Jeff Snyder

I think that's the carrot and the stick, right?

The carrot has always been stop the war in Ukraine and join us and let's do a lot of business.

We'll buy all your oil again.

The stick is we're going to slowly strangle you and there's nothing you can do about it.

I think the goal here for Putin, what he really cares about is remaining as president of Russia.

So if Trump can undermine his power base, he ends up like Maduro.

I mean, what else is he doing right now?

I think what Burry said, it's not about oil here, at least in this one respect.

What he said was that through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has lent billions of dollars all over the world.

And with Venezuela, it was collateralized by Venezuelan oil.

Trump just took their collateral, which means those loans are worthless.

Because let's face it, Venezuela is not going to pay them back.

And China knew that when they extended the loans.

That's what China does.

It extends loans to these countries that they know that they can't pay back, intending to either take the oil as the collateral or some other form of collateral, usually it's facilities like a railroad or a dam or some kind of mine.

So what Trump said is, OK, I see your Belt and Road Initiative, and I'm going to take the initiative and take the collateral right off the board, which makes that loan and your entire effort in Venezuela worthless.

Again, it's a piece on the chessboard that it's a pretty damn big one.

I think he realizes that this is Cold War II.

Let's be honest about this.

China is not a strategic rival or whatever they call it.