Will the Russia Sanctions Work?

Mar 31, 2022

Welcome to The Big Question, a new regular feature in which Project Syndicate commentators provide compelling answers to a timely question.

The West swiftly imposed unprecedented financial, trade, and investment sanctions against Russia in response to President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in late February. In a striking move, the United States, the European Union, and allies froze much of Russia’s foreign-exchange reserves, and further possible measures remain on the table.

In this Big Question, we ask Jayati Ghosh, Ricardo Hausmann, Harold James, and Shang-Jin Wei to assess the goals and likely impact of the sanctions.

Featured in this Big Question

Jayati Ghosh
Ricardo Hausmann
Harold James
Shang-Jin Wei

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Elizabeth Pula Apr 1, 2022

The US does not dominate the global financial and payment systems. Various nations have and still support using one to more common currencies as a convenience for accountable trading and eventual tax processing within individual nations, according to many levels of contractual agreements. Right now, only corruption of those agreed-to-and accountable-systems is the global monster-from-the-black-lagoon. If no nation is willing to deal with that monster, well, what we're seeing is what we're getting. Along with the use of one prime accountable currency, there is also a basket of other currencies that historically are going through adjustments to readjust perhaps from that one prime currency. The effects of that process can have immediate, through long-term results, if in fact any really significant change is yet occurring based on any relevant evidence of change effects, It remains to be seen just who is going to win really when all is said and done over especially the next couple of years as to any significant and relevant changes to affect that basket of currencies for imbalances of global financial transactions and media activities. Obviously any people that have been forced to flee Ukraine have probably been negatively affected to personal psychological extremes. Some actually may have improved their personal life-styles in the globally disruptive process, as usual. Any one that has been killed presently are normally labelled and counted as collateral damage. Too bad for them, but in the greater of schemes, they are discounted as usual. Are there any immediate reports of costs, gains and losses reported publicly of the present engagements for trading and accountability at this time?
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Elizabeth Pula Apr 1, 2022

Great suggestion. Kinda like a poor parental advisory supporting suicide or murder at the personal level for little kids on social media. They're the ones that get thrown in jail, and at least one dies. This suggested alternative/option is taking suicide or murder from the individual to a more acceptable mass level. Optimization algorithms should love it. Who prefers slow death by freezing, or complete immobilization, or starvation? And, there are quite a list of other choices. What pain level is preferred from the list by the optimizer?
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Elizabeth Pula Apr 1, 2022

Great questions. Since the Rand Corporation did a great pre-prediction analysis, all are onboard and on task to await further play-by-play reports.

In the meantime, with remarks like this on FT:"The Age of the Strongman began on December 31 1999, when Putin was sworn in as president of Russia." some people really should be asking some real questions about just what any one is really doing and accomplishing with certain specific contextual lead-ins, and thematic global narratives.

Now, we have entered the real phase of real life fantasy!!! Those last three words are even the title of a hip-hop song, and lyric "hooks" in a few other melodies.

However, in real life just when did history get rewritten so quickly in real time to distort basic historical reality of political conceptualizations and allusions, or definitions for any common rational, civil, and socially-contracted societies identifiable as anything, with any levels of organizations profitable or not, that barely resemble anything like a reasonably survivable state/nation still on this planet?
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The Big Question

Will the Russia Sanctions Work?

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