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Why the sanctions on Russia will fail spectacularly
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Here is what I had to say on the topic of the sanctions against Russia:

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Nobody on Earth is as stupid as the Empire pretends to be.

Of course these "sanctions" will do nothing but send the fucked global economy into the status of Even More Fucked.

Tens of trillions of dollars worth of "money" have been pumped into the global economy since 2019 by the central banks of the world. This slush has filled the gap of diminished demand stemming from the lockdowns and consequent realignment of retail sales away from mom and pop stores to corporate sellers.

In my own not so typical pattern of daily life of regular business travel, my gross expenditures diminished by about six thousand dollars a month. The planes were always full and the hotels wre jammed. Virtually everybody I know saw their entertainment and travel expenditures all but disappear for most of the last two years.

This massive hole in aggregate demand would "normally" cause a "recession" and it will eventually do so once the Central Bank money spigot is turned off. In the mean time, all those trillions of dollars of fiat money will continue to sit in the stock and retail estate "markets" inflating the balance sheets of all the investors in the world.

That dam could break at any moment -- that is why they call it a crash.

Now with these utterly irrational "sanctions" starting to cause specific energy and food inflation spikes. coupled with the increased demand that will come with the end of Pandemic House Arresst, Push will say hello to Shove. Two independent crises will combine Weimar level inflation with 1930's level economic contraction. The "stagflation" that elected Ronald Reagan in 1980 will return with an order of magnitude more intensity.

All over the internet, I see disgusted voices talking about how stupid the Biden Government is. That assumes, of course, that they really are oblivious to the threat of nuclear war or the idiotic economics of these Sanctions.

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Nobody is that stupid. There has to be another explanation.

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I see that the MSM is starting to ease off of the hysterical bleating about how Russia is getting its ass kicked while committing genocide and other war crimes. I expect the war crimes allegations to continue in full throated indignation -- but, uh, Russia might actually achieve its military goals.

And at that point, the Sanctions Strategy will lay as naked as the Vaxx Mandates with not even the tiniest bit of coherence.

It is fun to congratulate oneself for being smart enough to see through bullshit. Not so much fun when the bullshit keeps on chugging regardless of how stupid it is.

Maybe they are not that stupid -- but have another set of goals they are not telling us about.

....that strong-armed sanction-attacks are having on Russia's economy. The US is also attempting to blockade Russia's trading routes and threatening Russia's trading partners. Russia cannot control how the threatened nations react; they can only remain steadfast, themselves. I think it's clear that Russia has engaged in tremendous advance planning for handling US sanctions, preparing their trading partners and confirming their contracts. Russia took no overt defensive actions and didn't try to conceal their assets, but they did design many layers of reciprocal responses that will keep the US economy equally uncertain and scrambling.

I read a discussion, I believe it was in the Saker, that suggested the Russians were caught off guard and surprised by some of the sanctions and economic assaults that the US levied against them. Some of those sanctions made the US look very sinister and depraved in the eyes of the world. Russia was not expecting direct attacks on the Russian people — deactivating their credit cards for example, leaving them stranded financially. But we saw that Russia had fully functional parallel systems standing by that could instantly take over all consumer transactions.

The Saker article mentioned that Russia was not expecting the US to seize their currency reserves — but Russia did not try to hide these funds or make them inaccessible. It appears now that Russia was hoping the US would be tempted to steal the money. In the world of international finance, It is such an egregious and barbarian thing to do. It's part of a pattern of self-destructive actions on the part of the United States. This gave many nations pause to contemplate what kind of force the US had become.

Of course, the theft of Russia's currency reserves created the perfect cover for Russia to reasonably request that purchases be made using Rubles. Thus, the global demand for Rubles suddenly became intense. This, in turn, drove up the cost of exchanging Euros for Rubles on the Forex. I'm guessing that was a penalty designed specifically for Europe.

on the effects of sanctions on Europe are quoted here, but without a link:

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/05/ukraine-for-laughs/comments/page/2...

... What follows is taken from the middle of Putin's discussion as it deals with the propaganda aspect of Europe's self-inflicted energy crisis:

"... And today we see that for absolutely politically colored reasonsAnd instead of admitting their mistakes, they look for the culprits on the side.

"Yes, the Europeans explicitly admit that they cannot yet completely abandon Russian energy resources. It is all the more obvious that some EU states, in the energy balance of which the share of Russian hydrocarbons is particularly high, will not be able to do this for a long time. However, they set such a task, we see it. They bet without paying attention to the damage they have already done to their own economy.

"One gets the impression that our Western colleagues – politicians and economists – have simply forgotten the basics of elementary, basic economic laws or, to their own detriment, prefer to deliberately ignore them.

"What results do they achieve with their decisions?

"First. The sanctions already adopted by our European colleagues and the declarations on the possibility of a complete rejection of Russian energy carriers in the future have led to the fact that oil prices on the spot market are rising. You know this yourself: if you say something inaccurate at the political level, that's it, it is immediately reflected in the market, instantly.

"Second. The cost of petroleum products in the European market, such as, for example, diesel, due to their actual deficit, is growing even higher than oil prices. Such energy inflation – they are trying to write off this energy inflation on us, they call it by our names, they blame everything on Russia, trying to cover up, as I have already said, their own systemic mistakes in this area – this is already directly hitting transport and European industry, falling on the shoulders of consumers – millions of Europeans.

"Finally, the third and most important thing. The rejection of Russian energy resources means that Europe systematically, in the long term, becomes the region with the highest cost of energy resources in the world. Yes, of course, prices here will increase, and resources will also go here, to these prices, but it will not be possible to radically change the situation. And this is in the most serious way, and, according to some experts, irrevocably can undermine the competitiveness of a significant part of the European industry, which is already increasingly losing competition to companies from other regions of the world. Now these processes will certainly be accelerated. It is obvious that along with Russian energy resources, the possibility of increasing economic activity will also leave Europe for other regions of the world.

"Such economic auto-da-fé, suicide, is, of course, an internal affair of European countries. We must act pragmatically, proceeding primarily from our own economic interests."

Nothing Putin is saying is secret, even the Western media is publishing the actions of the ongoing suicide...

Posted by: karlof1 | May 17 2022 19:01 utc | 176