Russian Ruble just lost ~30% of its value | Hacker News Reader

Russian Ruble just lost ~30% of its value

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283 pointseifec434 comments

I think the 98 crisis will be pale in comparison. Background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Russian_financial_crisis

I wrote a thread comparing 98 with this: https://twitter.com/mmaunder/status/1498105293493792771?s=21

iirc when the 2008 financial crisis hit, Putin said that he'd never let Russians lose all their savings like in 98 - so much for that promise I guess

It would highly surprise me if it didn't. In fact I totally expect that other financial markets will melt down as well. This is going to be a pretty bitter pill to swallow but if that's the worst that comes from this then fine. It feels like it is 1928 or so, or maybe 1939.

I think it's rather 1956.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Crisis

Putin is trying to go all-in with his last few chips. If he succeeds, he'll be in the game for a few more rounds. If he fails, he'll be out.

Hitler had allies. He had what was when he took power the best mathematics universities in the world (with comparable success in other areas; he eviscerated German academia, though), and (IIRC) the second or third-largest economy. Putin has a doomsday device that he doesn't actually want to use.

> Putin has a doomsday device that he doesn't actually want to use.

I'm not so sure about that. I feel it depends on whether Putin still has at least some marbles left. If he does? Yes, he realises that leaving a legacy of "war criminal who nuked Ukraine" isn't actually what he wants so the threat of nukes is making a point to NATO to stay out of it. If he's lost all his marbles, though, or if he's so far out of touch with reality as makes no difference? I could see him nuking Ukraine out of spite if it's clear he won't get what he wants, in a sort of "If I can't have you, no one can!" move. Assuming that there isn't a coup before that, or that him giving that order doesn't trigger a coup, etc, etc.

This could be a play to force a mediated settlement. Playing on the fear of a nuclear escalation to force mediation by the NATO/China. A similar occurrence happened in the 1980s with South Africa's nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately as the second largest nuclear power acting as a belligerent, such a threat could plausibly draw NATO directly into the conflict. I don't see a world where a country uses nukes in Europe without triggering a full NATO response. I also don't see a world where NATO negotiates under nuclear threat, to do so would present a long-term risk that Russia believes NATO will cave to nuclear threats and pushes the issue again.

Do you have any reason to believes that he's out of touch with reality and lost his marbles?

>Hitler had allies

Last I heard, the governments of China and India were conspicuously refusing to condemn the invasion.

It doesn't seem unthinkable to me that a large part of the globe wants and feels they deserve, a "new world order" where the US takes a less hegemonic role and institutional influence is adjusted to reflect the modern world a bit more.

Allies join you, they don't quietly remain neutral. India isn't joining Russia in a world war. Certainly not with China. China, meanwhile, is the superpower in the room and unless they've developed an invisibility cloak they haven't exactly been preparing for a superpower-level struggle. (Yes, they're building up their military, but so is everyone else, and it's been at a consistent pace for two decades.)

>It doesn't seem unthinkable to me that a large part of the globe wants and feels they deserve, a "new world order" where the US takes a less hegemonic role

It doesn't "seem unthinkable" because they've been literally saying that for half a century. That doesn't mean they want to work with the second coming of Christian nationalism. Anyone who's worked in diplomacy in the global South knows it's hard enough for them to work with each other.

> Putin is trying to go all-in with his last few chips. [...] If he fails, he'll be out.

Or he tries the nuclear option. I would not longer rule that out. He has already lost the first round.

Honestly, my hope is that none of the Oligarchs or the Russians at the trigger want to see the world in a fiery end.

One thing that might be tricky is if he deploys tactical nukes, though. They're small enough so that the other nuclear powers won't go for all-out annihilation (probably), but still a step towards further escalation.

Agreed. It’s like cornering a bear: at some point it won’t care if it dies, it will just attack with whatever means available.

Specifically, what do you mean by 'lost the first round'?

The problem is that Putin might be completely irrational, and therefore operating in unpredictable ways.

If we believe some of the news, the invasion effort looks poorly coordinated and very risky. There are some units stranded without fuel, some light mechanized units engaged big cities and got repelled, whereas others got destroyed on the roads without proper air cover.

Frankly, Russia has some very impressive military tech but the whole thing does not look well planned at all. It seems more like the product of a delusional leader and some incompetent high ranking officials. Getting into urban warfare, which is where this seems to be heading to will turn to big losses on his side. Reminds me of Croatia '91, but without the secession component. Jugoslav National Army threw shitloads of poorly motivated armor units and they got nowhere.

He might be more rational than you think. He would rather suffer severe economic damage, have some mild military losses, and see Ukraine destroyed than have the last remaining buffer country between him and NATO end up as part of the NATO/EU/US order. He may also have correctly calculated that despite the media theater and economic sanctions, the US doesn't truly care about Ukraine.

It is unfortunately the Ukrainians who will suffer the worst of Putin's aggressiveness and the West's foolishness.

It's possible his generals have bungled the logistics on purpose. Can't stage a coup but they can undermine authority with feigned incompetence.

Putin is just the executive leader, not the (or only) general. If you think blame for logistic failures can just be cleanly assigned to the presence of his marbles or lack thereof, you’re sorely mistaken.

> Putin has a doomsday device that he doesn't actually want to use.

How do you know this?

My first reaction was "which part is being questioned, the doomsday device's existence or the willingness to use it?" such an absurd situation we are all in now. Anyways, maybe the poster is referring to deadhand?

It's a bit premature to judge, you need to wait until the Moscow market opens, when the Central Bank of Russia is active.

Might be a bit difficult to judge from that given that they've ordered banks to not allow foreigners to sell:

https://www.reuters.com/business/russian-cbank-orders-block-...

That's a nice life hack. If you forbid anyone from selling a currency, the data will prove that it's holding its value just fine!

Operative words there 'foreigners' and 'securities', not 'Russians' and 'Rubles'.

It's truly amazing what you can get done with few hours of spare time and a central bank.

This is about securities not Ruble

The Moscow Exchange is insignificant compared to major global FX markets. Close to half of all currency trading on the planet happens in London, and CME is the biggest marketplace for futures. There isn't a whole lot the Central Bank of Russia can do right now considering its own foreign reserves are frozen.

I am not sure what the price of ruble has to do with the Moscow market. These days forex is pretty much traded 24/7. If they are pulling these cheap tricks, there's even more reason for uncertainties surrounding their currency.

No, it's not. Currency futures have proven time after time to be nearly perfect reflections of actual forex movement.

It won't open until later.

https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1498160630209126400

When is that?

https://www.tradinghours.com/markets/moex/hours

Long lines at the ATMs:

https://mobile.twitter.com/taxfreelt/status/1497811412265099...

Seeing this really makes me sad. We rightly stand in solidarity with Ukraine, but ordinary Russian people will also suffer enormously because of this. Imagine living somewhere where your future just got vaporized and if you speak up about it, you risk ending up in a gulag. It’s a nightmare.

Please, show me a war where the elite, political class suffered more than the commoners. I’ll wait.

I’m as sad as anyone that OnlyFans “content creators” in Russia aren’t getting paid ( https://news.yahoo.com/russia-blameless-onlyfans-stars-ve-12... ) but democracy is worth more in the long run.

In Cambodia, just days after the Khmer Rouge took power, they ordered 2 million people living in Phnom Penh and other urban areas to head to the countryside.

The idea was based on an extreme version of Maoism and a belief in the superiority of the Khmer people, the predominant ethnic group in Cambodia. Citizens were to be turned into traditional rural peasants, referred to as the "old people" by the Khmer Rouge. Urban workers and intelligentsia elites were viewed as "new people" and easily expendable.

Good example but I probably should have said “interstate war” because civil war is by its nature very often about class warfare. Also, how a war ends doesn’t count: we were talking about sanctions as a means of inflicting suffering during a war.

In WW1 the British upper classes, who made up the officer class, were killed at a substantially higher rate than the largely working class enlisted men.

1. what was the army participation rate of the upper class vs the lower class? A cursory search seems to suggest the differential was 17% ("officer class") vs 12% ("largely working class enlisted men"). That's close enough that differences in army participation can drown the two out.

2. also relative to the army participation rate, is the suffering of civilians. If working civilians had to suffer rationing, starvation, and disease, while the nobility just chilled in their country side estates tended to be servants, that could more than make up for 1% (or whatever) of nobility dying in battle.

It may not count but roman centurions used to lead from the from and had huge mortality rates [0]

[0] https://www.quora.com/What-was-the-average-lifespan-of-a-Rom...

lead from the from?

The only time they get their comeuppance is when the peasants come knocking on their doors and want their heads and usually things don't progress that far. Then new bad humans take over and start the cycle anew.

I'm gonna go with the Romanovs, which is more than slightly ironic.

Sure, the elite everywhere will rest safely in private, but their very public, pet tyrants often don't always as well. Caligula, Hitler, Saddam, Gaddafi, et al did not retire peacefully.

Russian economy (applies to Eastern European in general) is generally cash-heavier than Western world. Having been burned by inflation before, Russians are skeptical of ruble as a life-savings mechanism, and diversify into gold or hard foreign currency, which is the reason you see those currency-exchange kiosks with neon signs well beyond areas frequented by foreign tourists.

Sad indeed.

Do you see any creative options?

I wonder if the Ukrainians could try to make it super easy and somewhat attractive for Russian soldiers to defect.

Maybe the EU could fund desertion bonuses for Russian soldiers and make a deal with remote countries like Paraguay to temporarily resettle them? Could be a very cost efficient and humane way to tilt the military power balance. It would also put economic pressure on the Russian military apparatus to increase soliers' wages, and Ukraine would get hold of some much needed gear.

I saw a comment on Twitter from a Russian expat saying something like “if the EU offered NATO citizenship to every Russian soldier, this war would be over tomorrow morning.”

Obviously a lot of magic-wand-waving there. But… seriously, is it that crazy?

Well, NATO citizenship doesn't exist as a concept, so taken literally, yes. NATO is a defensive pact between nations, not a supergovernment like the EU.

They could not guarantee the safe transport of their families away from Russian reach for this to succeed spontaneously.

> I wonder if the Ukrainians could try to make it super easy and somewhat attractive for Russian soldiers to defect.

That's what they constantly calling for: surrender if you're in the action. It's very attractive when the alternative is getting shot. Of course, there's matter of what to do with POWs after this is over, whether to kick them out back to Russia from them to taken to the wall or to the gulags. But that would be later.

The problem is acting on that when you're a soldier. All soldiers of all countries are brainwashed into following orders, not making they personal educated decisions about every operation they participate in. It's also a bit hard to just go and surrender when you're not cued in into what's happening and was not following news for the past week from the comfort of your home. It's a bit hard to surrender immediately when your first contact with the other side starts with a strike on your column and gunfire in your direction.

>" whether to kick them out back to Russia from them to taken to the wall or to the gulags."

I think if that's the offer they'll pass

This is very good idea. Not sure about Paraguay as it will just guarantee nothing but miserable life but if offered resettlement into West I think they would leave in droves. Putin might wake up without the soldiers.

> ordinary Russian people will also suffer enormously

True. But who will remove Putin from power if not the Russian people? They won't do so without suffering a lot, they have been used to criminal leaders for more than a century.

I am not saying it's the fault of individual people. But all there governments have been incredibly inhuman basically for centuries. It certainly affects the society.

As a Hungarian I'm quite happy that finally the EU put pressure on Hungary to not steal all EU funds and direct to Viktor Orban and his family. After 12 years finally we have an election where we have a good chance (about 50%) to unseat him and significantly decrease corruption in our country.

Of course in Russia the situation is much worse at this point, but Russians know that they can get back their money if they elect a less corrupt / aggressive leader.

> but Russians know that they can get back their money if they elect a less corrupt / aggressive leader.

I don't think there are any clear opposition candidates in Russia. They have been silenced, imprisoned, nearly poisoned. So even if there were an election without massive fraud I doubt many Russians would know whom to vote for.

Alexei Navalny may be in prison, but he's still alive. It's true though that if Putin goes down as a leader he would bring Alexei down with himself

How many of those have voted for Putin?

Nobody knows. Not even the Russian election committee.

Probably something between 70% and 80% according to independent polls. Of course after most oppositional candidates where hindered by the government in various ways.

How many of them believed that Putin would start a aggression to erase whole country from the map? Very few. As still the vast majority of the people in Ukraine did not believe it a week ago. And many European leaders either. Such wars have not existed in Europe since Hitler and not many believed they would return any time soon.

117%

In a free and fair election? Zero.

It wouldn't be zero. Strangely enough there really are Russians that want to go back to 'the good old days' and they will vote for Putin in an actual free election.

No. It's difficult to say how a free a fair election would look like because there has not been any free press for at least 10 years (if ever...) and it got much worse recently. So it's not even clear who would be the opposition.

But I would not be too surprised if were similar as in the US. 50% vote for Trump.

Point of no return has passed. Things like this will affect not just 0.001% of the population (as the idea of blocking Github), it will affect everyone in Russia. And this will finally make them fight against the regime.

> And this will finally make them fight with the regime.

Don't be too sure of that. But it does increase the chances.

"Fight with" can mean "fight for" or "fight against", which do you mean?

fixed, thanks.

Solidarity with working class on both sides

Sadly Russians need to be forced to get rid of their dictator. The only way to do it is if Putin stops getting more money from outside, and it will be extremely painful at this point.

All it takes is 5 million of it them out on the street in protest and Putin's goons will be overwhelmed. They face arrest while Ukrainians face bombs. The whole world is rallying behind Ukraine and the Russian people themselves have the biggest power to stop him.

5 millions unarmed protesting people can do nothing to dictatorship. You need military to stand against Putin.

Exactly, Belarus did not go well.

If 5 million people march against him, the army will follow

That didn’t happen in Belarus and Hong Kong.

It is sad. Unfortunately the least damaging way to put pressure on Putin.

Aren't ordinary Russian people fairly supportive of the Russian imperialism? Didn't Putin have a very strong improvement in ratings in 2014, when first meddling with Ukraine's affairs? Around half of Russians were positive about the current invasion days before it started (and went well south from there). Keep in mind, we talk about one of their most brotherly nations out there.

It's sad in some universal way but I'm far from feeling empathetic. It's been too much abuse.

Do you trust opinion polls of people subject to autocratic regimes? Do you trust the people doing the polling? If you lived in Russia and you got a call from a stranger asking if you support Navalny would you say yes?

Seems obvious these issues basically mean all such polls are garbage.

Well, we know that in many dictatorships support of the leader is marginal (e.g. just across the border - Belarus). This does not seem to be the case with Putin.

And yes, you can say you don't like the war in a poll. It's not North Korea.

Maybe you can see changes but you can’t see the actual number. The people being polled and the pollsters themselves are incentivized to lie.

They poisoned Navalny and then killed the doctor who treated him. If I am Russian living in Russia and I am asked by a stranger if I support Navalny, I don’t see any problem lying.

It is, especially considering the typical Russian is not for a war in Ukraine and is also not a Putin supporter. Putin is a president by force, Russians cannot unseat him without any bloodshed.

Are you sure they are not for war?

For example: https://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2022/02/europe/russia-uk...

They are surely less for war now but the effect would be opposite if they managed to capture Ukraine within a few days.

I haven't seen any calls for him to resign, just protests against the war. What's the breaking point for Russians against Putin?

When internal security forces switch sides (or stand down).

Tends to be how revolutions go.

They should be standing on main squares of their cities or standing in territorial defense units inside Ukraine, not in front of ATMs. Zero empathy until the war is stopped, people are dying, we don’t give a single flying fuck that somebody is inconvenienced by atm queue.

Yeah no, I do actually sympathize. I'm not booking a ticket to Ukraine to go fight, and similarly people in Russia have not signed up to revolt. Everyone has their own lives and families to look after.

I may be fine with hurting 'Russia' in the abstract, but it's not really fun that the only way to realistically do that is to hurt the ordinary people.

people of russia have control. they can go and protest or they can go and fight their fascist army. if they choose to do neither - they are complicit, so fuck them.

No sympathy with people who have no control and don't support this war? The last pill had support at 8%.

You can't speak your mind in Russia. The population is not guilty.

That's the price for standing and watching Putin take more and more power.

people of russia have control. they can go and protest or they can go and fight their fascist army. if they choose to do neither - they are complicit, so fuck them.

Responding as someone that has spent a good amount of time there, having trained a long time to fight Russians.

> We rightly stand in solidarity with Ukraine

Which Ukraine? There are actually two of them!

The eastern half is culturally, economically, philisophically, politically, Russian and in Russia's sphere of influence.

The western half is like continental Europe.

This is why I have joked w friends there, calling the East "Little Russia", or, "Western Russia". This was before all the recent wars too.

> Imagine living somewhere where your future just got vaporized and if you speak up about it, you risk ending up in a gulag. It’s a nightmare.

The Russians on the Wastern Front really defeated the Nazi War machine of Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe & SS, not us Yanks & Brits on the West. They did this at a huge cost and lost ~8-10M men, ~20M in total, in the process. This is actually seared into the Russian memory.

They will never permit a hostile enemy this close to their borders again.

Particularly not an enemy that promised a number of times never to move NATO Eastward [1] [2] , and has recently fomented color revolutions [3] in a number of their allies, and, is regularly enlisting NGOs to attack them.

Nope, we gave them casus belli a long time ago, and the US mainstream media regularly stokes the fires of Russophobia [4]

Remember, it is the same Pro-Nazi Azov Battalion [5] that found a prominent place in the Western Ukrainians military, and then promoted them to SF, and gave them western advisers and western arms.

> "Although Moscow had little choice but to acquiesce to the admission of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into NATO, Russian concerns grew as enlargement continued. It didn’t help that enlargement was at odds with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker’s verbal assurance to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990 that if Germany were allowed to reunify within NATO then the alliance would not move “one inch eastward”—a pledge Gorbachev foolishly failed to codify in writing. (Baker and others dispute this characterization, and Baker has denied that he made any formal pledges.) Russia’s doubts increased when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003—a decision that showed a certain willful disregard for international law—and even more after the Obama administration exceeded the authority of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 and helped oust Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi in 2011. Russia had abstained on the resolution—which authorized protecting civilians but not regime change—and former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates later commented that “the Russians felt they had been played for suckers.” These and other incidents help explain why Moscow is now insisting on written guarantees." [6]

Yet, here we are, literally getting in bed with Nazis for the sake of NATO adventurism. This is why I am against getting involved.

[1] https://mltoday.com/new-document-us-promised-not-to-expand-n...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/europe/live-news/ukraine-russia-news-01-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_revolution

[4] https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/02/25/235254/

[5] https://www.vice.com/en/article/3ab7dw/azov-battalion-ukrain...

[6] https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-cri...

The whole Nato expansion promise thing seem a pretty strained argument. The same parties negotiated and signed various treaties regarding this issue in the following years (paris charter, budapest memorandum, NATO foundation act with russia). There russia and other signatories guarantee ukraine their souvereign borders and free choice of military alliance. NATO has an open door policy since its inception 1949, nothing changed there.

Why would anybody think that NATO would be bound to this verbal musings that are clearly superceded by signed treaties?

@4) "...This is scarcely surprising because, for all the expectations of a full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine predicted as imminent by President Biden and Boris Johnson, this has not occurred. Supposedly, Russians commanders leading 190,000 Russian troops had received definitive orders to attack at the weekend, and by now their tank columns should be racing towards Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities, but in fact they have not moved."

This did not age well.

@5) Yep. Ppl tend to get radicalized if they are in an protracted existential war against a superior enemy.

Ukraine is not a member of NATO, and to join NATO, it needs the confirmation of 30 countries. Because Russia has strong ties to many of the countries in NATO, NATO is not likely to confirm Ukraine membership.

Putting a powerful alliance on your borders, and moving missiles close to your borders is a casus belli

We Americans have moved to blockade Cuba (but calling it a quarantine to be PC) when the Russians did the same with Cuba. [1]

> This did not age well.

They are not seeking to destroy Ukraine, only to capture it. This is not a repeat of the Nazi's capture of Ukraine in which much of the cities were destroyed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

From my US perspective the average Russians are enabling their government by allowing them to wage war. If average Russians leveraged consequences on your leaders that reflected your 8% approval rate; then the conflict would end.

Also, from a US perspective and ignoring the news media... from a former webmaster... Russia is literally the Brotherhood of Nod from the CNC game series. Your leader is Kane. By all appearances; Russia has no organic traffic. Just spiders and saboteurs. I have never seen a large organization that did not unilaterally geoblock any and all requests specifically from Russia and Belarus. Do you know why? Because there are no legitimate users from those countries. Just the worst kind of spam; the worst kind of fraud; basically the bane of the internet. Probably about 3/4 of the crap in the honey pots is Russian sponsored. It would be great if Russian citizens would demand accountability from their government for harboring and promoting international cybercrime. I can't speak for the rest of the world but from where I'm sitting; Russia gets a lot more value from being part of the internet than the rest of the world gets from Russia being a part of the internet.

> From my own US perspective the average Russians are enabling their government by allowing them to wage war. If average Russians leveraged consequences on your leaders that reflected your 8% approval rate; then the conflict would end.

From my US perspective, average Americans are enabling their government by allowing them to wage a 3-decade long war against Russia. If average Americans leveraged consequences on your leaders that reflected your president's god awful, approval rate, then the conflict would end.

You don't have to stan for Putin to see that US and NATO (i.e. the US) have a huge amount of responsibility for what's happening right now. The crazy thing is that it's the only thing we as Americans have even a hair of a say about. We can't influence the Russian government. Maybe we can influence our own.

> Russia is literally the Brotherhood of Nod from the CNC game series

You love to see guys just tell on themselves like this.

> zelon88

Completely unrelated I promise but what do those numbers mean

We can influence our own if we demand it. The people compelled Obama & Kerry to backpedal on their plan to invade Syria in 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/31/syrian-air-str...

'... a dramatic turnaround by the White House, which had earlier in the week indicated it was on the verge of launching strikes against Syria ... '

> You don't have to stan for Putin to see that US and NATO (i.e. the US) have a huge amount of responsibility for what's happening right now.

Woah - how huge an amount are you talking about ? Higher than Russia / Ukraine ?

The Russian elites seemed to be doing great - they own Aluminum companies, soccer teams, Putin built his new palace - why the need to invade a neighbor country ?

>By all appearances; Russia has no organic traffic. Just spiders and saboteurs. [...] Because there are no legitimate users from those countries. Just the worst kind of spam; the worst kind of fraud; basically the bane of the internet.

That sound suspiciously close to

"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people."

Looks like a run.

According too this article:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russians-withdraw-2413-...

Russians withdrew 111 billion rouble ($1.3 billion) on Wednesday and Thursday. That's a marathon.

Not sure how much cash those people think that ATM can hold.

Happy to see well coordinated effort from the 1st world to support Ukraine! Go Ukraine! Our hearts and minds are with you!

Pffft, I live in the U.S. I think my 401K lost about 20% of its value in the last 30 days.

Then you’re investing extremely poorly, as a market-weighted global stock portfolio is up 1.4% in the last 30 days. Only down 5% in 90 days.

As a millennial, this is the fourth or fifth world changing crisis I'm going trough. My 401k (local equivalent) is going to be whatever scraps I can scavenge after the climate wars.

SPY is up 12% YoY. A 30 day metric isn’t how retirement investing works.

And funny how crypto markets have not realized this at all yet e.g. https://www.binance.com/en/trade/BTC_RUB - i would have thought with 24/7 trading (unlike futures which take a break for the weekend), they'd be leading indicators

The liquidity in this market is tiny: volume of $10 million in the last 24 hour.

Any diff in that price vs spot presents an arbitrage opportunity, so price should still be close to accurate.

This is a unique situation. Spot is closed, you are looking at CME futures, which would not usually move since the underlying spot market is closed. So few people capable of doing this arbitrage would bother.

There is no such thing as a fx spot market. All fx is done directly with the counterparty.

That said most of those counter parties are closed because they trade in Europe & the US.

Nah, liquidity is too low. Spreads will kill almost all arbitrage opportunities.

Is that abnormally low? Lack of monetization of cybercrime as hackers work for the state?

Yeah, you should look at that chart again with less than a 1day view. The inflection is pretty easy to spot, and it’s only getting started. Yes, small sample size and small volume, but there was a clear shift over the past few days.

For all of the post-fiat arguments for crypto, this will have an effect in crypto markets as well. I wouldn’t be surprised if this causes a new round of regulation as well.

It's simpler then that: you currently can't trade things in and out of Russia, and can't turn rubles into other currencies: who outside of Russia wants to trade Bitcoin for Rubles?

Any wealthy person who has assets in Russia and outside of Russia could take advantage of this situation.

How? Again: who internationally would want to give up Bitcoins for Rubles, when you could instead use them on literally anything else in the world. There's no expectation that Russian currency will go up in value in the near future, and definitely no expectation or even legal means to trade physical property.

I can think of several ways to do that, but they would require a very large sink or source depending on which way things go and you may very well end up holding the bag if the other parties are better at assessing risks in a very volatile situation than you are.

Great chance for some Arbitrage there (buy rubles with USD, use to buy BTC there, cash straight back out to USD)

I would do it but I expect I'd be beaten to it with how long it would take to open an account at Binance

Where do you buy the rubles from, all forex brokers announced that they are suspending ruble trading for the moment.

Exactly, and that's why the apparent discrepancy is there. Pretty much any time there's an apparent large arbitrage opportunity one will find that there's a barrier (or significant cost) to actually executing it, or it already would have been arbitraged away.

If you want to buy rubles with USD how do you propose to do so without kayaking your way to Russia first?

USD => Chinese Yuan => Russian Ruble?

If you feel that the risks associated with evading these sanctions are worth the gain then you are a lot braver than I am, and besides that I would not want to profit of all this misery anyway.

Chinese Yuan is an extremely unpopular currency corridor because a) there is no market for it, it’s effectively a peg and b) it’s divorced from usage in the country it’s supposedly from.

That is to say you’ll pay a gigantic premium on that trade.

Find an answer to that question to collect a tidy profit ;)

The Bering strait isn't that wide, come on.

Good luck actually executing that trade

I don't think executing the trade will be all that hard, the settlement could be though.

Could it be offset by increased demand?

Increased demand for crypto? If anything that would make BTC prices (denominated in RUB) shoot up.

Maybe the crypto markets have already figured out that in order for sanctions to work, crypto needs to be banned, and the Fed is most likely already working on figuring out the parameters of the ban.

I think there'll be a massive increase in energy prices due to the sanctions against Russia, which will make proof of work crypto unfeasible, so I don't think crypto will have a large enough marketcap to be a viable way for Russia to circumvent the economical sanctions

> I think there'll be a massive increase in energy prices [...] which will make proof of work crypto unfeasible

Proof-of-work cryptocurrencies automatically adjust to use as much energy as possible (the amount of energy which can be bought with the block reward and fees acts as a cap, and the incentives are to increase the amount of energy used until reaching that point). If energy prices increase, they will adjust by using less energy. This has no effect on the block sizes or block intervals, so the feasibility or lack of it of any mainstream cryptocurrency will be unaffected.

Well, block intervals will be affected until the difficulty parameter adjusts. But not the end of the world.

> in order for sanctions to work, crypto needs to be banned

Not necessarily. Just use the secondary sanctions mechanism, same ones that make selling Russian gold problematic. Crypto, unlike gold, also permits one to publicly flag tainted wallets.

> Crypto, unlike gold, also permits one to publicly flag tainted wallets.

That's why I said I believe the Fed is working out the parameters of the ban. I don't think it will be an outright total ban, but some type of selective interdiction.

> why I said I believe the Fed is working out the parameters of the ban

Sanctions aren’t the Fed’s business.

If this were being worked on, and there is zero evidence it is, for all we get enamoured by crypto it’s too insignificant to merit serious attention at this level, it would be at Treasury and Commerce.

Currently it only helps the Russians. The Ukrainians aren't banned from banking, and can receive contributions and move money. The Russians on the other hand can leverage crypto to evade sanctions, work around SWIFT bans and support the war effort. Once folks catch on, restrictions should follow, in a perfect world. This world is far from perfect, though, so time will tell.

Crypto marketcap would have to go up massively to make that work with the little bit of crypto that is in active circulation. It will be a drop on a hot plate.

They can work around swift by making deals with other banks directly.

And yet those banks want to retain SWIFT access. My understanding is that even mainland Chinese banks didn't want to hold accounts for sanctioned entities in Hong Kong in 2020.

You really don't want to get cut out of the international banking system. It's not a good time. You lose your correspondent banking relationships and you get rekt.

In fact this happened humorously enough with Bitfinex/Tether and Noble Bank. After they talked Noble into banking them, they lost their correspondent banking relationship in the US and were forced into insolvency. [1]

[1] https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/2021.02.17_-_settlemen...

People seem to think that it’s easy to create a SWIFT alternative (one that gains acceptance) and that Putin is logging into Coinbase to buy bitcoin. Neither is going to happen.

I'm not sure why it wouldn't. You can easily launder crypto, disguise its origin and have a designated third party close the positions out at a banked exchange.

That's literally the value proposition of crypto. That you can conduct international transactions without permission.

So either...

(1) The raison d'etre hasn't been met, and therefore, it's not really providing any value over a permissioned system. Or...

(2) It works exactly as designed, allowing permissionless payments across borders and so oligarchs and demagogues can transact internationally in violation of international sanctions.

I don't see a good outcome. Am I missing something?

> crypto needs to be banned

Genuine question: why would I fight to defend the “feee world” if at the end of the day, no matter the people in charge, I have no freedom?

Does a ban on dumping motor oil in the river mean you "have no freedom"?

Is it possible that a "free world" may still have some restrictions on actions that have impact beyond the individual making them?

Cryptocurrency ban != having no freedom

"Freedom" doesn't exist. Freedom to "do something" does.

If you had no freedom you wouldn't be able to comment on the internet. Freedom of expression is a freedom.

Good luck with that.

I really don't understand how numbers in computer systems are affected by real world events.

At-least stocks have assets and cash flows linked to them.

What does crypto have?

Crypto is pure pricing.

Well if you have someone that thinks their money in RUB might go way down they might want to exit into a cryptocurrency which isn't controlled by fiat.

Demand goes up, supply stays the same, price goes up.

It’s all pure pricing at some level

Yes, but with capital markets, there are real world assets anchoring the stock market.

With crypto, the whole cycle is pure pricing. Say a bank converts crypto to money, the bank has no other way to use the crypto, other than selling it back on the exchange, presumably to other retail "investors" or other banks.

With no asset actually anchoring it, a crypto is an extremely weak pricing product that moves with sentiments, emotions and feelings.

When I traveled in the early 90's to Europe on business, I saw the currency changers selling rubles, but they would not purchase them ... Perhaps this will be at least short-term result of Ukraine?

That's because they were usually getting them at a substantial discount or were whitewashing rubles into hard currency. No point in reversing that again.

Al Cap had it right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_Slobbovia

His parody of the USSR, where Russia was upper slobbovia and the East Bloc countries were Lower Slobbovia. Their monetary unit was the "Rasbucknik", of which one was worth nothing, and a large quantity was worth even less, due to the trouble of lugging them around. Conditions couldn't be worse, as tourists were readily assured by the miserable, highly vocal residents.

One day a US beggar washed up on the shores of Lower Slobbovia, he had almost nothing, just a Lincoln penny. Instantly he became the wealthiest man in the country, bought everything in sight, lived in a palace etc etc. Al Capp did it well. Much of his stuff would be politically incorrect these days, so google him.

Of course, to him the Rouble was the Rasbucknik, of course, it may well go lower....

Al Cap had it right. Al Capp did it well

This reads like a bag of cliches that a high school student would come up with while trying to mimic mad magazine.

Food for thought.

What would be the endgoal when it comes to energy supply for Europe if sanctions keep mounting up?

Do you think Europe will innovate and join hands together with come up with better self contained sustainable renewable energy solutions? Or would you think this will ramp up arctic drilling?

My opinion: Let's first go beyond Europe. look at COP(s). Since the Paris agreement, developed country has failed to provide funding for the climate funds but more surprising is that they failed to show initiative to transfer technology for renewable energy production in developing and developed country. This shows the European and the US government has a tendency not innovate or not to share. The developing and LDC countries governments are bound to invest in fossil fuel plants.

Coming back to Europe we see the entire continent significantly reliant on one single country for their energy and fossil fuels. There is only one 'viable' and immediate solution, Arctic drilling.

If the effectiveness of sanctions have taught me anything, get them hooked into capitalism then use that as stick. Controlling arctic energy resources will essentially make Europe less reliant on Russia if both the United States and Canada starts heavily investing in it. It might not surprise you when it happens, but when it happens we will convince ourselves this was the right decision.

Ukraine itself has massive oil and gas reserves that have not been developed.

I can see intense E.U. interest in these reserves when this is over.

https://hir.harvard.edu/ukraine-energy-reserves/

Its possible Putin is trying to spread radiation into areas of Ukraine’s extraction.

The conventional oil reserves are under water in the seas to the south. There is also shale oil in the east and west. None of this is really vulnerable to radioactive contamination.

This video has maps of the reserves at 12:30.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE&feature=youtu.be

Thanks, that makes sense

I mean they're already well on their way to transitioning to a mix of renewables and electric vehicles. Well on their way does not mean, like 80% of the way. Maybe more like 25-40%?

I think they have a loose plan already, it's just taking a long time to materialize. Like the US, the EU sees how crappy renewables are without massive energy storage.

Lot's of windless and cloudy days this winter has meant cranking up the coal plants, or worse.

What I think the next selling point of fossil fuel is going to be LNG. I think LNG will be pitched as the lesser of evils. Coal plants will be used as a distraction and you will see everyone phasing out/down coal plants but every major country will eventually open up LNG terminals. Drilling gas from continental united states might not be viable but arctic drilling could be a viable plan.

healthy discussion disclaimer:

This information [1] kinda contradicts what I am saying but I studied petro engineering so I kinda have a bias. Also here is a wikipedia list that shows some European countries backing out of their LNG plans [2]. My theory hinges on the idea that, the moment arctic drilling gets traction we will see a radical shift on energy discussion. And if there is no immediate resolve to this conflict, arctic drilling will get pitched.

[1] https://qz.com/2025722/how-many-lng-import-export-terminals-...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LNG_terminals

Even the strongest proposed sanctions against the Russia's financial systems carve out provisions for paying for fuel. And I suspect some of Europe will buy, and Russia will sell, because it'll need to buy certain Western goods.

(If you read The War With Newts, you can compare it to the European nations still selling drilling equipment to the newts when they were used it to destroy the Europe's very land.)

> Controlling arctic energy resources will essentially make Europe less reliant on Russia if both the United States and Canada starts heavily investing in it.

So you're saying we should enact the plot of "Don't Look Up", but in real life.

With $600bn of foreign reserves, they can easily prop up the Ruble, if they want to.

Maybe not. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/how-russia...

> Not so fast, argues Bernstam. What does it mean that Russia “has” X or Y in foreign reserves? Where do these reserves exist? The dollars, euros, and pounds owned by the Russian central bank—Russia may own them, but Russia does not control them. Almost all those hundreds of billions of Russian-owned assets are controlled by foreign central banks. Russia’s reserves exist as notations in the records of central banks in the West, especially the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve. Most of Russia’s reserves are literally IOUs to the Russian central bank from Western governments.

Depending on how quickly the West takes action against the major Russian banks and their central bank, they may have trouble defending the Ruble much.

"The United States and its allies on Saturday said they will limit Moscow’s ability to use a large chunk of its foreign-currency reserves and kick some of the country’s banks out of the SWIFT payment system in what looks like a deliberate attempt to undermine confidence in Russia’s financial system"

https://www.reuters.com/markets/asia/sanctions-shock-and-awe...

Canada, US, UK, and more are blocking their ability to withdrawal foreign reserves.

Large chunk of those reserves is now frozen. They can’t do much about it.

They have 20% of reserves in gold. Gold can easily be used as collateral to get dollars.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/how-russia...

> There is one exception to the rule about reserves as notations: About $132 billion of Russia’s reserves takes the form of physical gold in vaults inside Russia. Russia could pledge that gold or sell it. But to whom? Most potential customers for Russian gold can be threatened with sanctions. Those who might defy the threat couldn’t afford to take very much: The entire GDP of Venezuela, for example, is only about $480 billion.

> Only one customer is rich enough to take significant gold from a sanctioned nation like Russia: China.

> Would China agree to take it? And if China did agree, would it not demand a big and painful discount for helping out a distressed seller like a sanctioned Russia? How exactly would the transaction occur? Would China be content merely to take legal ownership of the gold and leave the metal inside in a Russian vault? Doubtful. One ton of gold is worth about $61 million, so $139 billion would weigh about 2,290 metric tons. It’s certainly conceivable for a locomotive to pull a train of that weight from Moscow to Beijing. But it would constitute a considerable logistical and security undertaking to load, move, unload, and secure the gold for a train trip across Siberia.

China's abstention at the Security Council vote indicates this might not be an enormously viable option, too.

>It’s certainly conceivable for a locomotive to pull a train of that weight from Moscow to Beijing. But it would constitute a considerable logistical and security undertaking to load, move, unload, and secure the gold for a train trip across Siberia

That sounds like a great setup for a heist movie.

Why would China buy Russian gold? They don't really need to. I doubt the Chinese government wants to get evolved in such a risky endeavor,possibly facing sanctions or losing goodwill, just to get some gold at a discount.

> Gold can easily be used as collateral to get dollars

At a deep discount. The buyer would run the risk of secondary sanctions by the U.S. They would also, likely, want to take custody, all of which can result in striking discounts. (I beliece Iran got dimes on the dollar for their gold.)

China is not afraid of U.S.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/02/how-russia...

Gold is still difficult to sell with sanctions.

> Russia could pledge that gold or sell it. But to whom? Most potential customers for Russian gold can be threatened with sanctions. Those who might defy the threat couldn’t afford to take very much: The entire GDP of Venezuela, for example, is only about $480 billion.

> Would China be content merely to take legal ownership of the gold and leave the metal inside in a Russian vault? Doubtful. One ton of gold is worth about $61 million, so $139 billion would weigh about 2,290 metric tons. It’s certainly conceivable for a locomotive to pull a train of that weight from Moscow to Beijing. But it would constitute a considerable logistical and security undertaking to load, move, unload, and secure the gold for a train trip across Siberia.

I know it isn't your article but according to wikipedia the estimated gdp of venezuela is 42B. It was 480 or so in 2014

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Venezuela

Who is going to be the counterparty? There are sanctions.

I was thinking China, but it seems like China doesn’t give a shit about Russia’s self-created problems.

If you find a trading partner...

If Russia's foreign reserves are stored in foreign banks, access to those reserves can also be limited via sanctions

> If Russia's foreign reserves are stored in foreign banks, access to those reserves can also be limited via sanctions

All reserves not physically held are subject to sanctions. And the Russian central bank is being sanctioned by the U.S. and Europe.

I wonder why Russia didn’t dump its foreign reserves before invading Ukraine. I wonder how much more than $600 billion is Ukraine worth to Russia.

They expected their puppet government to be in place in under 72 hours.

Just a couple days ago it looked unlikely SWIFT would be involved. It's very possible Russia didn't expect magnitude of the sanctions being applied at all.

With US dollar reserves and gold being hard to use for Russia, I would think Russia and China will learn the value of self custody and self mining of cryptocurrency. The other alternative is to reinvest the money in real time inside their own borders: maybe build a few semiconductor fabs ?

It seems a significant part of it has already been frozen. And if they want to sell their gold, they'll need to find someone to buy it in a real currency (not yuan).

What happens when countries locked out of the fiat system start demanding payment for exports in gold?

The countries that make those payments also get hit with sanctions. There are very few countries in the world right now willing to defy USA, UK, Canada, and EU for the sake of buying some stuff from crippled Russia with gold bars.

Great for exports. Oh wait...

Even europe isn't going to stop buying their main export: fossil fuels.

Putin has gotten much more than he bargained for. Inspired by the people of Ukraine.

I'm not certain that Ukraine is winning all that much. sure there are a lot of encouraging and heartwarming videos out there, but Ukraine keeps losing key locations and infrastructure.

I'm keen to see some more pointy support for Ukraine. this invasion was completely unprovoked and unwarranted.

Conversely... Does it matter? The US couldn't hold Afghanistan or Iraq. The USSR couldn't hold Afghanistan.

What even is a "win" in Ukraine? It's inheriting 44 million armed insurgents and an unpopular occupation with your own people.

I think [0] Putin vastly miscalculated public sentiment in Ukraine. His attack was based on the premise that Ukraine's government is essentially a puppet state of the west with little popular support in the country. This is been how the Russain state has been telling the story since 2014. He probably expected this to go like the Taliban's expulsion of the US from Afghanistan in 2021. Most of the people would support, or at least not be too bothered by it, the government would flee, and the few government supporters would have no will to fight. Then he could install a sympathetic government as there is in Belarus. But obviously, popular support for the Ukrainian state turned out to be much, much higher than Putin thought.

As they say, don't get high on your own (propaganda) supply.

[0]: With the obvious caveat that I'm just a random person on the internet with no special information.

The Iraq war was way more costly in terms of lives lost. Despite killing so many people the US still couldn't hold it.

Iraq study estimates war-related deaths at 461,000

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24547256

Can you elaborate on "couldn't hold it" in the context of the Iraq war? It makes sense with Afghanistan due to the Taliban filling the void, but doesn't Iraq have roughly the same government and stability that it had when the US left / withdrew?

"In January 2020, during massive protests[3] and following an escalation of tensions between the United States and Iran, the Iraqi Council of Representatives passed a non-binding measure to "expel all foreign troops from their country," including American and Iranian troops. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_United_States_tr...

It's a bit crazy that to me that its only been a few days and everyone is judging russia in ukraine. How would they have judged the usa in afganistan after a couple days? Or iraq?

true. I guess the unbridled success of the Crimea still took a little over a month.

> not certain that Ukraine is winning all that much

Nobody says Ukraine is winning. Just that Russia is performing comically badly.

Major cities stand. Ukraine maintains an Air Force and SAMs, denying Russia air superiority. Putin attempted blitzkrieg and publicly failed. He’s also turbocharged NATO and possibly extended its northern borders, a monumental blunder given his original premise for the war.

Put simply, Russia’s military is worse than people assumed. Before, that was uncertain. Now, it is known. That isn’t great for a dictator ruling by military night.

Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe, did you expect a full occupation in 5 days?

That’s different: most people were expecting Russia to have air superiority quickly and control of major roads, airfields, etc., even if that’s not most of the country. From the initial rush, I think the assumption was that they could blitz Kyiv and capture the fraction of politicians who didn’t flee, on the assumption that a lot of people would stop fighting by then. Air superiority would make everything else they do easier and they appear to have thrown away a lot of their more heavily trained troops on those air drops, none of which can be helping morale.

A blitz for Kyev and surrounding and killing the government didn't seem so unlikely given how close it is to russian territory and given how small the Ukrainian army is.

> Ukraine is the biggest country in Europe, did you expect a full occupation in 5 days?

Putin clearly expected air superiority and the fall of Kiev by now. You can see that in their logistics chain fumbling after the first forty-eight hours.

Putin did. He had a plan for a 2-days war.

In chess, what can look like a blunder in the short term can be a brilliant move longer term.

I want to believe you're right, but it's too easy to say they're performing comically badly. Putin and his cronies aren't idiots. I can't shake this feeling that there's a longer term play at hand and this is a part of it.

I don't know if Ukraine will win, but I can't see this as anything but a blunder. The only reason Ukraine is getting this much aid is because of these blunders. If everything went well, they would be receiving a fraction of the military aid.

Instead, you have the EU giving Ukraine fighter jets, among other things.

So, maybe this was their plan. But it's still a blunder since I doubt their plan was to coax the EU into giving multi-million dollar pieces of military equipment to the Ukraine. And if it was, I don't see the upside here.

> Putin and his cronies aren't idiots.

Not idiots, but hubris has been the downfall of many powerful people.

Incompetence can look like malice, but this isn't malice masquerading as incompetence. Putin gave the West - and in fact the rest of the world - time enough to get their act together, big mistake.

There is no winners here but it's a huge improvement that Russia has to at least pay the price.

They're not. Propaganda machines are in overdrive.

For context, Germany with the help of the USSR took Poland in about 31 days, which was considered fast.

It's day 3, Russia is knocking on the capital and Ukraine is on its own. This is pretty one sided.

Russia is already showing that they're not doing great. The actions are not very targeted (missiles sent into residential areas), there's no viable air defence, (transports getting hit by drones), estimated 1/3 of forces already sent in and the capital still not taken over, airports were changing hands a number of times... Ukraine may not be winning, but Russia definitely isn't.

>Ukraine may not be winning, but Russia definitely isn't.

good summary I suspect.

Kiev is located less than 100km from belarus, where russia is staging and sending troops from. You could literally drive from kiev to belarus in an hour and not break the speed limit, if there wasn't a war on. Maybe your analysis is too simple for the comparison you're making?

Also, over 80 years of technological advances complicates the comparison quite a bit.

Ukraine won the war of perceptions.

Putin is absolutely come out as weak and pathetic from this step. Sure, he may get some with negotiations and the nukes threat, but everyone now knows that if he has to cry about my nukes in a strategic land war, orchestrated with months of planning, then he has already lost the war.

I would not be surprised if he will be deposed in less than a decade from now on.

The main way I see Ukraine winning is it continues like you said - Ukraine will lose infrastructure and key locations. But then it becomes guerilla warefare. At that point Ukraine has to outlast Putin or Putin's will to stay in Ukraine while he sees his military's morale and economy go down the drain.

Unprovoked?

Ukraine has been shelling Russian military installations for months and current government is openly hostile towards Russia, wants to join Nato and Zelenskyy called for Nuclear armament of his country.

Think if this was a situation in Canada. How long would the US tolerate Canadian government being openly hostile to the US. Employing the kids of Russian officials. Asking Russia for Nuclear arms and military aid. And openly shelling Alaska.

The Donetsk region of Ukraine doesn't want to be part of it Large parts of Ukraine are ethnically Russian and voted in past for the pro Russian candidates.

This is a regional conflict with global implications. But the more the world gets sucked into it. The longer the suffering for everyone.

This is not the right place for Russian propaganda

Your comments on this subject are strange.

Not strange. I'm just telling you what the chessboard looks like from the other players perspective.

Not nearly enough.

It’s the ordinary Russians who are hurt by this, not the elites.

I doubt the elites care what the Ruble is worth, because they operate in foreign currencies (namely USD and EUR). Most of their oil is sold in EUR, and other commodities in USD.

This perception that ordinary people should be immune to the actions of their governments is weird. Civilian opposition to their government is what prevents unnecessary wars. It's not other's duty to fix your country. Civil unrest is the only way to prevent war and a lot of bloodshed.

That doesn't really work that well in a strong dictatorship.

Does if enough people do it. Strong dictatorship be damned. Heck Ukrainians stood up to a brutal crackdown in the Maidan revolution to oust a pro-Russian puppet leader. It's about numbers and resolve.

At best that's a messy plan. Are you willing to intentionally make millions of people as miserable as possible on the slim chance that they'll overthrow the people with all the guns and power?

Note that the Maidan revolution was driven from within, as far as I know, not forced on the people from without.

What is the alternative?

If I had an easy one, I wouldn't just be some jackass on the internet. But "let's make millions of people miserable on purpose" doesn't sound like a great start to me. Has it ever worked, either?

That's why sanctions should affect all the population, not just tiny layers (and I’m not talking about the tycoons or elites). This is an example of great sanction - everyone is affected.

I never said that.

In fact, I think that ordinary Russians are absolutely complicit. Even last year Putin was still enormously popular with Russians.

I was just pointing out that the Ruble falling doesn’t hurt the elites one bit, nor does it stop the Russian war machine.

it may not hurt the elites, but it _does_ slow the Russian war machine in the medium to long term.

In fact, arguably one of the biggest things we've "learned" from the past week is that we (the west) have been _way_ too economically entwined with Russia for decades, and that is what has enabled this aggression.

Can we truly know how much Putin is popular when protesters gets violently reprimanded and oppositions poisoned? Asked under those conditions, I am pretty sure I also would "support" Putin.

The people make the culture, the culture produces the rotten government and Putin at the center. The people inevitably empower authoritarians like Putin (Lenin and Stalin didn't magically spring out of nowhere to hold the people hostage, the people made them possible, the culture made them possible, the people enabled them and joined in their revolution, militarism and statism). And certainly to the extent that there is a long-term persistence of terrible outcomes, it's absolutely clear it's the people and the related culture that are responsible. Russia isn't just unlucky to have centuries of repeated history of authoritarian leaders: it's their culture causing it, Putin represents that culture of empire and conquest (and Russia is the only major power in Europe still clinging to such ideology; the Germans, British and French for example have largely abandoned such cultural ideas). It's time for Russia to abandon that aspect of their culture, as the other great European powers have.

You'll see lots of headlines about how the West failed to curb Putin, failed to stop or confront his actions at various points. You know who overwhelmingly didn't do anything at all to try to stop him during his long dictatorship? The people of Russia. They are culpable, they are responsible (specifically those that haven't protested or made an effort against his regime, which judging by the small push-back he has faced overall throughout his dictatorship, is the extreme majority of the population). When he began shutting down free news reporting and media, and curbing human rights early into his dictatorship, did they all go into the streets and act against his regime? Did they try to stop him? No they did not, they rolled over promptly, and they didn't do anything much about him since then either. And they thoroughly enjoyed the good times during the oil price boom, no complaints about Putin then (quite the opposite). It is their fault. He has in fact been widely popular with the people of Russia for most of his time in office (not 90% popular, that's fake, but certainly majority positive typically). They liked the fake image he projected for them: power, empire, Russian strength, greatness - like the supposed old days of glory; it made them feel good again after what happened with the USSR.

> Even last year Putin was still enormously popular with Russians.

According to the Russian government, as influenced by _heavy_ government propaganda.

The impact on ordinary citizens is greatest (in relative terms), but there is an impact on elites, and perhaps some consequences of that already: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/27/two-top-russia...

Isn't their military made up largely of Russian conscripts? Hurt the ordinary Russians to hurt the Russian military's morale to make Ukraine have more of a fighting chance.

Nobody is going to buying their oil, or anything else, for quite some time, and sanctions should be locking up a lot of their toys. Hopefully governments are good at tracking where all of their foreign wealth is hiding.

They will care when it goes from 85 rubles to the dollar to 1000 rubles to the dollar.

Well, there go my borscht futures...

Borscht is Ukrainian, not Russian!

I don't think Putin realized how quickly public pressure would build against him and force reluctant governments like Germany to reverse course.

I don't think this was a possibility that they didn't consider.

In what way are you saying Germany is reluctant?

Germany has historically been very pro-Russia. Both as a form of peace work and because of scepticism towards the US. It has also been very pacifist, refusing to supply (also indirectly) any country involved in a war with arms - even Ukraine until Saturday. This war has changed everything about German foreign politics. Germany is now supplying an active war participant with weapons. It is increasing its military budget and buying drones. Energy security, including nuclear(!), is back on the agenda. In short, Russia's invasion has (temporarily?) ended pacifist rhetoric and policy in Germany.

Can't be 100% certain, but GP is probably referring to Germany's reliance on Russian natural gas. They get at least half of their natural gas from Russia. Due to this, Germany was dragging their feet on taking action, hence the reluctance. However, they snapped out of this once things really kicked off[0].

[0]: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/germanys-scholz-halt...

They were blocking the SWIFT move and refused to allow weapons to pass through their country.

Much of the US media spent the 2 weeks up to the invasion excoriating the German government for being reluctant to commit to certain sanctions if Russia invades as well as offering scant military aid to Ukraine.

Germany has not exported weapons to countries in war since WWII. They still insisted to not to do so last week, only changed yesterday.

Germany is one of the biggest buyers of Russian energy. You could also say one of the biggest payers for Putin's war. Not their intention, but still a fact.

It's Germany and by extension EU's own fault for not developing alternative sources of energy. Note, I said alternative sources of energy not alternative fuels. How did Germany come to being so reliant on Russian energy? What were the Germans thinking when they were happily decommissioning their Nuclear and Coal power plants in favor of what was largely Russian Oil & Gas? Its not surprising that the west finds itself again in this situation.

Your intel is completely off: Germany had been exporting weapons to many countries, including Saudis bombing yemen, much to the embarrassment of its population

Of course German weapons have been used in various conflicts in various ways. Dual use stuff even more. I as a German did not like it and not vote for those who did it. It was kind of dirty industry politics to stretch the official policy of foreign politics. I have always said the official policy was dishonest. If you do not export to any crisis area, you should not export at all. You are not a credible vendor if you stop selling when the buyer wants it most. In all fairness it was rather limited compared to other weapon exporting nations.

The difference since Saturday is: You can hardly vote for any politician anymore that does not openly support exporting weapons into an ongoing war. It's a huge turn-around.

To continue on this topic:

Now everyone is applauding Germany that they finally started to change. Will they still applaud when Putin noticed that he underestimated the reactions of the EU and starts to play the nuclear option? First signs are in the air. He is isolated, he has been criminal since working for the KGB in the 1980s. And he has not been meeting many people for 2 years because he is paranoid about the virus. Or only realistic that in Russia the situation is less under control than in other industry countries. What 2 years of isolation have done to his mental health is anyone's guess. His declaration of war was a complete mess of hatress, he was not even able to state a clear reason from is own perspective.

Germany was reluctant about Nord Stream, reluctant on SWIFT, reluctant on providing military aid. They were reluctant the whole way through. They import a lot of Oil and sell a lot of 'stuff' to Putins Russia.

To be fair, being reluctant is not necessarily bad. Being reluctant because you might suffer a short-term economic hit is a bit less so.

Germany was planning on going ahead with the Nord Stream 2 pipeline before this affair started and has cancelled the project with legitimate misgivings. It gets a significant part of its energy needs from Russia and right now has no real substitute.

This has proven to reveal miscalculation on both sides. Germany thought interlinking its economy with Russia would cause Russia to behave. And Putin likely assumed that when push came to shove, Germany's energy reliance would prevent them from taking a stand against the invasion.

They took one more day to think about what to do than others.

American war propaganda = 70-75% fake sensationalized news, Russia war propaganda 95-99% fake. Just FYI.

atm they say the street price is ~200 rub per dollar (~80 a week ago)

What's the benefit of having a strong Ruble in this situation. I am pretty sure Putin and his team already have thought about the different scenarios - it's not like this was something spontaneous!

Not necessarily a strong Ruble - but a steady Ruble . A rapidly decreasing exchange rate in this case has a similar effect to a high inflation rate. The buying power of savings (especially imports) is rapidly dwindling which makes people feel poorer and worried their live savings from hard work will be worth less.

"I am pretty sure Putin and his team already have thought about the different scenarios". After Kudrin left, there is little evidence of a coherent economic policy from Russia. There is little evidence that Putin even remotely considered the economic impact of this ill advised adventure.

I think the West is making a terrible mistake by giving enough evidence that countries should escape its control. SWIFT is ridiculously archaic and the most expensive email system in existence.

The table describes RUB futures - no the current RUB.

And the volume on these settles is quite small.

That's because markets are closed. And I am wondering if they will even open today.

CME currency futures opened 3 hours ago.

Aren't they breaking the embargo by trading in Ruble futures?

There are no embargoes on currency futures in the US. So far as I know there aren’t any embargoes on delivering rubles as part of a futures cash settlement either. Getting those rubles may get difficult. But currency futures are dollar cash settled…

Thank you.

My understanding is that futures are simply a contract between two parties. Ruble futures don't necessarily have to interact with Russia or any Russian individual.

There is no embargo. At the moment, US has imposed sanctions directly on Putin and other top Russian leaders, and a small number of Russian banks have been cut off from Swift. You are free to buy and sell Russian currency and stock if you want.

That was until Russia’s central bank started to halt sales of stock. They’ve sanctioned themselves! (Very bad for any future investment inflows)

https://www.reuters.com/business/russian-cbank-orders-block-...

If they do, expect circuit breakers to stop them.

I don't believe there are circuit breakers on most forex markets? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Unless you meant the Russian stock market, which is closed tomorrow I believe.

CME forex futures has circuit breakers.

There is no such thing as a “forex market”. You are trading directly with a counterparty in forex. Those contracts do sometimes stipulate circuit breakers.

> There is no such thing as a “forex market”. You are trading directly with a counterparty in forex.

That’s called a market. You probably mean a market maker, who may buy or sell a security at a market price without an available counter party. Any market can have a circuit breaker. But usually forex doesn’t because the whole point of the market is to provide a way to convert currencies when needed, compared to stock markets where the main goal is to efficiently allocate capital.

There aren't. It's a distributed market, there is no way to effectively stop trading.

Not sure what your point is. Futures on currencies are basically spot aside for some interest rate differences.

The point is, if the future goes down 30%, the spot is basically down 30%. Any other affects are like 3rd order at that point.

So why should the 4-month future rate (30 percent) determine the spot more strongly than the 1-month rate (20 percent)? When the latter has 100x the volume?

New York and European markets have not yet opened for the week. The futures are roughly a reliable indicator of where the market will open, low volume or not.

This is temporary. Within a year it will bacl to normal. Russia has a lot of gold backing their currency. USA last verified their fort knox publicly like 50 years ago. A nuke to any NATO countries will bring uo Rubbles as everyone else will drop. A large part of Russian currency is in oil. They sell using Euros. And China desperately need it. You have world factory willing to sell you stuff and you got food and oil and even gold. Guys you all need to read up history and Sun Tzu not getting geberal education from twitter.

Possibly of interest to this thread:

   Russian bank Tinkoff now offering to exchange rubles for dollars at a rate of 171 rubles per dollar.  It was 83 before the European/US announcement about targeting the Russian central bank. Currency market formally opens tomorrow. This is brutal.

https://nitter.net/PaulSonne/status/1497987741354799108

if anyone is looking to get rid of their rubles, I have a few nfts that I'm willing to exchange for them

You shouldn't be holding cash anyway.

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