The Duran Podcast - Big Biden sanctions on Russia's spooky SHADOW GHOST fleetThe Duran: Episode 2103

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

Big Biden sanctions on Russia's spooky SHADOW GHOST fleetThe Duran: Episode 2103

All right, Alexander, we have possibly, we possibly have very big Biden sanctions on Russia's shadow fleet. The ghost fleet are what some media outlets are now calling it. The shadow fleet and the ghost fleet, which you defied simply as ships that are not insured by London. That's it's pretty much all it is. But ghost fleet and shadow fleet sounds better. It's a lot more scarier. Anyway, he's going to play sanctions. on oil, on gas, on energy, on the shadow fleets.

This is going to be Biden's big final sanctions. Goodbye to Putin, to Trump, to the American people, because this is going to increase prices. But this is Biden. This is Biden's team. When we say Biden, everyone knows what we mean when we say Biden's team because of the Wall Street Journal article, which highlighted that Biden is very diminished

and has been diminished for four. four years. So anyway, your thoughts on this final sanctions act being prepared by the Biden diminished team. Oh, we discussed this before, but just to repeat again, just in case anyone has any illusions about this, this is going to happen. This is coming. We've had one report about it about a week ago in Bloomberg, and now we've had an even more important one. I think it was the Washington Post this time. There is no doubt this is going to happen. This is going to be signed off and it's going to be huge. We're going to go for the Shadow Fleet. You know, the pirate ships, why should they worry about sanctions, but never mind. There's going to be

sanctions against ships. What it actually means is that there's going to be attempts to sanction ship owners, threatened ship owners who own these ships with sanctions. With sanctions, sanctions if they agree to transport Russian oil. Up to now, there's been no sanctions directly against them because the sanctions were about shipping oil, shipping oil above the price gap. The price gap, of course, doesn't really apply. The oil has been shipped.

they've avoided sanctions against tankers and ship owners up to this time because Janet Yellen has said if we start sanctioning the shipping people in that kind of way, that will limit the amount of oil that circulates in the global economy, that will push up energy prices, that will push up inflation, and in the run up to the presidential election, and that will, and In November, the Biden administration was very, very sensitive about anything that would push up oil prices because that might affect Biden's chances of re-election or Kamala Harris's chances of election in that election. Well, Biden wasn't allowed to stand. Kamala Harris lost. Donald Trump is now president. Well, it's not president. He's president-elect. So that no longer applies. So you're going to do something horrid to both your enemies, both Putin and Trump.

You're going to do what you can to cause as much disruption to the oil industry, the oil transportation and all of this. So you hit Putin where it hurts in the pocketbook because he won't have the money from the oil sales. and you'll hit Trump where it hurts him because you'll have to deal with all these energy sanctions. That will mean higher inflation at major costs for American consumers. You'll dare Trump to cancel these sanctions and say if he does do that, that just proves that he's a stooge of Putin's. And at the same time, you package it or you spin a narrative, which no one believes that actually what you're doing is intended to help Trump.

That is all about helping Trump by putting him in a stronger position when he starts to talk with the Russians. I mean, it's... Biden 5D chess. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, I mean, it's... In some ways, I mean, it's...

If one takes a step back and ignores the consequences, which could be quite grave, actually. I mean, the whole thing is... is almost funny. I mean, it's transparent and it's all so simultaneously funny. Now, what's actually going to happen is that the all trade will continue. India has just done a massive deal with Russia to buy Russian oil. They need Russian oil. China needs Russian oil. Russian oil deliveries won't stop. There will be a period of perhaps several weeks, several months, until things are sorted out, but they will be sorted out.

If you're talking about the shadow fleet, and they sort of imply that the Russians, you know, cunningly put it all together, it doesn't really work like that. There would have been lots of people, lots of ship owners and middlemen around the world, who the moment those restrictions on Russian oil started to appear, they had assented an opportunity, and they will have come forward and said, look, I've got these ships, I've got these spare ships. I've got these spare ships.

Can you please put your oil in them? Because that way I can make money out of them. Again, people who talk in this way don't understand the oil industry very well. They don't know. And they absolutely don't understand the shipping industry, about which I know a certain amount. Now, what's going to happen this time is the same people who are, worried about the sanctions, the sanctions on themselves, and they will be worried about the sanctions

on themselves. But they'll still want the business, or at least they'll still want it cut in the business, because it's very lucrative and it makes the money. They're going to find ways around, so they'll sell the ships to shelf companies and they'll be intricate things of that kind. Or maybe they will generally sell the ships to other ship owners who are involved about this. They might be based in India or China or in Russia itself. So they'll go up, they'll sell their ships under Chinese, Russian, Indian flags or flags of other third countries. They might just brush off the sanctions. They might say, what do I care about sanctions, provided I can do my business. It's going to make heaps of money. And it's for the long term because, you know, we have a,

Was it a 20-year contract with India? So, you know, it's something that, you know, we can make lots and lots of money from. So they're not going to care. They're not going to bother. They're probably going to say to themselves with Trump coming into the White House in a couple of months or years' time, there's going to be major sanctions relief anyway. A lot of these sanctions are going to be set aside. So what this is going to do is in the short term, it is going to disrupt.

the oil trade, eventually everything will settle down. But as always happens, with every one of these sanctions, sanctions things that are imposed, it will settle at a higher price than would otherwise have been the case if those sanctions hadn't been there. So if the price of oil internationally traded might have been $60 a barrel, it will be trading at $70 a barrel because of this move. So that's, I mean, I'm plucking numbers out of the air,

but that is what it is going to do. And its overall effect is going to be inflationary. And it's going to have a back effect, not just on the energy trade and the oil trade, It's going to affect all trade in goods because people are going to be very nervous, for example, about transporting goods on a certain ship. They might be worried that that ship is also transporting Russian oil. It might be sanctioned as well. If you put your goods in that ship, that might not that the goods themselves will be sanctioned and you will be sanctioned.

So it's going to create major disruption in the international global trade system, as is already happening. It is going to make things worse. And as for the Russians, they're a fantastic amount of financial leeway in order to be able to absorb the shock. The debt to GDP ratio is only 15%. And they've got substantial savings as well. so they will be able to cushion the blow over the couple of weeks

that it will take for, as is at the market, to reconfigure. But the inflation, so long as these sanctions, remains in place, the inflation will stay. The inflationary effect will stay. And Marshall's going to make more money out of this. And Marshall's going to make more money because all prices are going to be higher than they would otherwise be. So this really does define the Biden White House.

I have to say this type of move really, really sums up the four years of the, of the Biden White House, which is to just take decisions that make everything worse. Yes. And sometimes it's, most of the times, it's not even about Russia. It's about trying to punish Trump, trying to make things difficult for Trump, trying to make things difficult for the American people. This is what this move is about. Yes. It's the Biden White House is middle finger to everybody that that didn't allow him to run again for re-election, that coup d'etat him, that didn't give him a chance at a second term that did not believe in him and his successful term as president of the United States.

This is the bitter, angry Biden White House giving its middle finger to. everybody, especially the American people, and especially the Trump White House, even though they're going to spin this as trying to help Trump get leverage over Putin. What this is about is making it very difficult for Trump, the transition, the American economy, and Biden has no problem with any of that. Absolutely. If it were really the case, if it were really the case that he was doing this in order to help Trump, he would presumably be consulting Trump. Why would Trump need his help?

Why would Trump need his health, exactly? I mean, absolutely. I mean, that's completely true. I mean, if Trump, who's going to become president in, what, three weeks' time, if Trump wants to post sanctions like this on the Russians, leave it to him. He can do it. I mean, the whole thing is just absurd. I mean, that whole narrative that's been spun is a ridiculous one,

and nobody should be fooled for it for one microsecond. Though there will be people, obviously, who trot it out. But you're absolutely right. It is exactly typical of the way in which this administration has run things. Basically, from the moment it was elected, it's been deeply antagonistic to all its enemies. It's, you know, pursued scorched her policies against all of them, both domestic and foreign. And the result is it's left the problem. a world on fire, and everybody's living standards lower than they would otherwise be,

and in many cases, very much lower than they previously were. So this is exactly characteristic. I just want to say a few things about Russia, because there's an awful lot of stories. I mean, this again, I've noticed that there's again a narrative circulating out there, that, you know, the Russian economy is now once more in grave difficulties and things of this sort. I've been going through the numbers. First of all, it looks like they're going to get around 4% growth this year, perhaps a little less, most likely a little less. But it will be around that. Now, 4% growth does not suggest major problems. Their budget deficit is going to be around 2% of GDP. Compare that with what you see everywhere else in Europe. 2% of GDP is probably 2% more likely to be 1.7%. percent of GDP and that's only going to happen because there's apparently some spending packages in the pipeline which are happening in the last few weeks of the year were it not for that more likely

than not the country would have ended with a budget in surplus or balanced but they've just decided to spend so the more money that they have on that their trade surplus is higher and their current account is stronger than it was last year. And industrial growth is surging. They have one problem, which everybody talks about, and it is a real problem. Nobody disputes it. Inflation has gone much higher. And mostly, I suspect that was because the central bank, as it has admitted itself, at the start of this year, cut interest rates too fast. So that meant that, um, There was an awful lot. The banks had an awful lot of money to lend.

They lent it to consumers and to businesses that helped growth go higher than it would otherwise have done. But it led to a lot of extra demand in the economy, which caused overheating and higher inflation. Now interest rates were pushed up to 21%. Monetary conditions have tightened still further because capital limits. on banks which had been eased in the in the 2020 period. In other words, the amount of money that banks needed to keep in reserve, that had been reduced. It's gone back to where it was before 2022.

So lending to consumers is falling. The central bank says, and I believe them, that around April we're going to start to see a sustained fall in inflation from that point. is definitely going to be lower in Russia next year than it is in this year, this year. But this is what the central bank and the government want to achieve in order to bring inflation back under control. Once inflation is brought back under control, we'll probably see growth go up again. And in the meantime, the central bank has also said,

that if the monetary tightening proves too strong and we start to see signs that the economy might be going into recession, then it's prepared to cut rates aggressively and ease monetary conditions again. And it's got massive amount of leeway to do it. So this is a stable economy. Yeah. Inflation in Russia means that high inflation in Russia in Russia High interest rates in Russia means that the Russian state federation is going to collapse and it's falling apart. Yeah, I know. High inflation and high interest rates in any country in the collective West, it's no problem. No problem.

Well, you may actually make a very, very good point because the Financial Times itself did a report a couple of years ago about Russian inflation numbers. And they looked at how inflation figures are collected in Russia. And they came to a conclusion, which everybody else who studied this objectively agrees, that inflation numbers in Russia are absolutely rock-solid, that the number that we are seeing accurately charts the rise in prices. As we all know, the same is not true of the West to anything like the same. same degree. So most people believe, and I think this is true, that across the West, including the United States, inflation is actually higher than the publicly published numbers imply. So in

reality, the gap may not be that great. Yeah. Just saying. All right, we will end the video there, the durand. Dot, locus.com. We are on Rumbleaudetaceepot, shoot, Telegram, Rockfin, Finn, X, and go to the Duran Shop pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video update today. The link is in the description box down below. Take care.