Hacker News Reader

Comment by Guthur | Hacker News Reader

Quite sure the whole world is at similar inflation levels, pretty sure it's about 30% considering the drop in profits from Western retailers, same revenue, massive drop in profits, the retailers took the inflationary hit but it will be passed on eventually. Just look at your fuel prices (supply issues there as well as monetary inflation).

Will this affect russia, of course, but if their level of inflation is rampant then so is the rest of the world.

Russia will likely deindustralise, but so will much of Europe, and even more so if Russia turned off the gas tomorrow. Remember this, russia could grind Europe to halt if it cut off the gas, which would be on top of an economic crisis that is already looking pretty bad. There is no alternative to the piped gas for Europe that's fact in any realistic time frame, no infrastructure plus the price would be at an extreme premium (piped gas is very cheap).

View on HN

You’re missing that Russia started this with a much lower base. Increasing prices and decreasing growth for an average North American or West European would mean that they would have to go somewhere cheaper for vacation this year and slightly adjust their consumption habits. When your net monthly income is ~$500 or less you might have slightly different concerns if you see prices rising by more than 20%.

> and even more so if Russia turned off the gas tomorrow.

Energy exports are the only thing keeping the Russian currency afloat, unless they want to go into full autarky mode this would hurt them more than the west (i.e. 40% of all gas in Europe comes from Russia, which is huge 80-90% of all Russian exports are fossil fuels and metals and most go to Europe).

Nope, most Western countries have inflation in the 8% range, although as always you can quibble about what's being measured etc.

Also, Russia has already turned off the gas taps to Poland, Bulgaria and by the end of this week most likely to Finland. However, European countries can substitute (with varying degrees of pain), while it's physically impossible for Russia to export that gas elsewhere, meaning any cuts to exports hit them hard in the pocketbook.

At the end of the day, it's pretty much the world vs Russia right now, and the world will absorb the economic blows better than Russia can.

You just left about 4 billion people out of your definition of “world”. China, India, and many more counties that are not against Russia. I find that very arrogant but also reflective of where the “western world” stands right not. This arrogance and self-supremacy must be broken. And that’s what Russia is just doing.

There is no comparable gas pipeline infrastructure to those countries, that's the problem for Russia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com