Dollars or joules, barrels or tons. The result is the same
Russia went from real surplus in terms of income to printing money and their expenses are rising rapidly, while their production capacity is decreasing
The UShas plenty of reserves and capability to increase production, the political will to do that is a real question, and we will see how that plays out
The point is Russia actually Putin didn’t need to do this, there was no threat to them from NATO, they were trading with the west and making lots of money, though as is with most fascist regimes most of it was concentrated with the few. There is a reason Putin is the richest man in the world
Putin gambled, thought his energy reserves and europes past dependence on it would cause them to cave and he could have his empire and power restored
After this is all over the reserves are still there and they will be used, who controls them will be the question
A dictator like Putin or a regime more willing to be a cooperative part of the world
I don’t like to address morality in these matters. The winners write the history books. I know for a fact I saw transcripts of Zelensky speeches in late 2021 in which he was very clear that he sought nuclear weapons.
But it is best to ignore that, because moral justification decides nothing.
Russia has a Central Bank with a balance sheet of 53 million Rubles. There is no dollar equivalent. Dollars are not used in Russia, and currency exchange markets reside in hostile countries so there is no reason to presume they are not govt controlled. And so the RCB has created about 20 million Rubles for internal consumption over the past year.
This is important because the Soviet Union did not have a CB capable of whimsically creating money outside the constraints of the Interior Ministry’s 5 year plan. It had nothing to do with SDI or Reagan. They made the mistake of treating money as if it had to make sense. They did not create it whimsically, as does our CB.
If they had had today’s CB, they would still exist.