Putin looking pretty puny at 9 dollars a barrel. Obama gets last laugh.
"You'll recall that three or four months ago, everybody in Washington was convinced that President Putin was a genius and he had outmanoeuvred all of us and he had bullied and strategised his way into expanding Russian power," he said.
"Today, I'd sense that at least outside of Russia, maybe some people are thinking what Putin did wasn't so smart."
Mr Obama argued that sanctions had made the Russian economy vulnerable to "inevitable" disruptions in oil price which, when they came, led to "enormous difficulties".
"The big advantage we have with Russia is we've got a dynamic, vital economy, and they don't," he said. "They rely on oil. We rely on oil and iPads and movies and you name it."
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-30629200
= new reply since forum marked as read
Happy New Year, arely!
The price was high because the producers could keep it high. Same for gas prices - because they could. Now there's a political reason for the tanking of oil prices. I believe that most fracking is for natural gas but I'm not certain about that.
One thing you can bet on is that the economic warfare against Russia is taken personally by the Russian people. Rightly so. It's so tragic because after the long years of the Soviet Union and the cold war, feelings were really positive toward America. No more. Russia bent over backwards, after the fall of the USSR, to play ball with the "world order", i.e., the Anglo-American controlled financial and trade system. They also scaled back tremendously in the military arena as a good faith measure. For that they got surrounded by NATO and saw Ukraine overthrown and the west backing actual fascists and Nazis! It cannot be understated how important that last part is to Russians who fought the Nazis on their own soil at a terrible price in Russian lives. All of the gestures of friendship and goodwill have been met with a giant knife in the back and brought back all of the worst memories of WWII.
Such insanity. I've cried about it many times 
One thing that really shocks me are the Europeans who are chomping at the bit for war. You'd think being the battleground for the first two would have taught them. Guess not.
"Moscow is financing legions of pro-Russia Internet commenters. But how much do they matter?"
"Russia's campaign to shape international opinion around its invasion of Ukraine has extended to recruiting and training a new cadre of online trolls that have been deployed to spread the Kremlin's message on the comments section of top American websites.
Except for a few remaining hardliners, I think they're just embarrassed, and not quite so "huge", but still "hilarious".
I hope that the derivatives don't 
but if they do, will the ones who cheer now, cheer then?
absolute ass--they're afraid to say so, but they'll think it.
I think Obama, without fanfare, without drama, and in a very calm, quiet, and subtle way, farted in Putin's general direction.
The guy on the left--a smart feller.
The guy on the right--a fart smeller.
