Russian Ruble Stronger than Before the War – Good Work with Those Sanctions Joe
This is humiliating.
Joe Biden’s sanctions have been an utter failure, his influence negligible.
How do I know this?
The Russian Ruble is now STRONGER than it was before the war and before the sanctions. Before the war, it fluctuated between 1.3 and 1.4 cents. Now it is about 1.5 cents, a swing of about 15%. In a world where currency traders make fortunes on 1% fluctuations, this is a pretty wild swing in Russia’s favor.
The ban from the SWIFT network (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) was supposed to be devastating. It was supposed to take all credit cards and payment systems in Russia inert, disrupting Russia’s economy.
It didn’t. In preparation for this war, Russia began working on its own payment network several years ago. While is it not nearly as extensive as SWIFT but it relieved a lot of pressure.
Because of the sanctions, several countries are now buying oil and gas from Russia in rubles rather than dollars. Germany and others are considering doing that as well (and despite rhetoric to the contrary, they probably have no choice). China is buying oil and gas in Yuan.
Oil and gas have traditionally been traded with the “petrodollar”, i.e. U.S. currency, which has always been a prestige factor for the U.S. But moreover, since the U.S. dollar is a floating currency backed by the world’s strongest economy, it has been a stabilizing factor in world trade. The Yuan and the Ruble are NOT floating (at least not guaranteed to be…) and can be easily manipulated by their respective governments.
Putin has locked in the land bridge that he needs. He has established three independent countries that provide a land bridge to support his Navy base and warm water port on Crimea. Two of the three have voted for independence (possible election fraud notwithstanding), and the third is poised to do so, minus much of its Ukrainian speaking population which has been evacuated (leaving the Russian speakers).
It will be tough to argue forcing those new countries back into Ukraine, since they voted to be independent. And since they are mostly Russian speakers, they will likely stay in the Russia camp. This was well thought out by Putin. In case you don’t realize yet, Putin has been preparing for this for about 10 years.
The hapless Biden Administration doesn’t know what to do next. They missed all of the opportunities to prevent the war, they had no idea what to do when the war started, and Putin continues to make a fool out of them. Us. America. NATO. The West.
Joe is causing sanctions on America but he’s too damned stupid to know it
Yes, Putin made some really nice moves and the ruble has rebounded. Yet, I believe inflation still stands between 10 and 20% on any given day so it’s not exactly a blessed economy. A lot of goods are hard to come by so if you want the good stuff, it’s sort of a black market world. The fact that the Rubel has rebounded it’s not necessarily make the economy rosy for all Russians.
The “hapless Biden administration” already is doing something next Joe. The treasury will end intermediate dollar brokering by end of month which will begin to put Putin’s propped up Rubel back in the box. This was put in place to ease the pain of trading countries in the beginning of the war so they didn’t have to go cold turkey on day one..
And remember, forcing people to pay rubles for oil and gas usually comes with a price; that is Putin potentially giving discounts on oil and gas. Because they’re shifting from Petro dollars to rubles, all deals will be on the table for renegotiation. Remember, there are other competitors in the market so this might be a real negotiation in a number of cases. Not quite the rosy picture you’re painting.
Lastly, don’t buy Putin‘s propaganda that most Russian speaking Ukrainians want to be Russian. That is most certainly not the case for quite a few Russian speaking Ukrainians.
That’s why we need trump
Russian has been a black market world for most of its recent history, so they are used to it. And remember, that most of Europe will desperately need Russian oil and gas, and Putin controls that flow. If he is demanding people pay in rubles then he can create that marketing independent of the dollar. This is a major strategy of the Russia/China alliance, to wreck the petrodollar. The more the U.S. tries to use the dollar against them, the more the incentive for others to bypass it.
And no, Putin will not be giving discount for oil. You are right about the negotiations though, Putin controls the exchange rate of the Ruble, it only floats as long as he wants it to. Its a sellers market.
I wrote an article recently about what if Saudi Arabia defects. Meaning what if they align with Russian and China, and abandon and cordiality with the West. This would mean a more permanent sellers market and oil would be more permanently elevated in price. I wrote a couple of years ago about how Saudi Arabia is supporting a massive welfare state and that anytime oil is below $60 or $70 per barrel (which it was for several years under Trump), they are cutting into capital reserves and heading towards bankruptcy. An alignment with Russia and China would put them into a monopoly-adjacent position and keep prices high.
The U.S. can still go back to energy independence. Europe can’t.
Yes, we need to send turnip to ukraine.
With Trump we wouldn’t be having an issue in Ukraine. Putin waited for a brain dead asshole with no backbone to crawl out of the sewer
Agreed
Yeah, Captain Bonespur to the rescue. Trump started no wars in four years so what makes you think he could handle one?
Left Syria, left the Kurds to hang out and dry, proffered the terrible Afghanistan withdrawal, Iraq drawdown, etc. while adding troops throughout Africa to expand those wars. But he started no new wars in new countries, that is true. He stands with Jimmy Carter as the two recent Presidents who can make that claim. Trump, like Carter, think about it.
Trump also did nothing for a bevy of new conflicts that emerged during his Presidency. So, don’t give me the “he would have stopped it,” “it never would have started,” crap since plenty of stuff started during his reign and he stopped nothing.
Instead, he attacked his own citizens putting federal troops on the streets of Portland, Kansas City, Seattle, putting the National Guard in DC where they staged helicopter maneuvers over the crowds, but only for BLM, he never called them on 1/6/2021, as he spoke of using them in other cities without protests, and even using them to control crime. Trump deployed tactical teams, SWAT, to Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco, CA; Denver, CO; Washington, DC; Miami, FL; Detroit and Port Huron, MI; St. Louis, MO; Buffalo and New York City, NY; Dallas, El Paso, Houston, and Pearland, TX; and Seattle and Tacoma, WA. Marine operations had drones over demonstrations in 15 cities.
“We have a military to fight our enemies, not our own people,” Mike Mullen, a retired Navy admiral who was the top military adviser to Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told “Fox News Sunday.”
So, yes, Donald J. Trump started no new wars. He exited many wars, some prematurely, all haphazardly. He helped in no new conflicts emerging during his reign. He helps few except himself. And where he engaged the most was with his own countrymen, the citizens he represents, and now we know who he supports and who he wages war upon. His own.
But he wouldn’t have stopped Ukraine, he wouldn’t have entered Ukraine just like every other conflict he ducked, withdrew from, or —— in his personal case —— claimed a fake bone spur deferment using Daddy’s money to buy his way out.
You think Trump not starting any wars is a bad thing? The rest of your post is incomprehensible. Your view of all of this is unbelievably distorted, practically nothing of what you said resembles reality in the least.
Give it a rest Joe, your generalizations are just bogus. You can’t understand the truth because you don’t like what it shows. It shows that while Trump may have started no wars, he certainly deployed a hell of a lot of federal forces against his own citizens.
No, of course I don’t think not starting wars is bad. Never said it was.
The incomprehensible point I was trying to make was that there were plenty of conflicts around the world that Trump never entered. Somehow, comparing Trump to Biden and saying we must enter Ukraine seems to be disingenuous. Or, if it’s a white European nation it must be different than the rest of world.
But the dream that Trump would keep us safer, would’ve stopped Ukraine, would’ve changed Ukraine, is pure speculation and not based on any real fact based on trumps reign. While he never deployed troops against any other conflict in the world and there for one would imagine that he would never deploy them in Ukraine, he certainly deployed them numerous times in multiple American cities against American citizens. Sometimes peaceful, sometimes not,
I never said we should enter Ukraine, that would be a really stupid idea.
But the Russian invasion should never have happened. There is one fact that supports Trump’s handling of this. Putin has been planning this invasion since at least 2014. But he did not invade during Trump’s presidency. He waited for the senile and incompetent Biden to come into power.
Yes, Trump made efforts to protect our cities from the walking piles of shit trying to burn them out. More of the bastards should have been shot. Do you have a problem with that? Probably do. But then they haven’t rolled up in my area. When they do coon season opens
What that proves is he waited until 2021, nothing more. One can say Biden was squeezing him so hard with his strengthening of NATO that he put Puter in a box he just had to break out from… I wouldn’t say that, but one could.
It’s pure conjecture and timing as proof means little, IMO.
FYI — rhetorical on the invasion, sorry, not clear, point taken.
And Trump turning federal courses against American citizens citizens did not protect our cities from these “pieces of shit“. For the most part they were ill trained, ill-equipped, and handled the situation poorly. They only attempted to protect federal sites, they did not protect our cities from these “pieces of shit.“ That’s a falsehood put forth by Trumpublicans to feel better about unleashing the military domestically.
What’s next time? Martial law to quell the riots that Congress? We were only a stones throw away from that.
No, I did not feel safer with Captain Bonespur at the helm. Far from it.