If you look at the headlines and who's kind of withdrawn from russia or wherever else, it's louis vuitton, it's mcdonald's, it's microsoft, it's apple, it's visa and mastercard who, by the way, didn't even do a full withdrawal. All they said was that you can't, if you have a russian visa or mastercard, you can still use it. They still make their fee. You just can't use it internationally to access institutions outside of russia, so that whole thing was a complete joke right, they're still going to make their money, but, most importantly, you have to look at it at what's being sanctioned right.

Russia is not a consuming nation. They're, not a net consumer they're, a net producer. The united states is the big consumer. Europe is the big consumer.

Yes, we have our resources right. Everyone talks about making the u.s energy independent, that's very difficult to do when the crude oil that comes out of the united states is not of sufficient quality to make gasoline up. That's why we have to import uh crude from other places from maybe now venezuela, but most importantly from opec uh. You know russia, russian, sweet crude accounts for like seven to nine percent of u.s imports and we're still importing by the way um there's something like 500.

000, barrels on a boat that just went out of russia today towards the united states, even though biden said that they're banning it. So how does that work? How does that that works, because the executive branch doesn't have all seeing power over every decision that gets made? So how long you know you you have to you have to wonder: why threaten to close swift for everything, except for energy payments. It's a joke! Yeah! The only people you're going to do is energy. Obviously, absolutely right and and that's the thing is like the united states - is the one buying all this stuff from global markets, and it's kind of you know in the very beginning, the united states is the one that kicked this whole thing off a lot of people.

Don't know this, but in the 70s the united states loaned russia 750 000 for russia to then buy american wheat with our own money, and that was kind of the first big grain deal that happened between the two countries and then, as the markets developed and everything. Russia became a lot more independent in agribusiness, especially after the 2014 and 2016 sanctions that blocked european exports into russia of agricultural goods, which then forced russia to become dominant in those categories. So you know the offsetting long-term effects of all of this are not very negative. For for russia and for china and india, you know and as much as we'd like to say it's going to damage them.

I don't really see a long-term scenario in which it does especially considering the vast amount of very intelligent infrastructure. Russia has set up with china and with india to facilitate all this trade, and you have to think about it. This way, right, if you have one guy who's selling the world a good portion of what they need, and then the world says we don't like you anymore, but we still want to buy your stuff who's in control there, the guy who's selling or the guy who's Buying it's the guy who's selling, so he can say you know what i have six other guys across the street who are gon na, buy all this from me sure they might pay 80 cents on the dollar, but they're going to buy a whole lot more of It and they're not going to hate me while they buy my stuff they're not going to sanction me they're not going to threaten my economy, they're not going to threaten me with war or military action. They're not going to arrest the wealthiest people in my country for did they do to themselves.

To be honest, i mean here is, of course, he's been known to do that more than once, absolutely or whoever else i mean there's so many of them there's dozens yeah, but wait. Is there enough capacity outside the western world for all this russian commodities to be purchased? To be honest, it's just so much so much. I mean how much india and china can buy to be honest. Well, the thing that i focus on also: logistically: how would you move all this? It doesn't the infrastructure isn't there to make it happen, but it's easier than moving stuff across the ocean.

Wouldn't you say yeah, but it's india and china. I mean it's. It's a different market different needs different. Well, people downplay india a lot.

I think people still have this vision of india as like uh. You know third world country when it really isn't anymore. I mean there's, certainly parts of it. It's not a fully developed nation, but their economy is moving very well uh.

If you pay attention to india over the last five ten years, huge economic advancements, huge advancements in technology computing the space race. Right i mean india has been launching uh space missions for the last. What is it five or six years now, um they're getting ready to put a rover on mars? I think they already have a rover on the moon, they're they're kind of the sleeping little player there, and not that's not even to mention the massively growing mutual fund market in india, which is the biggest the fastest growing mutual fund market in the world. Right now, which just goes to show the amount of wealth that's available in india to put into long-term assets.

So why is india, china and russia geopolitically they're right there um part of india's relationship with china, i think, is based on india's tension with pakistan and other players in that. Doesn't india have an issue with china? Don't don't they have a war going on on some territorial disputes? You know it's all there, but you could say the same thing about the united states and europe and russia there's conflict, but they still trade right. The the us may be sanctioning russia, but they're still buying russian oil for now and uh russia, the united states and everybody else are still negotiating the iran nuclear deal as we speak. But all i'm saying is look i have so based on what you're saying right now so uh you.

It sounds like you think that the russian economy is not going to take a hit from this long term, but it sounds long term now they're losing a lot of trade partners a lot, but they absolutely but think about it. This way, right when i both wait. Actually, as well like i mean they, don't really buy a lot right, they mainly sell. I mean you know, finish goods, they buy the finished goods yeah, but but they bought a lot of they.

They kind of lose a lot of high paying stable, rich clients at once for sure um, but there's an untapped market of high paying rich clients in asia. I think you know only time will tell right. I i again i don't specialize specifically in this area of trade. I can tell you about general commodity markets and things like that.

So i don't know i don't know the answer that question, but i think long term. Like 10 years, the russian economy will probably be okay and the reason i say that uh is energy right. As we know, russia has massive oil reserves. There was a time in the 90s before the well during the voucherization program in russia, where people like bill browder discovered that gazprom had something like 600 or 6 000 times the oil reserves of british petroleum, which was at the time the biggest oil company in the World right all of this untapped uh energy, soil, arable land, all these reserves in russia that theoretically have a market and going back to energy and food staples right, india and china have massively growing populations.

Somebody is going to need to feed them. If you look at china as a country just geographically a lot of it is desert, you can't grow much up there. They have the technology to maybe seed stuff over there, but it's not going to be enough and it's in china's best interest also to move the rinman b around the world, because their ultimate objective is to displace the usd as the global reserve currency right. So if they can buy more stuff in rinman b, through their own alternative to swift and through russia, trade, then they give everybody at least their trading partners, an incentive to have renminbi instead of usd.

So it all kind of ties together and then, when you look at various climate agreements like paris, which give india and china huge concessions to burn fossil fuels and increase their fossil fuel use through 2050 before they start ramping down right. That was kind of the unfairness of the paris climate accords, especially from the u.s perspective, because the u.s has had stable use of fossil fuels, whereas china and india are growing at huge rates. They're going to need to get their fossil fuels somewhere and have you heard of india having massive oil reserves because i haven't but who's the next or the almost next door, neighbor that does russia yeah they. So they have a market.

They have a market for at least the next 25 years. That's going to need a shitload of coal oil, natural gas, everything, especially as they modernize on the outskirts of cities as they grow more infrastructure for all of this there's a huge untapped market for everything there and that's going to be a windfall for russian energy producers. Well, they never lack clients. I guess i mean there's always going to be somebody who's going to be willing to buy oil, but the question absolutely at which price they're going to push it.

If i mean it's kind of like in business, if, if you're, if you have client concentration, it's unhealthy, of course, of course, and that's certainly a risk right. Well, we can look. We can lump that into um, just general market risk or perhaps counterparty risk or some combination of the two right, but i think ultimately, it's it's not a really big deal when you still have most of the world that needs a lot of energy to modernize and To grow and suppliers of energy who are willing to sell - and you know even short term, i think russia will probably be willing to take a hit price-wise on a lot of these commodities. Just because at the moment they're pr or soon they will probably be desperate for buyers.