Russia and economic war by the west #2

owais.usmani wrote:

https://twitter.com/DagnyTaggart369/status/1540980361731121154

In other words: the "leaders" of countries that officially worship "free market capitalism" are discussion "socialist" measures. I guess the market will react with rising prices to this "cap".

Words run out to describe the glorious peak-idiocy the West is reaching:
Imagine you want to dictate the world the price of a commodity, which you failed to manipulate previously and which is offer-side limited, and do it in the name of freedom, open markets and a "rules-based order", against the will of other players, which you complain are not obeying your sanctions in the first place.

Media – The End of the European Colonial Powers, The Tyranny of Physics

https://tomluongo.me/2022/06/23/media-the-end-of-the-european-colonial-powers-the-tyranny-of-physics/

Very good as usually from Luongo, and including this priceless definition of the current West

Any ideas how the ban on Russian gold exports will affect the Russian economy? Perhaps Russia can just keep the gold and increase their gold reserves

Nobody can ban the export of russian gold. Western countries "sanctioned" the purchase of russian gold, which means their banks and people aren´t allowed to buy it. All others (roughly 90% opf the world) are fine.

By the way, Switzerland bought some russian gold last week or so.

They think because Russia cannot sell its precious metals on the London market that this will be a major hit on Russia.
What will happen is the sales will move to a different market or be done directly with customers.

Take India. It is a major gold importer. They are a major manufacturer of jewelry. They import a lot of gold (5.9% of total Indian imports) and diamonds (4.25% of total Indian imports). 2.67% of Indian exports are jewels and 5.63% are cut diamonds. Do you think they will care about what Bozo Johnson decides? Once gold is melted there is no way of knowing where it came from in the first place.

Finally, Russia can simply pay their precious metals producers with the useless foreign reserves they are getting from energy sales and put those metals in a vault somewhere. Would be worth way more than that funny money.

Where the sanctions might have an impact is on diamonds. Now I don't know the particulars, but you can examine a natural diamond crystal and looking at the composition of trace minerals locked in the diamond with spectroscopy, sometimes you can guess at its possible origin. The largest markets for diamond jewelry are the USA and Japan I think. So on something like that a ban can have an impact. But the ban would have to be in the US and Japan jewelry markets. Not the UK trade market one.

It will only make diamonds more expensive in the west. Russia is not going to have a recession over it.

As for sales of gold - they said Russia eas earning ~20billions USD/yr for gold sales. But not Russia but Russian gold mining companies.

1) how many of them are Russian irl? Polyus is Cyprus registered and Petropavlovsk UK based. it would be good to use as an opportunity to nationalize them .



2) Russia wont be selling for Eur or USD - sanctions. Rubles/Rupees/Reminbi . What is actually better then good - one less channel to sell important commodities in USD. OR let US banks to set the price.


3) internal treasure should buy to back Ruble in gold (as wheat and oil/gas)

at the end of the day Russia might be actually better off in longer run

kvs wrote:It will only make diamonds more expensive in the west.   Russia is not going to have a recession over it.

Russian Gold is 5.67% of total exports and Diamonds is 1.02%. So Diamonds exports earn almost a sixth of gold.
Knowing the market, there is a lot of bulshittery, so you can expect the diamonds to still end up being cut and sold as something else.

The two countries with the largest diamond cutting industries in the world are India and China so.
Europe used to be the center of the diamond cutting business but that has not been true for many years already.

It's not time for a Russian banks' red tape on the exchange of hryvnias to rubles for incoming Ukrainians. This should be stated clearly by the RCB.
An old Western economist once said that in the long run the sound currency always prevails over the weak one, so it is a matter of time before the ruble dominates over the hryvnia. A flexible fluctuating exchange rates on both currencies should be introduced.

Kiko wrote:It's not time for a Russian banks' red tape on the exchange of hryvnias to rubles for incoming Ukrainians. This should be stated clearly by the RCB.

And what gain in detail would one achieve by harassing the civilian population of Ukraine leaving to Russia for security?

The economic terrorism they do with Russia and the bear's ability to resist is incredible. They hate Russia and everything it stands for. They want to kill their population.
The Jewish banks in the West didn't even do it to Nazi Germany.

owais.usmani wrote:

https://twitter.com/DagnyTaggart369/status/1541308790825435137

Some bizarre self-owning going on. They have the means to pay (it's peanuts to them) and the will, but are prevented from doing so.

Western financial institutions have proven to be incredibly corrupt and unreliable, and the rest of the world is seeing this.

PS, "since 1918" is a lie, too. 1998 was the last time, but Yeltsin, his western backers and leeches and so on... Quite different story now.

From Moon of Alabama:


The New York Times headlines:

Russia Misses Bond Deadline, Signaling Its First Default on Foreign Debt Since 1918

About $100 million in dollar- and euro-denominated interest payments failed to reach investors within a 30-day grace period following a missed May 27 deadline. The grace period expired Sunday night.
A formal declaration of default would need to come from bondholders because ratings agencies, which normally declare when borrowers have defaulted, have been barred by sanctions from reporting on Russia. The Credit Derivatives Determinations Committee, a panel of investors that rules on whether to pay out securities linked to defaults, hasn’t been asked to make a decision on these bond payments yet.

Russia has paid the interest on June 24:

MOSCOW. June 24 (Interfax) - National Settlement Depository (NSD), the paying agent for Russian sovereign Eurobonds, has received 8.5 billion rubles or $159.4 million equivalent in order payment of coupon interest on the country's 2028 Eurobonds, the Finance Ministry said.
The ministry said it had honored obligations to service the sovereign bonds in full.

The ministry said on June 23 that it had has transferred rubles to the NSD in payment of coupons on the country's 2027 and 2047 Eurobonds as part of the new arrangement for servicing sovereign external debt, as approved by a presidential decree of June 22.

The new form of payment came after the 'west' rejected to receive the money in Euros. As the NYT writes:

Russia is rejecting the default declaration, on the grounds that it has made efforts to pay. Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, told reporters on Monday that the statements about default were “absolutely illegal.”
“The fact that Euroclear withheld this money, did not transfer it to the recipients, it is not our problem,” Mr. Peskov said. “In other words, there are no grounds to call this situation a default.”

The bond investors can easily get their money in the currency they want. They will have to open two accounts with Gazprombank in Zurich, one in rubles and one in euros. They then can ask Russia's National Settlement Depository to send their rubles to their rubles account at Gazprombank which will happily buy those rubles and move the corresponding euro value into the investor's euro account.

That is simply the reverse of the process European buyers use to pay for Russian gas in rubles.

There is zero reason then to call this a default.

Peskov and others need to stop eating NATzO shit. Russia has no plans on borrowing from NATzO lenders in the foreseeable future
so what does it matter what NATzO clowns declare. Let them declare that the Moon is made out of cheese.

By going on the defensive Russia ends up look weak. Just act, reflecting reality, like no f*cks are given.

Actually it shows the bullshittery of supposed US led economic financial capital system. Supposed best in the world and best ever.

Right now most people have little alternative, but all the people with money will be looking in. You can bet all sorts of economic services will pop up all over from China, to the Gulf, even places like Israel.

Argentina and Iran have applied to join the BRICS

It is ironic about the economic war by the west on Russia now that after WWII that the US used Soviet style land reforms in Asia to counter the spread of Communism:


https://www.rbth.com/international/2017/01/31/how-the-us-used-soviet-style-land-reforms-to-counter-communism-in-asia_692431