The argument "their economy is based on natural resources so it's weak" often gets made, but how is this type of economy intrinsically weaker or more susceptible to collapse than economies based on financial shell games? Never understood.
Their economic system relies on perpetual growth. They need more working bodies or their economy will continue to decline and profit margins will fall unless they make some major changes.
Too big to fail comes from the fear of popular unrest (btw, this also works in non-democratic countries, albeit is weaker). There will be no popular unrest here.
these kind of government overreach is one of the reasons why capital(regardless of its size) has an insensitive to leave those countries, it's just that expenses to leave are more or less fixed, so its easier for rich people to afford it
Or it could be like Japan and stagnate over the next 30 years, due to its similarity to Japan in demographics, exporting country's inability to transform to a consumer economy, massive internal debt, capital flight, etc.
Which is kind of to the point, they have more money on hand than a small country’s budget and even if they lose it all it almost doesn’t make a dent in their net worth.
In this situation it is almost reasonable to want a small crisis to shake out your upcoming competitors and buy some more land or other things of real value at a discount.
Collapsing economies simply make autocrats double down even harder on autocracy. North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Zimbabwe. There are numerous examples of this. It simply multiplies the misery.
That's only true for countries with small economies. If the US, China, Japan or the Eurozone collapsed, that would plunge the whole world into a depression.
Suffice to say, countries don't last when ever more people rely on relative fewer producers. Greece and Spain tried and went too far: they just ran out of other people's money. Much of Europe is heading the same direction. Every communist country grids to a halt, with socialists tending the same. There is a glorious time of high living on other people's efforts, but greed and weariness win out.
The fundamental problem is they are determined to maintain a growth rate that can no longer be maintained (developing economies can grow 7% while catching up, developed economies can't.)
While they could bail this out with the printing presses it's really a symptom of the underlying problem and that can't be handwaved away.
Think Greece vs. Venezuela.
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