It is not just on the battlefield where the war is not progressing as hoped. Sanctions have failed to cripple Putin's war machine and risk backfiring on the West
I've admired your financial journalism for decades - since you were at MoneyWeek - but there is lots wrong with this article and perhaps you might want to reinvestigate the subject in another article.
The most obvious thing is, forecasts for Russia's growth. I don't know how the IMF comes up with its forecasts.
If you are Goldman Sachs, your job is to interpret data to give good advice to your commercial clients.
The IMF is above all that, it's "independent" in the sense that it's not the IMF's job to make political judgements, like, do the Russians lie through their teeth with their data?
So I suppose it puts the official Russian data into its model, and out comes a forecast. Is that how it works? I'm not sure.
Anyway, Russia stopped publishing many series of economic data last year. Probably none of its numbers can be trusted.
Meanwhile it suits the Russians if Western commentators repeat what is very unlikely untrue - that sanctions don't work. Probably they do work.
But If the GDP story is true, it comes from ramping up military production.at thge expense of the civil economy.
(In so far as it can be ramped up. The Russians are crap at making things. There is a whole rampant corruption story to be told too. They say they produce 100 tanks a month? They probably tell Putin some such number. Is it true, though? New tanks don't seem to appear on the battlefield).
And the civil part of economy is almost certainly in deep trouble. Ordinary Russian do not have happy lives.
The Chinese pay for Russian oil in renminbi. At a price set by the Chinese, quite likely lower than the cost of extraction. In any case there aren't enough pipelines, and they can't be built in time for this war. And India pays in rupees.
What can Russia do with these currencies? Buy joss sticks?
Take a look at where Russia's pipes go, and then another look at which hubs Ukraine is blowing up with drones, often deep into Russia, and then take a rethink.
The Black Sea is now effectively closed to Russian shipping.
Russian assets held in Europe may not be missed by Russia, as you say, because they've got used to not having access to them, But give that $350 bn to Ukraine to spend then suddenly it's a different picture. That's a lot of shells from South Korea, say.
Above my pay grade to check much of what I say above, but reputable people are making these arguments. Revisit the subject is my suggestion!
I've admired your financial journalism for decades - since you were at MoneyWeek - but there is lots wrong with this article and perhaps you might want to reinvestigate the subject in another article.
The most obvious thing is, forecasts for Russia's growth. I don't know how the IMF comes up with its forecasts.
If you are Goldman Sachs, your job is to interpret data to give good advice to your commercial clients.
The IMF is above all that, it's "independent" in the sense that it's not the IMF's job to make political judgements, like, do the Russians lie through their teeth with their data?
So I suppose it puts the official Russian data into its model, and out comes a forecast. Is that how it works? I'm not sure.
Anyway, Russia stopped publishing many series of economic data last year. Probably none of its numbers can be trusted.
Meanwhile it suits the Russians if Western commentators repeat what is very unlikely untrue - that sanctions don't work. Probably they do work.
But If the GDP story is true, it comes from ramping up military production.at thge expense of the civil economy.
(In so far as it can be ramped up. The Russians are crap at making things. There is a whole rampant corruption story to be told too. They say they produce 100 tanks a month? They probably tell Putin some such number. Is it true, though? New tanks don't seem to appear on the battlefield).
And the civil part of economy is almost certainly in deep trouble. Ordinary Russian do not have happy lives.
The Chinese pay for Russian oil in renminbi. At a price set by the Chinese, quite likely lower than the cost of extraction. In any case there aren't enough pipelines, and they can't be built in time for this war. And India pays in rupees.
What can Russia do with these currencies? Buy joss sticks?
Take a look at where Russia's pipes go, and then another look at which hubs Ukraine is blowing up with drones, often deep into Russia, and then take a rethink.
The Black Sea is now effectively closed to Russian shipping.
Russian assets held in Europe may not be missed by Russia, as you say, because they've got used to not having access to them, But give that $350 bn to Ukraine to spend then suddenly it's a different picture. That's a lot of shells from South Korea, say.
Above my pay grade to check much of what I say above, but reputable people are making these arguments. Revisit the subject is my suggestion!