Why exchange goods for dollars and euros, which are losing weight before our eyes?

Petr Akopov

Vladimir Putin’s speech yesterday at SPIEF was not dedicated to Ukraine, and not because the president was speaking at an event dedicated to the economy. It’s just that the world is going through an era of unprecedented transformations, and even more serious changes are looming — that’s why Putin spoke about two important and interconnected things. About the West trying to deny reality and counteract the course of history, and about how Russia should strengthen its sovereignty.
Recently, especially after the start of our special military operation, the West began to remind others very often of the “correct side of history.” As a rule, such appeals are addressed to those whom the Atlanticists propose to decide on their attitude towards Russia : China, India, Asian, Afri-can and Latin American states. Like, we strongly recommend that you think carefully about who you are with, so that later you do not regret that you were on the wrong side of history. Putin not only responded to such demagoguery – he made a harsh diagnosis.
He recalled that a year and a half ago, speaking in Davos, he said that the era of the unipolar world order was over – despite all attempts to preserve it by any means. And it ended because there was a flaw in its very idea, because the world based on it was, by definition, unstable: “The civilizational diversity of the planet, the richness of cultures is difficult to combine with political, economic and other patterns, patterns do not work here, patterns, which are rudely, without alternative, imposed from one center. Putin called these changes the natural course of history – which the West decided to simply ignore:
“The United States, having proclaimed victory in the Cold War, declared themselves to be the messengers of the Lord on Earth, who have no obligations, but only interests, and these interests are declared sacred. about themselves new powerful centers Each of them develops its own political systems and public institutions, implements its own models of economic growth and, of course, has the right to protect them, to ensure national sovereignty.
We are talking about objective processes, about truly revolutionary, tectonic changes in geopolitics, the global economy, in the technological sphere, in the entire system of international relations, where the role of dynamic, promising states and regions, whose interests can no longer be ignored, is significantly increasing.
Putin speaks about this not for the first time, but for the first time in such a concentrated, tough form. “I repeat: these changes are of a fundamental, pivotal and inexorable nature. And it is a mistake to believe that the time of turbulent changes can, as they say, sit out, wait out, that supposedly everything will return to normal, everything will be as before. It will not be.”
And here it’s not even this warning that matters, but in some ways even surprise (with notes of regret – given what Putin later said about Europe that had lost political sovereignty), with which the president assessed the West’s attempt to deny reality and oppose the course of history:
“It seems that the ruling elites of some Western states are just in this kind of illusion. They do not want to notice obvious things, but stubbornly cling to the shadows of the past. For example, they believe that the dominance of the West in global politics and the economy is an unchanging, eternal value. nothing happens.
Moreover, our colleagues do not simply deny reality. They are trying to counteract the course of history. They think in terms of the last century. They are captivated by their own delusions about countries outside the so-called golden billion, consider everything else to be the periphery, their backyard, still treat them as colonies, and the peoples living there consider second-class people, be-cause they consider themselves exceptional. If they are exceptional, then everyone else is second-class.”
It was precisely from the Western sense of exclusivity that Putin derived “an irrepressible desire to punish, economically crush someone who stands out from the general ranks, does not want to blindly obey,” and “if some rebel cannot be hounded, pacified, then they try to isolate him or, as they say now, “cancel” – thus explaining the nature of the current attack of Russophobia in the West, and “crazy and thoughtless” sanctions against Russia.
Putin continued to diagnose the West in the part of his speech where he spoke about the reasons for the continued deterioration of the situation in the global economy, naming it not Russia (as they try to present the case in the West), but the countries of the “golden billion” themselves: “Today’s rise in prices, inflation, problems with food and fuel, gasoline, in the energy sector as a whole are the result of systemic mistakes in the economic policy of the current US administration and the European bureaucracy. <…> A sharp increase in inflation in the commodity and raw materials markets has become a fact for a long time The world has been consistently driven into this situation by many years of irresponsible macroeconomic policies of the countries of the so-called “Big Seven”, including uncontrolled emission and accumulation of unsecured debts…
They printed money in huge quantities, and then what? Where did all these funds go? Obviously: including for the purchase of goods and services outside Western countries – that’s where they flowed, this money is printed. They literally began to “vacuum”, rake out the global markets. Of course, no one thought about the interests of other states, including the poorest ones, and did not want to think about it.”
That is, what happens? The West is trying to counteract the natural course of history – that is, the transition to a multipolar world – both geopolitically and economically. Geopolitically – ignoring the interests of rising (or returning) centers of power, such as Russia, and trying to crush and crush them. Economically, by pursuing a neo-colonial financial policy that harms the interests of the non-Western world. But on both of these fronts, the West will not be able to achieve success – moreover, its attempt to deceive history, stop time, prolong the era of its own domination hits itself, ultimately only accelerating the change in the world order and the global rules of the game in economics and politics:
“In the context of an inflationary storm, many developing countries have a reasonable question: why exchange goods for dollars and euros, which are losing weight before our eyes? According to the IMF, there are now 7.1 trillion dollars and 2.5 trillion euros in global foreign exchange re-serves, and this money de-preciates at a rate of about eight percent a year.But, in addition, at any moment they can also be confiscated, stolen, if the United Sta-tes does not like something in the policy of certain states.This, in my opinion, has become absolutely real for very many countries that keep their gold and foreign exchange reserves in these currencies.
According to experts, in the coming years, this is an objective analysis, the process of converting global reserves will be launched – they just have nowhere to go with such deficits – from currencies losing their value into real resources (other countries, of course, will do this), such as food, energy carriers, other raw materials. Obviously, this process will further spur global dollar inflation.”
Thus, Putin puts a lethal diagnosis on Western domination of the world economy: “The conclusion suggests itself: the economy of imaginary entities is inevitably replaced by the economy of real values and assets.”
This global transformation is not the merit of Russia, although we are betting on it, but the result of the collapse of the entire system built by the “casino owners”. Not just financial (having all the signs of a “pyramid”), but also trade, economic, and geopolitical. The West (more precisely, its Anglo-Saxon core) has played itself out, and now it is useless and pointless for it to blame Russia, China or anyone else. You have to pay for everything – sooner or later, but inevitably, this also applies to states and supranational elites.
And if we talk about the sanctions strike, then the West – once again – underestimated Russia:
“The very construction of Western sanctions was built on the false thesis that Russia is not sovereign from the point of view of the economy, it is critically vulnerable. They were so carried away by the spread of myths about Russia’s backwardness, about the weakness of its position in the world economy and trade, that they themselves, apparently, in believed it.”
In this situation, Russia not only withstood the first blow – as Putin said, “calculation for an economic blitzkrieg against Russia initially had no chance of success,” and we have a lot of work to do to build real and lasting national sovereignty. The head of state stressed that “sovereignty in the 21st century cannot be partial, fragmented. All its elements are equally important, they reinforce and complement each other”: “Therefore, it is important for us not only to defend our political sovereignty, national identity, but also to strengthen everything that determines the economic independence of the country, its financial, personnel, technological independence and independence.”
The President named five key principles on the basis of which our economy and country will develop. “The first is openness. Truly sovereign states are always set on an equal partnership, on making their contribution to global development. On the contrary, those who are weak and dependent, as a rule, are busy looking for enemies, planting xenophobia, or finally lose their identity, independence, blindly following the overlord. Russia – despite the fact that our Western, so to speak, friends literally dream about it – will never follow the path of self-isolation and autarky.
Putin declared reliance on entrepreneurial freedoms as the second principle of our long-term development: “Each private initiative aimed at the benefit of Russia should receive maximum support and space for implementation.”
And here there was an important appeal to business – do not just invest at home, but also think about what will remain for your children, because often a good name is much more important than capital.
Putin called a responsible and balanced macroeconomic policy the third principle: “We will not repeat the sad experience of our Western colleagues, who unleashed an inflationary spiral and unbalanced their finances. Yes, some of the world’s reserve currencies are now committing suicide, this is obvious, in any case, they have suicidal moods. Of course, to “sterilize” our money supply with using them today is pointless. But the main principle is to spend based on an understanding of how much you have earned, remains, and no one has canceled it.”
The President outlined social justice as the fourth principle, emphasizing not its political and moral significance (although they are huge), but economic (since it was still about the development of the economy):
“The growth of the economy and business initiative, industrial opportunities and scientific and technological potential of the country should have a powerful social embodiment. Such development should lead to a reduction in inequality, and not to its aggravation, as is happening in some other countries. Yes, and we, to be honest,, we are also not champions in solving these problems, we still have many questions and problems here. The reduction of poverty and inequality is the dem-and for domestic products, and throughout the country, and hence the reduction of the gap in the potential of the regions, the creation of new jobs exactly where they are most needed, in general, a determining condition for further economic development.
And besides, the well-being of people, their well-being is, after all, the most important factor in demographic development, Putin recalled, and here, given the overlapping negative demographic waves, the situation is extremely difficult. The president called the priority development of infrastructure as the fifth principle – these are roads, housing and communal services, a decent life in the countryside and in small towns, and the construction of tourist facilities. And Putin called the achievement of true technological sovereignty the sixth, end-to-end principle of development: “This is the creation of an integral system of economic development, which, in terms of critical components, does not depend on foreign institutions. We need to build all spheres of life at a qualitatively new technological level and, at the same time, be not just users of other people’s solutions, but have the technological keys to create goods and services of the following generations.
I emphasize that it is, of course, impossible to produce everything and everything, and it is not necessary. However, we need to have all the critical technologies in order to, if necessary, quickly establish our own production of any product.” The scale of the tasks, of course, is enormous, but one should not fall into despondency or thoughtless optimism – and even more so it is unacceptable to wait, hoping that “everything will somehow resolve itself”:
“We must assess the situation as honestly and realistically as possible, at the same time be independent in our conclusions and, of course, believe in our own strength – this is very important. We are strong people and can cope with any challenge. Like our ancestors, we will solve any problem. About This is what the whole thousand-year history of our country says. At the same time, the future world order also depends on our country – both what it will be and what place we will occupy in it:
“The rejection of globalization in favor of a multipolar growth model is bec-oming increasingly clear. Of course, the formation and birth of a new world order is a difficult process. We will still face many challenges, risks, and factors that are even difficult to predict and predict today.
But it is obvious that the rules for the maintenance of the new world order will be set precisely by strong, sovereign states – who do not move along the trajectory already outlined by someone. Only strong states and sovereigns can have their say in this world order that is being born again, or are doomed to become or remain a disenfranchised colony. It is necessary to strive to move forward, change, feel the breath of the times and show national will and determination for this. Russia is entering the coming era as a powerful sovereign country. We will definitely use the new colossal opportunities that time opens up for us, and we will become even stronger.” Will and determination to be Russia.