"Prepare for Retaliation," Germany Forcefully "Takes Over" Russian Oil Business, US Stocks Plunge by 1,300 Points

The West is currently facing high inflation, with the key issue being the energy crisis. As a result, both the United States and Europe have come up with many "clever" solutions.

On this Friday, the German government announced that it will officially take over three refineries within Germany. However, it is important to note that although these three refineries are located within Germany, the largest shareholder is the Russian oil company, and the German government's so-called "takeover" is seen by Russia as nothing less than a forced seizure.

It appears that Europe, especially Germany, in order to deal with the current energy crisis, has begun to act with increasing disregard for the rules.

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The US CPI has fallen for two consecutive months, from 9.1 to 8.5, and then to the 8.3 announced this time. However, this is only a slight decrease, and inflation remains at an absolute high.

It is expected that the United States will raise interest rates by 75 basis points next week. Affected by this, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has already fallen by more than 1,300 points this week. In addition, the Nasdaq and the S&P 500 have fallen by more than 4% in a week.

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The situation in Europe is even worse. The EU's statistical office has just released the latest CPI data, which has reached 9.1%, with Germany's inflation at 8.8%.

In order to curb inflation, the West continues to come up with ways to lower energy prices.After the conflict erupted, we can see the continuous evolution of the situation from the attitudes of Europe and America towards Russia.

At the very beginning of the conflict, Europe and America took it for granted to propose sanctions on Russia's energy exports, which not only involved oil but also natural gas, coal, and so on. This was the first move.

In the view of Western countries, Russia's foreign exchange income mainly comes from these energy exports. Once the export of oil and natural gas is restricted, Russia will immediately reduce a large amount of income, and the domestic economy will soon face huge problems.

However, what was unexpected was that Russia's energy did not need buyers.

India has been desperately buying Russian oil and coal recently.

For China, this is also a great opportunity. In the first four months of this year, China's crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia ranked first, but from May, the import of oil from Russia became the first, which also indicates that China has increased the intensity of importing oil from Russia.

It is precisely because of this reason that Russia's export income has not decreased significantly, but Europe's situation is very tragic.

In the past, Europe was very dependent on the oil and natural gas provided by Russia. Once the import from Russia was banned, Europe immediately faced energy shortages, and prices kept rising. Germany's latest PPI data even reached as high as 37.2%, with the rise in energy prices contributing to most of it. This has also led to German enterprises being unable to bear the burden, and some manufacturing factories have begun to move to other countries.

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Restricting Russia's exports obviously did not achieve the expected effect, and Western countries thought of the second move.Since Europe needs Russia's energy, allowing Russia to export to Europe but not exceeding the phenomenon proposed by Western countries essentially means that they want to buy your energy, but you must accept the low price I set, otherwise, you won't be allowed to export.

Although there is no final regulation on price caps, the US Treasury has suggested capping Russia's oil export price at below $44 per barrel, which for Russia is just the cost of oil production.

Putin immediately rejected this idea, stating that it is absolutely impossible to export oil and natural gas to Europe at low prices.

For Russia, this is not a problem because if they don't sell to Europe, they can sell to Asia. India has already implicitly stated that it will not participate in the G7 price cap. Everyone can imagine China's attitude.

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If there is really no way out, Germany came up with the third move, to "take over" the refineries of three Russian oil companies. The production of these three refineries is equivalent to 12% of Germany's market share, so if Germany controls these three refineries, it plays a certain role in ensuring oil processing.

For this reason, Germany's Chancellor even said that they can imagine that Russia will take retaliatory actions, but they are ready to face it.

In fact, his so-called facing is nothing more than looking for energy from other places to provide for these refineries, but if they can't find alternative oil, even if they take over the refineries, they still can't produce normally.

05If Europe and America cannot resolve their issues with Russia, it will be difficult to address energy problems, and it will inevitably be unable to suppress inflation.

Persistent high inflation forces aggressive interest rate hikes, which in turn severely impact the economy and financial markets.

Now, the US stock market has already fallen by 1,300 points in a week. If calculated from the beginning of the year, the Nasdaq has fallen by 26.8%. Similarly, Germany, as the leader of Europe, is currently in an economic predicament.

The aforementioned three major strategies have been exhausted. What other moves do Europe and America have?