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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

#171

Post by Kukumber »

reducesuffering wrote: post #150
Kukumber wrote: post #108

Quoted post unavailable.

Agree, can we have a better educated and sourced discussion instead of yours? Your source makes huge overreaching claims by only citing McCain visiting Ukraine and Nuland expressing preference for new leadership to an ambassador.

> Agree, can we have a better educated and sourced discussion instead of yours?

Well, luckily we do not live in Russia, so we can still do our own civil investigation

> Your source makes huge overreaching claims by only citing McCain visiting Ukraine and Nuland expressing preference for new leadership to an ambassador.

It's a documented issue, it's one of the source material

Here is another one, still from a western source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ukraine-tape-idUSBREA...

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

#172

Post by _5yv8 »

terryf wrote: post #104
icare_1er wrote: post #42

The real losers are Europe.

Hello from Europe! While I agree that there really aren't any winners in a war from a humanitarian perspective, it really doesn't feel here like we are losing. I'm happy to pay a lot for electricity and gas if that means the Russian government will fall and their army will be reduced to shreds (although the gas prices right now are almost the same as they used to be before the war... ) Also to the US, this is an incr…

Well life in Russia keeps going on as before with cheap food, gas and electricity - basically all basic needs. And the Rubel is the best performing currency this year. That the Russian gov will fall sounds extremely unlikely as someone who spent the last years in Russia. Life still goes on as usual, while in the EU it seems to crumble a bit.

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

#173

Post by adamsmith143 »

rich_sasha wrote: post #41
adamsmith143 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so sure about this. That a handful of aggressive and hungry Russo-Warlords with Nukes is any improvement over Putin.

Russia seems to be throwing it's entire war machine at Ukraine. It deployed units, and conscripts, from all over Russia, including the Far East (in fact sourcing conscripts predominantly from poorer regions, and preferentially not ethnic Russians). Chop that machine into 4 or 5 pieces and it's far less scary. Even the nukes, scary as they could be, are less of a threat when the individual actors are smaller and weake…

>Chop that machine into 4 or 5 pieces and it's far less scary.

Ask the people living on the Borders of Latvia, Estonia or Georgia what they think of that. These warlords won't respect borders.

>even if they are capable of using them, they are at a more precarious position than eg. Putin at the helm of Mighty Russia.

I think they have even more incentive to use them, far less consequences if they do. Losing your position as warlord of some Fiefdom is a lot less scary then losing your position as the Dictator of a nation with a top 10 GDP, a permanent UN Security Council seat and having personal wealth in the Hundreds of Billions?

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

#174

Post by H8crilA »

RC_ITR wrote: post #167
H8crilA wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has happened in the 80s though. Soros (for example) has written a lot about this phenomenon and traded extensively on it, making a small truckload of money. It peaked in early 1985: https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/currency It was bad for a lot of countries that had dollar-denominated debt, which is a bad idea precisely for this reason. Countries never learn though, it seems. But it was not too bad for t…

No, not even close. In 1985, Soros bet that the Plaza Accord (a market manipulation among a cartel of leading economies to weaken the dollar for political reasons) [1] would work and he was right. That has nothing to do with shorts or squeezes and everything to do with collusion among the Treasuries and Central Banks of something like 75% of the world economy at that point. Soros 'won' the trade because he realized h…

From what I remember he also traded the up leg, and then the down leg. But it has been years since I read anything from him.

Also, I remembered what it was called, the Reagan’s “Imperial Circle”:

https://www.georgesoros.com/1984/05/23/the-danger-of-reagans...

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

#175

Post by rasz »

throw-ru-938 wrote: post #155
rasz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they are the only ones who genuinely are pushing for annexing what they call “so called ‘ukraine’” due to their strong nationalist beliefs. Basically they are the most ideologically aligned with Putin but also the most critical of his failures. The only loud protest voices coming out of russia seem to be complaining about loses, poor soldier conditions, not killing Ukrainians fast enough etc. Even so called ru oppos…

> No anti war/regime protests to speak off There were some in February and March, even though they were not very impressive. But then again, just today a leader of Russian opposition was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for posting a video about Bucha on Youtube. > plenty anti mobilization ones tho If there's "plenty" of these, surely you could Google some up very easily?

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2022/09/arrest...

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/women-trouble-soldiers-w...

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/26/europe/russia-dagestan-protes...

https://www.reddit.com/r/N_N_N/comments/yn7x0s/hundreds_of_u...

https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/russia-ukraine-war...

https://www.newsweek.com/vladimir-putin-facing-revolt-after-...

https://www.ibtimes.com/over-100-russian-conscripts-stage-ma...

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/12/does-this-video-show-rus...

https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2022/09/arrest...

just first results from "protesting against mobilization" in google

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

#176

Post by rich_sasha »

adamsmith143 wrote: post #173
rich_sasha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia seems to be throwing it's entire war machine at Ukraine. It deployed units, and conscripts, from all over Russia, including the Far East (in fact sourcing conscripts predominantly from poorer regions, and preferentially not ethnic Russians). Chop that machine into 4 or 5 pieces and it's far less scary. Even the nukes, scary as they could be, are less of a threat when the individual actors are smaller and weake…

>Chop that machine into 4 or 5 pieces and it's far less scary. Ask the people living on the Borders of Latvia, Estonia or Georgia what they think of that. These warlords won't respect borders. >even if they are capable of using them, they are at a more precarious position than eg. Putin at the helm of Mighty Russia. I think they have even more incentive to use them, far less consequences if they do. Losing your posit…

Milosevic of Serbia was taken to court. Gaddafi was captured and killed before any court could protect him. Putin is never going to stand trial, unless somehow Russia rats him out (but I struggle to imagine that).

Smaller dictators can do less harm, not more.

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

#177

Post by RC_ITR »

082349872349872 wrote: post #168
RC_ITR wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not even close. In 1985, Soros bet that the Plaza Accord (a market manipulation among a cartel of leading economies to weaken the dollar for political reasons) [1] would work and he was right. That has nothing to do with shorts or squeezes and everything to do with collusion among the Treasuries and Central Banks of something like 75% of the world economy at that point. Soros 'won' the trade because he realized h…

Maybe you can answer a different question of mine: what, if anything, did Japan get out of the Plaza Accord? By weakening USD (and hence USD-denominated commodities?) West Germany got a strong DM and hence could LBO East Germany and reunify. Japan got a strong JPY and ... what, besides stagflation? edit: am I calculating this right? to do a Plaza today would need, not the G5, but pretty much the entire G20?

Japan got the opportunity to go on an international asset-buying spree (which is always less impactful to real GDP than it seems cough Belt and Road cough) [0] [1]

[0]https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1989/10/31/j...

[1]https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-11-19-fi-22750-...

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

#178

Post by Kukumber »

electrondood wrote: post #147
Kukumber wrote: post #108

Quoted post unavailable.

This is disgusting apologism for Putin's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. No one forced Russia to attack Ukraine. No one forced them to target cities and civilian infrastructure. They are absolutely not victims.

If you didn't flag my comment, and instead ask questions, you would have seen my comment on that matter

Putin did indeed made a mistake in engaging his military in Ukraine, and doubled down with the various nukes, he and his government should be punished for that

That doesn't mean we should stay blind when it comes to the wrongdoings of the western block

It goes both ways, otherwise you are not critical and objective in your analysis

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

#179

Post by DieAgainAli »

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…

No post body was provided.

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

#180

Post by dragonwriter »

foverzar wrote: post #128
082349872349872 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh. I sometimes wonder how vulnerable the US would be to a squeeze appreciating USD. You could probably even get large parts of the US political class to go along with it, as (in the short term) they'd be benefiting relative to their countrymen.

Wouldn't inflation actually be much more harmful for a loan-based economy like the US?

> Wouldn't inflation actually be much more harmful for a loan-based economy like the US?

No, hence the speed and strength of Fed responses to anticipated deflation vs. anticipated above-optimal inflation.

OTOH, the Fed is also why the theoretical adverse impact is unlikely to materialize in any real world scenario.

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