{"id":2610,"date":"2014-12-07T16:53:37","date_gmt":"2014-12-07T21:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2610"},"modified":"2014-12-07T16:53:37","modified_gmt":"2014-12-07T21:53:37","slug":"why-a-moscow-meltdown-could-spread-around-the-globe-world-news-the-observer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=2610","title":{"rendered":"Why a Moscow meltdown could spread around the globe | World news | The Observer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2014\/dec\/07\/moscow-economic-meltdown-global-problems\">Why a Moscow meltdown could spread around the globe | World news | The Observer<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p style=\"border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 13px 0px;\">Russia matters. It mattered in 1998 when the shock waves from its debt default reverberated around the world. And it would matter again should the plunging oil price lead to economic collapse. That\u2019s despite the fact that Russia is a massive land mass with a relatively small economy. It accounts for only 3% of global GDP and it is dominated by an energy sector that is responsible for 70% of exports.<\/p>\n<p style=\"border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 13px 0px;\">To an extent, the structure of Russia\u2019s economy should mitigate contagion risks. Lacking a modern manufacturing sector, it is not vital for global supply chains and, in theory, any other energy producer could make good the disruption to oil and gas supplies in the event of a deep and damaging recession.<\/p>\n<p style=\"border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 13px 0px;\">But there are at least five ways in which a crisis for Russia could spread. Russia\u2019s immediate problems have been caused by the sharp drop in the price of crude and it is not the only one to be suffering. Venezuela and Iran are finding it hard to cope with oil down at $70 a barrel. If Russia goes, it will be a case of: who\u2019s next?<\/p>\n<p style=\"border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 13px 0px;\">Second, Russia still has close economic links with eastern Europe, so a collapse would have serious consequences for countries such as Poland and an already imploding Ukraine. Western Europe, too, would be affected if for any reason gas supplies through Russia\u2019s pipeline were cut off.<\/p>\n<p style=\"border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; padding: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 13px 0px;\">&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why a Moscow meltdown could spread around the globe | World news | The Observer. Russia matters. It mattered in 1998 when the shock waves from its debt default reverberated around the world. And it would matter again should the plunging oil price lead to economic collapse. That\u2019s despite the fact that Russia is a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,5],"tags":[236,441,592,694,851],"class_list":["post-2610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-energy-2","category-geopolitics","tag-economic-collapse","tag-iran","tag-oil-price","tag-russia","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2611,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2610\/revisions\/2611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}