Thread: Economic sanctions

Originally Posted by helge

Which parts are untrue ?

Scroll up a few slots and read my post, then ask yourself the same question. I have already debunked the propaganda you referenced tonight once, and I do not intent to waste any more time on that. The TD stooges flood the forum with so much trash it would be a full time job.

The fact that you do not bother to vet the articles yourself, especially since they come from RT, is a telling revelation as to why you think the way you do.

The 4 articles seems to be about war profiteering, dodging the sanctions on Russia and manipulating oil prices.

Are you saying that this isn't happening ?

Hardly a full time job to answer yes, no or don't know.


It sure as hell is propaganda, but it looks near enough to the thruth for me

Originally Posted by helge

Are you saying that this isn't happening ?

Did I say that? It is the context that is skewed, and the headline is always over the top sensationalist. The idea of taking an inkling of truth and spinning it is the hallmark of RT and other Russian propaganda sources.

These useful idiots that post this crap are knee-jerk reactionaries. I posted an article from CNN showing that there will not be any immediate shortages of natural gas in the EU, and this lemming responds with a flood of crap in an attempt to bury the article he does not like. Sabang does the same exact thing. Good god, there are two threads on the war in Ukraine that have almost no commentary on the actual war because these clowns go into overdrive anytime there is bad news on the battlefield.

Originally Posted by bsnub

Russian propaganda

Pathetic.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Some non NaGastan sources, Norway, Nedellands , Saudi, plus a token other

Originally Posted by bsnub

I posted an article from CNN showing that there will not be any immediate shortages of natural gas in the EU

Does the article say, if 'immediate' covers our winter ?


You earlier posted that there would be no shortages of gas in Europe, cause "Norway and the US had that covered".

Only case where I can see that happen, is if prices go so high, that it can't be bought.

Data reported in recent months have shown Ukraine’s state finances to be under extreme stress, as steeply falling economic output causes tax revenues to sag. With foreign financial support inadequate, the government in Kyiv has turned to the printing press to plug huge gaps in the national budget. The country is now at high risk of slipping into hyperinflation if its war with Russia continues through the winter.

The Ukrainian Economy Ministry recently estimated that the country’s GDP in September was down by 35 per cent compared to one year earlier. Massive cuts to electricity supplies due to Russian missile attacks since September suggest that by the end of 2022, the decline in economic output could approach 50 per cent.
Five million people have now fled the country, and a further seven million are internally displaced. Of the latter, few have been able to find new jobs, and as reported by the Wall Street Millennial site, the official unemployment rate has now reached 35 per cent.

On August 27 a report by the German state broadcaster Deutsche Welle entitled ‘Ukraine battles to avoid hyperinflation as war costs soar’ noted that tax revenues had collapsed to about one fifth of their pre-war level and were covering only about one third of the government’s expenditures. To make up this shortfall, the Kyiv authorities have been seeking foreign loans and grants, and attempting to borrow on the local market.

However, only the most deep-pocketed and ideologically committed supporters are willing to lend Ukraine money—and even their generosity is being strained. The grants and loans are proving nowhere near enough to fill the holes in Kyiv’s budget.

Ukraine’s international backers, according to International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, have committed US$35 billion in financial aid to the country in 2022, a figure of about $3 billion per month. Meanwhile, the Financial Times cites a figure for the Ukrainian government’s budget deficit of “at least $5 billion per month,” while the Wall Street Millennial site puts the monthly shortfall at no less than $9 billion.

Ukrainian GDP is now probably running at an annual figure of less than $140 billion. The above data thus suggest that even with outside financial aid factored in, the country is running a hair-raising state budget shortfall, unbacked by grants or borrowing, of at least 17 per cent of GDP—and perhaps much more.

Tax the oligarchs?

Surely, one might think, Ukraine’s government would try to balance its books, at least in part, by raising its income tax take? Currently, the country imposes a “flat tax” of 18 per cent on all personal incomes, plus a “military levy” of 1.5 per cent. But ending the super-low tax regime that applies to Ukraine’s rich would almost certainly have little effect on revenues. Much of the reason for the low taxes—apart from neoliberal dogmas—has been that Ukraine’s oligarchic ruling class is skilled at concealing its income. The low income tax rates are designed to make this tax-dodging only marginally worthwhile.

The oligarchs have financial resources that could help repair the government’s finances, at least for a time. Efforts to induce the country’s rich to lend to the state by buying government bonds, however, are clearly falling flat. Ukraine’s wealthy have a long history of reacting to economic crises by sending their money abroad through exotic and nefarious schemes.

In these circumstances, the Kyiv government’s only choice has been to sell its bonds to the National Bank—in effect, to print money. In June alone, Deutsche Welle cites the Financial Times as reporting, the printing presses created the equivalent of $3.6 billion. This mass of extra buying power is certain to fuel increasing levels of inflation.

To continue buying essential inputs from abroad, Ukraine is meanwhile having to deplete its reserves of foreign exchange. As of September, about US$6 billion of an earlier $31 billion had been drawn down. To slow the attrition, strict currency controls have been imposed. At present, there is a ban on transferring foreign currency abroad to repay and service debts owed by Ukrainian businesses to non-residents. While this may aid in keeping the country technically solvent, its effect on the willingness of foreign firms to conduct business with Ukrainian companies can be imagined.

In August, the Ukrainian government persuaded its major creditors to accept a two-year freeze on servicing the country’s foreign debts. But the freeze has a serious downside: raising money by selling Ukrainian government bonds abroad has become close to impossible.

Devaluation

Not surprisingly, inflation in Ukraine has mounted steadily during the months of war, from an annual rate of seven to eight per cent at the beginning of the year to 24.6 per cent in September. In July the rising prices forced a 25 per cent devaluation of the national currency, the hryvnia, which had been pegged to the U.S. dollar. By keeping dollars cheap, the peg had strengthened the hryvnia and restrained inflation. With devaluation, this restraint was substantially loosened.

Inflationary pressures on the hryvnia are certain to mount much further in coming months. To a large extent this will result from the combination of a booming money supply with the falling quantities of goods available on the war-ravaged domestic market. But as winter approaches, another factor will kick in: the need to secure gas supplies for industry and domestic heating.

As of 2019, Ukraine was having to import about a quarter of the natural gas it needed to meet consumption. In mid-October the Wall Street Millennial site reported that European gas prices were at “more than ten times their normal levels.” For Ukraine to import sufficient gas for the winter at current prices, the site calculated, would cost about US$7 billion. This would require a devaluation far greater than the 25 per cent seen in July. On the basis of experience during the economic crisis that followed the Maidan revolt in 2014, the site suggested, the figure would need to be as much as 70 per cent.

The implications of this are horrifying. According to the above site, “[it] means they will have to print three times as much money to achieve the same purchasing power.” In these circumstances, a slide into hyperinflation would, the site’s author concluded, be “all but guaranteed.”

Hyperinflation is commonly understood as inflation of more than 50 per cent per month or 1000 per cent per year. In these circumstances, the national currency essentially dissolves as a store of value. Savings vanish, and the buying power of people on fixed incomes collapses. Anyone who holds the local money does their utmost to turn it into material goods or foreign currency as quickly as possible. Store shelves are quickly stripped, with merchandise finishing up piled in the dwellings of people who would normally have little need of it; meanwhile, people who genuinely need the goods must often go without.

For employees of the enterprises that remain open, turning up for work under the conditions of hyperinflation can make little sense; the returns tend to be far better if the time is spent hustling on the street. For many purposes, the local currency is replaced by barter, with all its inefficiencies, or by foreign banknotes. The economy becomes ‘dollarised,’ and concluding any substantial deal requires wads of foreign cash.

Bailout?

For a country in this condition to prevail in a war is almost unimaginable. So will Ukraine’s sponsors and allies now bail it out? The prospect seems remote. According to the Kyiv Independent, Ukraine in September was negotiating to receive $1.5 billion per month from the US, and $1 billion from the EU. A further $12 billion, to be paid out over an unspecified period, was being sought from the IMF. In blog postings, there is widespread agreement that this backing, even if it materialises, will be nowhere near sufficient.

At a time when Western economies are in severe crisis, the chances that NATO governments will massively boost their aid to Ukraine have to be seen as negligible. As reported by The Guardian, the dispensing even of the financial assistance promised to date is far behind schedule. Meanwhile, relatively little of the funding promised to Ukraine has been in the form of grants. As much as 80 per cent of the sums has consisted of loans, repayable with interest.

For Ukraine’s backers in the NATO governments, making donations of ageing military hardware is one thing. But major financial sacrifices, in a period of slumping profits, are something else entirely.

For the Ukrainian masses, there are lessons in the fact that the NATO governments seem ready to allow them to die of cold in unheated apartments or to suffer the traumas of economic collapse. By this point in the war, working-class people in Ukraine have nothing to gain from being foot-soldiers in Washington’s imperial project of “fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.”

The need is for a negotiated end to the fighting. This will cost territorial losses to Ukraine, but the longer the decision to seek a negotiated peace is delayed, the weaker Ukraine’s bargaining position is going to become.

https://newcoldwar.org/ukraine-faces...omic-collapse/

Netherlands issued 91 waivers to sanctions against Russia | NL Times

Originally Posted by OhOh

"If Ukraine needs tanks and we can deliver some, then we should do it," adds party leader Nouripour, and Foreign Minister Baerbock explains the reasoning "because we are a peace and human rights party."

Yes, very true hoohoo. Thanks for posting.

Herr Scholz sulked over to China to get some help on the economy

Germany’s Olaf Scholz meets China’s Xi Jinping as trade in focus | News | Al Jazeera

The reds aren't in power anymore in Moscow. But Germany is going over to red China , for help because of the war on white Russia.

Germany has become an economic satellite of America’s New Cold War with Russia, China and the rest of Eurasia.

Germany and other NATO countries have been told to impose trade and investment sanctions upon themselves that will outlast today’s proxy war in Ukraine. U.S. President Biden and his State Department spokesmen have explained that Ukraine is just the opening arena in a much broader dynamic that is splitting the world into two opposing sets of economic alliances. This global fracture promises to be a ten- or twenty-year struggle to determine whether the world economy will be a unipolar U.S.-centered dollarized economy, or a multipolar, multi-currency world centered on the Eurasian heartland with mixed public/private economies.

President Biden has characterized this split as being between democracies and autocracies. The terminology is typical Orwellian double-speak. By “democracies” he means the U.S. and allied Western financial oligarchies. Their aim is to shift economic planning out of the hands of elected governments to Wall Street and other financial centers under U.S. control. U.S. diplomats use the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to demand privatization of the world’s infrastructure and dependency on U.S. technology, oil and food exports.

By “autocracy,” Biden means countries resisting this financialization and privatization takeover. In practice, U.S. rhetoric means promoting its own economic growth and living standards, keeping finance and banking as public utilities. What basically is at issue is whether economies will be planned by banking centers to create financial wealth – by privatizing basic infrastructure, public utilities and social services such as health care into monopolies – or by raising living standards and prosperity by keeping banking and money creation, public health, education, transportation and communications in public hands.

The country suffering the most “collateral damage” in this global fracture is Germany......

FULL- https://michael-hudson.com/2022/11/germanys-position-in-americas-new-world-order/


I for one believe that Germany does not in any way deserve to be treated like this. It is questionable if the USA is even their ally anymore. More like a Mafia.

Germany is still a sovereign democratic state .

Is it really?

unlike Russia, China etc...

Really? So who do they bend their knee too?

Originally Posted by sabang

Is it really?

Really? So who do they bend their knee too?

Perhaps someone needs to explain to sabang what "democratic" means. Again.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Perhaps someone needs to explain to sabang what "democratic" means. Again.

It's pointless, I am afraid.

Yes, it would be nice if Mr. Shithole portrayed himself as a responsible global partner rather than a greedy, authoritarian parasite that will always prop a fellow dictator.

Originally Posted by panama hat

Why bother trying to set the cretin right

Thank you for your advice Mr Titfa, I fear you may be right and closed minds would need to be prized open with more brilliance or lubrication than worth the candle so to squeak.
For some sub mariners I think revalving may be the only humane solution or as the Reds roll up Pitt Street?

Meanwhile some here still able to defend the invader. The whataboutery that USA UK Ireland or the 5th century Picts were also not to be trusted in the dark has no bearing on the moral compass of those who defend these atrocities almost makes them complicit and why Icke was banned from EU today.

I am all for free expression, but equally defending aggression is a bad look even on an anonymous mongers board with barely a few dozen active contributors. Unless paid by Russia and or China what is their motivation?
Is it just to be contrarian, to seem aligned with evil?

Not sure much more I can contribute here on the serious threads other than correcting actual factual errors.

Originally Posted by david44

I am all for free expression, but

But

Originally Posted by david44

defending aggression is a bad look

Could be that you at times are confusing 'defending' with ''explaining'.

Originally Posted by david44

Unless paid by Russia and or China what is their motivation?

An equivalent to NAFO ?

It's out there for sure

Originally Posted by david44

Not sure much more I can contribute here on the serious threads other than correcting actual factual errors.

Needed

Originally Posted by panama hat

an academic discussion

On TD ?



Funny

4 Nov, 2022 14:28

HomeBusiness News

Germany warned of threat to gas reserves

Storages could quickly run dry if the weather worsens, the network regulator chief says

"Germany’s gas storage facilities may rapidly become depleted if the weather turns cold, Klaus Mueller, the head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, said in an interview with Der Spiegel published on Friday.“A few freezing cold days are enough for a dramatic increase in gas consumption. We know from historical data that when it gets really frosty, the storage tanks are quickly drained,” Mueller told the outlet.

The official added that Germany can get through the winter, but only if both citizens and industries join efforts and lower gas consumption by at least 20%. Last month, the country’s industries were able to lower consumption by 27.4%, and private households and businesses did even better with 42%, he said, noting, however, that this had to do with the warm weather and might change in the event of a cold snap.

As of November 2, Germany’s gas storage facilities were 99.3% full, which, according to Mueller, is enough to keep the country going for up to ten weeks as the only source of gas.

Germany, along with other EU states, has been gradually reducing its reliance on Russian energy supplies. According to Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, the share of Russian gas among the country’s energy imports recently dropped to 6-8%, while in 2021, more than half of Germany’s gas supply came from Russia.

To make up for the loss, Berlin has focused on building liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals. The country will have two floating regasification plants for receiving seaborne LNG by the end of the year, and two more by May 2023, the authorities said. Their total annual capacity is estimated at 33 billion cubic meters of natural gas."

https://www.rt.com/business/565943-germany-warning-gas-shortages/


4 Nov, 2022 05:33

HomeBusiness News

Russian LNG exports rising – Bloomberg

Countries are rushing to secure supplies for winter despite the push by Western nations to abandon Russian energy

"Exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from Russia surged in October despite the push by the West to cut reliance on energy supplies from the sanctioned country, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg showed on Wednesday.LNG deliveries last month were up by 1.1% year-on-year since March, notwithstanding efforts by Western countries to cut dependence on Russian gas.

Although the superchilled fuel hasn’t been sanctioned, some buyers have reportedly been avoiding supplies from Russia. However, LNG exports from the country are on the rise ahead of winter, when cold weather is expected to spur demand and squeeze global supply.

France, Japan, and China are among the top importers of Russian LNG, according to tracking data, which also showed that nearly half of the cargoes are currently en route to customers.

Pipeline gas exports to the EU plummeted as Western sanctions have prompted Russia to redirect its supplies to Asian markets. While the EU remains divided on setting a price cap for Russian gas, China is taking advantage of a discount to spot market prices, Bloomberg reported, citing traders.

According to the outlet, Chinese imports of Russian LNG increased by one-third in September compared to the same period in 2021."

https://www.rt.com/business/565860-r...-exports-rise/

Xi didn't grant Herr Scholz a handshake.

Can anyone remind me where the most one eyed Putin supporter and the biggest critic of western governments actually chooses to live? Was it Russia? China?

21 Nov, 2022 15:39 HomeWorld News


EU member will defend nuclear cooperation with Russia, foreign minister tells RT

Hungary hopes to continue resisting the bloc’s attempts to impose atomic energy sanctions on Moscow, Peter Szijjarto explains.

"Hungary is set to continue its nuclear energy cooperation with Russia and remains opposed to any sanctions in this field, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told RT on Monday. The country’s top diplomat made the remarks on the sidelines of the ongoing Atomexpo-2022 forum in Russia’s southern resort city of Sochi.
“It’s obvious that nuclear [power] is the cheapest, safest and most environmental way of generating energy. And that’s why it’s in our national interest to continue the nuclear cooperation with Rosatom and to make the two new reactor blocks operational as of 2030,” Szijjarto said."

Continues at:

DDOS-GUARD21 Nov, 2022 09:48

HomeBusiness News


UK bypassing its own sanctions on Russian oil – The Sunday Times

Companies are using a loophole that allows them to register Russian fuel as being from elsewhere after ship-to-ship transfers, the news outlet reports.

"The UK has purchased at least 39 shipments of Russian oil since February, although the cargoes were registered as imports from other countries, the Sunday Times has reported, citing tanker traffic data and trade statistics.

Russian-origin oil shipments, worth about £200 ($236) million, were reportedly delivered to UK ports after ship-to-ship transfers, a practice widely used when large tankers that are unable to dock due to their size transfer their cargo to smaller vessels.

According to the Sunday Times’ findings, this practice gives the shipping companies a way to register their cargo without providing the actual origin of the shipments, stating instead the country of dispatch as the source of the cargo. In this way a shipment of Russian-made goods can be registered as originating in Germany if it is brought to a UK port by a German firm.

The news outlet was able to track dozens of shipments of Russian oil that have arrived at UK ports since March, logged as originating in Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, France and other countries. At least 13 of those reportedly arrived in June and July. However, official figures on oil imports from the UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the country did not receive any oil from Russia in those months."

Continues at:

https://www.rt.com/business/566904-uk-bypassing-russian-oil-sanctions/


21 Nov, 2022 05:23
HomeBusiness News

Russia boosts fuel exports to China

Both LNG and oil deliveries have surged since the start of the year, Chinese customs data shows.

"Russian shipments of gas and oil to China grew significantly over January-October of this year compared to the same period in 2021, China’s General Administration of Customs reported on Sunday.According to its data, liquefied natural gas (LNG) deliveries jumped by 32% in annual terms, to 4.98 million tons. In dollar terms, the increase was 157% and exceeded $5.3 billion. Russia is currently China’s fourth-largest LNG supplier after Australia, Qatar, and Malaysia. While data shows that China’s imports of the fuel from Qatar also grew over the first ten months of the year, shipments from both Australia and Malaysia have been dropping.

While the customs agency does not currently list the physical volume of China’s pipeline gas imports, its data shows that the value of pipeline gas flows from Russia in January-October 2022 soared by 182% compared to the same period in 2021, to $3.1 billion. This makes Russia the second largest supplier of pipeline gas to the Asian nation after Turkmenistan ($8.23 billion).

China’s oil imports from Russia also surged over this period, rising by about 9.5% to 71.97 million tons. Deliveries were up 53% to $49.19 billion in dollar terms. As follows from the published data, in both October and September Russia was China’s second largest oil supplier. Saudi Arabia remains the leader, having sold 73.76 million tons of the fuel to China for $55.5 billion over January-October."

https://www.rt.com/business/566866-r...s-oil-exports/