Winners
Refugee NGOs – Money will pour in, and if we calculate for their maliciousness, the money won’t go to war refugee programs but more barges for the Libyan human trafficking program.
Boomers – They get their Cold War programming activated for a baddie they have familiarity with and a solid opponent. It is a nation state and a long time opponent. This is comforting in the chaotic period of their sunset years.
Metals Miners – If the Russians embargo the West or the West ban Russian materials, good times ahead.
Losers
Commuters – Gas blowing through summer averages in March.
Third World Peasants – The few wealthy in the Third World will eat fine, but the elimination of agricultural exports from Russia and Ukraine will crush the peasants. Food inflation led to the Arab Spring. Could happen again.
Russian Artists – Some of the best artists in the world are being removed from galleries, book shelves, dance troupes and orchestras due to a psychotic hysteria.
Links
China has a more nuanced and complicated view of Russia than you may assume.
Fantastic read. Heroes rise, Monsters fall.
The American Sun 
The last few years feels like they want to crash the economy on purpose at this point. Nothing that is going on makes any sense from a realist perspective.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One interesting wrinkle with the Hertz thing is that these car rental places are franchisees. As with everything else, we’ll never get a demographic breakdown of which franchise holders are having the problems, but that information might be illuminating. Often a procedure gets handed down that isn’t clearly grasped, or is even applied selectively/maliciously. People are the weak link in any set of procedures…
LikeLike