Russian Economy General News: #11

There is the ignore option too...

The world will always be filled with people who don't agree with you.... get over it... I have spent the best part of 30 years on the internet talking to American teenagers for the first decade trying to tell them that Russia is not actually evil and is not even out to get them and to be honest probably think less about you than you think about them most of the time. The real difference between Russians and Americans is that while both say their governments lie to them the Russians actually fundamentally believe it, whereas with any test... say Saddams WMDs they will tell you they don't believe or trust politicians but when US politicians say Iraq has nuclear or chemical weapons and we have to invade them then Americans just accept that that is true without any evidence.

Perhaps English words have different definitions in US dictionaries... but most in the west believes the same all politicians are liars but Russia is evil because our politicians keep telling us so and our media too... in the 1990s the media didn't really take sides very often and it was OK to question things... but these days if you don't print from their script then you can't come back and if you can report you are no longer a reporter... so you tow the line or get excluded for the information well...

Effectively western media have been trained like dogs and are just as obedient.

There are plenty here who immediately agreed with western media that Maduro is evil and bad and that the people of Venezuela hate him... but gradually over time we got the truth and the truth was that the western media was talking shit again to start another war for oil.

The key to the truth is the opposite of anything the western media reports.

If the west is angry at Putin or Russia or China then they have probably done something right.

GarryB wrote:The key to the truth is the opposite of anything the western media reports.

If the west is angry at Putin or Russia or China then they have probably done something right.

+1

Importance of floating currency, maintaining reserves at all costs and planning ahead:

It's Russia’s cheapest crisis ever and the country is still accumulating cash, despite the coronacrisis

https://www.intellinews.com/moscow-blog-it-s-russia-s-cheapest-crisis-ever-and-the-cbr-is-still-accumulating-cash-185126/

"Russia's post-pandemic economy: Pain for middle class, widening inequality, but rich will stay rich - experts tell RT."

https://www.rt.com/russia/491752-russia-recovery-covid-economy/

RT discredited cause they are such a shit news company like BBC.

The middle class will of course suffer more in a pandemic than the uber rich or the poor... the uber rich are not rich because they earn it every week... the middle class maintain their position by working so of course when you can't work you lose traction... the uber rich can cover their costs with compensation from the government throwing cheap loans at them to keep staff on... and if they didn't they could save money by firing staff and then when things go back to normal they can hire the people they like back and maybe look at other people to replace the people they actually wanted to get rid of.

In comparison the middle class people who didn't work probably didn't earn and had to burn up savings... of course such an event will increase the gaps between the different groups... some barely in the middle class might have been pushed in to poverty... thrown out of their house and lost their job... happens more often than you might think.

But RT is very very American these days... in fact more about America and the west than about Russia so I don't watch it so much any more.

The purpose of RT is to present an English language alternative news source to Western MSM. Nothing more, nothing less.

RT has been exposed so many times of bullshit especially in economics. Only individual in economics that has any kind of idea of knowledge even if basic is Max Keiser.

The rest, they just get any random so called "expert" and just repeat their nonsense.

RT (USA) comment censorship is just disgusting. I was censored 4 times for trying to correct the claims of some idiot who said that the Chinese tried to invade Japan (rather than the Mongols that had conquered and occupied China). No matter how i wrote this factual and non-controversial piece of info, i just couldn't get it thru, even though another poster has already said the same thing...

It may be RT but its run along US corporate lines, and they have succeeded in fucking up the site beyond all recognition.

Yeah, I have had some very controversial things go up and some pretty bland and harmless stuff not appear... either they have one prick moderator on LSD or the posting system there is a bit flakey...

Central Bank lowers key rate to historic low



The Russian Central Bank has record-lowered its key rate to 4.5%, dropping it immediately by one percent for the first time in five years, thereby updating the historical minimum of modern Russia. This was reported on the bank's website.


According to Russian media, this decrease was not unexpected for economists, it was expected. The bank explained its decision by the strong influence of disinflation factors that slow down growth in the context of the global coronavirus pandemic, and inflation can deviate strongly from the set parameters at 4% per annum. At the middle of this month, inflation was estimated at 3.1%.

This decrease is the third since the beginning of 2020. If in January the key rate was 6.25%, then in April the Central Bank lowered it to 5.5%, reaching a minimum of the end of 2013 - the beginning of 2014. Now its value has dropped to 4.5%. Earlier, the head of the Central Bank Elvira Nibiullina said that the bank will consider the introduction of such a measure, but the likelihood of this was not 100%.

Recall that the key rate is the minimum interest rate at which the Bank of Russia grants loans to commercial banks and accepts funds for deposits. The reduction in the key rate leads to a decrease in the value of deposits, consumer loans and mortgages, thereby making banking products more accessible in the conditions of a falling economy.

It is possible that in the future, the Central Bank will consider another reduction in the key rate.

https://topwar.ru/172327-centrobank-snizil-kljuchevuju-stavku-do-istoricheskogo-minimuma.html

Nice  

Sohu believes CR929 will bring billions to Russia

dino00 wrote:Putin proposes raising income tax to 15% for annual income over $72,825

He emphasized that not all incomes will be taxed at an increased rate, but this will give the budget about 60 bln rubles ($874.7 mln), which will be used for treatment of children with rare diseases

$72,825 ? Hardly 10% of Russians earn that kind of salary annually.

jhelb wrote:

dino00 wrote:Putin proposes raising income tax to 15% for annual income over $72,825

He emphasized that not all incomes will be taxed at an increased rate, but this will give the budget about 60 bln rubles ($874.7 mln), which will be used for treatment of children with rare diseases

$72,825 ? Hardly 10% of Russians earn that kind of salary annually.

That is exactly the point of this tax. It is for "richer" people. The rest will keep paying the 13% rate.

kvs wrote:You are forgetting that this number is a lower limit and out of that 10% many are making millions.   So the real number you should focus on is
$874.7 million.

I realize this is the lower limit. And that's what I said. Even at a lower limit of $72,825 barely 10% of Russians will make this kind of money.

Even a software engineer with 10 years of experience will not draw this kind of a salary in Moscow. And that makes sense because cost of living even in Moscow is a lot lower than Western Europe, North America and several Asian countries.

But the idea of this extra tax is to take a little more money from people who are already earning a lot.... taking money from people who can afford it in other words.

A rich person would call this devil worship... they claim rich people spend money so poor people must end up getting some... the so called trickle down effect, but in reality most of the time the only way to get blood out of a stone is with tax because voluntary contributions are few and far between...

Arrow wrote:What effects would the Russian economy have if the West cut them off from SWIFT?

A question they should be asking because that is exactly what will happen post-November if senile old Joe Biden wins and the Democrats sweep the House and Senate.

If they had cut Russia off in the 1990s... especially under Yeltsen it would have been devastating, but things were so bad at the time it would have seriously slowed recovery times, but it has been threatened several times so they have taken measures to ensure if it does stop that things keep going.

SWIFT is fast and easy which is why it is probably still used to an extent, but at the end of the day cutting it off will prevent western companies and individuals from making money in Russia... and there seems to be more going on there than in most western countries in terms of opportunities to make money.

Honestly my response would be go ahead... do it... most members of SWIFT don't want Russia or China cut out because there is money to be made there, and they don't give a shit about Americas little feud with Russia and China...

Arrow wrote:What effects would the Russian economy have if the West cut them off from SWIFT?

The Germans are going to be mighty pissed as they won't have an easy avenue to trade with Russia anymore.

Russia can survive without cash. Industrial countries like Germany cannot survive without resources. If Russia does not sell, they still have the resources to use locally.

It was mutually beneficial to sell gas to the EU due to the huge amount of reserves that Russia has. It is no longer economically required though as China will eat up any possible glut of energy resources you'll throw at em.

Russia & China speed up de-dollarization process: most trade no longer conducted in greenbacks

source

After years of talking about abandoning the US dollar, Russia and China are doing it for real. In the first quarter of 2020, the share of the dollar in trade between the countries fell below 50 percent for the first time.
To give an indication of the scale of the adjustment, just four years ago the greenback accounted for over 90 percent of their currency settlements.

According to Moscow daily Izvestia, the share has dropped to 46 percent, tumbling from 75 percent in 2018. The 54 percent of non-dollar trade is made up of Chinese yuan (17 percent), the euro (30 percent), and the Russian ruble (7 percent).

The dollar's reduced role in international trade can mainly be blamed on the ongoing trade war between the US and China. Relations between the two countries have deteriorated even further in 2020, after US politicians accused Beijing of hiding the severity of Covid-19 and President Donald Trump called disease the "China Virus" and "Kung Flu."

In January, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov explained that Moscow is continuing "its policy aimed at gradual de-dollarization" and is looking to make deals in local currencies, where possible.

Lavrov called the rejection of the greenback "an objective response to the unpredictability of US economic policy and the outright abuse by Washington of the dollar's status as a world reserve currency."

Movement away from the dollar can also be seen in Russia's trade with other parts of the world, such as the European Union. Since 2016, trade between Moscow and the bloc has been mainly in Euros, with its current share sitting at 46 percent.

I could not be happier with this news!     The way to burn the Uh'murikkkanz and end their disgracefully criminal tenure as Global Hegemon is to torpedo the greenback so that they cannot simply run the printing presses to settle their accounts.  Once the US is forced to trade fairly to earn foreign currencies to pay for their imports the curtain will fall away and the shoddiness of the US system will be laid bare for all to see.  

It couldn't happen to a more deserving bunch of murderous thieves and scum.