Listen now (31 min) | Western governments are looking for a way to end Putin's oil price windfall without plunging Europe into energy crisis and recession. It's not clear that's possible.
A+ topic. You generally are doing a great job of finding relevant and interesting topics and coming at them from an interesting angle without just following the flavor of the week. Great job Josh and Sara.
First question I have is about this idea that the oil squeeze has increased Russia’s GDP on net by increased prices. To what extent does the quasi-public ownership of Russian energy go to subsidize the rest of the economy to placate the populace? If the United States tanked the rest of its economy but there was a net GDP benefit because oil and gas made up the difference, there would be massive civil unrest. I know Russia isn’t the United States, but is energy under Venezuela-style control where the government can just subsidize all the economic losers?
On the very last part, I feel like the guest’s answer lost the plot. What Russia was thinking when it launched this war is that they would win early, topple the Ukrainian government and install a puppet, taking the Donbas in “negotiations” and the United States and EU would wrist slap them like they did in 2014, no worse for the wear. It didn’t work out that way and now there’s a mix of Putin feeling pot committed to save face plus the fact that he is obsessive in his imperialist vision to the disregard of all of its negative externalities. This wasn’t the plan. It’s just where they ended up.
So what's the progress on the plan? How many heat pumps have been shipped to Europe? How many more do they need?
A+ topic. You generally are doing a great job of finding relevant and interesting topics and coming at them from an interesting angle without just following the flavor of the week. Great job Josh and Sara.
First question I have is about this idea that the oil squeeze has increased Russia’s GDP on net by increased prices. To what extent does the quasi-public ownership of Russian energy go to subsidize the rest of the economy to placate the populace? If the United States tanked the rest of its economy but there was a net GDP benefit because oil and gas made up the difference, there would be massive civil unrest. I know Russia isn’t the United States, but is energy under Venezuela-style control where the government can just subsidize all the economic losers?
On the very last part, I feel like the guest’s answer lost the plot. What Russia was thinking when it launched this war is that they would win early, topple the Ukrainian government and install a puppet, taking the Donbas in “negotiations” and the United States and EU would wrist slap them like they did in 2014, no worse for the wear. It didn’t work out that way and now there’s a mix of Putin feeling pot committed to save face plus the fact that he is obsessive in his imperialist vision to the disregard of all of its negative externalities. This wasn’t the plan. It’s just where they ended up.