Tag Archives: Sanctions on Russia

The Last Straw, by James Rickards

Posted on March 20, 2022 | Leave a comment

Russia is resilient enough to recover from U.S. sanctions. From James Rickards at dailyreckoning.com:

The U.S. and its allies in the EU and others around the world have imposed the harshest economic sanctions on Russia that have ever been used. In the past, even nations directly at war with each other would continue to pay the debts they owed each other.

Since this war is in Ukraine, let’s look at another war that took place in present Ukraine from 1854–56, during the Crimean War.

Britain (and France) was at war with Russia. Yet throughout the war, the Russian government kept paying interest to British holders of its debt. The British government also kept paying its debts to the Russian government.

One British minister said that civilized nations should pay their debts, even to an enemy during wartime.

But that was then and this is now. The U.S. and its European allies outside of Ukraine aren’t even directly at war with Russia (not yet anyway), but they’ve still imposed the most punitive economic sanctions in history.

To a great extent, the Russian economy has been cut out of the global economy.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Economy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Law, Technology, Trade, War

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Russian Judo Tears the West Apart, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on March 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

Sanctions on Russia could destroy the U.S.’s and Europe’s financial and energy markets. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

Washington’s ‘replacement strategy’ for sanctioned Russian oil and gas imports appears to be to cozy up to its oil-producing arch-enemies Iran and Venezuela. Photo Credit: The Cradle

The official Russian blacklist of hostile sanctioning nations includes the US, the EU, Canada and, in Asia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore (the only one from Southeast Asia). Notice how that ‘international community’ keeps shrinking.

The Global South should be aware that no nations from West Asia, Latin America and Africa have joined Washington’s sanctions bandwagon.

Moscow has not even announced its own package of counter-sanctions. Yet an official decree “On Temporary Order of Obligations to Certain Foreign Creditors,” which allows Russian companies to settle their debts in rubles, provides a hint of what’s to come.

Russian counter-measures all revolve around this new presidential decree, signed last Saturday, which economist Yevgeny Yushchuk defines as a “nuclear retaliatory landmine.” .

It works like this: to pay for loans obtained from a sanctioning country exceeding 10 million rubles a month, a Russian company does not have to make a transfer. They ask for a Russian bank to open a correspondent account in rubles under the creditor’s name. Then the company transfers rubles to this account at the current exchange rate, and it’s all perfectly legal.

Payments in foreign currency only go through the Central Bank on a case-by-case basis. They must receive special permission from the Government Commission for the Control of Foreign Investment.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Collapse, Economy, Energy, Financial markets, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics, Propaganda, Trade, War

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Biden’s Sanctions on Russia Will Cause Havoc in Western Markets, by David Stockman

Posted on March 9, 2022 | Leave a comment

It’s a better than even bet that the sanctions imposed on Russia will end up hurting the sanctioners more than the sanctionees. From David Stockman at antiwar.com:

What a tangled web these war-loving fools spin. We are referring, of course, to Washington’s belated attempts to ease or remove sanctions against oil producers Venezuela and Iran. That’s so it can crank up the sanctions against the new villain of the month, Russia, without monkey-hammering American consumers with $7 gasoline prices.

Then again, why is Washington in the Spanker-in-Chief business in the first place?

Yes, the Venezuelan people foolishly elected a socialist government which proceeded (predictably) to wreck their economy. But why did Uncle Sam have to administer a spanking, especially since the strapping occurred during a Republican Administration that should know better than to indulge in the folly of nation-building? Yet that’s the whole purpose of sanctions – to force recalcitrant nations to reshape themselves according to Washington’s dictates.

Then again, who ever said the Donald was a Republican or rational for that matter? The sanctions on Venezuela that Sleepy Joe is fixing to lift where actually slapped on by the Donald in a bid to consolidate the Cuban/Latin emigre vote in Florida.

Still, couldn’t Washington have let well enough alone and wished the people of Venezuela better luck next time rather than viciously hobble what remained of their energy industry?

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Posted in Business, Economy, Energy, Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Government, Politics, Propaganda, War

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