[Nifty3929]

Because you cannot eat money, or live in money.

A country can QE forever, but this will not put food on the table or shoes on people's feet. If people want those things, they must either be produced or imported. QE doesn't help with either of those. Production is a physical act, not a monetary one.

And if you want to import from somewhere, then you need that nation's currency to do so. Which means that in turn you must have produced something to exchange for that currency.

[allisdust]

They have more than enough food to eat (except of course things that don't exactly grow there). They have surplus in energy and fertiliser.

What they would lack in the short and medium term are high tech products like chips, advanced medicine.

Given enough time and drive any energy and food surplus society can reinvent the high tech stuff.

Of course it doesn't mean they would, seeing how corrupt the whole ruling class is. But it is theoretically possible for them to be totally independent of the rest of the world. They are blessed with too many natural resources to not be able to do it.

[lostmsu]

There's also a question of trajectory of the high tech stuff vs the rest of the world. I don't see any reasons for it not to lag more and more behind.

[082349872349872]

Especially because lagging more and more behind is exactly what happened to the Union.

[avn2109]

Not to devil's advocate, but this sounds like an argument which might apply at least as well to the USA as it does to Russia.

[dragonwriter]

> Not to devil's advocate, but this sounds like an argument which might apply at least as well to the USA as it does to Russia.

It would, if USA was pursuing QE with already-high inflation.

[Nifty3929]

It absolutely, definitely does. And it's a shame that we (I'm a United Statesian) never examine our policies from this perspective. We focus a lot on solving money problems (inflation, inequity, etc), but never consider how our solutions to these issues affect production, which is what matters most. If we solve inflation and kill productivity, what have we gained?

[unmole]

> Which means that in turn you must have produced something to exchange for that currency.

You mean stuff like oil, wheat, fertilizer or aluminium? Yeah, there's no way Russia will be able to manage that. /s

[Nifty3929]

Russia produces lots of these things as you're saying, and as long as they continue to do so they'll be fundamentally fine. I don't think QE will help though.

[riku_iki]

> Which means that in turn you must have produced something to exchange for that currency.

and Russia still perfectly sells oil and gas.

[Nifty3929]

Yes exactly. But I don't think QE will help.

[riku_iki]

why do you think Russia is doing any QE and why they would need it?..

[Nifty3929]

I don't know anything about whether or not Russia is doing any QE. I was responding to the question: "If West can run quantitative easing for 15 years, why not Russia?" by explaining why, even if they could do QE forever, it would probably not help.