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Europe must drastically reduce natural gas consumption in order to survive through the winter, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned.
IEA chief Fatih Birol recently called on all European Union (EU) member states to reduce gas consumption by 15% in the face of the threat of a complete Russian gas cutoff.
However, the IEA now says the EU will need to cut even more in order to get through the winter.
“Even if there is no single accident… Europe still needs to reduce its gas consumption about 20% compared to today in order to have safe and normal winter months,” Birol said.
Birol made the comments while issuing, what he called, a “red alert” for energy markets.
https://slaynews.com/news/europe-slash-gas-usage-survive-winter-iea-chief-warns/
Europe must drastically reduce natural gas consumption in order to survive through the winter, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned.
IEA chief Fatih Birol recently called on all European Union (EU) member states to reduce gas consumption by 15% in the face of the threat of a complete Russian gas cutoff.
However, the IEA now says the EU will need to cut even more in order to get through the winter.
“Even if there is no single accident… Europe still needs to reduce its gas consumption about 20% compared to today in order to have safe and normal winter months,” Birol said.
Birol made the comments while issuing, what he called, a “red alert” for energy markets.
Business Retreats and Sanctions Are Crippling the Russian Economy
118 Pages
Posted: 20 Jul 2022
Last revised: 27 Jul 2022
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld
Yale School of Management
Steven Tian
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Franek Sokolowski
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Michal Wyrebkowski
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Mateusz Kasprowicz
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Date Written: July 19, 2022
Abstract
As the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters into its fifth month, a common narrative has emerged that the unity of the world in standing up to Russia has somehow devolved into a “war of economic attrition which is taking its toll on the west”, given the supposed “resilience” and even “prosperity” of the Russian economy. This is simply untrue – and a reflection of widely held but factually incorrect misunderstandings over how the Russian economy is actually holding up amidst the exodus of over 1,000 global companies and international sanctions.
That these misunderstandings persist is not surprising. Since the invasion, the Kremlin’s economic releases have become increasingly cherry-picked, selectively tossing out unfavorable metrics while releasing only those that are more favorable. These Putin-selected statistics are then carelessly trumpeted across media and used by reams of well-meaning but careless experts in building out forecasts which are excessively, unrealistically favorable to the Kremlin.
Our team of experts, using private Russian language and unconventional data sources including high frequency consumer data, cross-channel checks, releases from Russia’s international trade partners, and data mining of complex shipping data, have released one of the first comprehensive economic analyses measuring Russian current economic activity five months into the invasion, and assessing Russia’s economic outlook.
From our analysis, it becomes clear: business retreats and sanctions are catastrophically crippling the Russian economy. We tackle a wide range of common misperceptions – and shed light on what is actually going on inside Russia, including:
- Russia’s strategic positioning as a commodities exporter has irrevocably deteriorated, as it now deals from a position of weakness with the loss of its erstwhile main markets, and faces steep challenges executing a “pivot to Asia” with non-fungible exports such as piped gas
- Despite some lingering leakiness, Russian imports have largely collapsed, and the country faces stark challenges securing crucial inputs, parts, and technology from hesitant trade partners, leading to widespread supply shortages within its domestic economy
- Despite Putin’s delusions of self-sufficiency and import substitution, Russian domestic production has come to a complete standstill with no capacity to replace lost businesses, products and talent; the hollowing out of Russia’s domestic innovation and production base has led to soaring prices and consumer angst
- As a result of the business retreat, Russia has lost companies representing ~40% of its GDP, reversing nearly all of three decades’ worth of foreign investment and buttressing unprecedented simultaneous capital and population flight in a mass exodus of Russia’s economic base
- Putin is resorting to patently unsustainable, dramatic fiscal and monetary intervention to smooth over these structural economic weaknesses, which has already sent his government budget into deficit for the first time in years and drained his foreign reserves even with high energy prices – and Kremlin finances are in much, much more dire straits than conventionally understood
- Russian domestic financial markets, as an indicator of both present conditions and future outlook, are the worst performing markets in the entire world this year despite strict capital controls, and have priced in sustained, persistent weakness within the economy with liquidity and credit contracting – in addition to Russia being substantively cut off from international financial markets, limiting its ability to tap into pools of capital needed for the revitalization of its crippled economy
Looking ahead, there is no path out of economic oblivion for Russia as long as the allied countries remain unified in maintaining and increasing sanctions pressure against Russia, and The Kyiv School of Economics and McFaul-Yermak Working Group have led the way in proposing additional sanctions measures.
Defeatist headlines arguing that Russia’s economy has bounced back are simply not factual - the facts are that, by any metric and on any level, the Russian economy is reeling, and now is not the time to step on the brakes.
Download the visual slide deck accompanying this research monograph here: https://yale.box.com/s/7f6agg5ezscj234kahx35lil04udqgeo
Terrible consequences indeed:
Business Retreats and Sanctions Are Crippling the Russian Economy
118 Pages
Posted: 20 Jul 2022
Last revised: 27 Jul 2022
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld
Yale School of Management
Steven Tian
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Franek Sokolowski
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Michal Wyrebkowski
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Mateusz Kasprowicz
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Date Written: July 19, 2022
Hanover, a city in the northwest of Germany, has become the first major metropolitan area to try and reduce the use of natural gas by removing hot water from public buildings. The move comes as natural gas supplies from Russia are reduced to 20% of capacity. Germany is attempting to fill up storage facilities of natural gas in order to survive the winter.
To reduce energy consumption in the face of the looming German gas crisis, Economics Minister Robert Habeck has proposed a bizarre set of indoor temperature ordinances that continue the pattern of direct state interventions in everyday life first established by mass containment.
Workspaces where hard physical labour is performed are not to be heated above 12 C, under the new rules. Those involving moderate labour while standing will have their temperatures capped at 16 C, and moderate labour while sitting at 17 C. Places where light labour is performed standing, will be permitted temperatures as high as 18 C, while white-collar office spaces where everybody sits and types will be permitted nothing warmer than 19 C. The heating of hallways and other common spaces will be outlawed, as will certain kinds of restroom water heaters. There will be a general ban on using electricity or gas to heat private pools, and shops will be ordered to keep external doors closed at all times. Political pressure is growing for similar ordinances limiting gas consumption in residences.
While some doubt that these rules can be enforced, German police have already proven effective at enforcing pandemic-era contact limits in private homes. And even if indoor temperatures are never systematically checked by authorities, I’m pretty sure that the simple prospect of unannounced inspections and fines will be enough for most employers to declare a third season of home office, with the added prospect of offloading higher gas prices onto their employees.
It is most curious, how this totally new catastrophe should call forth some of very same measures demanded by the Corona pandemic. Not only will home office return, but municipal pools will close again and cities will be kept dark at night, a de facto limitation on evening mobility that might well encourage some places to reimpose the curfews last seen in the winter of 2020/21. Meanwhile, some of the very same spaces recently commandeered for excess hospital capacity and mass vaccination will be repurposed as heated shelters for the old, the sick and the poor.
Not any unified plan, but rather a long series of contingencies, have caused the German gas crisis. Yet the steadfast refusal of the Scholz government to consider any course of action that might ameliorate the shortage, always with a new excuse, grows every day more unsettling.
There’s the obvious explanation, that the Greens in government are merely taking advantage of this opportunity to achieve their higher goal of restricting fossil fuel consumption, as they’ve always wished. But I think there might be another, deeper way to understand this too. I suggest that we’re seeing here the emergence of a new political style, which you might call Crisis Governance—or, as a friend put it, “the continuation of Corona policy by other means.” One of my core themes here has been the deepening demobilisation of western states, as power is diffused downwards from the political apex into the bureaucratic institutions, the press and major corporate enterprises. The great advantage of this power-sharing is a near-total uniformity of political views that it has inspired across the socio-cultural elite, but it comes at the cost of initiative, coordination and strategy.
RWSGFY says
Terrible consequences indeed:
Business Retreats and Sanctions Are Crippling the Russian Economy
118 Pages
Posted: 20 Jul 2022
Last revised: 27 Jul 2022
Jeffrey Sonnenfeld
Yale School of Management
Steven Tian
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Franek Sokolowski
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Michal Wyrebkowski
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Mateusz Kasprowicz
Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute
Date Written: July 19, 2022
For Fuck's Sake - the West has the same stupid propaganda nonsense bullshit the Soviets did now.
You know what happened when McDonald's closed their doors? ALL the buildings were seized and now there's a Russian McDonald's running in its place, meanwhile, western propaganda is telling us that we need to eat fucking bugs.
Vkusno i tochka translates to : McDowells....home of the big Mick.......the clown dude is Boris McDowell
https://mcdowells.mortenjonassen.dk/
komputodo says
Vkusno i tochka translates to : McDowells....home of the big Mick.......the clown dude is Boris McDowell
https://mcdowells.mortenjonassen.dk/
So what?
I'm pointing out that Western countries leaving Russia didn't change a thing other than provide opportunity for a bunch of local corporations.
And McDonald's didn't fuck over their investors for nothing. They were paid to do this and we paid for it, American taxpayers paid for it.
All the stupidity in sanctioning Russia and withdrawing American and European countries, that's fucking over Europe and the United States - the citizens - who gives a shit about them though? Right?
We just gave Ukraine more money for this dumbass war than Russia spends on their entire military in a year, as a result, I...
You are preaching to the choir.
, a common narrative has emerged
RWSGFY says
, a common narrative has emerged
Think they'll ever investigate what Hunter was doing with Burisma and the Big Guy?
just hate this fucking war. It's fucking us all over,
And the cognitive dissonance on climate bullshit, energy destruction, and sacrificing for “democracy” in Ukraine is still everywhere.
So that oil supply is running on borrowed time. When winter comes and the oil backed up on the all the pipelines in Siberia freezes in place, the pipelines will be permanently damaged as well.
And it took almost thirty years for the Russians to fix those the last time that happened (fall of the Soviet Union).
The USSR was run by a bunch of incompetent assholes that treated their (competent) underlings like shit
richwicks says
The USSR was run by a bunch of incompetent assholes that treated their (competent) underlings like shit
... and Ruscia is continuing that tradition.
Egypt is preparing to adopt Russia’s Mir payment system and include the Russian ruble on the list of currencies used by Egyptian banks and tourism companies, according to an Egyptian Central Bank official who spoke with Al Monitor. ...
Cairo reportedly made the decision in anticipation of the winter tourism season, taking advantage of Europe’s ill-fated sanctions campaign against Russia.
Several countries across the world are seeking to start using the Mir payment system, chief among Iran, which has long been the target of punitive economic sanctions from the west.
The head of Iran’s banking and insurance department of the Iranian Finance Ministry, Qorban Eskandari, said on 16 August that Tehran is “just months away” from implementing the Russian payment system, which serves as an alternative to western systems like Visa and Mastercard.
Days later, Russian and Iranian companies started conducting trade in their national currencies for the first time.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said early in August that five of Turkey’s most prominent banks have already started using the Mir payment system.
Bahrain is also planning to introduce the Russian system “in the near future,” according to the kingdom’s ambassador to Russia Ahmed Abdulrahman al-Saati.
“In Bahrain, we will soon introduce the Russian Mir payment system into banking services, which will allow tourists from [Russia] to relax comfortably and safely with us,” Al-Saati said during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in July.
Sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of its invasion of Ukraine have backfired for the most part, pushing Moscow closer to its allies in the Global South, and leaving both the US and Europe scrambling to deal with the loss of Russian fuel.
Europe Commits Suicide-by-Sanctions
Sept. 12 - A Swiss billboard is making the rounds on social media depicting a young woman on the telephone. The caption reads, "Does the neighbor heat the apartment to over 19 degrees (66F)? Please inform us." While the Swiss government has dismissed the poster as a fake, the penalties Swiss citizens face for daring to warm their homes are very real. According to the Swiss newspaper Blick, those who violate the 66 degree heating limit could face as many as three years in prison!
Prison time for heating your home? In the “free” world? How is it possible in 2022, when Switzerland and the rest of the political west have achieved the greatest economic success in history, that the European continent faces a winter like something out of the dark ages?
Sanctions.
While long promoted – often by those opposed to war – as a less destructive alternative to war, sanctions are in reality acts of war. And as we know with interventionism and war, the result is often unintended consequences and even blowback.
European sanctions against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine earlier this year will likely go down in history as a prime example of how sanctions can result in unintended consequences. While seeking to punish Russia by cutting off gas and oil imports, European Union politicians forgot that Europe is completely dependent on Russian energy supplies and that the only people to suffer if those imports are shut down are the Europeans themselves.
The Russians simply pivoted to the south and east and found plenty of new buyers in China, India, and elsewhere. In fact, Russia’s state-run Gazprom energy company has reported that its profits have increased by 100 percent in the first half of this year.
Russia is getting rich while Europeans are facing a freezing winter and economic collapse. All because of the false belief that sanctions are a cost-free way to force other countries to do what you want them to do.
What happens when the people see dumb government policies making energy bills skyrocket as the economy grounds to a halt? They become desperate and take to the streets in protest.
This weekend thousands of Austrians took to the streets in a “Freedom Rally” to demand an end to sanctions and the opening of Nord Stream II, the gas pipeline on the verge of opening earlier this year. Last week an estimated 100,000 Czechs took to the streets of Prague to protest NATO and EU policy. In France, the “Yellow Vests” are back in the streets protesting the destruction of their economy in the name of “defeating” Russia in Ukraine. In Germany, Serbia, and elsewhere, protests are gearing up.
Even the Washington Post was forced to admit that sanctions on Russia are not having the intended effect. In an article yesterday, the paper worries that sanctions are inflicting “collateral damage in Russia and beyond, potentially even hurting the very countries that impose them. Some even worried that the sanctions intended to deter and weaken Putin could end up emboldening and strengthening him.”
This is all predictable. Sanctions kill. Sometimes they kill innocents in the country targeted for destruction and sometimes they kill innocents in the country imposing them. The solution, as always, is non-intervention. No sanctions, no "color revolutions," no meddling. It's really that simple.
What happens when the people see dumb government policies making energy bills skyrocket as the economy grounds to a halt? They become desperate and take to the streets in protest.
https://mailchi.mp/ronpaulinstitute/eusanctions-116257?e=5289e1161e
Europe Commits Suicide-by-Sanctions
The CEO of the world’s largest steel manufacturer has issued a grim warning as plants continue to shut down amid the mounting energy crisis.
Reiner Blaschek, the CEO of ArcelorMittal Germany, warns that the German wing of the company can no longer compete due to soaring energy costs.
The energy crisis in Germany is turning into a manufacturing crisis, Blaschek warns.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-stalingrad/the-return-of-stalingrad-russian-region-proposes-renaming-airport-idUSKCN10Z1DI
The return of Stalingrad: Russian region proposes renaming airport
https://slaynews.com/news/worlds-largest-steel-manufacturer-warns-crisis-plants-shut-down/
The CEO of the world’s largest steel manufacturer has issued a grim warning as plants continue to shut down amid the mounting energy crisis.
Reiner Blaschek, the CEO of ArcelorMittal Germany, warns that the German wing of the company can no longer compete due to soaring energy costs.
The energy crisis in Germany is turning into a manufacturing crisis, Blaschek warns.
Germany fucked by the American Deep State.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-stalingrad/the-return-of-stalingrad-russian-region-proposes-renaming-airport-idUSKCN10Z1DI
The return of Stalingrad: Russian region proposes renaming airport
https://slaynews.com/news/worlds-largest-steel-manufacturer-warns-crisis-plants-shut-down/
The CEO of the world’s largest steel manufacturer has issued a grim warning as plants continue to shut down amid the mounting energy crisis.
Reiner Blaschek, the CEO of ArcelorMittal Germany, warns that the German wing of the company can no longer compete due to soaring energy costs.
The energy crisis in Germany is turning into a manufacturing crisis, Blaschek warns.
Germany fucked by the American Deep State.
Putin is engaging in some cold-blooded calculus here. "Make things very uncomfortable for people in the west and they will cave in and let me do what I want to do."
We cannot let Putin win this battle!!!!
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Putin is engaging in some cold-blooded calculus here. "Make things very uncomfortable for people in the west and they will cave in and let me do what I want to do." Long ago, Western democracies caved into Hitler in hopes of appeasing him and stopping a second world war. We know what happened afterward. We are going to have high gasoline and diesel prices. We are going to suffer high prices for food, timber, and natural gas for a long time to come. We are going to see large numbers of people face starvation. We cannot let Putin win this battle!!!! Decades ago, Stalin and Chairman Mao engineered famines that killed millions of people. Putin is the same kind of monster