When you’re sitting on one of the worlds largest, if not the worlds largest, proven oil reserves and you have $100 in physical gold combined with near zero debt, well, life as nation looks pretty good.
As we have documented over the past two years the Russian economy continues to strengthen at every turn. Eliminating debt, acquiring gold and building out manufacturing and agriculture infrastructure that will sustain any nation for generations. If you combine this with a military that is building out technology that is second to none, well, you should be getting the attention of world leaders everywhere. The attention should be of envy not of the U.S. corporate media persuasion but from a perspective of admiration instead of fear.
The Chinese government on the other hand, well, they are attempting to do some of what Russia is doing, but the totalitarian, communist in them just doesn’t seem to understand the words respect and dignity. The Chinese economy, for whatever reason, is backsliding. Part of the problem is the global economic growth is all but dead and another part is the ongoing trade war instituted by the Trump Administration.
Russia is watching all of this and simply continues to make moves to ensure that as the global economic collapse continues to unfold the Russian nation will be protected. This is the reason for gathering gold hand over fist for the past decade – since the 2008 global economic implosion which sparked the greatest economic depression the world has ever seen. The bad news is, the rot is only just now beginning to make it’s way to the surface. Once it is fully expose, life is going to change for most of the planet, especially, those countries with direct ties to the Federal Reserve Note, U.S. dollar.
Russia, on the other hand, just announced they have enough gold to weather an economic storm for as many as 3 years.
Russia’s mountain of gold reserves will help it deal with any future crash in oil prices, finance minister Anton Siluanov has said.
Speaking to U.S. TV station CNBC, Siluanov said that even if the price of oil fell to “$30 or $20 per barrel,” Russia would not suffer an economic shock and would be able to fulfil its budgetary obligations for three years, thanks to its vast gold reserves.
“Regardless of how things work out with the oil price, we will be able to finance our obligations, because we have accumulated sufficient gold reserves of more than 7% of GDP,” he said. “Therefore, even if the oil price goes to $30 per barrel, or $20, we will be able to honor our obligations for three years, without any shocks of difficulties.”
Over the last five years, Russia has doubled its holdings of gold while the cost of the precious metal has risen by 20%. At current prices, Russia’s 2,219 tonnes of gold are worth more than $116 billion.
The price of benchmark Brent crude is currently $59 a barrel. The last time oil was at $30 was for a brief period in 2016, while barrels haven’t been traded at $20 since 2001. Source
If the global economy will sputter along for another 2-3 years, and I believe it will, this will give Russia enough time to secure their food production through a massive agriculture program to grow and produce the worlds largest organic and non-GMO food and food products. If you combine their food production with their oil production and top it off with a huge pile of gold, well, I’m betting like the Russians. They will be able to weather the coming storm.