aisle have used it. And the president of that country is playing our senate and POTUS like a fiddle while his goons have also carried out atrocities. Russia and Putin have been terrible in this war but Ukraine is no knight in shining armor. It takes two to tango.

It will be a long drawn out mess with finally Ukraine being divided into an Eastern segment aligned with Russia and a broken, damaged western part. If we had any sense we would be engaging Russia in a diplomatic solution that will keep Ukraine intact and the war to end but it is easier to just supply arms and have a proxy war. And it will make our war machine and defense manufactures and contractors profitable till we transition into out next skirmish, most likely in Asia.

Agreed

[dataentryspecialist]

Are we getting paid for these weapons now? I was under the assumption that we’d been basically giving them to Ukraine for free since the Russia fiasco started.

From what I can tell, we are just giving them now. What I’m trying to say is that whether we support militarily or not shouldn’t be predicated on Ukraine’s ability to pay us. I don’t think that means we should permanently prop up the Ukraine military or NATO financially, but our emergency assistance will give some time to the rest of Europe to either intervene more or pull out all support. The middle ground of partial support with a diplomatic partition of eastern Ukraine then inevitable smoldering insurrection seems the least palatable of all.

[dataentryspecialist]

Being merchants of death when we want to be so defence companies benefit from it

flawed foreign policy of great leader caused this we needed to create a rift between China and Russia way BEFORE this crisis started

now the first thing is to evacuate as many Ukrainian males to Europe so they are not caught up in the conflict and killed

I think that’s a cynical view of things. The Ukrainian people have chosen to fight invasion by a strongman dictator/kleptocrat and overthrow of their democratically elected government. The right and ability to defend against this shouldn’t be limited to those countries which have adequate domestic arms manufacturing industries and means to defend themselves against much larger powers.

Part of the post WWII/Cold War order is that there is the idea and hope that the world will share moral outrage and uphold the rights of peoples to self determination, by force if necessary, regardless of said nations economic or military power.

Should we, as the US, be the sole arbiter of such things? No I don’t think so. But you can see the world is pretty united with Ukraine in its opposition to this invasion.

[CordMcNally]

From what I can tell, we are just giving them now. What I’m trying to say is that whether we support militarily or not shouldn’t be predicated on Ukraine’s ability to pay us. I don’t think that means we should permanently prop up the Ukraine military or NATO financially, but our emergency assistance will give some time to the rest of Europe to either intervene more or pull out all support. The middle ground of partial support with a diplomatic partition of eastern Ukraine then inevitable smoldering insurrection seems the least palatable of all.

From what I can tell, the US has been propping up NATO financially for some time. I don't know anything about this website but it has a nice graphic that I'll assume is accurate: NATO Defense Spending: How Much Does Each Country Contribute? (visualcapitalist.com)

The US accounts for 69% of all NATO defense spending in 2021. Why are we even in NATO if we're the ones providing a majority of the money?

The EU doesn't want to do anything. They can't even come to an agreement because several of their members are very reliant on Russian energy. NATO goes as the US goes.