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The Black Swans Have Landed In Ukraine

The uncertainty caused by the invasin of Crimea leaves everyone completley uncertain where this all goes

By Joel Ross | Updated on March 02, 2014

In the past I have sometimes referred to the black swans as circling and likely to land one of these days soon. They landed in Crimea. Many of you might say, what does this have to do with US real estate and me. The answer is a lot. The situation is one that is fraught with total uncertainty and could explode in unanticipated ways at any moment. Putin clearly understands he can do almost anything and Obama will do nothing that matters. Europe is standing around instead of screaming, as they have done until it was too late in 1914 and 1935. Putin probably hard a hard time not laughing when Obama said the US will not be part of planning meetings for the G8, like he is supposed to care. Reality is Obama has made it clear from the start in 2009 when he ended the missiles in Poland, pulled out of Iraq, lied about Benghazi and did nothing in Syria and when the Iranian people tried to rise up in 2009. Putin is as smart and tough as they come and he will play this to the hilt. As Gates said in his book, “I looked into his eyes and saw a cold blooded killer.”

We already have a very unstable middle east, a likely failure of the nuclear talks with Iran, most of our former allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, India, and Japan taking matters into their own hands because they think Obama does not have their back. The bad guys of Iran, Syria, China and Al Quaeda all see the weakness and take advantage. This is likely to only create more instability, risk and disruption for the world. None of this has a good result on economic growth. The last thing Europe needed was a war risk on its doorstep, and pressure from Putin to go along or lose the flow of gas. Uncertainty just ramped up dramatically and there is no way for anyone to predict what might happen over the next few weeks, which just ramps up uncertainty.

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