Russia to the rescue?

[FBaggins]

61. Nope. The strawman was yours. Let me un-simplify it for you.

You were the one (along with the Russian propaganda) that defended their economic strength by measuring whether or not they were bankrupt (and the ridiculous claim that if they could lend money to Greece, they must be in good shape). I was responding to the claim in the article that it was everyone else in Europe that was suffering.

* Russia is cutting the bulk of their budget by 10% this year and 5% for the next two years
* Predictions for their GDP this year are in the negative 5-6% range... with another 2-3% loss in 2016. That's a severe recession.
* Making things much worse, they've had to boost borrowing rates astronomically (from 10% to 17% in just the last month or so) to defend their currency from further collapse... yet they can't figure out which fate is worse - cut the rate to avoid economic collapse (but see the rubble continue to fall apart), or support the rubble, and watch the economy crumble. Putin apparently stong-armed their (supposedly ind.) dentral bank into lowering the rate by 2% today.
* CBR is "encouraging" their banks to just accept (~40%) losses on their foreign-denominated mortgages and re-denominate them in rubbles... and not even at market rate.
* National debt cut to junk bond status, yet still has a negative ratings outlook
* The inflation outlook has climbed into the double digits

* And the one you obviously missed... they need to do something with their foreign currency reserves. The expectation was that the CBR would be selling dollars to help prop up the rubble... but there's no reason why they can't use it to impact foreign policy.

President Obama was correct. Russia's economy is "in tatters". Speculating that they might loan money to Greece doesn't change that at all. We can debate how much of it was poor policy on their part... how much was from sanctions... and how much was from OPEC oil moves (which may very well be part of the sanctions). What is beyond debate is that Russia's economy is in very bad shape right now.



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