Soviet Union cause Recessions?

Hmm. There are resources besides oil to consider.

For example, how about... steel. Okay, unlikely, but in theory, if one flooded the steel market, you could cause a domino effect, as lots of industries obviously use steel.
 

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Hmm. There are resources besides oil to consider.

For example, how about... steel. Okay, unlikely, but in theory, if one flooded the steel market, you could cause a domino effect, as lots of industries obviously use steel.
Rather find an industry that uses a lot of subsidiary industries, like cars or airplanes. Have GM and/or Ford folding in the 60ies or 70ies and you'll have a recession that will become a depression.
 
Rather find an industry that uses a lot of subsidiary industries, like cars or airplanes. Have GM and/or Ford folding in the 60ies or 70ies and you'll have a recession that will become a depression.

How do you think the Soviets would go about this? The key to the whole flooding the market plan would be to build up a stockpile of the product you're trying to devalue. AFAIK, the Soviets never made any cars worth anything (although I could be wrong, I'm not a car guy), so they'd have to buy up American/German/Japanese cars. That could get REALLY expensive. Where would the resources come from?
 
There really isn't a way that wouldn't cause considerable damage to Soviet finances, espescially after the collapse of the Gold standard. And short of mass liquidating the Spanish gold reserves they had taken holding off as collateral for arms shipments in the Spanish Civil War, I don't know how they could plausibly cause it without telegraphing it a bajillion miles away.

Soviet front groups buying stocks and real estate in the US? Jeesh, even if they did get the hard currency for that kind of foreign transaction, it would be impossible to keep someone from figuring out that the money traces it's way back to Moscow.
 

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How do you think the Soviets would go about this? The key to the whole flooding the market plan would be to build up a stockpile of the product you're trying to devalue. AFAIK, the Soviets never made any cars worth anything (although I could be wrong, I'm not a car guy), so they'd have to buy up American/German/Japanese cars. That could get REALLY expensive. Where would the resources come from?
I never said it would be easy, I'm just saying what would strike at the USA economy the hardest.
 
This was the idea behind a scenario I posted where the SU dominates the Middle East (without sparking WW3) giving it the ability to set the oil price arbitrarily, essentially winning the Cold War (since it can hold the Western economies economically hostage)
 
Soviet front groups buying stocks and real estate in the US? Jeesh, even if they did get the hard currency for that kind of foreign transaction, it would be impossible to keep someone from figuring out that the money traces it's way back to Moscow.

Interestingly, what was the relevant legal status of foreign government entities buying up US stocks and property back in the Cold War era (if the Soviet Union were to do such a thing)?

I know that even nowadays there tends to be a lot of un-ease in many Western nations about sovereign wealth funds from nations such as China and the Middle East Gulf States buying real estate and stocks (and that on some occasions here in Australia, they have been refused for instance the ability to buy some mining industry stocks).
 
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