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Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

thetimes.co.uk

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Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#81

Post by themgt »

djaychela wrote: post #78
oxff wrote: post #77

Do not ever forget what was promised: Russia in rubble in two weeks from sanctions and Russia out of missiles in two weeks. This was the "negotiated" social contract upon which quality of life in other parts of Europe was thrown into a dog shit trash fire. These kinds of articles are just not-so subtle cover for the once again failure of leaders here, and moving the goalposts and rewriting of history.

Do you have sources for those claims? I don't remember hearing either - my recollection is that there were warnings that sanctions would have some effect but take a long time to work, and the Russian economy would be supported by China and India, among others.

As a result of our unprecedented sanctions, the ruble was almost immediately reduced to rubble.

The Russian economy is on track to be cut in half.

It was ranked the 11th biggest economy in the world before this invasion — and soon, it will not even rank among the top 20.

- President Biden, Mar 26, 2022

https://twitter.com/potus/status/1507842574865866763

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#82

Post by daveguy »

oxff wrote: post #77

Do not ever forget what was promised: Russia in rubble in two weeks from sanctions and Russia out of missiles in two weeks. This was the "negotiated" social contract upon which quality of life in other parts of Europe was thrown into a dog shit trash fire. These kinds of articles are just not-so subtle cover for the once again failure of leaders here, and moving the goalposts and rewriting of history.

You are way off here. It was Russia who was promising that Ukraine would fall in two weeks. The response was always going to be a hard defense. And Ukraine has been incredibly successful with their defense. That defense includes these sanctions and material support of Ukraine. Russia's invasion has been a resource sucking failure for Putin.

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#83

Post by dsfyu404ed »

oxff wrote: post #77

Do not ever forget what was promised: Russia in rubble in two weeks from sanctions and Russia out of missiles in two weeks. This was the "negotiated" social contract upon which quality of life in other parts of Europe was thrown into a dog shit trash fire. These kinds of articles are just not-so subtle cover for the once again failure of leaders here, and moving the goalposts and rewriting of history.

Nobody on either side with a brain and/or a knowledge of history believed the "it'll be over by Christmas" shit. It NEVER is.

I agree, people were lied to, but that's what politicians do. At some point people need to stop being angry at the politicians and be angry at the enablers.

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#84

Post by allisdust »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #64
throw903290 wrote: post #48

Call it what you want. Russia is switching from export to internal consumption. Getting something like 30 years mortgage on house, was unheard of until recently. If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?

Because you cannot eat money, or live in money. A country can QE forever, but this will not put food on the table or shoes on people's feet. If people want those things, they must either be produced or imported. QE doesn't help with either of those. Production is a physical act, not a monetary one. And if you want to import from somewhere, then you need that nation's currency to do so. Which means that in turn you mu…

They have more than enough food to eat (except of course things that don't exactly grow there). They have surplus in energy and fertiliser.

What they would lack in the short and medium term are high tech products like chips, advanced medicine.

Given enough time and drive any energy and food surplus society can reinvent the high tech stuff.

Of course it doesn't mean they would, seeing how corrupt the whole ruling class is. But it is theoretically possible for them to be totally independent of the rest of the world. They are blessed with too many natural resources to not be able to do it.

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#85

Post by moloch-hai »

oxff wrote: post #77

Do not ever forget what was promised: Russia in rubble in two weeks from sanctions and Russia out of missiles in two weeks. This was the "negotiated" social contract upon which quality of life in other parts of Europe was thrown into a dog shit trash fire. These kinds of articles are just not-so subtle cover for the once again failure of leaders here, and moving the goalposts and rewriting of history.

No one said any such thing in any credible forum. Sanctions were the lever that was available. Quality of life in Europe was not thrown into a "dog shit trash fire", whatever that is supposed to be. Claims Germans would "freeze in the dark", expressed in less credible forums (e.g. here), proved false.

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#86

Post by avn2109 »

Nifty3929 wrote: post #64
throw903290 wrote: post #48

Call it what you want. Russia is switching from export to internal consumption. Getting something like 30 years mortgage on house, was unheard of until recently. If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?

Because you cannot eat money, or live in money. A country can QE forever, but this will not put food on the table or shoes on people's feet. If people want those things, they must either be produced or imported. QE doesn't help with either of those. Production is a physical act, not a monetary one. And if you want to import from somewhere, then you need that nation's currency to do so. Which means that in turn you mu…

Not to devil's advocate, but this sounds like an argument which might apply at least as well to the USA as it does to Russia.

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#87

Post by fortuna86 »

rasz wrote: post #33
greggarious wrote: post #9

They're running out of things like missles and bombs though IIRC? Why don't we honor the Budapest agreement and let the Ukrainians finish off Putin's regime with US made weapons if we are going to play word games about the difference between NATO and a firm and unambiguous promise to defend a nation if they give up their nuclear weapons? The people of Russia don't seem to want this war, they are conscripted. (From wh…

>The people of Russia don't seem to want this war, they are conscripted. (From what I've read from afar.) People in russia want the war, want to win and conquer Ukraine, they just dont want to be conscripted personally.

This is what makes taking in Russian refugees complicated, many of them support the war they just didn't want to die themselves.

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#88

Post by regnull »

oxff wrote: post #77

Do not ever forget what was promised: Russia in rubble in two weeks from sanctions and Russia out of missiles in two weeks. This was the "negotiated" social contract upon which quality of life in other parts of Europe was thrown into a dog shit trash fire. These kinds of articles are just not-so subtle cover for the once again failure of leaders here, and moving the goalposts and rewriting of history.

I guess we need to apologize to Russia and Putin and just hope that maybe, maybe he will be kind enough to give Europe cheap oil and gas.

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#89

Post by foverzar »

keewee7 wrote: post #11

One reason that sanctions haven't had an apparent immediate effect is that the Russian economy was already in a slow downward spiral. The Russian economy peaked in 2013 and has been going down hill since then. The Russian society has already been hardened by these 9 years of "hard times" and not to forget the much harder times in the 1990s. Another reason is that Western companies stopped their sales in Russia while…

> The Russian economy peaked in 2013 and has been going down hill since then

Do you have anything substantial to back this claim?

Cuz to me (actually living in Russia) it seems like exactly the opposite - the economy had been slowly decomposing up until the financial crisis of 2014, when the exchange rates had shifted so that roubles became cheaper.

Until then it was extremely hard to build a sustainable business in Russia, due to the fact that it was just cheaper to buy something from abroad and the only reliably sustainable industries were food production and unprocessed resources.

After 2014 - in my impression - quite a lot of entrepreneurs seem to have seized the opportunity of cheaper expenses, as I personally saw quite a lot of new businesses rising and blooming.

So I'm having a hard time figuring out what exactly had peaked in Russian economy in 2013. Sales of unprocessed resources? This is hardly a success.

Also, I don't get why are trying to reduce all the complexities of real world economics to some single number. This just feels kinda blunt. Why specifically GDP? GDP doesn't tell you anything about sustainability and self-sufficiency of some economy. Hell, all it basically tells you is how much money had changed ownership over the observation period. Why not PPP, for example? Cuz GDP number makes Russia look weak, but PPP makes it one of the world leaders, leaving behind GB, France and Italy? :P

Re: Russia’s apparent resilience is being kept up by policy tricks and cash

#90

Post by Nifty3929 »

avn2109 wrote: post #86
Nifty3929 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you cannot eat money, or live in money. A country can QE forever, but this will not put food on the table or shoes on people's feet. If people want those things, they must either be produced or imported. QE doesn't help with either of those. Production is a physical act, not a monetary one. And if you want to import from somewhere, then you need that nation's currency to do so. Which means that in turn you mu…

Not to devil's advocate, but this sounds like an argument which might apply at least as well to the USA as it does to Russia.

It absolutely, definitely does. And it's a shame that we (I'm a United Statesian) never examine our policies from this perspective. We focus a lot on solving money problems (inflation, inequity, etc), but never consider how our solutions to these issues affect production, which is what matters most. If we solve inflation and kill productivity, what have we gained?
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