Wednesday, January 19, 2022

Russia Dumps $900 Million More in US Treasuries as Total Investment Hits Historic Low

If you are new to the Russian English-language press, Sputnik and the Moscow Times are less propaganda-y than RT.

From Sputnik about an hour ago:

Once one of the largest holders of US debt, Moscow has gradually whittled away at its T-Bill stocks and dollar holdings after 2014 over the crisis in Ukraine, switching to euros, yuans, gold and other alternative investments and stores of value.
Russia has continued to reduce its holdings of US debt, with total investment dropping from $3.7 billion to $2.4 billion in November 2021, fresh US Treasury data published Tuesday has revealed. Russian investment now includes $2.3 billion in short-term bonds, and $101 million in long-term bonds, according to the Treasury. 
Russian investment in US debt has dropped to just 1.3 percent of its 2010 peak of $176.3 billion over the past twelve years, with Russia tumbling from the ranking of the top 15 holders of US debt in 2018.
In January 2014, at the onset of the Ukraine crisis, Russia held $131.8 billion in US government securities, dropping its holdings to $66.5 billion by April 2015, before growing them again to over $100 billion by the spring of 2017. In 2018, after getting slapped by new US sanctions, Russia’s Treasury holdings plummeted again, this time to just $14.9 billion. They have continued to drop since, hitting $10 billion in 2019, $6 billion in 2020, and $3.9 billion by September 2021....
....MUCH MORE
 
Of course both the Moscow Times and Sputnik have to somewhat toe the line or they are out of business, so we ponder why Sputnik chooses to make this a lead story.  
PravdaReport/World (Pravda.ru not Pravda translated) and Tass can both give off some of the old Soviet vibe.