Washington tightens Russia sanctions that aren't working
Submitted by gjohnsit on Thu, 11/30/2017 - 12:24pm
RT had it's press credentials at the U.S. capitol yanked today. This is just the latest step in isolating Russia politically and economically.
There's just one small problem - it isn't working.
Gross domestic product added an annual 1.8 percent in the third quarter, down from 2.5 percent in the previous three months, the Federal Statistics Service said on Monday, citing preliminary data, which don’t include a breakdown.
...Capital Economics said the weaker-than-expected performance was probably caused by slow growth in industrial production, as well as one fewer working day in this year’s third quarter than in the same period of 2016. Adjusting for the calendar difference, the expansion reached 2.4 percent from a year earlier, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.
2.4% GDP growth isn't great, but it's nearly the same growth rate as the United States.
The failure of the sanctions don't stop there.
Russian government bonds are likely to remain among the favourite picks for global investors next year, despite possible sanctions and a dip in yields in line with falling interest rates, foreign market players say.
Russia is planning on selling bonds priced in Chinese Yuan, thus completely avoiding any sanctions.
There is also a potentially critical problem - one of our major allies is extremely unhappy with the sanctions.
Germany's economy minister, Brigitte Zypries, on Monday decried the US' latest round of sanctions against Russia, insisting that they violate international law by indirectly punishing European firms.
"The Americans cannot punish German companies because they are doing business in another country," Zypries told Germany's Funke media group. "Of course we don't want a trade war," she added, pointing out that the federal government had pushed "the Americans not to deviate from a coordinated approach to sanctions."
However, those calls were effectively ignored last week, after the US House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of imposing new sanctions on Russia.
The longer the sanctions don't work, the less possible influence they can have.
Modest changes in current sanctions are unlikely to do anything other than angering our allies.
Comments
RT
That's an outrage that they pulled the credentials for RT. They definitely singled them out. TPTB are colluding to restrict information.
facebook is actively censoring anything that doesn't fit the establishment narrative. Informative posts disappear before I can even click on them..
This is the future Orwell warned us of.
Tech companies and gov't allies using RT to justify censorship
Yah, this is definitely not about one or two media outlets, but about board range censorship through various methods like disappearing certain websites from google search results. Thing is, seems much of that censorshiop is aimed at left alternative media.
Good article from FAIR looking at the consequences of censoring RT and using them as a cover.
http://fair.org/home/backlash-against-russian-fake-news-is-shutting-down...
@BORG_US_BORG
Yeah, I just recently went through my FF page Youtube link to search for 'Wealth Inequality Most Severe Since Ancient Egypt w/Prof. Richard Wolff The Jimmy Dore Show' and nothing related to Jimmy Dore showed up on the first pages or further down, as far as I look. The first time I looked at the filter criteria, there were live links and under 'references' there was no mention of Jimmy, although they were unlinked almost immediately. No sign of the Duck on the page; I went to another new page, used DDG, and The Dore Show appeared at top.
Evidently, if we Google, we may never know what we're missing.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
The Empire Strikes Back! Fugging hypocrites.
Funny how when I first saw RT appear in the Evening Blues a couple of years ago I found I still had some Cold War era paranoia hanging around in my consciousness.
What a country ! FWIW PRC did this kind of crap to friends of ours working for western news orgs after the Hong Kong handover return, even going so far as to not recognize non-Mandarin speaking journalists at pressers.
Thankfully RT can still be found in Facebook, News.google , and Twitter searches--- at least for now.
Where would be seeing reporting on Haley fail if not on RT?
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Excellent essay info, thanks.
Of course Russian petro chem owners are big climate criminals just like their global counterparts.
Seeing some writing that 'Russia wins with climate change,' since the epic low temps they are experiencing just now might be replaced by a warmer average agricultural friendly climate. These writers ignore the problems created by unpredictability for farmers. Also, what about climate refugees, etc?
A truth of the nuclear age/climate change: we can no longer have endless war and survive on this planet. Oh sh*t.
Melting permafrost can greatly hinder oil extraction.
A frozen permafrost allows the Russians to drive over the permafrost without having to build real roads. And if it melts, then they are left with mud. I think the Russians know this, but another matter how they plan to deal with it.
@divineorder
Not to mention making it evident that the actual facts of what occurs in Congress are not to be made public; RT's not a tame liar, you know - unlike like the ass-launderers.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Sanctions seem to be creating a self-sufficient Russia
The halting of food imports from Europe definitely hurt the EU. The French had to compensate their farmers for huge losses and even Lithuanian pig farmers protested. So looks like government is helping small farmers all over the place to fill in gaps from food imports. If memory serves, they used outside sources for drilling platforms, but now can make their own.
You know, back in the day, I remembered people arguing for trade with the Soviet Union and other communist countries as Western products like blue jeans and rock-and-roll would be powerful forces undermining repressive regimes. Now sanctions seem like competitive clubs to advantage American companies rather than tools to change regime behavior. And given the deprivations the Russians have had to endure over the years, I really doubt if sanctions would affect them. They know how to survive.
Trade is what destroyed the Soviet Union
not Reagan's military budget. It's a lesson long forgotten in DC, or perhaps never even fully digested in the first place. It will be our downfall too, I just hope that the landing is soft.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Lee Camp / “Redacted Tonight” about U.S. freedom of the press
https://deutsch.rt.com/kurzclips/61480-rt-komiker-lee.camp-pressefreiheit/
There have been a few brief shining moments when people’s definition of democracy reflected the Voltairean attitude of “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
But in general the understanding of “diversity” propagated by the elite — that powerful caste who control the machinery for molding minds and shaping lives — is literally only skin-deep, and does not extend to, and has never extended to, genuine diversity of philosophies and political views.