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That would be very helpful to Russia in the short term, but it should not come at the cost of desperately needed structural reform that will reduce Russia's dependence on oil revenue in the long-term. Putin's lack of interest in this area over the last decade indicates that he will not suddenly...

You did a fine job explaining the concept. Formally, a company hires an investment bank to help them prepare and underwrite the offering (i.e. the investment bank actually buys the shares from the company, and then sells them into the market at the IPO). Then the firm files a Form S-1 and does...

But it wasn't the central bank that used that $7bn, it was the Ministry of Finance, which is unorthodox, to put it lightly. Why would the MoF need to intervene when that's usually the central bank's job, and the central bank has over $400bn of reserves? Something's not right.

Unbelievably, it's even worse than that. I had to read these two paragraphs twice to make sure I understood correctly: The Ministry of Finance suddenly found $7bn of USD? What do we call that, if not a slush fund? It's precisely this sort of corruption that is causing the markets to lose...

@Lure Thanks for the study. It will take me some time to read it. As far as the treatment of XYZ country by US media, I have to ask, what is the utility of such a discussion? The US media is driven by a complex set of factors: 1) The US media is privately owned, so the influence of...

China may desire such an outcome, but as long as the US has defense treaties with Japan and the Philippines (and Taiwan), a strong relationship with Singapore, and growing ties to the ASEAN members, it seems a bit out of place to contemplate the ejection of the US from Asia. Let alone the fact...

It's really a question of time for me. Between work and family, I have a limited amount of time to learn, and I read voraciously. PDF, for me, was equivalent to a curated RSS feed, and I was able to read some interesting articles and analysis posted by users here. But my ignore list has grown...

RMB will be a reserve currency, so the danger for China is that the RMB will strengthen (like the other reserve currencies do) in times of crisis.

Thank you for your swift response, @waz ! If it was Sven's wish, I guess it can't be helped.

Can any of the site staff please explain why the following thread was deleted? A good discussion had developed, and it's a shame to see all of the content simply disappear. https://defence.pk/threads/the-death-of-a-superpower.348834/ @WebMaster @Horus @Oscar @waz

As the saying goes, when the market is in crisis, correlation goes to 1. I don't think this is an India-specific scenario, it's just a general flight-to-quality that is hitting emerging markets across the board. Everyone hides in the warm embrace of the reserve currencies (USD, JPY, EUR) in...

Russia is in a bind. If it imposes capital controls, of course it will stop the capital outflow and stop the ruble's decline--but it will also damage its ability to raise foreign-denominated debt and impair FDI inflows, which will starve the local economy of credit. Capital controls harms...

That's a difficult question, to which there are probably no satisfying answers. The rise of oil during Putin's term in office masked a lot of long-term structural problems, and in truth, Russia's economy was already heading towards recession before Crimea and the oil collapse. I'm certain that...

Even though the rapid decline of the Russian ruble is well-known by now, I'd like to post this Economist infographic and a companion FT piece here, because this is starting to look a little scary, and the implications for other emerging markets may be more dire if the problems of the ruble...

@Chinese-Dragon As always, you are too kind. After a few hours, I sometimes re-read my posts and cringe and the errors, typos, and grammatical mistakes, and scramble to correct them. Embarrassing. And then there's the main issue, which you correctly pointed out: I used old data (admittedly...

I can't really offer any more insight than the popular knowledge on the subject. The narrative that "China will get old before it gets rich" seems to encapsulate the thinking behind the dependency ratio fears, but I tend to rank that issue lower on the scale when arguing about superpower...

@SvenSvensonov I've given your article a lot of thought, and I believe the crux of our different perception is in terms of focus. In other words, your analysis (and most analyses) looks at our military, economic, political, and cultural power and uses those four bases to support our Superpower...

@SvenSvensonov Interesting analysis of the situation, thank you for writing it. I appreciate your segmenting of the question into the military, economic, political, and cultural elements, and agree that those are useful axes along which to think about the position of the US. It's a very broad...

@SvenSvensonov is by one metric the most valuable member of PDF, bar none. Post-for-post, he has the highest rating of any member here, and it shows in the quality of his contributions. I have to agree with @gambit that the experience and knowledge of the American veteran contingent appears to...

I'm sorry, I don't. I tried skimming the original CSFB report that these numbers were based on, but it's clear that the methodology is rather mixed and inconsistent based on the quality of data gathered per country, and since the majority of the data is at the household level and built up, it...