Hey everyone me kevin here in this video i'm going to catch you up with what's going on in ukraine, including the latest on nuclear tensions towards the end of this uh live stream. We'll also see what u.s futures do are doing crypto market in reaction to some of the latest madness again, especially those nuclear tension. We'll also talk about what war means for the global economy, including the collapse of the russian ruble presently trading for 107 uh ruble per us dollar. That's nearly twice what it traded for in 2017, uh, which is sort of longer run average at around 70.

uh and 50 higher than what it was trading for just in the last of four months. What the federal reserve is planning on doing we'll talk about as well, and what central banks around the world may do are going to be important as well uh, so a lot to pay attention to going forward. Let's catch up on everything, that's going on quick note for private live streams with me and programs on building your wealth check out that coupon code expiring tomorrow, linked down below specific. Shout outs.

Excuse me to those of you who just signed up in the last couple hours here: emanuel kennedy brendan rake bob paul, christoph and rogario thanks so much all right. Folks, let's get into this so right now, we know that we have about 368 000 refugees that have traveled from ukraine uh out uh a lot of them fleeing to poland. We also know that we have some substantial death numbers now. Some of these still get unconfirmed, but the current estimates are that 352 civilians, including at least 14 children, have been killed in ukraine since the start of the russian invasion just last week.

This is according to ukraine's ministry of interior. Just today, they also report that they believe they have achieved 4 300. Russian kills the destruction of at least a 706 armored personnel carriers, 146 tanks, 46 aircraft and 26 helicopters. Unfortunately, with the tragedy of war can come a lot of collateral damage, including a missile strike that i'm about to show you and i'll describe a little bit about this, because there's a lot of confusion about specifically what's going on with what happened with this missile strike.

Now this happens very very quickly, so i'm going to quickly show you this just pay attention to this building right here and then i'll give a little bit of an explanation here. There you go uh and then we'll see from another angle, uh this missile strike as well by the way futures just opened and uh the nasdaq down; 3.2 s, p futures down two point: seven: four percent, dow futures down one point: seven four at least uh. Initially here so we'll see how uh uh this this evolves, but so far the market's not very happy, and it was kind of foreshadowed by cryptocurrency prices starting to rotate down but anyway. The problem, for example, with this missile strike, we just saw, is the the tragedy of war on the ukrainian side.

We hear ukraine saying this: is russia being indiscriminate they're, taking a siege mentality and they're? Just trying to attack us and shocking us out of cities and to give up? Putin has already called on individuals in ukraine just to give up uh. Unfortunately - and this is where the confusions come up - confusion regularly comes up in war. Unfortunately, russia responds and says no. This is actually an anti-aircraft missile that ukrainians fired at one of our aircrafts, but y'all missed and shot your own building problem.

Is it doesn't matter? Rockets are hitting residential buildings and it's a problem. This is a big issue. Now nobody died in that missile strike, which honestly was really remarkable. But a lot of folks in ukraine have gotten really good at being prepared, uh for being away from the outside walls of their homes, away from windows staying in interior hallways going underground, if possible, to try to evacuate from this kind of madness.

There are also a lot of calls for support to the ukrainian military. In fact, you've got britain and denmark supporting their citizens. Essentially saying: look if you want to travel to ukraine and support and join the movement, we support you doing that. So there's really become this united front around the world against the madness of what russia is doing, especially and we're seeing this uh in in the form of protests as well throughout, not just europe uh, including even madrid, but also uh in america.

Now we need to talk a little bit about what's going on with the nuclear crisis here. So a french president macron claims that moscow may be able to deploy nuclear arms in belarus and that moscow has essentially been given the green light to deploy nuclear armaments. There. Now this is a really big issue.

The last thing we want is nuclear provocations, in fact take a look at this or maybe not take a look at it. Take a listen to this. According to one report here, russian state media has stated quote our submarines alone. Can launch more than 500 nuclear warheads which guarantees the destruction of the united states and nato for good measure? Now, in response to this, the united states envoy to the united nations immediately urged russia to just tone down the dangerous rhetoric regarding nuclear weapons.

France has obviously responded to this in the last few days. Saying look, you know. We've got nukes too okay, putin. Of course uh has has been seen on tv talking about hey, well uh.

You know once i decide to launch you won't even have time to blink before you'll be destroyed uh. This is this classic kind of uh putin discussion here and relates, of course, to mutually assured destruction or mad, where essentially one side launches nukes. The other side launches nukes and everybody just dies uh. You know i.

I think this is really a lot of negotiating posture here, especially this idea of bringing nuclear weapons over to uh to belarus. But unfortunately, the ramping up of this rhetoric is is not a good thing. The putin himself says he doesn't like it, but then again he's also this sort of artful negotiator who likes to make other people feel like he's a loose cannon, the more and more in mainstream media. We hear people say that putin's just a loose cannon.

We have no idea what he's going to do next, the more he talks about this sort of madman style rhetoric, because it's very difficult to negotiate with a madman and actually believe a word that they're going to say now we'll talk about negotiations in just a moment, But it's worth noting that the economist believes that putin's nuclear sort of reactions here have uh have become a sign of really his failure in ukraine. That putin highly underestimated the resolve of ukrainians to stand behind their leader highly underestimated. The resolve of zielinski who's become a face of heroism during this madness and that really the more putin meets resistance in ukraine and the longer putin is resisted in ukraine. The more he's going to have to lash out because he's basically losing now uh.

This is potentially leading uh some individuals to say russia is likely to consider at least starting to attack more civilian targets. This is leading to renewed calls that civilians should leave. Oh at first, this is uh, leading to more calls that uh individuals should leave ukraine uh. Specifically, because if there is any kind of siege mentality that ends up being engaged in in ukraine, then uh, then the the amount of the death toll could be substantially worse in ukraine.

Now this is one thing that actually, if we look at the civilian death toll 352 civilians and 14, children is absolutely terrible and heartbreaking, but we we've got to be real. A p5 member of the u.n security council, russia uh with a you, know, over 1.4 trillion dollar gdp, sized inc economy uh. You know, that's that's somewhere! Around 15 of the us gdp can still inflict a whole lot of death if they really wanted to start indiscriminately. Shelling on cities, which that sort of siege mentality is being warned, and this is why a lot of folks are being asked to really if you haven't considered leaving yet consider leaving because russia is unlikely just to give up, is the argument now that they're likely to Just get more aggressive, in fact right now, uh, despite uh the potential for peace talks which we'll talk about in just a moment.

There is talk about a three and a half mile, long convoy of tanks, fuel trucks, shipments, armaments and artillery heading towards heave. Some say kiev by the way, i think that's more of the older version. Some say kiev either way now what's important here is that kiev and kargi both the second largest city of ukraine, both have really held back the russian advance. Russians have not been able to take control of the two largest cities in ukraine, especially with zielinski, providing uh an incredible resolve within ukraine, uh to to encourage folks to fight, but have been severely outnumbered severely out.

Armed ukrainians are crushing it they're, absolutely crushing it with their resolve to fight against the russians, and this is very good now. Some of their tactics do include guerrilla warfare style sort of response attacks, which you can't blame them at all. In fact, they're getting armed even more with missiles and rocket launchers and javelins and stinger missiles, which we'll talk about in just a moment to continue to repel the russians now uh. Regarding peace talks.

There is no date determined at the moment, but the kremlin has initially rejected the ukraine's offer for pro for peace talks in warsaw. So russia first said: hey: let's have peace talks in belarus. Zielinski understandably says: why would i go to hostile territory? Why would i go to belarus to negotiate with you? Russians? That's, basically, your territory, that's stupid and, quite frankly, it would be stupid because, in my opinion, one of the things that's holding together. The ukrainian resistance right now is zielinski's resolve and the fact that he's alive in the capital making selfie videos - this is really powerful.

It's so amazing, so the last thing we want is zielinski to get captured by the russians. That would be the worst case scenario because i do think resolve could get crushed in ukraine if that were to happen, so obviously silence is not going to go to belarus. So now there's talk about well, initially zelinski counter-offered and said: well, why don't you come to poland come to warsaw and uh will negotiate in in a neutral territory in warsaw to this, of course, putin's like we're not going to warsaw. That's you know, that's that's uh! That's essentially nato, that's essentially united states.

So now there's talk about, have finding a border location that is neutral right now the target is in the north. The ukrainian belarusian border near the river, according to sky news, uh precise time for the meeting was not uh, has not yet been indicated, but one of the most important things right now uh is that if a negotiation location is determined, both sides are going to want To make sure that planes, helicopters, missiles and really military units on both sides stay away from whatever potential neutral location they decide to negotiate in otherwise either side's, probably not going to believe the other side's good faith negotiation efforts. Now i doubt putin's gon na show up himself. I highly doubt that uh, you could almost guarantee that he will.

But the point is that there are tentative plans for uh peace negotiations, which is really good. Now on morale, which morale is so critical. We've heard confirmations of reports about the ghost of kiev: uh kicking butt uh. This is a mig jet fighter, potentially even in two on one fights beating russian warplanes.

I mean some of these. These are some incredible uh uh morale boosters. We saw snake island the morale boost of uh 13 ukrainians uh. It is supposedly saying f off to a uh to a russian uh warship but uh on morale.

Maria one of the largest cargo planes in the world has unfortunately been targeted by russia and its hangar has been bombed. This uh, it's honestly quite incredible, just to see how many even landing, how many wheels it has here, looks like it has seven to eight wheels on each side here, really incredible, but anyway uh triple jets on each side too. This is uh the only plane of its kind. The only plane that has ever been made of this size as a cargo plane and uh this plane has been damaged in a fire after artillery.

Has uh has hit this now uh. Regarding resistance, uh, look i want to be really clear about how vital it is to have a personality like zelinski and not just a personality, but really like the hero mentality of somebody like zelinski uh. We photographed uh inside keith, videoed in in uh in kiev, uh wearing a bulletproof vest standing with with the locals and the military, uh and and uh the civilians of uh key. This is this is so so important, he's being seen now as an international hero compared to gani from afghanistan, who bailed and was seen as an international embarrassment which quickly led to the morale collapse of whatever morale there even was in afghanistan and the almost instantaneous overrun Of um kabul by the taliban, now the united states recognizing the severity of the circumstances in ukraine has offered zielinski a uh, essentially evac evacuation out of kiev.

The united states has offered to extract zielinski from cave and he responded and said i don't need a ride. I need weapons uh really really empowering i mean you get chills uh for for thinking of this i mean the the locals in ukraine. Right now are actually collecting glass bottles. Can you wonder why people are collecting glass bottles because uh the locals uh? You could even see them coming here, bringing more glass bottles here.

The locals are using these uh so that everybody is armed with glass bottles to create molotov cocktails, which is where you fill them with a flammable and throw a rag in them a light. The rag on fire throw it, and then it's essentially an impromptu grenade that probably more so could be used against, like russian infantry, probably not too terribly useful against uh against armored vehicles, but maybe unarmored convoy. This this would be devastating for uh now. Another thing to know is that uh, the the weapons that the resistance has in ukraine well uh, is are nowhere near as uh as as impressive as what potentially the united states might have.

Individuals in ukraine are getting some substantial weapons that are quite modern and quite good, which is good. I mean the more we arm the resistance, the better, and this is exactly what europe and the west are doing, is they're arming the ukrainian resistance. For example, an rpg is an old-school style weapon. An rpg can launch a rocket rocket-propelled grenade, maybe 100 to 200 yards in a straight line against uh against, let's say a tank or a vehicle or whatever.

However, uh now we have these things called javelin anti-tank missiles. These devices cost about a hundred seventy five thousand dollars uh and essentially, you can target a tank from up to twenty five hundred meters away. That's just over 8 000 feet away and you can launch a missile. This is more than just a rocket that just goes in a straight line.

You can launch a missile uh to uh that could go as high as 175 feet into the sky and uh and destroy tanks or or armored personnel carriers. Every time the resistance in ukraine takes down one of the russian vehicles by the way, then, understandably, so it's kind of a drop-off of ammo and supplies. If you think about it, the more russia fails, the more russian ammo guns and, and who knows, leftover, body, armor or whatever can be used by individuals in ukraine. So the the more of these vehicles we could destroy uh in in a way where you could still salvage material from them.

Uh the more uh strong ironically, those in ukraine actually become, or maybe unironically anyway uh. Regarding weapons support coming from western countries, the eu has now, for the first time ever decided to provide fighter jets to ukraine uh via funding from brussels. The head of the eu. Now a lot of folks respond to this and say: oh, but where are they going to take from the russians? Are you know, fighting all the airports in that? Well, no they're, not fighting all of the airports.

The russians are failing, they're, getting repelled in a lot of areas. A lot of uh of jets can actually be taken off from roads that are still intact or highways or from nato bases in the west. So they're receiving this. This incredible support, which is just phenomenal.

Denmark is going to donate 2 700 anti-tank weapons. Sweden is sending 5 000 anti-tank weapons in addition to 5 000 helmets, 5 000 body shields and 135 000 field rations to ukraine, food water uh, which, by the way the more the russians the more the russians, spend time in ukraine, the more they run out of Food themselves, the more they run out of ammo right the longer this goes on the harder it is for russia. So far, russia has deployed about 150 000 of their troops into ukraine. This is way up from the first sort of 30 000 troop siege.

This is expected to be about two-thirds of the russian military, so there's still another third of russian military that could come in uh. Italy's foreign minister says that uh italy would immediately send a hundred million euros to ukraine. Germany is providing 500 stinger. These are surface-to-air missiles and 1 000 anti-tank weapons to ukraine as quickly as possible.

The eu for the first time is also financing the purchase and delivery of weapons for ukraine. I mean this is. This is really really incredible: sephora uh monetarily, the uk is sending 40 million dollars in uh in humanitarian aid, uh biden and uh in america we're setting 54 million in humanitarian, eight plus 600 million in immediate aid from the state uh to their state 350 million in Military funding bitcoin donations by the way you can now donate directly to the government of ukraine in bitcoin uh, in fact uh. If you want to see this for yourself uh, you can go to my like history on my twitter page at real meet kevin or you could navigate to this directly and the government of ukraine has provided their btc tether and ethereum wallet addresses for donations.

So far, they have collected four million dollars in donations and it's expected that this will rise. In fact, one of the replies was from the founder of polka dot and he said hey. If you post a polka dot address i'll, send you 5 million. I thought was like that was kind of like half marketing half like generous, because if you think about it, it's like dude just convert it to tether like get your act together and convert it to tether uh but uh.

So i i was a little like. I don't know if i should feel happy about that or, like i don't know like you know, but anyway, uh le so uh regarding uh social support. One thing that's interesting to note is the eu right now is: is evaluating three years of asylum for ukrainians in the european union. I thought mitt romney had a very uh interesting quote.

He says this is the greatest demonstration of good versus evil that we have seen in in really just decades. The united nations security council is calling for a special meeting of the general assembly, not just the security council, but the general assembly of the united nations within 24 hours. This is the first time in decades such a meeting has been called we'll see. Last week we had the meeting of the p5, the permanent five security members and the u.s security council.

Russia has veto power in this uh it which basically means even though the united nations security council said, hey russia. We want you out of ukraine, russia's, like yeah, we're vetoing that it's like okay, well, a lot of good that does anyway. Uh. Remember kiev under control, right now by ukraine, as well as car keith.

We got to talk now about oil, natural gas, the fed futures uh, how the market's starting to react to this and that uh. Let's talk a little bit about oil. We've got multiple reports already confirmed about uh explosions uh some areas about 18 miles south of kiev, where there are multiple oil tanks in storage areas and storage bases. Unfortunately, a lot of these have been attacked.

Uh ukrainian resistance forces and military forces are trying to attack russian pipelines. All of this is is obviously not great for economic purposes. In fact, you've got french authorities now saying their naval authorities have captured a cargo ship sailing in the english channel under a russian flag to start enforcing sanctions. So it's i mean commerce is just coming to a halt.

International trade is coming to a halt here in the uh us and and probably throughout the world. You now have calls to boycott russian vodka. I think it's really important to mention, though, that uh only about 1.2 percent of vodka in our world actually comes from russia. So uh i i would just be watchful of like boycotting all the russian al vodka, because you could actually be hurting uh manufacturers who are not from russia uh, but i expect that will happen anyway.

Turkey is now talking about uh. Well, okay, so so this thing with turkey has been very interesting uh and it's actually useful. I'm gon na i'm just gon na pull up google maps really quick, because it's quite it's quite useful, because you've got turkey uh to the east. You've got uh europe to the west and to the north you have crimea and then ukraine, let me pull it up.

Ukraine and uh. What's important here is the black sea. So let's pull up the black sea here, let's go, let's just go to uh. I don't know, can we just get to a regular map there we go so this makes it a little bit easier to see so here's istanbul, which is uh one of the, i think, one of the only places you actually have two continents that meet by land Uh but anyway, so here's, the black sea and the turkey was initially thanked by zielinski for apparently being willing to block russian warship access in the black sea, because turkey has a big naval presence here in the black sea.

A turkey initially said. No, that's not true. Don't get ahead of yourself, but now turkey has determined that no what's happening in ukraine is actually a war and as soon as the war declaration becomes active, it's a legal distinction for them. In of turkey.

Now they could potentially ban russian warships or potentially even trade ships in the black sea through strategic choke points that they set up. So again, imagine if you have turkish ships here or or even even along the region here, south of crimea and uh, you block uh. Russia's ability to essentially move from uh from the russian coast up to the ukrainian coast uh right here, so this black seas is pretty critical and getting this international support is quite wild. Uh and i mean i shouldn't say wild.

I mean it's really good. It's really important because ukraine is is getting screwed here. Uh i mean they. They really don't stand a chance against russia alone.

They need this kind of support. Uh you've also now got japan, uh japan, sending liquid natural gas uh tanker ships to uh the the european region to help offset some of the uh need for russian natural gas, which there's a lot to talk about regarding that uh. But we'll come back to that. In just a second first, i want to mention a couple other things, including a response to a request from ukraine to help provide internet access in ukraine, to which uh elon musk, responded and now said that starling has started uh offering internet service in uh in ukraine.

Now this is really important, because space-based uh internet is a lot harder to disrupt in war than like cell tower based systems. You know like 5g or whatever or uh or obviously wired, which i mean even if we just go to my twitter. Let's go to my twitter really quick here, uh, we go to my twitter over here and we go to my likes uh to hop over my profile likes on the right side. Remember i'm at really kevin on twitter.

Look at this video right here boom that that was actually a rocket hitting a telephone pole. So, even though i doubt that the point of that rocket was to hit a telephone pole, it didn't uh and that's what happens in war is. Is you know just to make this sort of relatable to the united states if a telephone pole goes out or down during war? It's kind of hard for a t, your spectrum or comcast yeah? Let's go fix it very difficult, uh and obviously uh free access to information is uh, vitally important, especially for for connecting and being aware of uh russian troop locations. One of the things that i think is really incredible is that there are actually a lot of individuals on twitter, posting, uh, geolocations, uh or whatever uh, to um.

To help basically show the uh resistance in ukraine hey. This is where the russian troops are now. This is where convoys are coming. All right here are the latest updates, whatever this is happening on telegram as well, uh and yeah.

There is regarding elon, musk and spacex talk about oh, but you need base stations to be able to capture this. Obviously, the expectations are that base stations will be shipped uh. You know, through through emergency efforts to ukraine uh this. This is coordination.

That is, is very, very common uh. So now uh, i do briefly. Oh yeah, look at this. Okay, here's another thing: uh talking about sort of just uh corporations getting involved here, youtube, which is where you're watching this video right now.

Obviously uh youtube says that it is taking several actions against russia. In response to all this drama uh i mean this incursion. I shouldn't say drama that uh that terribly under uh escalates. What this is this is this is a crisis uh in response to this crisis and war.

Youtube is now restricting access to russia. Today, russia today is a state-controlled television network in russia and they're. Restricting access to this in ukraine and the reason for youtube doing this is they're trying to essentially prevent russian propaganda from potentially reducing morale or distorting the truth in ukraine. Now youtube also says that it's pausing several russian channels ability to monetize on the platform, because there are a lot of russian-based uh youtube channels that make a lot of money from from youtube ad revenue and uh.

Then then, what do you end up? Having? Well, potentially, more pain for uh businesses or the wealthy in uh. Russia may be leading to more pressure against putin to stop this. This uh ridiculous uh atrocity now uh hospitals in ukraine right now are running dangerously low on oxygen supplies. The world health organization has warned this on sunday that there may only be about 24 hours of oxygen left.

There are currently 1700 patients being treated in ukraine right now for covet, for example, and oxygen is not just necessary for those, but also uh war, casualties or just quite frankly, other reasons you might be in the hospital uh by the way futures slightly recovering right. Now. Still uh, quite quite deep and red here in the united states at the top right here you can see the dow 30 down about 1.29 on futures s p down about 2.21 nasdaq down about 2.54, and we do now have small caps showing as well small caps. Usually delayed uh, they usually take about 10 minutes before we actually start getting their futures trading and those down now also about two percent uh.

Okay. So now uh regarding crypto briefly, and i do want to shout out ftx here - uh ftx - has a link down below right next to the programs on building your wealth and uh. Ftx is a phenomenal platform where you're able to purchase and sell cryptocurrencies uh, while using trading views, technical analysis, uh services here, which i think is incredible. I mean they have over 200 indicators here that you could use some incredibly powerful tools.

Uh and one of the things i really want to point out here is this rejection of bitcoin at uh 40. 000 early this morning, i woke up uh this morning and i saw this rejection at about 40 000 and i thought okay, what the more we have trouble passing uh. This 40 000 point the more of a potential issue we have shortly after this rejection. We did have a technical trade down and then, as soon as nuclear talks started escalating in ukraine, we started noticing this further sell-off, and so my expectation is, is actually the nuclear fears right now that are that we talked about earlier in this video that are creating A little bit more of an escalation of issues here, uh, let's see here russian central bank orders market players to reject foreign clients bids to sell russian securities.

Ah, russian russian central bank is trying to prevent the flight of capital, which is something that we also need to talk about. We'll talk about swift and the rupal and we're going to talk about the rupal in just one moment. Right after i mention a quick shout out for uh, shiva milos ethan tony emmanuel uh, all those of you who have joined uh, the actually all of y'all, the stocks and psychology of money group here within the last 20 to 30 minutes, with the exception of emmanuel Who also bundled up with uh the wealth course stocks and real estate? A triple bundle welcome aboard thanks so much for using that coupon code that expires tomorrow. Okay, we got ta talk about the ruble, so one of the things that's happening right now is being likened to potentially a bank run in russia.

Now this is really potentially devastating for the russian economy, because this is the kind of stuff that happens in depressions. I mean we're not talking about recessions now, which we will talk about recessions in just a moment, because we got to talk about the united states and europe, but the ruble uh is currently trading for about a hundred and seven rubles to dollar uh. This is a very sharp rise. I mean on friday trading closed at 84 rubles per dollar.

We were about 70 dollars before that about four months ago, so we're up about 50 over the last four months. So that means the russian currency has lost 50 percent of its value, essentially in in just uh in the last month here and uh. If we go back four years, you know back to 2017, we used to trade for somewhere around 50 rubles per dollar, but now because of this, this rampant devaluation of the russian currency, the ruble we are now seeing, what's being likened to a bank run, because what People are doing is first of all, they're worried about the stability of banks in russia. That banks are maybe going to run out of money.

Now the russian central bank says don't worry about it. We've got plenty of money, everything is okay and you know what usually happens when the when the government or central banks come out and say: everything's: okay, don't worry people, panic and freaking lose it. So we've got long atm lines throughout russia. It looks like there's: a bank run basically happening in in russia, and i think one of the reasons you're seeing this happen is because individuals are realizing that rupal is very quickly losing value.

So i think, folks in russia say uh, think hey, let's just withdraw our cash from the banks and go buy stuff, because the stuff is actually going to preserve our wealth more than ruble. That is like you're, better off going and buying a tv. That's maybe worth two thousand dollars now and i shouldn't say two thousand: that's a lot. This may be worth five hundred dollars now, let's say or an ipad, you know ipads and apple devices.

They tend to be a store of value, which sounds crazy. Let's use that as an analogy, let's say you go, buy an ipad for a thousand bucks. Well, you could probably still resell it for eight nine hundred dollars brand new, if not a thousand dollars in in you know a few weeks from now or a month from now or two months from now, whereas uh and maybe you lose, you know 10 15 or Whatever uh, whereas with the ruble uh, had you done nothing essentially over the weekend, your currency lost somewhere around 25 percent of its value. Just like that, it's insane! No, it's absolutely nuts, so uh it.

It there's no surprise to me that individuals are wanting to flee. Uh that uh uh that currency now uh also over the weekend, we had uh a uh. We essentially - and this was a big anticipated move. We saw russia and certain russian banks kicked out of swift.

This was something that initially, italy and germany were not on board with they did. They were not on board with banning uh uh, with with banning russian banks from swift. Now this has implications for the federal reserve as well, because now there's their thoughts that uh, oh uh, you know we might have to actually expand our balance sheet rather than contract our balance sheet. Because of what occurs when, when you know, banks are shut out of this banking system, but uh initially, germany, italy were not okay with kicking russian banks out of swift.

We also heard that jp, morgan and citibank were not okay with russia. Getting kicked out of swift, or at least certain banks uh other banks that didn't have as much international trade were okay with kicking russia out of swift, which kind of made folks wonder like uh. So are we um, you know, are jp morgan and citibank a little biased here, uh and there's always this concern that hey. If we kick russia out of swift, that which is all denominated in dollars that maybe an alternative to swift would end up popping up and that could actually then reduce the power of the dollar in the global economy.

Well, now a decision was made by western nations to finally exclude russian banks. Well, some of them the larger ones, from the swift messaging system. Now remember. This is responsible for like trillions of dollars of transactions between banks around the world, and this joint statement was made saturday.

The move has uh finally been approved by german uh by germany by italy, uh and banks within the united states now uh this. This won't immediately put the entire russian economy into shock, but it's definitely going to create a lot of issues: uh for banks, wire transfers, apple pay, google pay and so on and so forth. So definitely some issues here now one of the issues or one of the reasons oh uh hold on quick note here. It does look like there is now a note that uh, the fighter jets being delivered by the european union are now expected to uh arrive in ukraine within an hour uh.

So you can actually see a lot of the movements here developing in real time as weapons are being delivered to ukraine to continue to repel russia. Now russia is is very interesting because the european markets really only rely on on russia for about five percent of their exports. So it's not like germany and and uh. You know spain or the uk, or whatever, really need russia to send their products to.

It only makes up five percent of exports going from the eu to russia. That's that's. All i mean look, five percent is is a chunk. You know it's notable one in 20 right, but it's it's significantly smaller than the reverse.

The reverse is that urine european markets rely on about half of the natural gas supplies that they use from russia, and the flip side for products is also bad for europe. I'm sorry for russia. Russia relies on the eu to sell about 50 of their exports, so russia has natural gas hanging over our head. European markets do not need russia to sell their stuff to again.

Only five percent go into russia, but russia sells about half of their stuff to europe. So losing europe is really really bad for the russian uh consumers market, but also bad for europe. Regarding the uh, the natural gas situation now take a look at this. The european union together has a gdp.

That's about the size of america, the united states, the united states has a gdp of about 20, just over 21 trillion dollars the eu's sitting at about 17 trillion dollars. This collectively collectively the eu and russia sits about 1.45 trillion dollars. So a little less than one-tenth of the size of the eu, but again uh. The bigger issue is natural gas.

I'm going to give you some numbers here on natural gas. Listen to this spain and portugal not a big deal. They actually do not import natural gas from russia, belgium, france and netherlands. They import just under 10 of their natural gas from russia, italy and germany, import 40 for italy and 50 for germany percent of their natural gas from russia.

This is one of the reasons you saw resistance by italy and germany uh for from wanting to potentially kick russia out of swift. So you're like oh you know, that's that's a lot of uh, that's a lot of natural gas, so we might lose access to uh. Sixty percent of the natural gas that austria, hungaria hunger, hungaria hungary, uh slovenia and slovakia receive come from russia. 80 comes from poland, 100 uh or 80 of polish natural gas comes from russia, and 100 of natural gas used in bulgaria comes from russia, so you can see poland and bulgaria.

They've got a big reliance on natural gas from russia, and the eu has the capability, through their strategic gas reserves, to supply all of europe with enough gas until august, without having massive shortages. But they're probably going to have some big old contractions in in the availability of gas limits on the availability of gas and skyrocketing prices to sort of conserve, because we don't know how long this crisis is going to go on with uh russia. Now we can always try to ship natural gas via ship, but let me just give you a comparison if we use so remember the nord stream 2 we've got the north stream 1 and the north stream 2.. The nord 2 has the capacity of sending about 55 billion cubic meters uh, so cubic meter, i mean think about it, like that's, like 3 meters by 3 meters is probably the size of like a 10 by 10 room.

So if you're sitting in a 10 by 10 room picture that it's probably like a cubic meter uh, but anyway uh this, this natural gas, 55 billion uh cubic meters of natural gas, could flow through the north stream two per year. That has now been canned at least tentatively. Instead, europe is suggesting. Well maybe we can use uh liquid natural natural gas carrier ships to to transport more natural gas to europe, but i researched that there are only 642 natural gas carrier ships in the world.

Each ship has about an average capacity of about 125 cubic 125 000 cubic meters and uh. Each ship takes about 20 days per trip, so even if they did about 18 trips per year, the north stream 2 still has about 25 x. The global capacity of all of our ships together, like that pipeline, is huge uh for for a natural gas supply. So when japan says they're working on supplying liquid natural gas to europe, it's like yes, i mean thank you, but it's probably not going to help a lot anyway.

Now uh, we do have another note here. It looks like dad. Just came in here, oh hold on. It's a little unclear, no, no, never mind a little too unclear uh! Oh here we go uk's boris johnson tells ukraine's zielinski that he will do all he can do to help uh provide defense yeah! No! Okay! That's not that much of an update right now.

Just that the uh fighter jets are coming, but we already talked about that and that they're arriving within an hour, so we might actually start seeing pictures of those so uh. Then we have uh oil. Listen to this. So there are oil tankers that can supply oil to uh ukraine or to around the world and the ship owners who are who usually transport oil from russia to other parts of the world, usually charge about fourteen thousand dollars per day to transport oil, or at least That's what they were charging on friday now, because of hostilities at sea, the cost to transport oil per day has skyrocketed to 43 671 per day.

At the same time, the united kingdom is now considering banning russian ships from british ports. Now, let's talk a little bit about more damage to uh the economy and how integral ukraine really is to the world so uh, first uh, the eu is now considering banning russian planes from its airspace. This follows the united kingdom's government, who said that aeroflot is no longer accepted, uh or flights from aeroflot. The the russian airline are no longer being accepted in the uk.

In response to this, aeroflot is now refusing to fly to europe at all, so you're, starting to see travel really get restricted across the european uh and and russian uh airspace. Now uh british petroleum is dumping. Their 20 stake in rosneft, which is a russian oil producer. We believe that growth is likely to slow worldwide because of buildups of debt payment issues see there are a lot of companies that do business with russia and russia needs to pay those companies like if russia orders a bunch of stuff.

It's like hey here's our payment. Well, a lot of those payments may not end up coming in because it's hard for russia to do anything with their banking system right now, partially for getting kicked out of swift, but also because of sanctions. So this means creditors in in europe might be waiting for money from russia unable to get it. It also means that businesses in russia who need to get payments are not able to get payments so we're going to see a slowing in growth which was absolutely going to affect russia.

We could potentially see a depression in russia the longer this lasts. We could see a recession then spread to potentially europe, maybe even the united states, but i think less likely so the united states we'll talk more about that in just a moment. But let's talk a little bit more about some some of the damage here. There is talk that maybe russia and china will try to create some form of alternate swift system that we talked about.

Fedex and ups have suspended shipments into russia amid the country's invasion into ukraine, manufacturers of auto wiring systems and even seat manufacturers in ukraine, like wire, harness manufacturers. All this stuff, they're shutting down in ukraine, nestle has suspended operations in ukraine, uh, davidoff and philip morris. Cigarette makers have suspended operations in ukraine all of this stuff by the way, whether you like you know uh, you know, i don't know: sweet tea or cigarettes or wire systems for cars. All of this stuff affects spending and remember every dollar.

That's spent like your neighbor spending five dollars on some lipton iced tea, jug or whatever is five dollars. That's no longer circulating through the economy and thanks to the principle of the velocity of money, five dollars spent can translate to anywhere between 25 to 30 dollars of global gdp, because that five dollars goes from uh. The person who bought the jug of let's say i see uh to the manufacturer that the employees, the employees then go, buy their own iced tea and then the cycle continues and so and so forth. Right yogurt maker danon gets about five percent of its revenue from russia.

That's now affected eight breweries say they make up about ten percent of their revenue from russia. That's effective! A quarter of the parts that are used to make cars in russia come from around the world if russia can't get uh parts for their cars anymore uh. That means russian. Consumers are gon na, probably see skyrocketing prices for used cars in russia, russia's uh.

This is a tough one: russia's mmc norsk nickel pjsc. That's a company name! Okay, i'm not even going to try here anyway, they mine about 40 of the world's palladium uh, which is also used in things like catalytic converters for gas fuel cars, uh and uh, and you know if they essentially get iced. Well now we have 40 less access to palladium. This same company also mines about 11 of global nickel production, which is used in car batteries and around 4 of the world's cobalt, which is another ingredient for batteries and the harder it is for us to get our hands on nickel and cobalt.

The more likely we are to use iron lithium iron phosphate batteries, 90 of which are used in china, so like this war between russia and ukraine, actually increases the power china has over the ev market. Fortunately, tesla, for example, loves lithium iron phosphate batteries and their relationship with uh catl, for example, which is really close to giga shanghai anyway, 25 of vanadium, which is used in steel, making comes from russia which, if you ever want to see the cyber truck okay. The last thing you want are more delays with steel. Uh zielinski is now telling uh the prime minister of boris johnson for of the uk that the next 24 hours are going to be critical uh in in this uh in this war, going back to uh economic implications.

Here, russia and the ukraine - i shouldn't say the ukraine, sorry i've, it's russia and ukraine in case anybody's wondering the ukraine used to be what russians during the soviet area called the region of ukraine. It's like it's like saying the hinterlands like over there. You know uh. So so, if you ever hear, somebody say that it's politically correct today and it's proper today to say ukraine, not the ukraine uh, i 99 of the time.

I say that correctly, but i just slipped so i wanted to clarify that uh, okay, so russia and ukraine combined account for about one third of the world's wheat exports. Nineteen percent of its corn exports and eighty percent of the world's sunflower oil uh. And much of this ends up flowing through the black sea and a lot of those ports are currently closed, though we might not see other than in wheat futures trading. We might not actually see big moves of uh of of uh.

What's it called here, big moves of wheat prices yet uh because of uh wheat, wheat harvests usually being conducted in august. Germany has factories for cars that rely on a lot of parts in ukraine, and we've actually actually seen some factories shut down in ukraine. Titanium for aircrafts comes a lot of. It comes from ukraine.

Uh europe to asia. Trade becomes a lot harder without having the airspace of ukraine and russia, which is obviously very dangerous right now, and so this makes trade between europe and asia harder again an impact on global gdp, so people who are like, oh this, isn't going to affect the economy. Crazy, okay, like this, really affects the world economy. Anyway, over 90 percent of semiconductor-grade neon supplies come from ukraine, 35 of us palladium is sourced from russia, uh and much more okay.

I'm gon na stop with the list, though, because it's kind of exhausting anyway. The point is all this stuff could end up, leading to lower aggregate demand globally. Now, that's on one hand, a good sign for potentially limiting that wage price spiral which would lead the federal reserve to have to rug, pull us, because if we have a wage price spiral, the federal reserve is probably going to have to force a recession to prevent Out-Of-Control inflation and the way to prevent a wage price spiral is by lowering aggregate demand and what is a recession. A recession is a lowering of aggregate demand to where a year-over-year comparison puts you at a negative for two quarters in a row now uh.

There will, however, be some okay, i'm going to say hopefully transitory here, but there will be some, hopefully transitory, inflation, certainly in the energy sector and commodity sector, a sector. So the longer this war goes on, the more commodities could potentially go off in terms of pricing. At some point i do expect commodities will collapse uh in in pricing, so you got to be careful if you're using commodities to hedge your portfolio. I do think there will be a rapid collapse in commodity prices at some point.

So it's not something you really want to huddle uh, but anyway there will be some inflation, a lot of inflation, probably in energy prices and commodities. Again temporarily. This will include wheat uh, which you could actually there's an etf that invests in wheat and wheat related companies, and it's w-e-a-t, which i thought was kind of cool, because if you pronounce it it's wheat but there's the h missing anyway, aluminum nickel. These will all suffer.

Uh, the trade restrictions are going to reduce demand and international travel. Uh, obviously we'll see like here's something i think that's really important, uh a lot of folks. They they like to just summarize this and say that inflation is going to the moon. Inflation is a really an interesting beast because you have to look at a lot of parts of inflation and so, for example, if you draw a circle over here and you parse out, let's say energy and oil and then like commodities right.

We put that over here. Yeah, obviously, this is going to create some inflationary pressures, but other things that create inflationary pressures are obviously wages, but then also just like product prices, right product prices, uh and then ultimately, demand technically demand's, not part of the inflation calculus. But more demand leads to more uh, more inflation right. So when you talk about inflation, you kind of have to look at all of these pieces of the puzzle together and if demand goes down because there is fear, especially fear of nuclear conflict and people travel less or they say you know what.

Maybe we should consider saving up some more money, because we think gas and energy prices are going to go to the moon. Maybe now is not the time to travel. Maybe now is not the time to spend money. Maybe now is not the time to invest on a home, remodel or whatever the more we see that the more demand goes down, the more that wage price spiral goes down, which does not mean that wages go down.

It just means wage price increases. Don't keep going to the moon basically and that could potentially stabilize product prices and remember a stabilizing of product prices means that inflation uh stays uh stays constant rather than uh, rather than having this continued increase of uh inflationary costs or or prices so energy, and these Commodity prices, yeah they're at peace, but again if demand goes down then then maybe there's not as much of an inflationary risk and see this is this was an important prelude to what is the federal reserve going to do uh and i think that's pretty important, because Geopolitical risks create a lot of uncertainty. I believe that the federal reserve is likely to continue with about nine quarter basis, point hikes in a row: we've got uh, eight uh, sorry, seven meetings left by the federal reserve here in 2022 and then probably the first two meetings of 2023. We're going to see continued rate increases and that could get us to about 1.75 to about 2.25 on the fed funds rate, that's obviously up from zero.

It is possible that the economic issues that i've just described in relation to demand coming down will slow. The federal reserves need to be hawkish a lot. I really think it's unlikely. The federal reserve is going to go for any kind of shock and awe or aggressiveness in these massive times of uncertainty.

I think that that's not only highly unlikely, but i i think it's probably stupid, because the the uncertainties i've just described actually helped push inflation down and now you've got to be concerned that this crisis in ukraine and russia doesn't last so long that we get a Depression in russia and then a global recession, thereafter right, and so this is why i've been saying that the odds are we're going to see continued fear and uncertainty, create insane volatility in our stock market and just global markets in general, so fear of okay. We talked about induced savings. How savings might actually go up during this time as well, but uh. I think importantly, we've also got to remember that at the same time as people get fearful about potentially demand going down inflation going down in the federal reserve, maybe being a little bit less hawkish, but potentially even being too hawkish.

In fact, balance sheet runoff could be a little bit hard with russia being out of the swift banking system. I'm not exactly sure how those two could interlink. So i'm not going to try to explain that, but i know there are some implications here and some connections here that are going to create issues plus the risk factors that cyber attacks in the united states or in europe could continue to affect logistics and supply chains. It's quite likely that there'll be so much volatility in stock markets.

Then i can't say that anybody should make like huge all-in bets on the market just going to the moon uh. This is going to take a while. I i really believe that 2022 is, is just going to be a painful, a very complicated year and there's there's really no rush uh to get into the market now going forward. We've got to evaluate the following.

What if russia wins? You know if russia wins and we have this big uh power vacuum in ukraine, uh and and potentially counter sanctions by russia. Well now we have a european union and nato that has to fight russia, essentially at the doorstep of ukraine, and if belarus joins russia. Well now, we've got a substantially stronger russia, or at least larger russia, that's much closer to our european allies than ever before. We don't believe that russia has the capacity for occupying ukraine there'll be too much insurgency, but there's always the potential of uh once in the event that zielinski is captured and there's an overthrow and morale falls that people give up to some form of government to just End the fighting and end the death and end the destruction.

It can also embolden china in their attacks against or or aggression. I should say towards taiwan. So there's a lot a lot of uncertainty here now i don't believe uh and i i don't know, but i don't believe that russia is going to be successful in ukraine. I think we've got some incredible uh resistance and leadership in ukraine, but again all it would take, is potentially zielinski getting captured and that ends that support and morale ends, which is terrible or would be terrible.

Now it's worth noting that futures are a disaster in the united states. Uh we've got the dow down about 1.42 percent s p futures down 2.11 for the monday, opening nasdaq down 2.3 percent small caps down 2.18 uh crypto has not been faring much better. We've definitely had a reduction in crypto prices. Uh we've had a little bit of a stabilization here just in the last few hours here after a lot of these nuclear threats, remember check out ftx in the description down below for more information on on trading cryptocurrency on the ftx platform and also a shout out To shiva brandon and aaron, who all just joined the socks and psychology money group brandon actually joined the new course.

The path to wealth, your plan for higher net worth really really cool. That course is especially cool because it kind of combines uh principles from real estate. Investing and stock investing and trying to figure out how how to create a plan for yourself to build your wealth. More that's kind of neat, but so future's.

Obviously right here. Part of this reason that we have futures right here as well is also because we are seeing a little bit of a shock in oil prices. We go to the cnbc ticker here. Look at this folks, brent futures just jumped up to a hundred and three.

This is a substantial boost in what we've seen compared to the relaxation that we saw on friday on a friday, we saw relaxation of brent down to under uh 95 dollars, which was quite incredible, certainly under 96 and uh wti oil, which is the left one here. The u.s version this was down to about 92., so we've seen this sort of resurgence here now, as these nuclear talks have really amped up.