After the chinese government chose not to announce any additional measures today. Chinas chief economic planning official, zheng shanjie, told a Press Conference earlier hes fully confident the country can hit its 5 Growth Target for the year and had no further policies to reveal to boost chinas struggling economy. For more im joined by Alicia Garcia Herrero chief asia pacific economist at the bank natixis. Has that disappointed investors . Did they expect more . Yes they did because there was already a softening of the market overseas. Of course the chinese market was already closed. But already by friday you could see overseas markets waiting for more on the fiscal side. This Press Conference was announced in china and there was a big expectation that it would go beyond the 2 trillion. That they had an officially announced. The reality is they didnt even fully confirmed that and the markets remained a little bit surprised that they would call a Press Conference for such little infor
mr. putin saying, hey, we re trying to do this diplomatically. we don t want to go to war. and they are doing a good job of it as nic said. it s a continual effort. not only the u.s. but many of the french nations, the uk, french, german, italian, romanians have approached putin saying we are unified in this approach, and russia is trying to deny it. second, information. russia has failed to control the information environment, which they have attempted to do so many times in the past. they are on their back foot. we are delivering information to the world about what they are doing to counter ukraine s sovereignty. economics, the third area. there is resolving unity between the u.s. and the nato counterparts in terms of what we will do from a sanctions perspective which will be extremely damning against the russian oligarchs. i think putin realized that will hurt him badly. i m sure mr. the president, our president, is making that point very well-known to him.
well. the russian index is down almost 30% so this idea that a lot of this was already priced into russian companies and russian markets, it s been proven not so true this morning. i think it also behooves us to remind viewers that, from a sanctions perspective, with the white house will be focusing on, and of the major western powers as well, we ll be energy but already in an energy crisis in many parts of the world. russia counts for about a quarter of all natural gas exports. and he disruption to gas supply pipelines through ukraine will cause major supply disruptions here in europe. we already know that approval for the nord stream 2 pipeline has been frozen. it s off the table. you might also see this idea of russia being moved from the swift financial messaging system, which has been one of them major sanctions lobbed it russia, and it s never been deployed. in court, keeping a very close eye and commodities, natural commodities, things like wheat,
issue i keep coming back to two-countries i keep coming back to, china and germany. tonight, germany, a phone call to president biden, could say, you know, we re going to have to sacrifice in the short term. we need to cut russia off from the swift banking system. they have explicitly come out against that. your reaction to that given how much kounthryes are asked to sacrifice here to help ukraine in their hour of need. the source of sanctions like that is outside of my expertise. from the sanctions perspective, i would say at the moment, the most significant sanction being imposed on vladimir putin is the casualties and the ukrainian armed forces that are putting it on that government. and i think the the strength of the resistance and those
but what he is really looking for is a hands-off policy with regards to ukraine. one that gives him the impunity to launch a host of different ways to destabilize ukraine. he is looking for that signal. he is looking for some weakness on that front. i think the possibility of war is high because he can t necessarily take the assurances from the west. he can t take the, you know, this idea that the u.s. will withdraw the support it s been offering to ukraine. it is going to have a hands-off policy. that is not an ironclad assurance. the only way he could achieve his objectives is through destabilizing it through military force. the question is, is the cost too high? this conversation that joe biden is having with him today, in part, is to signal that the cost will be extremely high. it ll be extremely high from a sanctions perspective, from a way to further ostracize russia and make it an international