Sarah Paine

Unless we do a nuclear war, then we might finish all of ourselves off.

Oh, I never said it would do that.

It's a question of if Putin feels that his back is up against the wall, it's what price.

We don't really know the terms of their trade on what are the real energy prices that China's paying for all of this.

I don't know.

Maybe some people do know, but I suspect that whatever the terms of trade are going to be, the Chinese are going to get a really good deal.

And then if Putin is really... In fact, if you look at what happened to Gorbachev at the very end of the Cold War...

So his internal situation, it's not he's not going to war with anyone, but his internal situation is devolving so rapidly because their economy collapses.

He's already got no lousy oil prices.

But in addition, he is so upset the centralized planning problem.

so that revenues are just collapsing around him.

And he's about to be thrown out of power.

And so he is desperate for the kind of loans that the Germans in particular are willing to give him.

in order to get not only Germany reunited, but West Germany stays in NATO.

Oh, and the next thing is East Germany is going to be in NATO too, and then NATO can have whoever.

Those things are trades he never would have made, ever.

But he's so desperate.

So in that case, the West doesn't like to pay people.

So instead of paying them a low price, the West is paying them a high price to back off.

In China, I suspect it'll be the opposite.