Western Economies and the International Political Economic Situation

Germany’s 10+ years sovereign bond yields are dropping significantly, this even though central bank interest rates were increased, and the ECB and US Fed have both said they don't plan on cuts any time soon.

The above is significant because it likely indicates the bond markets' moves to positioning for recession. Sovereign bonds are being bought up, gold is going up, and USD remains strong despite countervailing pressure from non-US central banks that are putting negative pressure on the USD.

Risk of economic slowdown will be factored into future commodity prices: natural gas and electricity prices included. Expect downward price pressure on those.

At the same time, the Russian government has signaled commitment to long-term diversion of energy away from Europe and the formal international agreements and MoUs of which are being publicly released over time (after meetings with Chinese, African, Iranian, Turks, Indian, etc. officials). The infrastructure projects diverting such energy are already under construction (that was fast) and the financing is in place or quickly being made available to support their rollout. These projects are aided by long-term administrative and regulatory agreements as well as the inter-linking of new inter-state payment solutions.

Almost all internal Russian financial transactions are now invisible to the West; they've fully moved off of SWIFT even though they were not all of them kicked out. This was done with Russian state intervention to their national banking systems.

On a related note: the GDP of numerous Asian economies has accelerated relative to previous estimations and trends. This can be understood as a growth of new economic activity present there; activity that was previously in the US and Europe that has now moved there over the past year. This has boosted that continent's economies as transport, communication, industrial and financial development investments are diverted there. What this means is that those countries will not easily be convinced to return to the old way of doing things: of sending the historical sums of goods, moneys, and contracts to Western centres for exchange and management. This because their economies are growing faster as a result of the political economic shift, plus the growth is resulting in incremental material improvement in the capacity of these regions to function with decreasing need of Western institutions.