Posted on 05/08/2022 11:25:12 PM PDT by ganeemead
Hopefully this little shock to the system will change some minds. Green obsession suddenly isnt as important as reality.
That’s not due to the war, rather due to the trade issues with Brexit
Oh, for crap sake.
They’re still importing Russian stuff.
Including energy products.
Makes it worse for the Russian business climate. And that applies to everyone on earth, including Russians. Why would any Russian want to invest in Russia with such uncertainty? Capital flight is just going to get worse, or spare money is going to go into stores of value and not productive assets. There is no good that can come of this, for Russia. It simply isnt worthwhile to put up with such political risk premiums.
Not to mention cutting itself off from the best markets on Earth. It doesnt matter what you produce; the rarest thing in business under almost all circumstances are customers. Markets are more precious than any commodities.
I have seen several countries suffering from such self-destructive autarkic whims. The results are always bad, and even if a reform government takes over it can take decades to recover.
” Russia is so close to self-sufficient that it can survive without anything from anybody.”
This author clearly doesn’t realize that most years Russia is one of the world’s largest food importers. A mild drought on the steppes and Russian grain supplies collapse.
As to business climate I understand your point. Sort of like buying energy products from Russia which has kept the proceeds of your payments to them in your banks and then you steal it...$285 billion. Kind of kills confidence...:-)
Articles recently about China working with financial groups to move China’s money out of the grasp of the West. Kind of hard to maintain “currency reserve” and “petro dollar” status when you steal from your customers. Everybody that can will redirect their financial resources after this disastrous Western move.
But, the most important response to your points is that Russia has permanently divorced from the West and all that is left is “negotiating over the children” (this comes from The Duran.)
The media has buried the very important story about what has been going on behind the scenes world wide. Most of the world no longer wants the U.S. to have free world hegemony. Countries outside of the NATO block are forming new power blocks...BRICS, etc. A West vs. East division is developing.
Interesting side note: They had begun these new alliances after the global economic crises and had begun to have yearly meetings. They suspended those meetings once Trump was elected and then restarted them when he lost in 2020 and Biden was elected.
I strongly recommend reading
https://www.voltairenet.org/article216524.html
The end of Western domination
by Thierry Meyssan
The Western sanctions against Russia, decided unilaterally by Washington, are presented as a just punishment for the aggression against Ukraine. But, without mentioning their illegality under international law, everyone can see that they do not reach their target. In practice, the United States is isolating the West in the hope of maintaining its hegemony over its allies.
It’s painful, but so useful to get a more realistic picture of what is really going on.
Buckle up, we are in for a rough ride.
Vastly premature.
Maybe when China’s per capita consumption doubles. And the long march there has run into inherent roadblocks it seems.
As for the rest, they are hugely dependent on western makets and arent going to replace them with home consumption anytime soon.
The wealth difference between the west and the rest is extreme. And the difference in value of markets is even more so. And as for private flight capital, assuming your money is safer in Shanghai vs New York is beyond unrealistic.
Russia including Siberia is a major portion of the planet's land surface. It produces all manner of materials including rare gases and metals that are necessary for modern industry and that neither Europe nor the US has other access to.
https://mronline.org/2022/04/16/russias-sergey-glazyev-introduces-the-new-global-financial-system/
Leading Russian economist Sergey Glazyev says a complete overhaul of the western-dominated global monetary and financial system is under works. And the world’s rising powers are buying into it.
Posted Apr 16, 2022 by Pepe Escobar
Sergey Glazyev is a man living right in the eye of our current geopolitical and geo-economic hurricane. One of the most influential economists in the world, a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and a former adviser to the Kremlin from 2012 to 2019, for the past three years he has helmed Moscow’s uber strategic portfolio as Minister in Charge of Integration and Macroeconomics of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).
In a bout of Russophobic hysteria, the ruling elite of the United States played its last “trump ace” in the hybrid war against Russia. Having “frozen” Russian foreign exchange reserves in custody accounts of western central banks, financial regulators of the U.S., EU, and the UK undermined the status of the dollar, euro, and pound as global reserve currencies. This step sharply accelerated the ongoing dismantling of the dollar-based economic world order.
Currently, the U.S. is fighting to maintain its dominance, but just as Britain previously, which provoked two world wars but was unable to keep its empire and its central position in the world due to the obsolescence of its colonial economic system, it is destined to fail.
A minor point - one reason Russia is a very special case is that the “proceeds” from exports were held in, not just western banks, but western investments of all kinds, which are much harder to identify and unravel. Thats because Russia, peculiarly, was loathe to reinvest in Russia. There are various estimates, but maybe half of Russia’s national wealth is held abroad. It points to a general distrust of its own nation on the part of both its rulers and oligarchs.
How or whether Russia can bring all this wealth back is an interesting question. And will the host of private parties that own it actually bring it home?
That is an incredible weakness in Russia, and it does not seem like a hopeful sign for an autarkic policy going forward. Russia will require a profound sociological and psychological reform to make its alleged strategy work. That is unlikely.
China has other, different, problems.
There are plenty of smart Russians.
But they don’t stay in Russia.
Putin has damaged the country badly in his 22 years of misrule
I guess we’ll just have to stop buying Russian liquor, mail order whores, and nesting dolls. Pity.
One of the few Journos out there I pay attention to... so happy he made it out of Ukro custody alive!
Me, too!
First day in office Biden shuts down pipe lines and drilling chaos ensues world wide.
Utopians democrats environmentalists and other crazy people cheer with much glee.
Yup it all works out except for that big qualifier word “except”
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