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But Russia's exports of commodities have all spiked in value, and Russia will get those sold to China, India etc even if it takes some month extra. At the same time, Russia can't buy Coca Cola, McDonald's or Hollywood propaganda... Not sure how that could hurt their economy.

There is a problem that Russian companies have a hard time paying for imports, but as soon as the commodity exports get going again, the wealth will be flowing into Russia and there will be a huge demand for Rubles - Unless China cut Russia off.

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As it stands, Russia is perhaps days away from debt default. Export flows resuming a few months from then would be resuming a few months too late for that.

Interesting thing about the "China bails Russia out" theory: the ruble has collapsed against the yuan as well and of similar proportions as the collapse against gold. If China was buying Russian commodities, the currency flows alone would have stabilize the ruble well above where it is now. That suggests that China is sitting on the sidelines waiting to see what the final outcome is. While that is prudent for China, it doesn't reconcile too well with the notion that China and Russia are now BFFs.

Based on the currency dynamics, China is staying closer to the US than to Russia.

Tomorrow could be an entirely different story, but, as things stand, Russia's economy is experiencing considerable damage. And as the supply chain pain the US has experienced post-COVID lockdown illustrates, economies do not just simply rebound from shocks of any significant magnitude.

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