By Maurizio Monti, Swiss Stock Exchange Institute
Bluffs that win or lose
It was early February, when I published an article where I was talking about a dear friend of American trader, who is also an international poker player.
Brilliant character, whose name I am not allowed to reveal, explained to me the vision she had of Putinassociating the image, in fact, to a poker player, who was aiming for a dangerous rise in the stakes.
On February 24, the day of the invasion ofUkrainewe realized that the stakes had risen a lot or that perhaps it had always been much higher than how almost the whole world had perceived it until then.
There Russia today has an internal social reality very different from Soviet Russia.
For some years he had given us the illusion of a progressive approach to our way of being, trying to combine his own Eurasian culture with the Western one.
The images of Putin with Bush of a certain era they looked like those of great friends from college.
For reasons that historians will investigate in due course and that we, today, find it rather difficult to understand, the Putin since then it has undergone a profound transformation over the years.
A very imaginative but suggestive hypothesis is that the Putin today is a different person than the Putin of that time: that is, that of today is a double, which has replaced the Putin since then, conveniently made to disappear because it has become too pro-Western.
The concrete proofs of this fantasy are very uncertain: but the very existence of this hypothesis manifests the perception of a figure who has greatly changed his characteristics and his way of thinking over the years.
One thing is certain: the foreign policy of the Russia today looks much more like that of the Russia Sovietwhich not to what for some time we had deluded ourselves that it could be or at least become over time.
And so let’s go back to the poker player.
There Soviet Russia she has always been a skilled poker player, showing muscle and power: let’s not forget that Communist Russia it has imploded on itself, on an economic system that is impossible to make exist and to govern. In the end it was a huge bluff.
Obviously, he is a poker player who has some good cards: the nuclear weapon.
Not many Italian newspapers have given the news that Russian TV, just this week, illustrated a simulation of a launch of Sarmat nuclear missiles on London or Berlin, from the base of Kaliningrad, specifying that the same two cities would disappear, respectively in 202 and 106 seconds. There was no specification in how many seconds later Moscow and the Kaliningrad base would disappear and, subsequently, a large part of the world.
This is the way to play poker. Flexing your muscles, in a cold way, making you think you have a royal flush in your hand, and trying to imply that your opponent, with his four aces, would lose anyway.
The skill of the West now must be to know how to compete with a poker player.
With the serene lucid and determined awareness that there is a poker player there, that he will remain so until he is forced by his own madness not to be discovered as such.
On 9 May next, on the occasion of the grandiose military parade, probably, the poker player will have to uncover a couple of cards with his people, declaring that the police operation has become a war, as in reality it always has been. The prolongation of the conflict puts him in a position not to be able to do without it.
Obviously, the poker player declares that he is not the one declaring war, but there is a ready list of guilty attackers. Since the Ukrainian Nazis are no longer enough, here are the new offenders, NATO, the United States, the European Union and the “hostile countries“.
He would have gladly done without having to reveal a couple of cards he had in his hand, he wanted to play them differently: not everything always goes the right way. But NATO’s “proxy war” will be an excellent argument to support yet another pure Soviet-branded bluff against its people.
With respect to the outside world, the very fact of remembering the nuclear war and the arsenal at its disposal, serves to feed the tension towards the adversary: adversary judged weak and incapable of adequate reaction, because now mollified in the well-being and comforts of capitalism where it has settled for decades and to which it is not considered capable to give up.
This last aspect is moreover amply demonstrated: in fact in Ukraine, the opponent tries to help the Ukrainians, but does not intervene directly. And this, in the mind of the poker player, supports even more the low consideration he has of the opponent: inept, softened and sunk in the comfort of him, which prevents him from feeling “soldier”And take up arms in first person.
So, as with the invasion ofAfghanistan or with the tanks sent to Hungary in 1956 or those that arrived at Wenceslas Square in Prague in 1969 … the West condemns, perhaps reacts, finances the resistance … but that mass of weaklings, in the mind of the poker player, does not intervene. allows him to carry out his plans. He moves the Red Army, the others don’t.
Sure, Prague in 1969 and Budapest in 1956 were already in the Soviet area (not 1980 Afghanistan though), and, formally, not Ukraine. But what matters is that Ukraine was still, in fact, a land of possible conquest.
In the end, will there be nuclear war?
The world is obviously taking risks, just talking about it indicates a high level of risk. And keeping your nerve on this side won’t be easy.
It is unlikely that Putin press the nuclear button. The great Soviet bluff, sooner or later, will prove to be what it is: a great immense bluff, very dangerous, but a bluff.
Ideas win wars. Not weapons, not soldiers, not armaments. And ideas based on bluffs… vanish like snow in the sun. As in 1989: a gigantic bluff that will implode on itself. Of course, it seems impossible to us, even in 1989 it seemed so.
How much damage will we get from all of this? Not big, but huge, we are already paying them and will pay them again.
If you think it’s the fault of Putin, the United States, NATO or whoever you want, it doesn’t matter. The bill to be paid will be high, from all points of view and it will count for little who is to blame, also because, in essence, we will not be able to do anything about it.
Where will the markets go? To look for a support from which to start again. In the meantime, they will do what we have seen in recent weeks, typical bear market behavior: rapid rebounds, even significant ones, and progressive lunges …
The difficult thing is to understand where it ends, usually it ends with a very strong, stronger lunge and sometimes, hopefully not, catastrophic, the televisions they talk about it (good sign: on the news yesterday there were thuds of Amazon and Apple) and we return with great caution to buy back.
It seems that fear, this time, must go underground to make greed return to see the stars again. We will see to what extent.
Maurizio Monti
publisher
Swiss Stock Exchange Institute
PS: That of the stone and the slingshot. He is the “man of my time” by the unforgettable Salvatore Quasimodo. I fear he is the man of “all times”.
Despite everything, man’s fortunes remain magnificent and progressive: slowly, we will learn.
In this, the markets have a lot to teach us: we separate the cynical part, unworthy of human nature, but we learn realism, we look at the charts, we study the techniques, we use the strategies that win. In a word, we win that continuous challenge in poker, where bluffs come immediately to the surface and the cards must be really good … or it is better not to play.
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