Russian lawmakers authorize Putin to use military force outside the country

[Labster]

-- I read a post from a Russian immigrant today, he says his friends in the navy are thinking of mutiny because rumor has it Russia is taking the whole crews of sailors off of ships and shipping them off to fight on land in Ukraine.
-- Russia is hiring 1000+ mercenaries to fight in Ukraine, on the theory that people paid to shoot guns may use them more than people conscripted to shoot guns.
-- Zelenskyy continues his quixotic attempt to get a no-fly zone over Ukraine.  NATO continues to turn it down due to their desire to keep radiation doses low in major cities.
-- Fiona Hill gives her assessment on WWIII to Politico.  She points out that Putin doesn't really understand why you'd have a weapon you could never use, like Novichok or nukes.  She's a really smart analyst of Russia, but she's deep in the US intelligence establishment, so take that into account as you read.

-- Facebook and Twitter banned in Russia.  They are so lucky over there.
-- Russia banned from Eurovision
-- Russia and Belarus banned from the Winter Paralympics going on now.  They've broken the Olympic truce twice in a decade now.  China's coverage of the games censors the part where people call for peace, which I don't know why they bother because no one watches the Paralympics.
-- Russia banned from international gymnastics
-- The Hermitage in Amsterdam breaks relations with Russia.  Honestly, the Dutch half of the museum with the guild hall portraits was more enjoyable to me than the Russian propaganda half, though it was kind of cool to see letters written by Tsar Nicholas II himself.

But enough about culture, let's get to the front lines of the war: stonks
-- The Moscow Stock Exchange has decided to take last week off. Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.
-- Russia's central bank doubles interest rates to 20%.  For comparison, most G7 countries still have interest rates below 1%.
-- Yandex is two days from bankruptcy.  Since NASDAQ halted trading of some Russian stocks, and the MSE hasn't had any trading at all, all of their debt becomes immediately convertible after the sixth day of no trading.  As a company incorporated in the Netherlands, listed in the US, primarily doing business in Russia, they are pretty boned.  With no SWIFT transfers from Russia, they only have enough to pay half of their debt.

-- Russia will no longer sell rocket engines to ULA and Northrup, adding, "Let them fly into space on their brooms."  Theoretically Bezos will build them now.
-- Oil hits $115.68 a barrel, the highest since 2008.
-- I bought gas today at $4.70 a gallon. In town it's about $5.15, but I went to Costco, where the lines were long.  Which is normal.  I talked the the county weights & measures guy a few years back and he told me Costco has to calibrate their pumps differently because the petrol never has long enough in the tank to cool to ground temperature.  I would be fairly unsurprised to see $6/gallon in the next few weeks.
-- Matt Levine pointed out that while most of the sanctions do not actually prohibit dealing with Russia, they do send the signal that dealing with Russia might be more trouble than it is worth.  So everyone is encouraged not to invest.

-- Veeeery quiiietly, the US is about rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran that it left under Trump. 
-- Vladimir Lenin said, "There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen."

--Ukraine has it's Eurosong entry, dropping in unnanounced with Bayraktar.

Bayraktar always is dropping in unannounced.

--The spectre of the Gulag looms once again - and already the talking heads are extolling the benefits it had for the zeks who were lucky enough to be sent to the archipelago

A new arrival to Gulag is asked: "What were you given 10 years for?"

"For nothing!"

"Don't lie to us here, now! Everybody knows 'for nothing' is 3 years."