Comments by "seneca983" (@seneca983) on "What Happens When a Country Defaults on Its Debt?" video.

@apacheattackhelicopter8185 "And why does your article say that Russia defaulted for the first time since 1918? It has defaulted as recently as in 1998." What did the article say precisely? In any case, that year is probably given because it's the last time Russia defaulted on external debt. In 1998 Russia only defaulted on Rouble denominated debt but not on debt denominated in foreign currencies. Either the article failed to explain this fully or maybe you missed this detail.
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Russia would still have been able to pay its debt by using the money it had been receiving from energy transactions but chose not to.
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@midlander8186 "The terms of the loan on which Russia "defaulted" required it to pay creditors in US dollars from a bank in New York City, specifically." I tried to search this info but I couldn't find such conditions stated anywhere. In any case, Russia only tried to pay it's foreign denominated bonds from its frozen forex reserves rather than from non-frozen funds and also stated that it wouldn't pay unless the forex reserves were unfrozen. "I believe Russia invited creditors to take payment in Russia in any currency" I'm under the impression that Russia only offered to pay them in roubles. Some of the Russian foreign denominated bonds have a clause that allows payment in roubles under certain circumstances but not all do.
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@fl3669 Owning the money printing machine doesn't mean you won't default. While it gives you the technical capacity to always avoid default (in debt denominated in your own currency) the option of inflating away your debt by printing money is often a worse option than a straight up default. E.g. in 1998 defaulted on its debt denominated in roubles (but not those denominated in foreign currency).
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Haha!
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@midlander8186 "I saw the terms stated in a CNBC YouTube video. I don't know why they're so difficult to find" I tried searching for it again and watched a couple of CNBC videos but I could find mentions of such terms. "Russia offered to pay the loans in Russia, where the US of course could not freeze funds. If creditors could legally take payment in Russia, they could of course take payment in rubles and convert rubles immediately to most foreign currencies of their choice." It's not entirely clear that that would be possible. Russia has implemented capital controls to support the rouble exchange rate. Most people can't sell roubles, only buy them. Unless bondholders get some kind of exemption any receipts in roubles might be stuck inside Russia. However, I didn't try to check whether they would be affected by the capital controls.
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@midlander8186 "I'm sorry you've spent time searching through CNBC YouTube videos for the terms of the loan to Russia." No need to apologize. When I tried to search this YouTube brought up two videos which were about 2 min long (and after that the search results weren't from CNBC). The time spent on that wasn't that much.
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@paxdriver "but they needed those funds given the fact it's the only access they have to usd and they're at war. That makes usd more valuable to then due to scarcity." Sure. I just wanted to point out that (to my understanding) they would have still had the technical capacity to pay in dollars or euros so in that sense it was still a choice at this point.
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"Russia had the money however due to sanctions were not able to give the payment in US dollar." I think this isn't quite true. Russia's central bank has been locked out of the dollar and euro (and some other) forex reserves it held. However, Russia has still been receiving dollars and euros for its energy exports. Russia would still have had the capability to use those to pay its dollar and euro denominated debts but didn't want to pay if it could only use those funds.
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