Putin Warns the World that Major Economy Change is Coming

President Putin has just chosen to advise the world that the global economy is about to change, and that this presents major challenges and opportunities. What are we to make of this? Is he correct? What are his motivations? Could this have an impact on Americans, and if so, in what ways?

ST.PETERSBURG, June 2. /TASS/. The world’s economy faces systemic long-term challenges and there is no time for quarrels, there is the need to unite efforts, Russian President Vladimir Putin said at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

“We face systemic long-term challenges, and it is difficult now to calculate the consequences and make forecasts. We should not do that, we don’t have the right to fritter away our resources, waste effort and time for quarrels, discords and geopolitical games,” Putin said.

The world countries need “wisdom, responsibility, a joint search for non-standard solutions, new formats of cooperation between countries, regional integration unions, businesses and scientific community, there is the need to make the most of the potential of such a unique universal organization as the UN,” he said.

Russia seeks dialogue and partnership, and is open for joint work, implementation of mutually beneficial projects and cooperation in solving the most important strategic issues of global development, the president said.

Continuing:

Russia seeks dialogue and partnership, and is open for joint work, implementation of mutually beneficial projects and cooperation in solving the most important strategic issues of global development, the president said.

“Only together, through uniting efforts, we can overcome the current misbalances and ensure a stable growth of global economy, elaborate just rules of trade and fair competition, level down poverty, cope with terrorism threats, regional conflicts and the spread of nationalism and xenophobia,” he said.

Clearly, Mr. Putin is bullish on the Russian economy:

Putin believes that the national economy has entered a new growth phase and he is determined to support this trend.

“The economy is entering a new phase of growth. The basis for its future development is being shaped,” Putin said. In his opinion “it is essential to support and speed up all these positive trends in order to achieve outpacing growth rates above the world ones in 2019-2020.”

The Russian leader believes that “greater investment activity, in the first place, by private businesses, is the key factor.”

You can pick up the story around 13:00 in the following video. However, Mr. Putin’s point is that the global economy is undergoing major changes and that scarce resources must be allocated to capitalizing on the opportunities those changes present rather that squandering them on conflicts.

Those are very nice thoughts, but given the entrenched warfare in progress and the terrorist threats nations face, it would be naive to think that we can reach the point where the vast majority of nations will easily cooperate on economic projects no matter how beneficial that would be.

War is perhaps the most horrific waste of money and resources there is. Yet there are powerful interests that make a lot of money from conflict.

Perhaps what Mr. Putin is saying is that as the economy changes those nations that devote their resources to building industry are going to find themselves on the top of this new economy while those that continue to involve themselves in phenomenally expensive defense projects and conflicts are going to find themselves at the bottom looking up.

This would not be an earthshaking observation. But it may be that the impact of the choices that nations make are about to have a much more pronounced impact on their well-being than in the past.

An increase in the rate change and the sensitivity of economies to policies might be what Mr. Putin is predicting.

Source: Tass Russian News Agency

Source: X22 Financial Report