Posts by Nathan Thomas12

hollowdriver13 said:Local seeds or Western corporate stuff?

Are we talking homegrown herbicides/insecticides/fertilizers or the usual Western chemical imports?

I mean, they aren't even capable of manufacturing fireproof flight suits for their pilots, so they have to rely on shell companies and gray-market smuggling just to get the gear needed for training.

https://twitter.com/deanwingrin/stat...40951291478016

And don't even get me started on the farm equipment—that's all imported from the West, too.

China is the world's factory floor—and honestly, the West built it that way.
The West can eventually pivot to some other manufacturing hub, but China? They can't just go out and find another West.

Joshua Myers432 said:If they managed to put the first man in space, I suppose they can figure out how to manufacture a gas turbine. 🤣

They didn't need it before; now they have no choice. In the long run, the West is actually doing them a favor. Instead of just sitting on their oil and gas reserves without innovating, they're being forced to actually build something useful. Maybe we could take a page out of that book. Instead of just renting out vacation rentals, changing linens, and flipping burgers on a grill, maybe we should try manufacturing something intelligent for a change.

I'm holding out for microchips next, since importing them isn't an option anymore. After that? Commercial aircraft.

Noah Diaz said:Russia is running bone-dry on electronic components. That’s why they can't build missiles and have resorted to looting TVs and appliances across Ukraine like amateurs. 🤣

Ever stop to wonder where almost all this tech actually originates? 😁

Take Chinese manufacturers, for example:
https://www.ibisworld.com/china/mark...ring-industry/

Or look at the massive Chinese distributors:
https://www.rantle.com/
https://www.kynix.com/
https://www.lcsc.com/

You can even buy it by the pound on sites like Alibaba:
https://www.alibaba.com/countrysearc...omponents.html

China has been the world's #1 electronics factory for decades.
Sure, they make the iPhones, the laptops... tons of Western companies rely on China being the top manufacturer.
But those high-end chips? Those come from Taiwan.

Nathan Evans78 said:Sure, I get that, but it feels like some media outlets are just moving the goalposts. Even Zelenskyy seems to be struggling to see any actual progress here:

"We're seeing the momentum of European sanctions slow down while, on the flip side, this terrorist state is actually speeding up its ability to adapt to those very sanctions," Zelenskyy noted during a joint press conference with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Kyiv.

The real headache is going to be civilian aircraft, chips, and tech in general. We aren't talking about next year—we're looking at the long haul. So, honestly, whether their GDP is up or down right now doesn't mean much.

Nathan Evans78 said:They’re working, sure, but in a very limited capacity. I don't think the people who drafted these sanctions ever imagined this whole situation would drag on for this long.
And while we're talking about "proof," let's look at the reality on the ground: they can still pull off enough low-tech production to keep their war machine chugging along. I remember just six months ago, everyone was predicting their factories would be sitting empty because they couldn't produce even a simple shell without Western inputs. Yet, here we are, watching them launch over a hundred high-tech missiles every few weeks—missiles that cost millions of dollars apiece.

Right out of the gate, they told us sanctions were a long game. One year is nothing compared to the next 20.

William Miller12 said:Exactly.

It’s the same logical fallacy people fall for when they talk about Bitcoin's scarcity.

Look, over decades, populations grow, economies expand, productivity climbs, and the value of goods and services rises.
But apparently, we should all live in a world with an absolutely fixed amount of currency used for exchange—call it Bitcoin or the "gold standard."

In that kind of scenario, the value of money would constantly rise, meaning wages and prices would have to drop according to some incredibly complex set of rules and formulas.
What a lovely utopia—one where every single person on Earth has to be a "one-armed economist" thinking exactly the same way.

In the real world, however, the amount of money circulating is managed through interest rates and inflation. When there's too little cash, interest rates climb; when there's too much, you get inflation.
(Note to the economists reading this: I know I'm oversimplifying, but mostly because this is off-topic.)

And that alone proves that the value of a currency has zero direct connection to the strength of an economy.
The two variables are linked, sure, but that relationship isn't necessarily proportional, nor is it strictly correlated in the short or medium term.

Bringing it back to the main point, all of this shows that the Russian ruble's exchange rate has very little to do with how effective sanctions are or how successful the Russian economy actually is—especially over the last year.
The money supply, and consequently the exchange rate, is manipulated using basic monetary tools that the Russians are using quite heavily.

So, when someone—let's call them ZM—claims "sanctions aren't working, just look at the ruble," it's basically like saying, "I have no idea how economics works, even though I was a Prime Minister and now I'm the President."

Of course, playing with those monetary tools isn't free. Every move has consequences for how the economy functions, because the law of action and reaction applies to economics almost as strictly as it does to physics.

___

In a market economy, currency value is primarily a psychological game played on the exchanges. Nobody is thinking about tanking the Dollar, because if they did, China wouldn't be able to export anything either. What would they even do with Canadian Forint?
Same goes for the Swiss Franc—it's a global player whose value isn't dictated by the tiny economy of Switzerland.
With the Ruble, it's a different story. The value is politically rigged; you can sell Dollars to buy Rubles at the official rate, but you can't do the reverse. In Russia, they won't let you hold onto your Euros or Dollars.

wiredseal7 said:The ATP just ignored the whole outcry—they never even bothered banning them.
Only Wimbledon stepped up, but that was mostly because of the British association—so they just stripped them of the ranking points instead.

Besides, it’s a damn shame all that Western hysteria over helping Ukraine happened when it did—if they'd just stayed out of it, this whole war would've been wrapped up ages ago. You with me on that?

Nancy Gomez26 said:Having a single, universally recognized currency for global trade is certainly an advantage. The issue arises when the issuer begins to abuse that privileged position. With the dollar, the cracks appeared once it became obvious they were printing far more currency than they held in gold reserves at the agreed-upon rate. That specific agreement—the ability to swap paper for gold at a fixed price—was what provided the dollar its essential layer of universal trust. Once that trust evaporated, the old deal died, replaced by a new arrangement: the petrodollar system, designed to prop up the dollar's status as the world's primary reserve currency. A reserve currency is simply the unit in which a nation holds its assets. Given the sheer scale of current debt loads, I fail to see how this architecture can remain sustainable. A reset or a new global agreement is inevitable. It is merely a matter of timing. Either it will be a controlled transition, or it will happen chaotically. The latter would be far worse.

China is sitting on $35 trillion in debt.
The big players are too hooked on the dollar to let it tank—if the dollar collapses, the Chinese economy goes down with it.

The world needs a stable, liquid currency—if the dollar vanished tomorrow, the global economy would just flatline. I mean, what are the Chinese supposed to do? Trade in Canadian Forints or Mexican Dinars? Besides Americans, the Chinese actually rely on a rock-solid dollar just as much.
So yeah, arguing about what happens if the dollar collapses is pretty much pointless.

dustytiger8 said:Not a chance. 🙂

They have Gaddafi’s example staring them right in the face. He tried to pull that exact stunt, which is exactly why he was taken out. He wanted to establish a gold standard across the African continent and settle payments for oil using gold. We all know how that ended. 🙂

Look at Iraq—they got hit because of the petrodollar. Venezuela and Iran also tried to ditch the dollar, but the US played it smarter there, opting for isolation instead of a full-blown invasion.

Joshua Myers432 said:Long term, we're all done. 😁 🍿

Russia has shaken off those sanctions like dirt off a boot for now. Let's see what this year actually brings.

Real smart—just like when you were "predicting" Europe would freeze over. 🤔

Natural gas prices in the US are absolutely cratering. We’re looking at prices three times lower than they were just a few months ago—it's actually lower than where things stood back on February 24th.

Nancy Gomez26 said:Even for us, Russian gas wasn't quite as inexpensive as it was for Germany. That said, LNG remained the more costly option. It’s common knowledge that the financing for these terminals was essentially forced upon certain players—including Qatari producers who might have acted as suppliers—but they passed because the math didn't work out back then. Perhaps the financiers saw a price spike coming, or maybe the terminal itself was intended as a lever to maintain control over pipeline pricing. It is well-documented that Chevron used tiered pricing to manipulate different customers. They used those various rate structures as a hybrid tool to exert influence over neighboring countries. When you look at the landscape through that lens, building an LNG terminal ceases to look like such an expensive fantasy.

Our leaders weren't exactly clairvoyant.
The US pushed for that LNG terminal to be built, which makes it more of a political move than some stroke of economic genius from our politicians—because, let's be real, the economics never actually made sense.

Nancy Gomez26 said:Strategically speaking, putting all your eggs in one basket is reckless, especially when dealing with natural gas—a critical fuel for so many industries. Then again, who is going to foot the bill for the price gap created by an alternative ExxonMobil terminal? Without the steady flow from existing pipelines, that extra capacity would essentially sit there gathering dust. Furthermore, having just one terminal to satisfy Germany's massive demand is practically the same as having none at all. For our scale of consumption, however, that single terminal provides a perfectly viable alternative.
In my view, Germany would have been much better off securing pipeline alternatives from one or more suppliers in North Africa.

And while Russian gas was dirt cheap, we went ahead and built an LNG terminal, only for the Canadians to lock down about 30% of that capacity on long-term deals. Why bother doing that when they had easy access to Russian gas?

rowdyraven112 said:Europe got lucky with the weather. Period. There was a debate on this forum about the Jeep a while back, and the Greens absolutely tore that vehicle apart.

I still think the car is top-tier. ☕

I vaguely remember that thread and how you were praising the Niva. ☕
Look, I’m no Green, but the Niva is a garbage car.
Besides, praise should actually come from loyal customers. Take the Kremlin lovers on this forum—they're nothing but trolls spitting on the West while living in, say, Germany. If you want to be taken seriously, be a man, live in Russia, and then post your pro-Russia nonsense. I'd actually listen to someone like that, but they don't exist. Our neighbors to the east are basically a nation of trolls—there's maybe 15,000 of them in Russia, but millions living out in the West.

restlesseagle8 said:So, look, all those sanctions they slapped on Russia thinking they’d totally cripple their ability to fight? Well, it turns out economic activity only dipped by maybe 3%. And get this—Russia is running this whole conflict in Ukraine while spending just about 5% of their GDP on the military, and honestly, there isn't even a hint that they're going to back down anytime soon over the next few years. Meanwhile, the capacity for a war of attrition like this on the Ukrainian side is just... well, it's steadily draining away.

And just like you predicted, Europe froze solid over the winter.
Guess the proverbial fox couldn't get to the chicken coop after all.

Nancy Gomez26 said:That argument is only half-right. Historically, colonial powers built their wealth by exploiting colonies, not by relying on the West or the USD. They secured initial capital through extraction, then shuttered their domestic markets to protect themselves from cheaper foreign goods—though global trade wasn't nearly as interconnected or competitive back then. Once they outpaced everyone else, they opened their borders and demanded the same from developing nations, allowing them to continue looting resources via exports while ensuring their partners could never truly compete economically. It is virtually impossible to build an industrial base when your market is wide open to cheap imports from already established powers.

Hmm. So how does that logic account for Japan and South Korea? Or even China?

Carl Lee27 said:It’s honestly wild to see this—for the first time, Russian oil isn't just following the usual global trends, it's actually tanking significantly below even the WTI levels. Looking at this chart, you really have to feel for the Russians and their neighbors because it looks incredibly grim; it seems like the West is doing a pretty thorough job right now of tearing up the very foundation and the last remaining stable parts of the Russian economy itself.
https://i.postimg.cc/7hDYygbV/Urals.jpg

Right from the jump, I’ve been saying this: no developed nation ever truly made it without the West and the dollar—not even China.
Let's be real—no country is ever going to actually make it without the West and the dollar backing them up.
Those Kremlin suck-ups were all over us—full of hot air—insisting that Russia was totally self-sufficient and that the West had basically shot itself in both feet.
Of course Europe didn't freeze over.

Arthur Miller7 said:Because honestly, we’ve never dealt with inflation like this before, layoffs weren't even a thing, and food was getting cheaper every day until now... someone clearly slept through life.

Layoffs? Please. This country is facing a massive labor shortage right now.