Quote from: pooya87 on Today at 06:51:31 AM

Quote from: DrBeer on May 10, 2022, 11:56:15 AM

1. Is the Russian economy self-sufficient or import-dependent?
2. Import-dependent economy, forced to buy something from exporters, what currency should be calculated?
3. And if everyone pays her for the main product exported by Russia, in rubles - where will Russia take the currency to pay for imports?

1. Apart from one or two countries every one else has an import-dependent economy. The ongoing conflict and its effects on all economies (excluding a handful) proves that.
2&3. Depends on the trading parties. The world has also been moving away from US dollar and SWIFT. For example Russian trades with India and China have been mostly conducted using other currencies including Ruble, and they went fully Ruble after the war started. Or for example Arabs started selling their oil to China using CNY and dumped USD.

Besides, anybody who refused to export to Russia or export using Ruble was immediately replaced by a competitor. For example I heard that imports of detergents and cleaners from Germany, Italy and Sweden were stopped and we immediately too over that market. We don't use SWIFT either. Wink

I think that the West was surprised by the calm reaction of the Russian banking system to the SWIFT disconnection (although it seems to be presented as an economic nuclear bomb). It turned out that the banking system of Russia is perhaps the most progressive in the world, without problems with legacy, mainframes, punched cards and cobols - flexible, manageable and easily customizable.

Quote from: pooya87 on Today at 06:51:31 AM

Quote from: be.open on May 10, 2022, 04:13:49 PM

OK, Germany cannot agree with Qatar on the supply of liquefied natural gas. Qatar does not want to increase production

Gas production does not have a switch that you can flip and magically increase the production. There are a lot of limits and it would take them years to start new facilities and start extracting more gas. Not to mention that their supplies are still not enough to cover a small portion of what Germany needs.

But the gas pipeline has a valve that can be easily closed. Of course, Qatar already has buyers for the entire volume of liquefied gas and investments are needed to increase gas production. But it also needs the political will to do so. Europe froze Russia's money, which she paid for gas supplies, that is, Europe actually received gas from Russia for free. Plus, Europe has very strict antitrust laws, and Gazprom has already been subject to its penalties, in particular, initially the contracts included a ban on the resale of Russian gas, on the abolition of which Germany is now making good money by supplying gas in reverse to Poland. It will be very difficult for Europe to find gas suppliers other than Russia, so it will have to save a lot and maybe even choose between production and heating of residential buildings next winter.