50 Comments

Ukraine was never America's to lose, and your ridiculous typification of a Putin ready to trigger nuclear meltdowns underlines the utter silliness of this analysis. Go and do some actual real research on Put-on, Ukraine and Russia's security interests. Then maybe, you will be able to overcome your biases to accept that Ukraine os the Russian equivalent of Canada or Mexico. The US should GTFO before it starts a world war through its aggression.

Expand full comment

Larry, Larry, Larry - please stick to helping people with Social Security! Your political comments are not what we signed up for. As well, they are off base and offensive. Donald Trump's "Russian Collusion" was a lie concocted by the HRC campaign and pushed by corrupt officials in the White House, CIA, and FBI. It was an attack on American "democracy" and our electoral process. The benefactor of that hoax, Mr. Biden, has done immense harm to this nation and its future. That is an iceberg we are sailing into and we desperately need a new captain!

Expand full comment
author

He immediately publicly ridiculed NATO. Nothing wrong pushing for more money from our partners, but not in the manner he did so. He publicly undermined our security services claiming he believed Putin over them. He opposed sanctions on Russia. He never publicly criticized Putin despite his being a clear murderer. And the list goes on. What do you like about Trump? Re Biden, I agree, Biden should have set dark red lines from the get go. It's his war to lose. That's clear from what I wrote. best and let's keep discussing, Larry

Expand full comment

This is an unhinged recommendation to start nuclear war?

...I LIKE it!

Expand full comment

You're a fucking idiot my dude

Expand full comment

Larry, you're a brilliant economist and as such you should stay clear of politics. You have just lowered yourself to the senseless and uninformed partisan left! Typical academic!

Expand full comment

Zelensky needs to surrender. Half the country is Russian Ukrainian - the eastern portion. If they want independence that’s fine.

Expand full comment

Please clarify what Trump did or did not do that makes you think he is Putin’s lapdog? This war started due to weakness on the Biden admin not Trump! Where is the UN or NATO or WEP, or pick a letter.

Expand full comment

You are completely batshit insane, you know that?

I understand that you support the ideal that all men are cremated equal, but I do not want to glow in the dark.

Expand full comment

Help me understand why you think Trump is a traitor and Biden isn't. Gas prices? Selling oil to China? Inflation? Taxes? Market value? America first? Trump is a capitalist. Biden is a hapless politician (at best)

Expand full comment
Aug 3, 2022·edited Aug 3, 2022

Hey Larry, sorry for upsetting your feelings, but facts remain facts, no matter what you or your handlers say in the demo controlled media.

Just sad to see a brilliant economist turned into a puppet for extreme left, and taking my rep,y down.

This is the way commie media operates in your beloved ukraine

I'd stay with the Social Security topic.

Thank you, and hope your goons will not take down this post.

Expand full comment

Stick to economics. Ukraine is irrelevant, or rather no more “strategic” than Moldova and Belarus, which we allow Russia to dominate or neuter, despite both bordering NATO, and somehow this isn’t an existential threat.

Sure I would love to see the Ukrainians fight the Russians to a standstill and retake Kherson and that whole bank of the River, but I am not willing to risk my children’s lives to make that happen. If the EU wants to take on Russia, have it.

Here is an alternative history. If the Trump family got rich off Ukraine and Ukraine was participating/cooperating in an impeachment of Joe Biden, would Ukraine be the world’s darling right now?

Expand full comment

Larry, as much as I respect your past work in the field of Social Security, you should stick with it.

This articl of yours is a socialists-Democrat propaganda, and garbage based on no factual information why Putin went in. I am not going into it now, but approach it from your ethnic ancestry. You should be ashamed protecting nazi- ukranians. Here is why. (I wrote this article for a Jewish demo publication back in March of this year),

March, 2022

The ukrainians is the only European people who had NEVER admitted, repented or apologized for killing the Jews.

The most vicious guards of Auschwitz were the ukrainians.

They also eagerly rounded up, transported and killed innocents in Babin Yar.

All of these facts are widely documented by the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum, in Nuremberg trials papers, Auschwitz memorial museum, and many other Holocaust museums in the US and Europe.

Given a chance, they would do it today again.

Forget about Israel.

Never in their miserable history they expressed support for tiny Israel.

In all their votes through their voting history at UN did they ever support Israel?

Meanwhile, that clown they call president had guts to blame Israel for not doing much in their support.

Or another fact comes to mind. Remember the gas chambers of the concentration camps the germans used so efficiently. They field-tried them in ukraine first when they used trucks with exhaust pipes rigged inside the box. Guess who herded the poor victims inside, and washed the trucks after for the next load of innocents...

What was the Jewish life worth through all ukranian miserable history?

Are ukranians going to give back our land? our personal belongings? How many of them are living in stolen homes? How many of them having stolen property in their homes? What was a Jewish life worth?

Are they going to pay for that too? Nope? They are not forgiven, at least not by me.

STUDY YOUR HISTORY, PLEASE.

(lower case letters are used intentionally)

Expand full comment

Ukrainian accession to NATO as it’s at war while directly threatening the Russian leadership would be extremely dangerously. The Russians could as easily destroy Washington D.C., New York, Kiev, London, and Berlin as the US could vaporize Russian cities, so what’s the point of making belligerent threats? And why would the Russians have the slightest interest in negotiating a “lease” of Crimea after annexing it years ago following broad approval by referenda of the people living there? Short of nuclear war, there is no credible threat the US has to force such negotiations.

The EU has damaged its economies with its own sanctions, NATO has lost credibility, the US has lost its proxy war in Ukraine, and Ukraine has lost the Donbass. That’s reality, and threatening or even using nuclear weapons is not going to improve it.

Expand full comment

Biden has already lost the mid terms and has nothing to do with Ukraine. It has every thing to do with his lack of economic policies that put the poor and middle class above short term corp profits.

So the urgency in Ukraine should be around preserving NATO, in my view. I am 100% certain the Pentagon has evaluated solutions similar to Prof Kotlikoff's. My guess is that they have rejected it because of how much it increases the chances of a nuclear war..

Putin, does not appear to know 'exactly' what he is doing as he did not anticipate this level of economic sanctions or of resistance from the Ukrainians. That makes him more desperate and less likely to act rationally...

Expand full comment

I share your wariness and your support for Ukraine, but I think Ukraine as an uninhabitable wasteland might be at best an extreme fallback position for Putin. IMO his No. 1 preference would be for Ukraine as another Belarus -- something he almost had with Yanukovych.

Expand full comment