Russian sanctions

[John Clark]

In my opinion the greatest long-term damage to Russia from the sanctions will be in the semiconductor industry. Taiwan's TSMC is the largest semiconductor foundry in the world and Taiwan refuses to trade with Russia due to the Ukrainian invasion, INTEL and AMD also refuse to do business with Russia. In addition the Dutch company ASML dominates the manufacture of machines that manufacture semiconductors and they also refused to do business with Russia; the American company Applied Materials is #2 in the same business and of course they also refuse to sell anything to Russia. There are some chip foundries in Russia but they're using ancient Jurassic technology, it's 15 years out of date! Even China, Russia's only friend nowadays, can't produce anything that even comes close to what TSMC or ASML can make. The only trouble is it takes time for sanctions to work and I don't think Ukraine has that much time.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

oo0

[spudb...@aol.com]

Putin's embrace of Xi will resolve any long term probs for Mother Russia. Putin will also sell all the gas and oil China will buy. There is some speculation that advances in renewables or CO2 storage will alleviate dependencies on fossil fuels worldwide, but this seems optimistic. Moreover, the greatest threat to humans was never The Climate as has been promoted ceaselessly for 30 years, it has been and continues to be nuclear annihilation. This should show us JC that ideology does occlude clear thinking of people with normal and exceptional intelligence. 

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[John Clark]

On Fri, Mar 4, 2022 at 8:00 PM <spudb...@aol.com> wrote:

> Putin's embrace of Xi will resolve any long term probs for Mother Russia. Putin will also sell all the gas and oil China will buy.

Probably, but Russia still will be living in a semiconductor desert. China is better than Russia but it's still not very good when it comes to making semiconductors, the world champ in that department is the small island nation of Taiwan off the coast of China, the island that China would very much like to take over. That's why Taiwan is as upset as anybody over Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it sets a very bad example. And the company that is the world champ at making machines that make semiconductors is Dutch, and Ukraine is far too close for the Netherlands to feel comfortable, so they're not gonna be selling any machinery to Russia either. And even if they were with the ruble now worth less than a penny Russia couldn't afford to buy them because just one of TSML's extreme ultraviolet lithography machines costs $175 million, and a typical fabrication plant might have 20 of them.

> the greatest threat to humans was never The Climate as has been promoted ceaselessly for 30 years, it has been and continues to be nuclear annihilation.

Spud, at last we've found something that we agree about.

[spudb...@aol.com]

Well, depending on how practical-minded we get, addressing practical issues, like human survival, we likely agree on a bit more, depending on the circumstances we must face. For military reasons alone, Xi and Putin have entered into a partnership before Vlad invaded, so I expect Xi to underwrite everything industrial for Putin, and I expect Putin to underwrite everything military for Xi. 

It's a more complex place we now live in, byt strangely enough it now seems a throwback to the 1950's and 60's. 

-----Original Message-----
From: John Clark <johnk...@gmail.com>

[John Clark]

Another interesting development is that just a few days ago both Boeing and Airbus announced they would stop maintaining  their airplanes in Russia, and would no longer service or sell spare parts to that country either. And Boeing has 334 jets , Airbus 304,  that's 2/3 of all of Russia's commercial airliners. Thomas Friedman comments about this development.

"Russia spans 11 time zones. If this persists, the grip of the Russian central government over the Russian landmass could begin to loosen. In the Russian Far East there are a lot of cities closer to Beijing than Moscow. Just saying …"

China might conclude that a Russia that has been economically weakened might not necessarily be a bad thing for them, and so they might not be all that eager to buy oil and gas from Russia. 

And there is more, the Russian stock exchange is still closed but in London the shares of Sberbank, Russia's largest bank, were trading at $14 a share as recently as Wednesday, but today the price has fallen more than 99% to one cent. And both the rating agencies Fitch and Moody have downgraded Russian government bonds six notches to ‘junk’ status, making it impossible for Russia to borrow money in the bond market. And all the Western oil companies have pulled out of Russia, and that lack of technical expertise is going to seriously erode the productivity of Russia's fossil fuel industry.

John K Clark    See what's on my new list at  Extropolis

ccp