"[Y]ou can tell that Joe Biden thinks his presidency is going swimmingly. His words weren't defensive. They were triumphalist. He even seemed to promise he would bring the opioid epidemic to an end and, for good measure, would also end cancer 'as we know it.'

"The immodesty of these ambitions, as we stumble out of the COVID era into an uncertain future in which the dollars in our pocket are worth less every week while Europe faces a continental war and a potential refugee flood of colossal size, had a somewhat delusional aspect.

"We're in an unprecedented crisis abroad, following our unprecedented health crisis over the past two years and an inflationary spiral we haven't seen the like of in four decades.

"Maybe we should, you know, focus on those things."

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"Free-world financial sanctions are hitting Russia hard, but the best long-term way to pull Vladimir Putin's teeth remains more rational energy policies, in the United States and across the West.

"The ruble tanked Monday, and Russia's stock market didn't even open. All in reaction to the far tougher sanctions the West announced Sunday -- drastic measures inspired by the brutality of Putin's invasion and Ukriane's heroic resistance.

"Yet it's not enough: Putin's regime gets much of the wealth that funds its military from energy sales. And he uses energy as a weapon, blackmailing Europe in particular. ...

"But America needs to do its part. That means abandoning Democrats' short-sighted efforts to strangle the US energy sector, which is producing 1.2 million fewer barrels a day in oil than it did at peak under the last president.

"As Steve Moore notes for The Post, with oil at $100 a barrel, that's $120 million in lost US income every day.

"It also leaves us importing from Russia -- and forced to turn to also-tyrannical regimes in Venezuela or Iran if we boycott the warmonger."

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"Vladimir Putin just achieved the impossible: genuine European unity.

"The Russian president's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine has united Europe and the transatlantic sphere like nothing since the fall of the Berlin Wall, as even his erstwhile allies on the Continent abandoned him over the weekend.

"From Sofia to Stockholm, Europe's internal divisions over how to react to Putin's aggression have melted away in recent days as the historic dimensions of the invasion -- the greatest challenge to the West's security architecture in decades -- sank in.

"As images of Russian tanks rolling over the Ukrainian border and families huddled in subway stations filled the airwaves, concerns in national capitals about the local impact of tougher measures, such as barring Russian banks from SWIFT (a linchpin of the global interbank payment infrastructure), gave way to a shared resolve to do whatever it takes to halt Putin in his tracks. ...

"Even as events in Ukraine force the West to question its own strategic and political shibboleths, it is the man who set it all in motion who is likely to experience the rudest awakening. Putin clearly believed he could drive a wedge through Europe with the invasion -- as he has done with success on other fronts over the years.

"But this time, instead of dividing and ruling, the Russian leader has inadvertently created the greatest challenge to his hegemony he has ever faced -- a united Continent."

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"The Western sanctions response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine is already wobbling.

"In an uncertain press conference performance, President Joe Biden refused to announce sanctions on Vladimir Putin's person and failed to answer repeated questions as to why he was not doing so.

"Concerned about U.S. energy prices, Biden also pledged that new sanctions would not target the Russian energy industry. Yet, considering that the Russian energy industry is the overwhelming centerpiece of its economy, Biden's decision to shield that industry from sanctions represents a huge win for Putin. The undeniable link between Biden's heavy regulation of domestic energy production and foreign policy weakness is on full display. Biden's publicly emphasized desire to shield Russian energy interests will also encourage Putin to unleash his semi-deniable cyberoffensive actors against the U.S. energy industry.

"That wasn't the only problem with Biden's statement."

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"Vladimir Putin has declared WAR on Ukraine and unleashed his terrifying arsenal with a full scale assault on the country - plunging Europe into a bloody new crisis.

"The tyrant declared a 'special military operation' in Ukraine with a dawn raid after months of amassing his forces on the border and brazenly lying to the world about his plans to invade.

"The world is waking up to what could the most horrific crisis since World War 2 as Putin seeks to tear down the world order."

"The Biden administration brought economic sanctions to a gunfight...

"One of the problems with using economic sanctions as your primary tool of deterrence in foreign policy is that eventually you'll run into a hostile foe or force that does not care about trading with the U.S. or even money at all. In fact, it is fair to wonder how much money motivates any of America's current foes.

"The Taliban certainly don't particularly care about money; they think they're on a mission from Allah. Iran has been hit with just about every sanction in the book, and no doubt it's had an impact on the Iranian economy, but the mullahs don't seem to care much. Kim Jong-un and the North Korean regime have been sanctioned many, many times, and they just keep getting better and better at evading them. The U.S. and China are too economically intertwined to easily enact sanctions that are serious enough to alter the decision-making in Beijing.

"And then there's Vladimir Putin's Russia -- a government that foresaw the types of moves the West was likely to make, and prepared accordingly..."

"The Ukraine crisis has entered a phase of maximum danger. In an address to the nation Monday night, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the recognition of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of eastern Ukraine as independent states. ...

"The coming weeks will serve as a foreign-policy test of the Biden administration rivaled only by the August withdrawal from Afghanistan. If it is to emerge successful, the White House must embrace two simple but essential truths of Russia policy: Putin is in conflict with us, and he only respects strength.

"While the United States talks of off-ramps, de-escalation and the path of diplomacy, Putin is prosecuting a multifaceted war against the West. He announced his hostility at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 and opened the conflict with a major cyberattack against Estonia later that year. After the subsequent invasion of Georgia, annexation of Crimea, conflict in Donbass, intervention in Syria, blockade of Ukraine, hybrid attacks across the West, including the use of chemical weapons in assassination operations in the United Kingdom, and now recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk, it is beyond time for the West to abandon hopes for partnership. ...

"During Monday's meeting of the Security Council of Russia, its deputy chairman, former President Dmitry Medvedev, observed that Russia's invasion of Georgia, which also included the recognition of two provinces, led to no firm response from the West. The lesson, he concluded, is that the West will once again stand by, since 'Russia is more important than Ukraine.' It's time for the Biden administration to prove otherwise."

"The number of House Democrats not seeking reelection this year has hit a 30-year high -- a bleak benchmark reflecting frustrations with the gridlock on Capitol Hill, the toxicity of relations between the parties and the challenges facing Democrats as they fight to keep their slim majority in the lower chamber.

"Rep. Kathleen Rice's (D-N.Y.) announcement this week that she won't run again made her the 30th House Democrat to call it quits. That's the most for the party since 1992, when 41 House Democrats decided to retire even as voters were sending their presidential nominee, Bill Clinton, to the White House.

"It marks just the third time since 1978 that either party has seen at least 30 retirements in a single cycle, according to figures tallied by the non-partisan Brookings Institution. The last instance was just four years ago, in the 2018 midterms, when 34 House Republicans made for the exits. It was a grim sign of things to come: The GOP went on to lose 41 seats -- and the House majority -- in a Democratic wave widely viewed as a referendum on then-President Trump.

"This year, it's President Biden's Democrats who face the difficult terrain. Between Biden's sagging approval ratings, a stalled policy agenda in Congress, nationwide redistricting and the historical trend that the incumbent president's party tends to lose seats in midterm elections, the odds of winning the House are increasingly in the Republicans' favor."

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"Home mortgage rates continue to climb upward, and the average 30-year fixed-rate is now approaching 4% according to the latest data from Freddie Mac.

"The organization's Primary Mortgage Market Survey for this week shows the average rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hit 3.92%, up from 3.69% last week. The average rate for the same product a year ago was at 2.81%.

"'Mortgage rates jumped again due to high inflation and stronger than expected consumer spending,' Freddie Mac's chief economist, Sam Khater, said in a statement. 'The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is nearing four percent, reaching highs we have not seen since May 2019.'"

"In an exclusive interview Wednesday with Yahoo Finance Editor-in-Chief Andy Serwer, legendary investor Charlie Munger weighed in on the high stakes of soaring inflation in the United States.

"Citing examples from the Roman Republic to Adolf Hitler to Latin America, Munger said, 'Inflation is a very serious subject, you could argue it is the way democracies die.'

"He notes that it was after of years of inflation when 'eventually the whole damn Roman Empire collapsed, so [the current situation] is the biggest long-range danger we have, apart from nuclear war.'

"The recent Consumer Price Index (CPI) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics found U.S. inflation accelerating in January at its highest rate in 40 years, with prices rising across a wide range of goods and services. The 7.5% annual gain in January -- driven by high demand and lingering shortages from supply chain disruptions -- was a jump from the 7.0% year-over-year increase seen in December's number."

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