Although Russia is now the most sanctioned nation on earth, predictions of its economy's impending implosion have proved fanciful.
Oil exports to Europe have actually risen. “Putin is continuing to make at least a billion dollars a day selling oil and gas, and the lion’s share is from Europe,” said Edward Fishman, a former Europe specialist at the State Department. “Individual European countries are sending military assistance to Ukraine but it’s dwarfed by payments they’re making to Russia for oil and gas.” Certainly, there are those states bordering Russia that fear a proximate threat to their existence, while others further afield fear an extended war poses a resounding threat to their prosperity. The E.U. can't have its cake and eat it too. They can't remodel the laws of economics with wishful thinking. “As long as Russia can continue to sell oil and gas, the Russian government’s financial situation is actually pretty strong,” said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, nonresident senior fellow with the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE). “This is the big escape clause of the sanctions.” Europe relies on Russia for about 40 percent of its natural gas and 25 percent of its oil. With such stakes of dependency at play it's near impossible to secure alternatives to Russian energy for the foreseeable future. Germany’s economics and climate minister, Robert Habeck, said recently his country would not be able to wean itself off Russian gas until at least 2024. If an embargo on Russia gas went into effect now, Germany’s gross domestic product could contract by as much as 5 percent, with devastating effects for Germany’s population, according to Habeck.
The U.S. and its allies should learn from history (such as with Iraq in the 90's) that sanctions can take many years to achieve momentum, if at all, and frequently fail to realize their stated objective. “The point of sanctions is to hurt the other guy more than yourself, so it’s a balancing act and I think they’re just going to have to keep calibrating that,” said Brian O’Toole, a former Treasury Department official and now a fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank. Since World War II, sanctions of this scale have never been imposed on an economy as large as Russia’s, and the consequences are still uncertain — for both Russia and the global economy, said Gerard DePippo, a former U.S. intelligence official who specializes in economic analysis. “We’ve never attempted to hit such a large economy, that is so important for commodity exports, with such severe sanctions, and the world is grappling with that,” said DePippo, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. As Ukraine and Russia are major exporters of grain, the war and sanctions are increasing global food prices. Poorer countries in the Middle East and Northern Africa are especially impacted. To be sure, Putin can manipulate this situation in order to trigger a migrant crisis on Europe's borders. By continuing to blockade Ukraine's ports he is able to 'turn the tap off' of a significant amount of grain exports that will soon starve the aforementioned regions.
For over a decade Putin has been sealing the vulnerabilities in his country's economy to make 'fortress Russia' what it has become. Putin recently stated: “Russia is confidently coping with external challenges thanks to both the responsible macroeconomic policies of recent years and systemic decisions to strengthen economic sovereignty, technological and food security.” To exemplify Russia’s impressive performance under sanctions, Putin pointed at the ruble’s strength, saying it had become the best-performing currency this year. Economy Minister Maxim Reshetnikov agreed with Putin that the economy was showing resilience, adding that the labor market situation was stable and inflation started slowing.
Biden boasted in March that sanctions were “crushing the Russian economy” and that “the ruble is reduced to rubble.” However Russian oil revenues have set records as crude prices surge. “Russia’s financial system is back to business as usual after a few weeks of severe bank runs,” Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, wrote on twitter last week, adding that those who thought “that cutting Russia from financing for a few weeks at the beginning of the war would stop the war have proven naïve.” Biden didn't anticipate the economic pressure we are now experiencing as a result of banning imported Russian oil. Energy prices have increased astronomically. Gasoline is now approaching $6 per gallon in some states. Ironically, the sanctions are enabling China to purchase a huge proportion of its oil cheaply, as Russia reaches out to alternate customers. “Sanctions are certainly not deterring Russian forces from the kind of military operation they’re carrying out,” said Alina Polyakova, president of the Center for European Policy Analysis. “Most governments broadly miscalculated the perspectives or the worldview of the Russian elite and what Putin cares about,” she added. “It has been clear for a very long time that Putin and the people around him don’t care about economic growth. What Putin and the elites care about is revenue, and they’re still getting revenue from energy sales.”
Part of the problem, said Andrew Weiss, a longtime Russia expert and vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, is that the economies of the Western countries are more exposed than their governments had anticipated. In February, U.S. officials disavowed any plans to target Russian oil and gas exports. “We were deliberate to direct the pain of our sanctions toward the Russian economy, not ours,” Daleep Singh, the recent White House deputy national security adviser on international economics, said in late February. “None of our measures are designed to disrupt the flow of energy to global markets.” “Like all battle plans, the original trans-Atlantic blueprint for imposing severe and crippling sanctions on Russia collided with reality after the war actually began, and Western leaders were stampeded into doing things that they didn’t originally plan for or want to do — namely impose sanctions on Russia’s oil and gas sector,” Mr. Weiss said. “Overall, I think we’ve reached the political limits of sanctions,” said Gerard DiPippo. “New sanctions are probably not necessary and certainly not sufficient to achieve an acceptable end to the conflict. But Ukrainian victories on the battlefield probably are both necessary and sufficient. That should be the focus of U.S. policy.” A fundamental question now is whether resolve for the sanctions might be running thin. Speaking to reporters, Biden said that “at some point, this is going to be a bit of a waiting game: What the Russians can sustain and what Europe is going to be prepared to sustain.”
Putin correctly calculated that Russia will be able to withstand most sanctions with Chinese help, and that any sanctions will damage the West more than Russia. Now Biden is heading for midterm elections this fall in which Republicans are going to capitalize on the rising cost of living. The US companies that walked out of Russia have lost billions in licensing deals, and many of those companies (like McDonald) are being revamped and are now operating making money and jobs. The Ruble is strong. Being locked out of the swift banking controls the expansion of communism in Latin America, this has given Putin a great excuse to not pay the interest on western loans. So, our banks that lent Russia money are very concerned, as Russia has technically defaulted.
This fiasco is the direct result of the policies of Biden, his administration, and the left wing of the American Democratic Party to which he panders. Biden's deliberate move of the USA from energy and oil independence and low gasoline prices, predictably drove up the price of fossil fuels to Russia's enrichment (as well as rescuing the economies of Iran and Venezuela). Not least of all, this convoluted debacle is the product of Biden's handlers, the Obama surrogates Susan Rice and Biden's Chief of Staff Biden’s Klain, who are intent on empowering America’s enemies from Iran, to China, to Venezuela. In Biden's scam, the American consumer is ripped off at the pump (producing further derivative inflation for foods prices), by transferring American consumer's money from artificially inflated petroleum prices into the pocket of Putin, Iran and Venezuela.
This of course does nothing to reduce overall global carbon emission, but simply takes money from Texas, Oklahoma, Alaska, and The Dakotas and sends it to Putin, Maduro, and Iran.
It subsidizes Putin's invasion of Ukraine, funds Iranian radical Islamic terror and nuclear weapons development, and bankrolls the further expansion of communism in Latin America. In order to achieve this betrayal, Biden hands the American tax payer, driver, and consumers the bill for it. This is "Jobama". This is the Democrat Party. And this theft at the pump and supermarket is what mainstream and social media hides from the victims of this colossal fraud.
