EU moves towards using €27bn in profit from frozen Russian assets for Ukraine

[beautifulthailand99]

5 hours ago, rabas said:

I've never understood why it is seen as some sort of a priori truth that China and/or Russia would welcome the failure of the US and/or EU economies.

 

Certainly no one would welcome the collapse of China which is well integrated into and benefits the world economy. Putin's Russia is a different story. 

 

Putin's Russia is an economically failed state where a group gangsters sell off national resources to enrich themselves and  build doomsday weapons to threaten the world and protect their operation. You do remember the nuclear blast  not long before the Ukraine invasion? That was a failed test of Putin's unstoppable nuclear powered dooms day cruise missile. Nuclear rocket not bomb,  once turned on it can't be turned off. 

 

The Russian 'economy', once the size of Greece, is now closer to that of Chile.  Listen to what Yale Professor Sonnenfeld, world expert on the real Russia economy, has to say. 

 

 

 

I've done a bit of due diligence on this Professor. He's very big in the stock market, connections with hedge funds, private equity and the like. Meaning, his is big on big US capital. It's common knowledge that JP Morgan, BlackRock amongst others are part of the feeding frenzy for business come the peace. I suspect he's shilling his book.

 

https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/ukraine-reconstruction-bank-guided-by-blackrock-jpmorgan-ready-action-this-year-2024-01-16/

 

The stat that stick out for me was he claims that it costs $40 to extract every barrel of oil, and they are losing money on each one when the figure is closer to $10, and he includes taxes and revenues to the state as costs not benefits. Very sneaky. And these 3 respected financial journals disagree with the thrust of his polemic. He sounds like a maverick outlier like Professor Mearscheimer. It's not to say that it is probably in difficult waters, it undoubtedly is, but then the whole world is.

 

This work was led by my colleague Catherine Wolfram, who was the deputy assistant secretary for climate and energy at Treasury. Russian oil has a very low marginal cost to produce. To the best of our knowledge, the marginal cost of producing oil in Russia is around $5 to $10 per barrel. When you take into account some of the more marginal wells, then maybe it’s closer to $20. The Russian government then collects various royalties and taxes that they impose on their producers, and we know that for budget-planning purposes they would usually target a break-even price of around $40 per barrel.

 

https://www.minneapolisfed.org/article/2023/how-the-oil-price-cap-balances-pain-for-russia-with-protecting-us-consumers

 

He's also closely connected with Zelenskiy who spoke at his conference, which doesn't make him wrong but means he is certainly not impartial.

 

https://worth.com/worthy100/jeffrey-sonnenfeld/

 

According to him, he and CELI are now higher on the Kremlin’s sanctioned individuals list than Mitch McConnell. But his work has also garnered attention from other governments. U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, members of the British cabinet, as well as reps from the International Monetary Fund have all requested meetings with CELI and access to its data. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was so impressed by CELI’s work that he agreed to speak without a prepared script at Sonnenfeld’s CEO summit in July 2022.

 

The Economist

 

Few other central banks have been as tough. Yet Russia still seems to be heading for a “soft landing”, in which inflation slows without crushing the economy. The performance of the economy is now in line with its pre-invasion trend; gdp grew in real terms by more than 3% last year (see chart 2). Unemployment remains at a record low. And there is little evidence of corporate distress; indeed, the rate of business closures recently hit an eight-year low.

 

https://archive.is/NyKJP

 

Financial Times

 

On Tuesday, the IMF appeared to concur with Russia’s president. The IMF revised its own GDP growth forecast for Russia to 2.6 per cent this year, a 1.5 percentage point rise over what it had predicted last October.
The Russian economy’s resilience has stunned many economists who had believed the initial round of sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago could cause a catastrophic contraction.

 

https://archive.is/DX0dG

 

Bloomberg

 

Saleha Mohsin: Bloomberg has reported that Russia actually managed to import over $1 billion worth of American and European microchips last year, for use in war technology. That’s because the chips went through neighbor countries—so they weren’t blocked by sanctions. That would require additional export controls.
But Treasury’s Lyngaas says it’s not so simple. Just because the Russian economy is growing does not mean that all GDP growth is created equal.

 

https://archive.is/e0CMU

 

 

Edited March 27 by beautifulthailand99

[thaibeachlovers]

29 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

Financial Times

 

On Tuesday, the IMF appeared to concur with Russia’s president. The IMF revised its own GDP growth forecast for Russia to 2.6 per cent this year, a 1.5 percentage point rise over what it had predicted last October.
The Russian economy’s resilience has stunned many economists who had believed the initial round of sanctions over the invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago could cause a catastrophic contraction.

LOL. This little conflict has had western pundits wrong so many times that I'm surprised some still try it on.

Seems that all the AN posters telling us 2 years ago that the orcs were losing have thought better of it and abandoned ship.

[thaibeachlovers]

3 hours ago, billd766 said:

And Russia of course, is pure and innocent and has no corruption.

 

BTW who is "we"?

I never mentioned Russia but keep deflecting by all means.

 

You know who we is.

[beautifulthailand99]

7 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

LOL. This little conflict has had western pundits wrong so many times that I'm surprised some still try it on.

Seems that all the AN posters telling us 2 years ago that the orcs were losing have thought better of it and abandoned ship.

 

China has rescued Russia whilst Europe has effectively sanctioned itself and put a severe brake on the German industrial base which is vital to support the Eurozone. Of course this means that Russia is effectively a vassal state of China, but I don't think Putin cares about the optics, just the fact that it has saved his ass. Chinese know how will also be useful in supporting and developing Russia's crumbling infrastructure, and they will no doubt take future contracts in lieu of cash if they can trust them, which is a big if. Globalisation and the buoyant world economies that benefited from global cooperation are now effectively dead, and dark times loom ahead with advanced economies drowning in debt and welfare entitlements and a pressing need for huge rearmaments where elected leaders will need to persuade reluctant electorates for guns not butter. Good luck with that.

 

And Trump is coming - never forget that.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/02/23/sanctions-treasury-russia-economy/?utm_source=reddit.com

 

But Russia’s most important help comes from China. Two-way trade between the countries last year topped $240 billion, a record high, up from $147 billion before the war, according to Chinese customs data.

Chinese companies are filling the gaps left in Russian supply lines with shipments of lathes, self-propelled mechanical shovels and machines that manufacture semiconductors, according to economist Heli Simola of the Bank of Finland Institute for Emerging Economies.

 

India is now buying 1.9 million barrels per day from Russia, up from almost nothing in 2021, according to the International Energy Agency. China is buying more, 2.3 million barrels, but was a significant customer before the war.

“He has enough money to support the economy and to support the military,” said economist Elina Ribakova, vice president for foreign policy at the Kyiv School of Economics. “This can continue for a long time.”

[billd766]

1 hour ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I never mentioned Russia but keep deflecting by all means.

 

You know who we is.

If you mention the Ukraine and the frozen Russian assets, how is mentioning Russia a deflection?

 

Actually I don't know who "we" is.

 

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/we

 

plural in construction
1
: I and the rest of a group that includes me : you and I : you and I and another or others : I and another or others not including you —used as pronoun of the first person plural

 

"we" in this case certainly NOT include me or possibly millions of other posters.

 

It would include you. but not necessarily any one else.

 

 

[thaibeachlovers]

18 hours ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

And Trump is coming - never forget that.

You really have a thing about him, don't you?

 

I hope he does win, and does something about Washington this time. If ever a ( IMO ) snake pit needed a good cleaning it's that one.

This time he won't have that <deleted> Sessions stabbing him in the back, so hopefully they won't be able to tie him up in BS again.

 

The western economy, far as I can see, is built on BS, and is due to collapse anyway, so it doesn't really matter who is POTUS IMO. It's probably going to happen anyway. At least with Trump we get a few laughs on the way down.

 

OR

 

Nothing really bad happens and it's just BS as normal.

 

OR

 

WW3 happens and it's all irrelevant.

 

OR

 

we have the 1930s depression on steroids ( there are a few billion more people than last time ). Cue wars and civil strife everywhere.

 

OR

 

something else entirely

 

Your guess is as good as mine

[thaibeachlovers]

17 hours ago, billd766 said:

f you mention the Ukraine and the frozen Russian assets, how is mentioning Russia a deflection?

You really are taking the michael aren't you!

 

The post I made, to which you responded with your irrelevant reference to Russia was

 

If they give the money to Ukraine, can we expect that most of it will be stolen? Ukraine is, after all, a very corrupt country.

 

NB, it was not a question in response to yourself, and I did not quote you.

 

It is a stand alone question about Ukrainian corruption. It could be any money from anywhere- doesn't matter. It's about Ukrainian corruption PERIOD.

Sooooo, where in that sentence can you see any reference to Russia that would necessitate introducing Russia for some unknown reason?

 

We, as if you didn't know, is myself and anyone that agrees with me.

[billd766]

4 hours ago, thaibeachlovers said:

You really are taking the michael aren't you!

 

The post I made, to which you responded with your irrelevant reference to Russia was

 

If they give the money to Ukraine, can we expect that most of it will be stolen? Ukraine is, after all, a very corrupt country.

 

NB, it was not a question in response to yourself, and I did not quote you.

 

It is a stand alone question about Ukrainian corruption. It could be any money from anywhere- doesn't matter. It's about Ukrainian corruption PERIOD.

Sooooo, where in that sentence can you see any reference to Russia that would necessitate introducing Russia for some unknown reason?

 

We, as if you didn't know, is myself and anyone that agrees with me.

But the topic is about  Quote from the OP, "EU moves towards using €27bn in profit from frozen Russian assets for Ukraine", and NOT about corruption in the Ukraine.

 

Further quote from you

 

'We, as if you didn't know, is myself and anyone that agrees with me'.

 

And "we' is NOT an all encompassing everybody, but only you and those that agree with you, which not the same thing at all.

[thaibeachlovers]

18 hours ago, billd766 said:

But the topic is about  Quote from the OP, "EU moves towards using €27bn in profit from frozen Russian assets for Ukraine", and NOT about corruption in the Ukraine.

 

Further quote from you

 

'We, as if you didn't know, is myself and anyone that agrees with me'.

 

And "we' is NOT an all encompassing everybody, but only you and those that agree with you, which not the same thing at all.

I can only assume you are baiting me and so I will not continue this silly exchange.

Bye.

[billd766]

32 minutes ago, thaibeachlovers said:

I can only assume you are baiting me and so I will not continue this silly exchange.

Bye.

That would be a wrong assumption but the choice is yours,

 

You seem to assume that many more people agree with you than disagree with you, which is also not correct.