OT: This could get interesting

[BionicTiger]

A new round of sanctions has effectively made the ruble an inconvertible currency. RCB benchmark rate sits at 16%. Gazprombank and Rosbank have stopped selling USD. The Moscow exchange halted all dollar and euro denominated trade yesterday, so you get massive bid/ask spreads and large price dispersion that leads to trade being forced to the significantly more opaque OTC markets which only exacerbates the unreliability of pricing and price dispersion issues.

Plus, the ruble is in free fall and you’re seeing a classic bank run - massive lines of people looking to pull physical currency. Not the first time we’ve seen this, but things had stabilized to a large extent since the initial chaos that immediately followed the 2022 invasion.

 

[clemmer]

Using the petro dollar as a weapon is not going to turn out well. Short-sighted.

 

[BionicTiger]

@Cris_Ard - I know moderation is collectively managed to some extent. But, we’ve got an abortion of a jeopardy thread about absolutely nothing that’s been up for hours along with several other OT threads on page 1 of the WEZ - covering super relevant, topical things like chicken sandwiches, beaches, Breckenridge, golf shoes, breakfast meats, pool maintenance, personal pet peeves, etc. This isn’t political. It’s less OT than a lot of what doesn’t get moved. Why the hell is this the one relegated to @TigerGrowls blog?

 

[fatpiggy]

Im going to go sell my Rubles now before it's too late.

 

[BionicTiger]

Im going to go sell my Rubles now before it's too late.

Good luck.

 

[BionicTiger]

Using the petro dollar as a weapon is not going to turn out well. Short-sighted.

Possibly. But, we’ve heard that for decades. Yet, Weaponization of the petro dollar leading to major, negative consequences is still up there with Area 51 ETs, unicorns, and the clit.

 

[fatpiggy]

Good luck.

In all seriousness, the sanctions we have imposed do not seem to have hurt Russia all that much. China and some others (India?) seem to buy Russian oil despite our objections. Not sure sanctions can have too much of a bite unless we get cooperation from other countries.

 

[BionicTiger]

In all seriousness, the sanctions we have imposed do not seem to have hurt Russia all that much. China and some others (India?) seem to buy Russian oil despite our objections. Not sure sanctions can have too much of a bite unless we get cooperation from other countries.

Thus far, I’d say you’re by and large correct. I think the outside understanding of some of the effects has underrepresented some of the impact on average Russians. I also think they’ve had to work to cobble together something resembling a normally functioning national economy when in reality it has been very far from the case. Plus, it’s pushed them toward relying on unreliable actors and hindered their ability to operate geopolitically as they normally would have otherwise.

This is starting to look different, though. They are running out of options and getting pushed deeper and deeper into a fiscal/monetary/economic hole that is getting harder and harder to climb out of with fewer and fewer viable work around options. And frankly, the new sanctions should have been included in the packages from the get go. It likely would have helped significantly. Not sure people saw this conflict being as protracted as it has proved to be, but I would have tried to put as much as pressure as reasonably possible on them from the beginning. Hindsight and all that, though…

 

[Dadar]

Thus far, I’d say you’re by and large correct. I think the outside understanding of some of the effects has underrepresented some of the impact on average Russians. I also think they’ve had to work to cobble together something resembling a normally functioning national economy when in reality it has been very far from the case. Plus, it’s pushed them toward relying on unreliable actors and hindered their ability to operate geopolitically as they normally would have otherwise.

This is starting to look different, though. They are running out of options and getting pushed deeper and deeper into a fiscal/monetary/economic hole that is getting harder and harder to climb out of with fewer and fewer viable work around options. And frankly, the new sanctions should have been included in the packages from the get go. It likely would have helped significantly. Not sure people saw this conflict being as protracted as it has proved to be, but I would have tried to put as much as pressure as reasonably possible on them from the beginning. Hindsight and all that, though…

"Gazprom is unlikely to recover gas sales lost as a result of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine for at least a decade, according to a report commissioned for the Russian energy group’s leaders."

 

[yoshi121374]

Anything that bleeds Russia's Economy is good for the US.

 

[Dungeon09]

Possibly. But, we’ve heard that for decades. Yet, Weaponization of the petro dollar leading to major, negative consequences is still up there with Area 51 ETs, unicorns, and the clit.

For people with such a rhetorical obsession with “western values”, they sure do see to get hard ons for predicting that the global West is done for.

 

[BionicTiger]

For people with such a rhetorical obsession with “western values”, they sure do see to get hard ons for predicting that the global West is done for.

What they really mean to profess is their co-opted, bastardized version of western values. The emergence of this weird, kind of amorphous, populist/part time nationalist right wing faction with strangely incongruent views on virtually everything that isn’t isolationist idiocy or voiced by guys like Carlson, gaetz, etc. has been one of the stranger things about politics over the last 4 to 5 years. The extremes on both sides have really jumped way out in recent years and are generally inhabited by abhorrent, exquisitely stupid people.

 

[coldbud1994]

I hate that this thread ended up in this forum. Had promise

 

[BigPapaWhit]

What they really mean to profess is their co-opted, bastardized version of western values. The emergence of this weird, kind of amorphous, populist/part time nationalist right wing faction with strangely incongruent views on virtually everything that isn’t isolationist idiocy or voiced by guys like Carlson, gaetz, etc. has been one of the stranger things about politics over the last 4 to 5 years. The extremes on both sides have really jumped way out in recent years and are generally inhabited by abhorrent, exquisitely stupid people.

Granted I was last in Russia twenty years ago for four months. The average Joe (Ivan) did not care for George W. However, they had no problem consuming our IPods, Nikes, and Whiskey. I always said it was not Democracy that brought down the wall, it was capitalism. Back then it was roughly 38 Rubes to the Dollar.

My decades old observation, the Russian people are not much different than Americans. If they can get there day to day needs and wants met politics is less an issue. When they cannot put food on table or get satellite tv then there will be discontent.