I also am a user of voice to text so don’t sweat the occasional error. I think people can read through it and it bothers us, who made them, more than others who . . . read through it.
Some items.
1) India’s GDP growth last year was 6%. Probably deserves some !!!!. Their surplus with the US is about $45B, and this is a pretty tiny % of their $2+Trillion GDP. It is much bigger hype than the numbers demand.
2) India’s oil consumption is about 5 million barrels/day and their domestic production is 900K bpd. There is hopeful talk floating about relevant to some suggested shut down of refinery buys from Russia. The specifics are government-owned refineries, and they are rather less than the majority of imports. The private refineries buy more oil and no one has said they stopped Russian oil buys. When the govt decides, as historically pretty much all govts do, that they will not be coerced by oil sanctions, the govt refineries will resume normal behavior. (See US response to Arab oil embargo, Japan response to FDR cutting off oil imports. No one accepts coercion derived from oil)
3) Reports say there are long, rage-inducing lines at Russian gas stations. I have a report on this. I went a youtube vid that was referenced by a website making these claims. It was a video of a car driving past a very long line of cars. Went on for a while to demonstrate line length. When the car got to the front of the line, it shut off filming. But too slowly in a world with pause clicks. The line of cars was heading into . . . some store. The store had no gas pumps. Don’t know what they were selling, but it wasn’t petrol.
4) Re interest rates and inflation. Russia has a slew of complex subsidies at the consumer level. They exist. I am no expert on them. They just get mentioned. When people see prices, they then go to GPT and ask for the average salary in Russia. Then they declare no one has enough money for rent and food. But oddly, those grocery store shelves are full and you can see employees wandering around stocking them. I see nobody emaciated. Nobody is starving.
5) As for the intricacies of banks and loans, Russia has a central bank just like everyone else. They had restrictions on it in the 1990s that caused Soviet failure as oil price fell (money supply was restricted to the Interior ministry’s 5 year plan, which needed to adjust upwards as oil price fell. It didn’t. They literally ran out of money). But those restrictions are gone. They are just like the Fed or ECB or BoE or BoJ or Peoples Bank of China. They can create money and inflation? Just cap it by decree. The US did that once.
It’s very very hard for a country with a central bank and nearly no debt on the books to fail because of money. Not going to happen in Russia. Especially not at 10 million barrels/day.
correction, India GDP growth 6% on $3.78T. That trade surplus with the US is small potatoes. It’s mostly drugs.
So they shut off that surplus. The damage is not impressive.
Here is a contrary point of view from a rank Trump hater who is full of statistics without much specific attribution but who nevertheless serves up some food for thought.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fREvE3BZnb0&ab_channel=War%26Politics24