Hope you’re not one of the affected, are you?
My halted RSX short is a hedge for my halted long YNDX 
I knew the RSX risk and was fine with it getting halted if it came to that.
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Your money is not your own, lessons from seizure in a public morality crises, whether that’s Canadian Truckers or the Really Rich (“oligarchs”) from a country that just started an unpopular war.
The most stunning move by the US and its allies was cutting off the Russian central bank’s access to most of its $630 billion of foreign reserves. Without access, one wonders if these funds are really “its” reserves at all? What is ownership without access? No matter how justified that move might seem today, there’s no escaping that this action will reverberate for years to come
Another eyebrow-raising development is the US Department of Justice’s establishment of the ominously-named Task Force KleptoCapture, which has the stated intent of seizing (not freezing) the assets of Russian oligarchs
Western governments have a long history of trying to implement controversial policies by leaning on business leaders to do their dirty work for them – but these recent developments likely cause concern even among Western leaders
Along similar lines
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Background on the crisis
The Russian invasion of Ukraine resulted from two immense strategic blunders, Robert Service says. The first came on Nov. 10, when the U.S. and Ukraine signed a Charter on Strategic Partnership, which asserted America’s support for Kyiv’s right to pursue membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The pact made it likelier than ever that Ukraine would eventually join NATO—an intolerable prospect for Vladimir Putin. “It was the last straw,” Mr. Service says. Preparations immediately began for Russia’s so-called special military operation in Ukraine… The November agreement added heft to looser assurances Ukraine received at a NATO summit five months earlier that membership would be open to the country if it met the alliance’s criteria.
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I agree Soviets<->Afghans = Russia<->Ukraine
Calling out some of the US war mongering politicians
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I do, primarily for two reasons, both of which could be twisted into humanitarianism with enough pretzel dough.
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Food prices in this country will go sky high, as foreign countries compete for the smaller, Ukraineless wheat/grain pie. And don’t think the vegetarians will be the only ones harmed. Cattle eat a lot of grain.
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Lots of people will die directly due to lack of food (starvation), and the acrimony-leading-to-war over hunger will cause more death.
A report I heard this morning on the radio addressed this matter:
Report said wheat harvests in Canada, the USA, and Argentina are anticipated to make up for any shortfall owing to circumstances in Ukraine.
You know, we have a pretty darn good hemisphere here, and a really absolutely GREAT self sufficient continent . . . . especially if you include Greenland (rare earth metals).
There is not a lot of damage the remainder of the world can do to us if malign political forces here turn our hemisphere loose. Sadly that is not happening yet, but things are looking up. 
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There is so much demand for wheat that the WEAT etf ran out of shares to sell and had to suspend creation of new shares. This means it can trade at a premium, unlike usually.
The wheat futures market is no better, trading limit up for each day for a week now, meaning people are forbidden from bidding more than a given say +10% each day vs the prior, and when there are no seller at that price, no one can buy. Dumb rules.
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The gloves are off now :
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Agreed! I predict Putin will be dead by Thursday around lunch-time in Moscow. 
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Should read: Netflix suspends service for old people in Russia. Young people still watching through VPNs.
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I won’t pretend to understand all this, but it’s a macro take from some well known guy on how commodities are changing the way currencies are valued(?).
https://plus2.credit-suisse.com/shorturlpdf.html?v=4ZR9-WTBd-V (click More / pdf for all 4 pages)
On Putin’s popularity, rising in Russia while we talk about hopes for him to be kicked out. Doesn’t seem likely.
https://twitter.com/clintehrlich/status/1500996394659696640?s=21
Because Russians do not believe Putin was responsible for the war, they naturally do not blame him for sanctions.
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Nickel futures going nuts, triggering big margin calls. NILSY is the big Russian nickel company, but they’re halted so you can’t buy them.
https://twitter.com/methompson72/status/1501146856637751298?s=21
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The idea that Putin would be overthrown is probably mostly just wishful thinking.
He won the last election with 67% of the vote. So either he’s pretty popular in Russia really or he’s fraudulently controlling things. Either way the current war wouldn’t cause him to lose power.
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Nickel craziness. Levine is excellent as usual
One way to reduce this sort of pressure is to suspend some of the margin calls, which happened:
A unit of China Construction Bank Corp. was given additional time by the London Metal Exchange to pay hundreds of millions of dollars of margin calls it missed Monday amid an unprecedented spike in nickel prices, according to people familiar with the matter.
The reprieve from the LME means that the unit, called CCBI Global Markets, is not formally in default, the people said, asking not to be identified as the matter isn’t public.
Another, more drastic way to reduce this sort of pressure is to suspend nickel trading , which also happened:
The London Metal Exchange suspended trading in its nickel market after an unprecedented price spike left brokers struggling to pay margin calls against unprofitable short positions, in a massive squeeze that has embroiled the largest nickel producer as well as a major Chinese bank.
Nickel, used in stainless steel and electric-vehicle batteries, surged as much as 250% in two days to trade briefly above $100,000 a ton early Tuesday. The frenzied move – the largest-ever on the LME – came as investors and industrial users who had sold the metal scrambled to buy the contracts back after prices initially rallied on concerns about supplies from Russia.
A third, even more drastic way to reduce this sort of pressure is to retroactively suspend nickel trading, by canceling trades that already happened . That happened too; from the LME today:
The LME have been monitoring the impact on the LME market of the situation in Russia and the Ukraine, as well as the recent low-stock environment observed in various LME base metals. With immediate effect, and following the suspension of the LME Nickel market announced in Notice 22/052, the LME (acting where required through the Special Committee) has determined that it is appropriate in the circumstances to take the following actions in respect of physically settled Nickel Contracts: (i) cancel all trades executed on or after 00:00 UK time on 8 March 2022 in the inter-office market and on LMEselect until further notice (Affected Contracts); and (ii) defer delivery of all physically settled Nickel Contracts due for delivery on 9 March 2022 and any subsequent Prompt Date in relation to which delivery is not practicable (as determined by the LME and notified to the market) owing to a trading suspension in line with the process in this Notice.
Obviously that’s bad! You don’t want to break trades! The whole point of an exchange is that it is a transparent and predictable place to agree to trades. On the other hand if price moves are too wild, and if they are driven too much by margin calls, you’re going to blow up enough exchange participants to undermine predictability anyway. (If a lot of traders go bankrupt, it is hard to avoid breaking trades. If some of those traders are nickel producers , bankrupting them due to soaring nickel prices is an especially bad idea: You need them to make some more nickel!)
So you shut everything down for a while, including retroactively, and hope that everyone can get their financing in order to make for an orderly reopening. In theory, if the people caught in the short squeeze are in fact largely big nickel producers, this should work. If you’re a nickel producer your nickel should be worth more now, and probably someone will give you some money for it.[4]
Elsewhere a nickel (the U.S. 5-cent coin) now contains 4.7 cents’ worth of nickel and 3.9 cents’ worth of copper so, you know, get melting.
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The downside of financing airplanes… they can fly off to places you can’t repo them.
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Q is can they sustain themselves? Do they make their own “stuff” like China or is it true that they need to sell to survive like Saudi arabia?
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