Maybe now we all know why Russia was dumping U.S. securities back in 2018.
At the time, the restructuring of the Russian portfolio was met with much speculation. Some thought it was an attempt to hurt the U.S. by dumping Treasuries, although they didn’t hold enough to do that.
Others suspected it was retaliation for sanctions at the time against certain Russian officials and oligarchs.
However, as with most things, Putin does not act rashly. He’s a very calculated player on the world stage and it’s likely that this selling in 2018 were the early moves as he prepared for what we are seeing today.
Starting in March of 2018, Russia dumped 84% of the U.S.Treasuries. At the time it was a good sale, Treasuries were at their highs.
Speculation is that the sales of these went into the FX swap markets, still technically in U.S. dollars but in Eurodollar markets.
But that’s the whole point here, the speculation is because the movement of money became very mysterious and nobody truly knows where it all ended up.
The Bank of Russia claims their holdings in U.S. dollar assets dropped from 50% to 20% since 2018. While others here who follow U.S. markets believe the number is still closer to 50%.
But if Russia was moving their billions around over the past several years, it’s most likely it can now be funneled through eastern markets (China). That means sanctions may not get to it, but it will still be out of the western global market once identified.
As they say, always follow the money. In this case, Russia was making big money moves in 2018 and the proceeds have been hard to track since then.
Did Russia have intelligence on what was to come with covid and the American election? Perhaps a tip from China? I suppose the answer to that is as mysterious as what happened to all that Russian cash.
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