Amazing stuff
Bankrupt them! by a technicality if you can’t do it with actual sanctions.
- Treasury to Block U.S. Investors From Receiving Russian Debt Payments
- Sanctions Carve-Out Had Allowed Payments Until May 25
- Treasury Announced Tuesday It Will Allow Carve-Out to Expire
- Decision Could Push Russia to Default on Its Debts in Summer
Who cares about American creditors? Not their government. Clearly Dear Leader must be thinking that letting Russia give some of its money to us is somehow helping them and hurting us.
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Maybe they’ll again allow them to pay after the default triggers some kind of automatic borrowing cost increase. No?
No, they just want them to “default” to look bad, but then western lenders will get nothing for years or ever. Not that anyone who cares about their official credit rating would lend new money to them currently anyway.
The Russian Finance Ministry said it has sent the interest payments to Russia’s national securities depository to be sent on to bondholders. But the payments will need to pass through a number of financial intermediaries before Moscow can be said to have fulfilled its obligations to creditors.
Those include correspondent banks, agent banks and clearinghouses—such as Citigroup Inc. and Euroclear—all of which are based outside Russia. Previous bond payments made by the Kremlin since the Ukraine war began have been held up at intermediaries because of complications from sanctions.
The payments announced Friday carry a due date of May 27—after the exemption is likely to expire. Russia, however, faces approximately $235 million in payments due under some of its dollar-denominated bonds on June 23, and an additional $159 million due June 24.
The U.S. has been steadily tightening Russia’s ability to stay current on its foreign bonds since the invasion of Ukraine. Russia hasn’t defaulted on its external debt since the aftermath of the 1918 Communist revolution.
In further evidence they’re willing to pay, to the extent we let them, this morning they announced payments would be available in rubles (which would probably still count as a default under some debt terms, which call for payment in USD).
*RUSSIA TO CONTINUE SERVICING USD DEBTS IN RUBLES: MINISTRY
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Meanwhile our sanctions are giving China cheap energy, as they buy up Russian oil and we pay high prices in order to “hurt Russia”.
Who pays the price? The rest of the world who can’t afford those high prices.
Ukraine-Russia war is fueling triple crisis in poor nations . Crises in food, fuel and finance caused or worsened by the war in Ukraine threaten to stoke unrest in poorer countries and push dozens of them into default, global business and humanitarian leaders warned this week at the annual gathering of the World Economic Forum.
The three interrelated crises—caused or worsened by the war in Ukraine—have come into focus during this week’s meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, making it one of the gloomier annual gatherings in its more than 50 years.
High inflation and interest rates could push more than 70 countries into default, according to Achim Steiner, administrator of the United Nations Development Program. They would follow Sri Lanka, which recently became the first Asian country to default on its debt this century amid protests that turned violent and led to the collapse of the government.
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Just to follow up, our sanctions have destroyed about $20B in western held assets with these bond sanctions. You were getting paid in full before, now you’re lucky to get $0.10 on your dollar, and maybe nothing in a default depending on how the war goes.
Russia had approximately $39 billion in outstanding foreign currency bonds at the end of 2021, of which approximately half were in the hands of foreigners, according to JPMorgan research. Those bonds currently trade around 10 to 20 cents on the dollar, a level they have traded at since around the end of February.
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I’m pretty sure that somewhere here, back on day one, I suggested that someone was going to do exactly that.
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So doesnt blocking the payment of those bonds only make Russia $39 billion richer?
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Someone who knows a little about Russian diplomacy, calling for peace…
“In my view, a movement towards negotiations on peace needs to begin in the next two months or so. The outcome of the war should be outlined by them before it creates upheavals and tensions that will be even harder to overcome, particularly between the eventual relationship of Russia towards Europe and of Ukraine towards Europe,” Kissinger, 98, said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, “Ideally, the dividing line should return to the status quo ante. I believe pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine, which has been undertaken with great cohesion by NATO, but into a war against Russia itself…”
More background on why the solutions we get are primarily expensive military ones and not diplomatic ones -
This far left anti-war activist got it right. Too bad there weren’t enough to matter. Good short speech.
https://mobile.twitter.com/capitaliztpigs/status/1525105783188463616
Stop funding regime change and money laundering schemes
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well, $39B is the principle and the payments being blocked are mostly interest. But if/when something would mature, the principle won’t be able to be paid either. So basically we decided it would be better if a bunch of risky debt investors, half of them in West, made a $40B interest free loan to Russia in order to “hurt their reputation.”
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So that would be the February line with Crimea and parts of Donbas belonging to Russia? Forgetting that Crimea was taken entirely by force and Donbas was taken with full assistance? Russia won’t go for it anyway for many reasons. There’s a fresh water source leading to Crimea from Ukrainian territory that Ukrainians blocked after Crimea was taken. It’s now under Russian control. Plus they also have a land connection and full control of Sea of Azov. I seriously doubt they’ll give up any of these gains. Their position is probably something like “we’ll stop shelling you and taking more territory if you officially recognize that what we’ve taken by force is now ours. But not yet, we need the rest of Donetsk and Luhansk regions first.” Strategically they probably also want Odesa. This would create a land connection to Transnistria and cut Ukraine off the Black Sea completely.
Yes, I think that’s probably how it ends, but I’m not the US media telling us that the war must go on. The UK is the biggest cheerleader for some reason -
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JOHNSON SAYS UKRAINE SHOULD GET ADVANCED MULTI-LAUNCH ROCKETS
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JOHNSON SAYS NO POINT NEGOTIATING WITH A ‘CROCODILE’ LIKE PUTIN
Meanwhile also this am from the guy winning the PR war but perhaps not the actual one -
UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT ZELENSKIY SAYS UKRAINIANS ARE NOT EAGER THAT I TALK TO PUTIN, BUT WE HAVE TO FACE REALITY
Maybe once we pay off $20-30B to the arms industry and another $10B to spread around Ukraine and the sons of our leading political figures (many of whom were actively involved in Ukraine before the war “doing business”), we can move on towards possible diplomacy. Here’s the MSM starting to admit things aren’t going well…
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Looks like people are taking turns seizing oil tankers now. That won’t help keep energy prices down.
And here’s another billion in Ukraine aid to … Raytheon.
- EXCLUSIVE - U.S. ARMY SIGNS CONTRACT FOR $687 MILLION WORTH OF ANTI-AIRCRAFT STINGER MISSILES TO REPLENISH STOCKS SENT TO UKRAINE -SOURCES
Reporting from the war
For the western media to cover up the neo-Nazi connection in Ukraine is the biggest lie of this war. I have recently returned from two months of reporting in and around Ukraine. Certainly, both sides are guilty of atrocity but I have seen a different kind of barbarity by the AFU that is beyond the pale of war because the AFU and the Avovs consider and treat all Ukrainian Russians, Jews and even peace advocates as vermin. They have given up all morality. I can bear witness to the killings of the innocent, the torture and killings of prisoners, the firing on civilian targets, the mining of the humanitarian corridors to prevent escape, and the execution of anyone who suggests peace much less negotiation, and I have seen the Swastikas and pro-Nazi tattoos scrawled on the hands, arms, necks and chests of the AFU killers.
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Yeah, just keep in mind this guy “covers” all kinds of conspiracy theories. Hard to tell who is lying about the neo-Nazi connection. Also free bump.
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If you were in Johnson’s shoes, wouldn’t you want attention directed away from your Covid parties? Heck, directing attention anywhere else is good, but if you can frame yourself as being a wartime leader (which Britain hasn’t had since Maggie Thatcher), all the better.
When you nationalize (control) the media, you too can be a (fat boy N. Korean or Fido Castro’s brother [if he’s still alive]), and claim any silly thing you want. When your kicking back 10% to the “big guy”, international media will be overwhelmingly on your side and you can expect no investigations into anything.
Background on Ukraine corruption and our political intervention in recent years
The war has completely reinvented Zelensky, thus saving his scandal-plagued presidency marked by broken promises. As a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll showed, just 24 percent of voters supported him in late January. But now, thanks to the West’s embracement of the actor’s new persona which often places him beyond reproach, Zelensky has become the recipient of unqualified adoration and enormous amounts of international aid money. “Before the war the U.S. was sending $300 million per year to Ukraine,” said to NPR Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for International and Strategic Studies. “Now, we’re providing $100 million a day” to what was until recently considered “the most corrupt nation in Europe,” reports (of all newspapers) The Guardian .
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Ouch! There’s something to take the shine off of our “present-day Churchill.”
Since the Pandora Papers were released to the media, I’m surprised (well, not really) that our vaunted liberal media hasn’t jumped all over the corruption that is taking food out of babies’ mouths, and hurting the “most vulnerable” of Ukraine, and other VCs.
investing perspective from a regular Russian caught up in all the sanctions and rules.
https://community.rationalreminder.ca/t/geopolitical-risk-on-a-live-example-im-from-russia/17080/5
His Russian listed foreign index ETFs, that held US or western stocks as part of a diversified portfolio, are now frozen and don’t trade (much like the US froze three US listed ETFs that held Russian stocks like RSX). Some foreign banks forced their Russian customers to cash out everything and return it to Russian banks, where they got a bad exchange rate into rubles. Interactive Brokers features favorably compared to others. He left Russia when it was still easy to get out, but almost no one will let him open a bank account as a Russian, etc.
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“European resolve” - an oxymoron
Europeans have forever been a bunch of weenies. Nothing has changed.
Diplomats and officials are getting increasingly frustrated the EU may be reaching the limits of the short-term pain it can inflict on Russia already three months after its invasion of Ukraine.
Member states are failing to deliver on promises to hit President Vladimir Putin where it hurts: the lucrative energy industry. The focus has been on Hungary’s refusal to back sanctions, but other countries are yielding to Putin’s demands for gas payments in rubles.
Oooh Oooh Big Shock!
(not)
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