Posted on 06/26/2022 8:11:57 AM PDT by marcusmaximus
Russia was poised to default on its foreign debt for the first time since 1918, pushed into delinquency not for lack of money but because of punishing Western sanctions over its invasion of Ukraine.
Russia was likely to miss payments on two foreign-currency bonds late Sunday, according to holders of the bonds who had yet to see funds deposited. The day marks the elapse of a 30-day grace period since the country was due to pay the equivalent of $100 million in dollars and euros to bondholders.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
What would be entertaining is to find out the American investors who are getting stiffed by Short Bus Biden and mock them to their faces about the American goobermint making girls out of them.
Just to enrage them and get the lawsuit juices flowing, ya know. 
In North Korea, they tell the captive citizens that all Americans eat dog food and live on the street. North Koreans have it the best in the entire world, they are told. And they believe it.
Everyone can go to literally any Russian vlog and watch the everyday life of Russians. Lots and lots of Japanese cars, people are healthy-looking, there are malls and city parks and all sorts of everyday happenings that could be taking place anywhere in the world.
No one has neon-colored hair. People dress and act age and gender appropriate. Clothing is no different than what we wear here. Lots of baby strollers, grocery stores look like American ones. Houses are affordable and come in a range of prices/amenities. Gas stations that look the ones anywhere in the world, with convenience stores attached and prices closer to what we paid 2 years ago.
These are not Potemkin facades. The vloggers will go to several different places, usually differentiated by price or inventory. There are small cities of 15k, rural villages with small (as well as large)individually owned/worked farms and web cams in larger cities. You Tube is full of these.
Your caricature of Russian-accented English is bizarre. None of my Russian ancestors sounded like that and, to the American ear, the accent of my Ukrainian ancestors was the same, except they did pronounce some words slightly differently. This was also manifested in their everyday Yiddish speech. Most, even my great-grandfather, born in the 1870s, were multilingual. My grandfather, for example, sang Italian and German opera on the radio for extra income. They were far from wealthy or privileged.
You are a propagandist, heavily reliant on the Daily Mail, which has been characterized as *lurid* for over 100 years. Worse, you appear to believe your propaganda and even triple down on it when called out.
Everyone here is on to you and your Hallelujah chorus.
...by next year it will be President Xi Jinping is on his death bed in China.
__________________
ICYMI, that was actually a trope earlier this year from the same sources.
Just like Trump, actually.
Russia earned what is very likely a record 93 billion euros(about $97 million) in revenue from exports of oil, gas and coal in the first 100 days of the country’s invasion of Ukraine, according to data analyzed by the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air, a research organization based in Helsinki.
###
MOSCOW, June 22 (Reuters) - The rouble jumped on Wednesday to its strongest mark in seven years against the dollar and euro, supported by capital controls, a favourable upcoming tax period and Russia's trade surplus.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-16/russia-current-account-surplus-surges-to-96-billion-on-energy#:~:text=Even%20with%20oil%20restrictions%2C%20Russia%27s,Economics%20forecast%20on%20May%206.
Russia’s current account surplus more than tripled in the first four months of the year to $95.8 billion, the central bank said, as prices surged for its oil and gas exports and imports plunged under the weight of sanctions imposed by the US and its allies over President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The surplus on the current account, the broadest measure of trade in goods and services, was the highest since at least 1994. The figure in first four months of last year was $27.5 billion.
Secret Putin plan to conquer the West:
Take in a lot of debt from European an US banks
Attack a country an incur sanctions
Rake in the dough with rising prices due to conflict
Default on debt
Economies of Europe and US collapse. Win war
Profit. Vacation in resort in the country you just took over and built with all the money you made.
As Trump says, when you owe Bank of America several hundreds of millions of dollars the bank doesn’t own you, you own the bank and dictate the terms
What currency is the west converting into rubles to pay for oil? Seems to me Russia has plenty of foreign currency when the convert. I'm not a financial expert by any means but just a thought.
It is gonna be amusing to watch the western bankers paper over derivative default daisy chains.
Grab the popcorn!
Lie lie lie—it is the way of “democracies”.
You gloat about Russia's default as though it were a reflection of Russia's economy having an awful, terrible, no-good, very bad time. Yet your own article conveys the duplicity of the default up front:
Russia has defaulted on its overseas debt for the first time in more than a century after missing a Sunday deadline to make a $100m interest payment. (This implies it's Russia's fault.)
Russia has the money to meet its obligations and is willing to pay, but sanctions made it impossible to get the payments to international creditors. (This makes it clear, however, that the default is entirely artificial, being an artifact of sanctions rather than the ability to repay.)
The Kremlin had been determined to avoid the default, which is a major blow to the nation's prestige. (Yet the BBC goes right back to speaking of the default as a blow to the nation's prestige, as though they hadn't just admitted that the default was forced upon them by the West.)
If you want to celebrate the default as an element of economic or geopolitical warfare against Russia, then that would at least be honest. But your celebratory paroxysms about this default somehow being a reflection of Russia's economic capacity (or rather the lack thereof) are utterly infantile.
Just to be clear, do I understand correctly that Foreign Dept Default is because foreign entities do not want to accept repayment in rubles, rather than dollars or other western curriencies? Could this be partly because they anticipate that Putin will soon have to scurry back to his own country and the ruble will loose value as a result?
I can also post 7 random images of people in destitution or poverty from America as well, because people existing on the margins can be found in every country.
How does your post refute anything that reformedliberal said?
Thank you.
My reaction was the same, but I decided to go work in the garden, instead of posting.
Also: time and geolocation ID needed.
The second image: from a March 2016 article by the Daily Sabah talking about poverty in Russia. The particular image is from a distribution point for food for the homeless in Moscow. The article spends some talking about the impacts of US-EU sanctions on the Russian economy following the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
The third image: this one took a bit more digging, but I found it traced back to a March 2016 article from a Russian website. The article describes an uninhabited barrracks that had burned down, but I think the image may be referring in general about such wooden dwellings built in the 1920s for miners as temporary housing. Quote: "The hundred-year-old barracks were declared unsafe and subject to resettlement in 2012. Only a part of the tenants received new apartments. There were no new houses in the village." The village of Uralets is located in a rural area of Sverdlovsk Oblast, and is over 800 miles geographically from Moscow.
The fourth image: from a September 2015 article by DW, again talking about Russian poverty in light of a devaluing ruble (tied to the sanctions at the time), inflation, and low oil/gas commodity prices.
The fifth image: Google Lens is tracing it originally to a January 2020 article from the Times about Vladimir Putin "bolstering his rule with fake political parties" per the headline; however, it's locked behind a paywall, so I can't get any additional context.
The sixth image: the earliest incarnation of this picture is from a LiveJournal entry from September 2008! It is from a village called Betenkes, and the photos are taken in the aftermath of a flood of some kind. Betenkes is located in the far north of the Sakha Republic of Russia, and is nearly 3,000 miles from Moscow geographically. (It's actually closer to Anchorage, Alaska!) It's basically an image from the Russian equivalent of Eskimos or Inuits.
The seventh and final image would ostensibly be from a 2015 article by the Borgen Project about Russian poverty, which they attribute to the Motor City Times. However, it goes back even further to a January 2013 piece from a Jewish conspiracy website, with the 'charming' headline "Putin is Jewish Pawn, says Russian Patriot", which alleges that Putin is actually a Jew, that the only well-off individuals in Russia are Jewish, and that Putin intends to exterminate ethnic Russians.
So basically, those images are from all over the place...and for the most part, are years old.
“when you owe Bank of America several hundreds of millions of dollars the bank doesn’t own you, you own the bank and dictate the terms”
In the same way a mosquito owns your blood as you splat it flat. The amount of money owed to BOA is about as big an annoyance as a mosquito bite. This debt does not go away, eventually Russia will have to pay it.
Disagree. The day marks the elapse of the elapsing (period of time passing) 30 day grace period. The payment lapsed (did not happen).
Putin was forced into this position by western leaders who were freezing Russian dollars internationally.
There isn’t a country in the world that isn’t watching this Sxxtshow and taking note
Oh man that is some sophisticated grammar - beyond me. But happy to go with it.
...those images are from all over the place...and for the most part, are years old.
_____________________________
Thank You!!!! So helpful!
Like posting pics of Pine Ridge to diss SoDak.
I have lived in places, back in the day, that had buildings like the wooden barracks & stoves that looked a lot the one pictured.
Also, I wondered about the ethnicity of the elderly woman and noted that the Russian flag was on the food delivery truck.
I should just ignore the bots, but sometimes I get bored and peek at the Ukie threads with the long list of keywords because I know the sane people will also post.
File under self-indulgence, I guess.
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.
