I know little about Russian economy but note that when sanctions were announced some in this forum were predicting Ruble going to 0 within a day. That said, my thoughts on this have factored in a limited time window for Russian Federation. A lot hinges on how the situation in Ukraine is finalized. Will UN mechanisms like JCPOA, UN peacekeepers, lifting of sanctions etc. be on the table? All TBD. US will prefer a long enough period to deploy conventional defenses. Russia a bit less, but long enough for it to address the giant holes in its economy.

But the global economic picture really requires understanding of how China decides to act. People tend to view the world according to their own civilizational context, so for example, the Western geopolitical analysis du jour posits a “Thucydides‘s Trap” vis a viz US and China. Chinese, on the other hand, have their own ready and applicable historic paradigms to apply to the global order. The ‘Three Kingdoms’ period of Chinese history is how the Chinese view the world. You will also need to understand that the fabled Chinese “century of humiliation” includes Russians in the list of offending nations. It’s a complex and subtle calculus for the Chinese leadership and having a very aggressive and successful RF on their border is not entirely in their interest in the long term. [but p.s. going “multi-cloud” definitely is what they want.]

I'm just confused. I feel like I'm having a conversation with a cnn text generator. Neither half makes much sense, and the latter half isn't contextually relevant.

Point to the "some in this forum were predicting Ruble going to 0 within a day". I don't buy it for a second. Or, I'm sure someone could have said it, but that too would be ridiculous. And, what is your point? Like, you said that the USD received a "death blow", which is bonkers. It makes zero sense in the global scale of things. And you can verify all of it. The index has had no short term negative effect, and the longer trend is still rising. That was the discussion. Some kind of ridiculous talking point about the dollar being unstable. I was keen to hear your thoughts regardless.

What I instead get is impressively, a complete board of geopolitics bullshit-bingo in a couple of sentences:

"civilizational context", "du jour posits a “Thucydides‘s Trap”", "ready and applicable historic paradigms", "global order", "‘Three Kingdoms’ period of Chinese history", "complex and subtle calculus for the Chinese leadership"

What on earth are you talking about? From your post history, it seemed like you were very interested in Russian economy, and Putin for that matter. Which is why I mentioned the Ruble. As for the other ramblings, if it wasn't auto generated, I don't know how that is relevant to anything. But, you do you.