Posted on 03/17/2022 1:34:29 PM PDT by delta7
The Sanctions Boomerang
But Russia has not stood still. The Central Bank of Russia imposed capital controls so that Russian companies cannot pay interest or principal on international debts. That means those loans and bonds may soon go into default.
Many such securities may be stuffed into 401(k) plans of Americans under the umbrella of “emerging markets” funds or ETFs. Even more important is the possibility that interbank lending may start to dry up as Russian banks are frozen and Western banks reduce leverage and shrink balance sheets in order to reduce risk.
This will lead to defaults in the West and could even mark the beginning of a global liquidity crisis that can only be contained by Federal Reserve currency swap lines, like we saw in the early stages of the pandemic when markets were collapsing.
But even that technique may not work since there are no swap arrangements in place between the Fed and the Central Bank of Russia. The shooting war may or may not be over soon, but the financial war has just started and will continue after the shooting stops.
For that matter, a global financial panic may emerge even before the shooting stops. We all see what’s happening on the surface. Here’s what you don’t see: Someone is on the wrong side of every one of those trades. Hedge funds and banks are losing billions and are sinking. It takes about a week for bodies to float to the surface.
And foreign investors who try to sell Russian companies will find that their sales are blocked. Russia imposed capital controls so that Russian borrowers cannot pay their creditors in dollars or euros.
So yes, sanctions will hurt Russia. But like a boomerang, those same sanctions can hurt the U.S. economy, which is on shaky ground as it is.
It’s almost like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Russia Still Has Options
And Russia can work around the sanctions to obtain at least some access to the global financial system. The main loophole is that Russia may still receive dollar payments for oil and natural gas. Those payments may be frozen inside the central bank, but they can still be received and added to Russia’s reserves.
Russia can also transact outside the SWIFT messaging system using older technologies such as telex and internet channels outside of SWIFT. Russians can also transact through Chinese and other banks that have not joined the sanctions.….. Also, Russia’s official media report that Putin seeks to establish a ban on the export of certain products and raw materials outside the country by the end of 2022.
Besides oil and natural gas, Russia exports substantial amounts of food crops and precious metals used in industrial production like aluminum, titanium, palladium, platinum, nickel, cobalt and copper.
This is the most important move yet. Consumers are familiar with the retail end of the supply chain. But they aren’t as familiar with the input end. If you can’t source the raw materials, you can produce finished goods.
For example, the farmers who grow food and raise livestock and the butchers and food processors who prepare that output into meat, poultry, bread and dairy products are not the source of the supply; they are intermediaries. The source of the supply chain is in fertilizers made from chemicals, especially nitrogen and phosphate.
Any break or bottleneck anywhere in this supply chain will result in either higher prices or empty shelves at the consumer end.
If Russian nitrogen exports are diminished and prices soar, that has a global impact including on U.S. farms. The impact of higher fertilizer prices does not stop with grain. Most grains are used not for direct consumption by humans but as feed grains for livestock. That means the fertilizer price increase will flow through to meat, poultry, eggs and dairy products.
These breaks are already occurring. Russia and Ukraine together provide more than 25% of the wheat supply in world trade and 20% of global corn sales. Ukrainian exports are already in disarray because of the war and Russian exports are being handicapped by the sanctions.
Don’t Forget About Russia’s Gold
Finally, Russia has $150 billion in official physical gold bullion. This gold cannot easily be sold or bartered, but it can be leased or used as collateral for hard-currency loans.
The latest dumb idea out of Washington is to freeze Russian gold. But the gold is physical and it’s inside Russia. The only way to freeze it is to leave it outside in the winter. You can freeze dollar-sale proceeds, but Russia’s a buyer not a seller. It can buy gold directly from Russian mines.
And Russia can use parallel loan structures (which haven’t been used much since the 1970s) where a lender inside Russia can also be a borrower outside Russia in a separate transaction with the obligations netted out.
None of this is efficient relative to a normally functioning system, but it does work. The bottom line is that the Russian economy will muddle through despite the sanctions, although with higher costs, more risk and less liquidity.
The main point for investors to understand is the damage will not be confined to Russia. These inefficiencies and this illiquidity will ripple out to all parts of the global financial syste……”
Unintended consequences, pray that the US has a good growing season….good weather…..I am sure Vlad will not ship us any spare Barley or Wheat…. He just signed an agreement specifically to supply China with WHEAT and BARLEY, strange I say….A Harbinger? Gives meaning to Rev 6:6…. “ Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, “Two pounds[a] of wheat for a day’s wages,[b] and six pounds[c] of barley for a day’s wages,[d] and do not damage the oil and the wine!”
We are not there, Yet.
Russia bonds are about 0.25% of the global market. They are not an economy that matters on the global scale.
Excellent article.
“ don’t hoard food...”
~~~
If you and your family have food while there is a severe shortage, you will be less desperate and not as easy to control
What did we do 40 years ago before we started trading with then USSR? I believe we grew lots of stuff.
There will be a run on gas and food, the World Bank inadvertently reported. World Bank President David Malpass is warning people not to hoard essentials amid runaway inflation and monetary policies that continue to worsen every variable of the situation. Malpass simply said he expects nations to begin or continue resourcing energy and food/food supplies outside of Russia. “The right thing to do in these current circumstances is not to go out and buy extra flour or extra gasoline, it’s to recognize that the world is a dynamic global economy and will respond. There’ll be enough to go around,” he warned.
As our models predicted, China will soon become the financial capital of the world. The yuan accounted for 13.1% of Russia’s central bank’s foreign currency as of June 2021, compared to only 0.1% during the same month of 2017. China remains Russia’s top gas export, ahead of even the EU, with China purchasing $79.3 billion in 2021 (56% solely from energy exports). Russia is now using the yuan as its foreign reserve currency. China is not confiscating assets from Russian civilians under the infuriating theory of conspiracy.
The situation for many will only deteriorate from here. I wish I could provide a more optimistic forecast, but I must go off what the models state rather than my own hopes or opinions. Again, the World Bank is now acknowledging that food and energy will become scarce.
Those areas if the globe that do rely heavily on those exports will feel the pain.
What is not mentioned is the cascade effect. For example, Hungary is banning grain exports. Brazil may do the same. Because in the end it becomes a matter of self preservation.
But watch. It will become the new grift for politicians in the US to get their 10% off the top shipping foodstuffs elsewhere while their constituants are left begging.
The FED was buying about $140 BILLION in bonds each month before they started tapering off in Nov. They could monetize the Russian bonds in a blink. US consumers spend twice as much on pet supplies each year as there are Russian bonds bonds outstanding.
Rickards was so dead wrong about what would happen in 2008 and afterwards.
“He just signed an agreement specifically to supply China with WHEAT and BARLEY,”
And if Ukraine also signs such an agreement with China the war will be instantly over. I don’t think China wants much more from making Putin invade.
What did we do 40 years ago before we started trading with then USSR? I believe we grew lots of stuff.
———-
Yes we did, I am a senior and remember we sent food to Soviet Russia, my, how times have changed.
The concern today is 1) our farmland has been bought up by huge corporations, Bill Gates the owner of record. Worth watching closely any new EO’s issued by Senile Joe, pertaining to farming….I can say there is rumors of rationing in the industry. Just rumors as of yet.
2) Weather, remember our bread basket getting wiped out/ flooded a few years back? Well, that is why I say pray for good growing weather.
We could be in store for terrible drought/ rain. The NOAA does say we are in a severe drought….you decide.
https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/temp-and-precip/drought/nadm/maps
You are thinking about economy in terms of Wall Street and “service based” which is about to go down in history.
What is the value of the “services” when 80% of consumer goods are imported from China?
Wheat, metals, and gas are of real value, not papers on Wall Street.
Western mediacrats/Nations swallowing the “climate hysteria” and followers are gullible/shortsighted.
Q: What is the difference between the ruble and the dollar?
A: A dollar.
Your stupidity is a real detriment to this website.
“ ….. Drought conditions are likely to continue across more than half of the continental United States through at least June, straining water supplies and increasing the risk of wildfires, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Thursday.
Nearly 60% of the continental United States is experiencing drought, which is the largest part since 2013, NOAA said in issuing its spring outlook, a broad climatic forecast for April, May and June. While these conditions are not new, the agency expects them to worsen and spread in the coming months because of above-average temperatures and below-average precipitation.
That is a turn back in the wrong direction after a winter in which some drought-stricken Western states had seen improvement. And while those states remain in better shape than they were last summer, some states in the southern Plains are in significantly worse shape.
Jon Gottschalck, operational branch chief at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, said during a call with reporters Thursday that the few patches of the Southwest and the southern Plains not already experiencing drought — namely parts of Arizona, Kansas and Texas — were expected to start.
Lake Powell, one of two huge reservoirs on the Colorado River, fell this week to its lowest level since it was created more than 50 years ago with the construction of Glen Canyon Dam. It is getting closer to a threshold that would shut down hydropower production at the dam.
The forecast is also bleak in California, with a majority of the state returning to “severe” or “extreme” drough…..”
Food for thought, anything Senile Joe touches ( sanctions) turns to cr@p.
Disrupting the global financial markets is never a good idea, unintended ( ?) consequences. I guess the rumors of rationing may very well become fact.
Imploding our economy for some corrupt Eastern European tribal skirmish against a country that could expose the whole folly going on since the Marshall plan/Ricardo orgy fest.
“Emerging Markets Funds”. Those always had me imagining that I would have to clean the dirt off them before putting them in my portfolio.
I know you are right. Didn’t we rotate crops to make sure the nutrients were not depleted? I doubt that corporate farms do that but I could be wrong. I think Gates buying up farm land is because he is invested on the fake meat fad. I’m more worried about China buying up our farms.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.