Sanctions against Putin, public debt and banks, crypto- "Tinkoff" and how to establish a dream after the holidays

The negotiations of Russia with NATO have been clarified little. In the United States, against this background, for the first time, a set of new sanctions was officially proposed

The negotiations of Russia and NATO were given about the same result as with the United States in Geneva on Tuesday - it was not predictably consent on the main issue, but the results could not be called disastrous: despite the threatening rhetoric, the parties said that they would continue the dialogue, and even agreed to open representative offices again. The United States, meanwhile, for the first time officially specified its sanctions threats. Democrats in the Senate proposed, and the White House - supported the bill on sanctions against Russian banks, the public debt and (for the first time) Personally Vladimir Putin. They can be introduced not even in the case of a direct military invasion, but a “significant escalation” in Ukraine if the White House considers Russia guilty of it.

Russia is NATO

Negotiations with NATO under security guarantees lasted about four hours - an hour longer than the plan.

• The first to be reported by the Secretary General of the Alliance, Jens Stoltenberg (his briefing can be viewed here ) predictably stated that NATO would not abandon the fundamental principle - freedom of entry for sovereign countries. It is NATO non-expanding-that is, the restriction of this principle for the countries of the former USSR-de facto is the main requirement of Russia.
• Nevertheless, Stoltenberg called the negotiations “difficult, but important”, and discussing problems at the common table - “an important positive signal”. The risk of military conflict in Europe is real. However, the Alliance Secretary General did not specify whether he grew up or decreased after negotiations.
• The head of NATO named two constructive results - the parties agreed on the resumption of Russia's missions in Brussels and NATO in Moscow, as well as the continuation of dialogue - in particular, on restrictions on missile weapons in Europe (this is one of the few issues that the parties are ready to discuss, and they are trying to translate the negotiations of the Western country).
• On the Russian side, negotiations were commented by the head of the Russian delegation, Deputy Minister of Defense Alexander Fomin. He stated that relations with the alliance are critically low, and the measures proposed by Russia were ignored - but the delegation brought all the proposals of Russia to Russia.
• The representative of the Foreign Ministry, Deputy Minister Alexander Grushko, has traditionally made a more “hawk” rhetoric. In particular, he recalled that Moscow has a set of “military-technical measures” (this is the expression in the context of Russia's right to respond to the aggression of the West by President Putin). “We will take all the necessary measures in order to fend out the threat of military means if it does not work out political,” the deputy minister said.

Now negotiations will end with a meeting of Russian representatives with the OSCE on January 13 (the parties openly attach much less importance than previous meetings). What to wait after that is not yet clear. The head of the American delegation, deputy secretary of Wendy Sherman said that, according to her assessment, the period of approval with the governments has come for all parties.

The threat of sanctions

Meanwhile, in the United States, sanctions threats for Russia in case of military conflict with Ukraine, which still existed only in the form of anonymous leaks from the State Department, gained the first official form. On the day The Washington Post reported that the head of the International Committee of the Senate Bob Menendes is preparing a bill with sanctions personally against Vladimir Putin. And in the evening, Menendes submitted a bill at a meeting of the committee. We studied its text .

• The main difference from the December sanctions leaks from the White House is that senators propose to impose sanctions not only in case of direct military invasion.
• Within 15 days after the law entered into force (and then - once every 90 days in the first year of the law and once every 120 days since the second one), the US president must determine: a) whether Russia or its satellites [DPR and LPR] were aimed at the “significant military escalation” of the situation in Ukraine compared to the Regulation on December 1, 2021; b) Whether these actions were aimed at overthrowing the government of Ukraine, the occupation of its territory, interference in sovereignty and undermining territorial integrity.

In case of a positive answer to both questions, the US president will be obliged:

• To impose sanctions against senior Russian officials-president, Prime Minister, Foreign Minister, Minister of Defense and Head of the General Staff, as well as commanders of all military branches. Sanctions involve the blocking of property located in the United States or accessible to the American authorities, as well as a ban on entry.
• To impose sanctions against at least three Russian banks or financial institutions of 12 of the listed (Sberbank, VTB, Gazprombank, VEB.rf, RDIPI, Moscow Credit Bank, Alfa-Bank, Rosselkhozbank, Otomsvyazbank, Skombombank, Transcapitalbank). Sanctions are also threatened by structures that provide banks with reports for transaction messages (we are talking about SWIFT and its alternatives).
• To ban operations with new issues of Russian public debt (both in the primary and secondary market) and expand the ban on bonds of at least 10 Russian state -owned companies.
• To consider all possible measures to prevent the commissioning of the Northern Stream - 2 "(but we are not talking about mandatory direct sanctions).
• To determine the list of people and legal entities to be sanctions, in the oil and gas and coal industries, the extraction and processing of minerals and other sectors of the choice of the US president.
• A separate chapter is devoted to an increase in military assistance to Ukraine (by $ 500 million in 2022 in the case of Russian invasion) and other means of confrontation between Russia in Europe.

But in the project there is no mention of at least two important measures that in December announced sources in the White House.

• Closing of the Countries of Russian banks in the United States, which would deprive them of the opportunity to conduct operations in dollars.
• Export restrictions that would deprive Russia of the opportunity to buy imported electronics (for example, smartphones). For the introduction of such restrictions, however, the sanction of the congress is not needed.

What does it mean?

The White House does not just support the bill of Menentes in words-officials of the Biden administration this week actively persuaded lawmakers-democrats for him to vote, write The Washington Post and Bloomberg .

This is behind their own logic: officials are thus trying to guarantee to prevent the passage of an alternative bill proposed by the Republican Senator Ted Cruz. The Cruise project involves immediate (without conditions in the form of new actions from Russia) the introduction of blocking sanctions against the Northern Stream - 2 - and the White House believes that this will undermine all efforts on negotiations with Russia and will resolve the United States with European allies, primarily Germany.

Experts, nevertheless, believe that the Menendes project does not have so many chances to accept - but everything will depend on how negotiations with Russia will develop. If the Biden administration decides to impose sanctions, it can technically do without a congress - the White House has all the necessary tools.

What am I to me?

The Russian market perceived the emergence of a sanctions bill wary, but without a real panic - the ruble on this news fell, but only 40 kopecks. The market traditionally does not react to negotiations in Geneva and Brussels - to understand which way they go to is still impossible.

MONEY

Inflation brings together

One day, both the Russian and American statistical departments called the final inflation figure in 2021 - and they, as expected, turned out to be not so distant. In Russia, prices for a year rose by 8.39% (and inflation in December, as expected, a little - by 0.01 percentage points - slowed down compared to November). In the USA - by 7% , and this is a record since the time of Ronald Reagan, since 1982. In the States, at the same time, inflation continues to accelerate - and this presses on the Fed, which will soon begin to raise the bet . The realistic range that analysts now examines begins with four steps of increase, the first of them is probably already in March. The Fed’s chairman Jerome Powell the day before confirmed that the fight against inflation would be his absolute priority.

Crypto- "Tinkoff"

Tinkoff has the first crypto project in the Act: as The Bell found out today , TCS Group Holding, the head structure of the bank, bought a share in the Swiss cryptocurrency company Aximetria. How the bank will build its crypto business is not yet known. But in the summer, the head of the group Oliver Hughes said that although cryptocurrencies are a popular tool for investors, the bank does not have a mechanism to offer them this product in Russia, because the Central Bank on this issue takes a very strict position.

EDUCATION

City on venture investments

Hurry up to book a place, this spring in School repeats the venture investment course from the founder of the XSEED Capital Foundation in Silicon Valley and the Lecture of Stanford University Rob Ziegel .

The course "Venture Capital. Successful strategies for venture investment ”is designed for novice investors and entrepreneurs who want to attract capital. During training, you will learn:

• What is the economy of venture capital
• What criteria to choose a profitable company for investment
• What investment strategy is suitable for you
• How the company's business model affects the funds for collecting funds
• What factors and financial incentives affect investors' decisions

Dates of the course: April 14, 20 and 21. You can familiarize yourself with the program and register here .

PRACTICE

Achievements of cryptoeconomics of Salvador

We continue to monitor the cryptocurrency experiment of a national scale, which is conducted by the young president of Salvador Nayib Bukel, who at the beginning of September legalized Bitcoin and began to purchase cryptocurrency for budget money. So far, as expected, the results are dubious: purchases of cryptocurrencies (which the booklet reports in free form on Twitter), according to Bloomberg, to the present point brought the country a loss of 17%. But the indirect consequences of cryptoorviews are more unpleasant-due to the distrust of economists and investors, the Salvador government bonds ended the worst in the world with a yield of 36%, and the IMF did not allocate a promised stabilization loan of $ 1.3 billion. Bloomberg tells in detail about the achievements of the Salvador cryptoeconomics.

How to establish a dream after the holidays

WSJ shakes this article to the next wave of pandemic, which provokes stress and sleep disturbances - but we have a much better reason: the end of super -long Russian New Year holidays. After them, the establishment of sleep is an urgent problem that you probably felt at the beginning of this week. WSJ gives five tips on how to do it. Including related alcohol: immediately after you drink, most likely you will draw you into a dream, but this is a deceptive effect-after three to four hours in the process it will be replaced by unnatural vigor. This means that a couple of glasses of wine at an early dinner may prevent you from falling asleep, and “for the coming” - they will help to fall asleep, but they can make them wake up at night.