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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.
China has to buy US bonds. They mangage/manipulate their currency so that there is effectively a huge discount to all products and services in China. This discount on *everything* is what really drives relocating manufacturing to China not so much wages.
To force the exchange rate to a level that provides this effective discount they need to control the US dollars in their economy. So all the merchants/suppliers being paid is US dollars need to sell those dollars to the gov't and then the gov't needs to remove these dollars from the economy. Buying US bonds does this through the magic of international accounting.
Yes, this is an accounting trick but this is how the calculation of exchange rates work. At least that's how our macro econ professor explained things a few years ago. China can't stop buying US Bonds because then it would lose control of the exchange rate and lose its primary competitive advantage.
Too bad we're not big importers of Borscht.
Its interesting how "economic sanctions" are no match for an OPEC decision to increase production. Even at lower prices with increased U.S. production and fracking, they did not waiver at market price. This will eventually hurt everyone who invested in shale, back when the market was twice the price. The middle east continues to be able to pull oil from the ground for about one half the cost...maybe even less. Of course, nothing lasts forever, but it seems the oil has been the biggest stick there is when it comes to economic pressures. It sure is a lot easier to shoot down air traffic over the Ukraine when oil is pegged at $120 a barrel. Now Putin is gonna be happy just sipping the borscht and saving the warfare for summertime, perhaps.
This guy is not Russian. First of all, he is using the propaganda points that US is spreading in Russia, the fear that China will take part of their territory. It is one of the talking points. Second, he is making homophone mistakes (doubt -> dough) that only native speakers make or sometimes people who use english for 10-20 years or so and he is not making any of the grammar and preposition mistakes common for foreign speakers. It is sad to see our discussion here on slashdot tainted by spooks.
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
I agree with you about trust but don't about the reasons why.
The US dollar has several important advantages.
1. Trust as you said, but encompasses several factors. The first is that the US's separation of powers provides a guarantee that no matter what is politically expedient or the people want without concurrence by all three branches it won't happen. Two the independence of the US court system is very powerful and the laws and case law that governs financial transactions is highly defined and well understood. This results in a system where foreigners are treated the same in financial transaction as US citizens and corporations. This is emboldened by the restraint congress shows towards the financial system, and the unwillingness of our politicians to slaughter the golden goose under any circumstance. The final component of the trust lies with the much maligned US federal reserve system. The US has basically put the private banking system in charge of the economy and they are chartered to maintain inflation between 1 and 2%. They have demonstrated this several times by slaughtering the late 1970's economy to halt inflation that was higher than 3%, even against the complaints and maneuvering of president Carter and again under the second Regan administration and most recently with QE1, 2 and 3.
2. The trust in the system builds in another important factor and that is the transparency of our system. Almost everything is done in the open, the Fed doesn't make a move without warning about it for weeks or more frequently months and years. There are only one or two other systems which even have this.
3. Trust combined with Transparency yields Stability. Behind the Fed's primary mandate on inflation their second most important objective is stability. They've demonstrated absolute devotion that they will do whatever it takes to maintain stability in the system. This was demonstrated most recently with the QE's. The Fed basically created more than 4 trillion dollars out of thin air and gave it to the banks to do with whatever they wanted. This injected massive liquidity into the system at its most broken point and restarted lending because the banks were handed all that money and weren't charged any interest for it. Many people (particularly Edrogan of Turkey) don't realize the boom in the BRICS group was a direct result of all this free money. The banks took those trillions and invested it in systems that offered the highest possible return and this made massive dollars available in those markets propelling their economies forward. But the end of QE means the end of free money and a return of the slow growth to these nations along with all those trillions being pulled bank into the US system. Stability is one of the Dollars most important attributes. It's why it's the currency of choice in dozens of nations around the world, from countries like Zimbabwe that have no local currency to countries like Venezuela that are seeing hyper inflation to Argentina who has a love affair with the stability of the dollar.
4. Is the most complicated attribute, it ties two concepts together and that is the US governments willingness to run massive trade deficits to allow enough dollars to flow outward to satisfy demand and the Feds willingness to flood the market with dollars if they are needed to maintain that inflation mandate. This allows the dollar to have trillions of dollars floating all around the world completely out of US control.
The UK is the only nation I'm aware of that met conditions 1-3. The pound would likely still be a major player but for two reasons. The first is that at the end of the war the UK government was leveraged (indebted) to 250% of GDP (the Tea Party was created out of the idea of 100% of GDP). They were also severely economically damaged during the war. London had massive infrastructure (capital) damage and the UK had lost billions of pounds. Not the least of which was the several billion pounds (2014 pound) of equipment lost during the Dunkirk evacuation. But most importa