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Serious Economic Crisis Looms In Russia, China May Help
jones_supa writes: Russia is facing a "full-blown economic crisis," a former finance minister has warned, as the country is forced to take emergency financial measures. The economy has been battered by a wave of sanctions (set by other countries as a result of tensions over Ukraine), geopolitical uncertainty, and falling oil prices. Analysts have warned that the Russian economy will not improve in the long run until the aforementioned conditions have also improved. The Central Bank of Russia said that a plan to loan Trust bank an amount of up to 30bn rubles ($54m) had been approved. Trust bank has run a series of advertisements featuring actor Bruce Willis in Russia, along with the ironic quote: "When I need money, I just take it." Anna Stupnytska, an economist at Fidelity Solutions, said that "the risk of a sovereign default is low, it's the corporate sector where the main vulnerabilities lie, and banking in particular. Due to sanctions, companies cannot refinance their debt as access to international markets has been essentially cut off."
Reader hackingbear adds:
Two Chinese ministers offered support for Russia as President Vladimir Putin seeks to shore up the plummeting ruble without depleting foreign-exchange reserves. Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said expanding a currency swap between the two nations and making increased use of the yuan for bilateral trade would have the greatest impact in aiding Russia. Western governments and experts have been criticizing China for restricting exchange and suppressing the value of its currency, even though anyone who lived in China during the 1990's knew that the value of the yuan was cut to align with the (vibrant) black market. But as grandma has warned us, we should be careful of what we wish for. China has greatly sped up the relaxation of currency exchange and is promoting the yuan as an alternative to the dollar for global trade and finance. They've signed currency-swap agreements with 28 other central banks to encourage this. Once accomplished, and backed by China's growing military might, Renminbi would be a formidable competitor to U.S. Dollar, which would hamper the U.S's ability to borrow almost freely with banks around the world.
Most of our debt is owned not by foreign governments but by the federal government itself, mostly between the Fed and Social Security - we've been dumping surplus receipts from the payroll tax into T-bills for years.
Actual debt owned by foreign governments - combined - is only about a third of the total debt.
It can, however, stand on its own, making the "Hamming-correct" headline read as follows:
"Serious Economic Crisis Looms; Russian China May Help".
So clearly, flatware manufactured in Russia might just save us all from the looming non-specific economic crisis. Time to open a Pottery Barn in Moscow!
Source here:
http://www.factcheck.org/2013/...
I never have understood the world's fetish with the US dollar. Every nation has a currency. The US economy is just as prone to stagnation, deficit, over, and under valuing as any other currency.
I'd like nothing better than to see the Rothschild's hold on international markets broken. If it takes China to do that, then all power to China in the endeavour.
You can thank Harry Dexter White for that. (And if you're American, you should thank him. Otherwise, maybe not.) See: The Battle of Bretton Woods. It really is pretty fascinating.
Some privacy policy Slashdot.
As Russian, I might add that if China will help Russia, it will simply absorb Russian, digest it, and in not far near distant future, we might see China expanding its territories a bit close to Europe. To be honest, I am highly pessimistic about future of my country at this point.
Unless Europe and US will try to integrate Russia into "West", China will take over. China is more dynamic, more capable and way way less corrupt. No way country with population of 140 million(and rapidly declining) can reside on 1/6 earth's land territory. I am hoping Putin's will be squashed (and I dough it will happened), and Europe and US will go through painful, long integration process.
Saddest part of all, country is becoming a European "Hamas".
Except that I'm a european socialist, and I actually like Cuba. Are these guys ignorant conservatives too?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Not that I agree with the WaPo's ideas that much, they say that the cuban "regime" was falling before Obama "bailed it out", but that's just false, it wasn't going to fall anytime soon, and Castro's successor has already been picked. Obama simply realized that the US strategy failed.
I never have understood the world's fetish with the US dollar.
It stays strong because if anyone is stupid enough to speak out against it, we make them regret it.
Don't fuck with the U.S. Dollar.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
See: The Battle of Bretton Woods. It really is pretty fascinating.
A more useful answer is inertia.
After England's Sterling lost its place as reserve currency for the world, the USA's massive gold reserves (>50% of the world's holdings) let the US peg the Dollar to gold and everyone else pegged their currency to the Dollar (aka the Bretton Woods system).
Of course, (puts on flame suit) because gold standards are actually a terrible idea, the USA's overprinting of cash ended up causing exchange rate imbalances and Europeans started cashing in their dollars for gold.
So Nixon ended the gold standard and inertia + economic strength and maneuvering has kept the Dollar as the global reserve currency for 43 years.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Japan/Germany - they couldn't REACH us to do much damage, even if they'd wanted to.
That's just not true. The German u-boats in particular were very much able to reach us, and cause significant damage. Operation Drumbeat in particular was able to do a surprising amount of damage. With only 5 u-boats, they were able to sink 25 American ships, many of them within sight of major US cities such as New York and Boston, all in the span of a single month.
Over the next few months, they managed to sink 22% of our tanker capacity, and well more than 2 million tons of cargo shiping.
It got to the point where the u-boat commanders were calling the time from January to August in 1942 the "American Shooting Season," and east coast cities and towns had to be blacked out after dark for most of the remainder of the war.
They couldn't invade, but Germans could certainly reach us all right.
"Violence is not the answer. Violence is the question. The answer is yes."
Not really
The debt from the stimulus is similar in comparison to GDP to the debt taken on during the Great Depression/WW2
That was mostly paid off by the late 70's by high taxes on the wealthy
All of the heat and noise that you hear there days is generated by the wealthy people who do not want their taxes raised
If you think that they have your best interests in mind, then you are mistaken