Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
If the US economy is slowing down, it would create high unemployment and reduce the purchase power of the US consumers and the production in the US goes down. The US reduces consumption from China which causes China to produce less and deteriorate their consumer purchasing power. As a result, the US and China would need less energy to produce less goods and they would purchase less oil from Russia.
etc, etc, etc. China is NOT the main importer of Russian hydrocarbons, for one thing. Secondly, there are industries that WILL consume hydrocarbons (for heating and transportation, if nothing else, there are talks about alternatives but oil will remain the main source of energy for quite a number of years). There will be some decrease in oil consuption perhaps, but not as dramatic as you try to show me here. Besides, there are suprisingly few people working for oil and gas industry in Russia and I don't think the slowdown of the US's economy would seriously impact their well-being.

Quote Originally Posted by Crocodile View Post
It's a choice of each country how they are to save their capital.
It's not much of a choice. I can't save in gold or anything else, because if I want to buy something from abroad I must buy dollars first. Well, Euros in some rare case. That's the problem. Dollar must have an alternative. For competition if nothing else.