NYTimes Genius: Russia Entirely Unimportant to World Economy Except Literally Most Important Things

Your little goy brain isn’t large enough to understand analysis of this magnitude.

However harsh the effects, the immediate impact will be nowhere near as devastating as the sudden economic shutdowns first caused by the coronavirus in 2020. Russia is a transcontinental behemoth with 146 million people and a huge nuclear arsenal, as well as a key supplier of the oil, gas and raw materials that keep the world’s factories running. But unlike China, which is a manufacturing powerhouse and intimately woven into intricate supply chains, Russia is a minor player in the global economy.

Italy, with half the people and fewer natural resources, has an economy that is twice the size. Poland exports more goods to the European Union than Russia.

This analysis is so stupid I almost feel like responding to it is beneath me, but here goes. Russia providing the oil and raw materials, such as tungsten, copper, etcetera, puts them in a better position to disrupt the economies of other countries. There is no magical way for the EU to snap their fingers and continue using the exact same amount of gas. If some manufacturer needs tungsten, there is no magical way for them to snap their fingers and suddenly have it appear.

Prices in a market based economy somewhat obfuscate the fact that if the country was using, say, 1 million barrels of oil per day, and that gets cut off to 100k, you can now only use 100k barrels of oil per day. Price hikes and whatnot obfuscate this harsh reality.

Countries that serve as resource extractors are better positioned to fuck with other countries economies for this exact reason. If Russia has to sit on some oil and raw materials for a while, that’s totally fine. They can even continue to mine/drill, as they build up a surplus. On the other hand, if Italian manufacturers can’t make the products they want to make because there is not enough of x mineral that they need, there’s nothing they can do but sit there and do nothing.

As a concrete example. Let’s say that some Italian company, Ferrari, receives 100% of the gas and raw materials needed in manufacturing from Russia. If they take $10k worth of oil/materials from Russia, and turn it into a $100k car, technically they “contribute more to the world’s economy,” or whatever. Except that prices for cars are somewhat arbitrary, unlike the oil/materials, and if they can’t build the car because they can’t get the materials, then they can’t magically make said cars.

The countries at the end of the “supply chain,” are the hardest hit by supply chain disruptions, and to say otherwise is so fucking stupid that it makes my head spin because of how bafflingly idiotic it is.

“Russia is incredibly unimportant in the global economy except for oil and gas,” said Jason Furman, a Harvard economist who was an adviser to President Barack Obama. “It’s basically a big gas station.”

“Tom Brady is incredibly unimportant to the Patriots Superbowl success, except for throwing the ball. He’s basically just a glorified ball thrower.” – New York Times Genius.

This analysis is so outrageously stupid that it boggles the mind. It’s even dumber considering that Ukraine is an enormous food exporter. If Russia actually invaded, which I’m not betting for or against, then even if they didn’t capture Ukraine, there would still be massive disruption to the food supply for much of Europe and the Middle East. But apparently, according to the genius Jason Furman, economies don’t need to have raw materials, oil, or even food to function properly. As long as you can run the electricity to Wall Street, muh GDP will continue.