Russian Economy General News: #11

GarryB wrote:...Hahahaha.... and has the damage from democracies bombs of peace been cleaned up completely in your neck of the woods... there was no communism in Yugoslavia but there seemed to be lots of interest in mass graves that often turned out imaginary when the Serbs were to blame... but quite real in other cases.

Of course with most of your organs removed they can put you in a smaller grave that is harder to find I guess...

There was plenty of communism in Yugoslavia, that's how we got the mass killings of Serbs during the late 40s, reds are nothing if not predictable, they want to make everyone equal and their preferred method of doing so is to cut down those who are more developed instead of developing those who are lagging behind

And they most definitely killed way more than "democracy" did, it's not even in the same ballpark

Just because you read something about Serbia on 4chan doesn't mean you know anything more about our history than any other random New Zealand hipster so please stick with talking about British history (and that of it's subservient territories) and don't insult others with usual Western ignorance

GarryB wrote:....

Again you are talking about things you have no knowledge of whatsoever

Take a chill pill, order another decaf latte and stick with discussing Queen's domain

There is some 60 million killed by Stalin figure being thrown around. This is revisionist BS by Nazi lovers. A prime source
of such propaganda is book Harvest of Sorrows which promotes the Holodomor hoax and uses photographs of the 1920s
civil war famine on the Volga to "prove" that Ukrainians were starving in the 1930s. To this day, nobody has produced
photographs of famine victims in Ukraine in the 1930s. Instead we have more fraud such the use of photographs from
one of the early 1900s British occupant generated famines in India being passed of as from Ukraine!

The 60 million figure is double the 30 million figure claimed by more "sober" western propagandists such as those on PBS.
But they never detail this figure. One has to assume it includes 14 million Holodomor "victims" (from Bengal and the
Russian Volga, ). It is also not made clear whether the 10 million actual deaths during butcher Trotsky's
civil war is being counted as Stalin's crime. It looks very much like it is. Propaganda is always ambiguous enough
for people to fill in the blanks themselves, this cements its effect since it engages the "plausibility" analysis of the
human brain.

Another example of the revisionist Nazi apologia is that 20% of the gulag inmates died each year. This is a pure lie.
That peak death only occurred in 1942 when agriculture in the USSR was in very bad shape due to the Nazi invasion
(a lot of farm land fell under Nazi control and Siberia was not exactly an easy backup plan). So people were starving
around the USSR and not just in the gulags. So we have millions of supposed deaths in gulags. This is false and
about 800,000 people died in the gulags and due to Stalin's repressions. As with the 14 million Holodomor hoax
number all western "estimates" (they are not even that, they are purely pulled form the anus) are not credible.

During Yeltsin's term in power about 8 million citizens of the Russian Federation died from unnatural causes. They
are clearly victims of Yeltsin's regime and his shock therapy voodoo economics to please NATzO. Nobody can fob
off these 8 million as non-victims. They would not have died even if there stressed conditions of 1990 USSR
were maintained. In this regard, Lukashenko deserves a lot of credit since he prevented such deaths in Belorus.

Hole wrote:The peace-loving western democracies started one war after the other in Africa, Asia and South America. But they had no choice because evil communists would have taken over these ressouce rich countries.

Sarcasm out.

There were liberation insurrections during the 1900s where people tried to throw off the colonial yoke. The colonialist west supported
colonial occupation governments against "radicals".

Cuba is an example. It only went into the Soviet camp because Uncle Scumbag did not actually want democracy in Cuba. He was
too invested in the regime of Batista. This was the pattern through the whole of Latin America. In Argentina there was a dirty
war in the 1970s against rather mild leftists who wanted Argentina to be not be a right wing yanqui satrap. The US staged all
sorts of right wing coups in Argentina in the 1950s to foist its control over the country. The fact that Daniel Ortega has won
votes long after the US instigated Contra war shows you where the public support in Latin America is. It is not in favour of
US backed regimes.

Latin America all by itself is more than enough proof of what slime Uncle Scumbag is and how utterly empty is US propaganda
about "derechos humanos" (human rights) and democracy. It's human rights and democracy only if it serves US imperial interests
which are primarily economic exploitation.

I link a lot of his videos but this an example where he is dead wrong.

He thinks that a high prime rate set by the CBR is a good thing because it enables saving by consumers.
He proceeds to chirp that reducing the insane CBR prime rate is injecting "easy money" into the economy
of the sort we see in the west.

1) Consumer savings are a myth. Consumers never made any serious money through bank interest. They
only accumulated money paid to them by their employers. Banks were never like the stock market where
one could make millions with the right choices. He is confused about savings since in the past it was
the aggregate bank savings of consumers that enabled banks to lend out lots of money to companies for
their operations. The purchasing power of consumers was never due to the central bank prime rate
in the form of savings accretion. Purchasing power has always been linked to the size of the wages
and the inflation rate.

2) It has been patently clear over the last 20+ years that Russian companies are starved for domestic
credit from the Russian banking system. The loan-shark level interest rates (banks set a rate higher
than the CBR prime) drove Russian companies to borrow abroad where they could find loans in the 3-4%
rate range. In Russia they had to pay over 8% for most of the last 20 years. The narrator clearly
has no clue what easy money is. Companies borrow not because they use loans as substitutes for
income. Being a vatnik ignoramus his understanding of capitalist economics is non-existent. Companies
borrow to be competitive and to innovate. They cannot make money off products that do not exist.
They have to develop them first and that requires borrowing money. In spite of all the actual Pancho Villa
finance in the USA, the existence of a potent venture capital supplier base is actually are real US advantage.
In Russia, there is very little venture capital capacity thanks in part to the ridiculous lending rates.

3) Due to the absurd CBR policy, the Russian banking system is tiny and almost irrelevant. Banks grow
through their loans and loan demand is set by the affordability of the interest rate. So Ostashko can
bitch about easy money since he thinks he is being a patriot all he wants. But he is actually being a useful idiot
for Russia's enemies. A weak banking sector is one of the prime weaknesses of Russia. Powerful
banks in the west are one of the prime reasons for the power of the west.

So the prime rate by the CBR kills two birds with one stone: the economic potential of Russia by depriving
Russian companies of necessary lending resources and the Russian banking sector since it can't grow if
nobody wants to borrow from it.

The reduction of the prime rate by the CBR is a win for Russia. The much higher than inflation rate was
choking Russia's growth. That is why the CBR monetarists and their Ministry of Finance buddies were in
favour.

Also, reducing the prime rate to a sane level is not the same thing as quantitative easing and a culture of
consumer debt. The prime rate will hardly give Russian consumers 3% personal loans. They will still
be paying high rates just like the in the west. The Soviet model of accumulating rubles to buy stuff is
no longer viable in Russia. If people want to buy apartments or private houses, then they need affordable
mortgage rates. Waiting 20 years to accumulate enough savings to buy with cash is a guaranteed fail
since in 20 years the inflation adjusted price will have gone up substantially. Russia is not immune from
such market price dynamics. If it does not want them, then it needs to go back to a command economy.

As with Cyprus, Russia has issued notices to Malta, The Netherlands and Luxemburg to change the double taxation agreements
and those effectively terminate them as offshore havens for Russian money.

I think the clowns at the Ministry of Finance will be steam rolled by Putin if they attempt to delay this by 5 years or more.
Note that the delay period goes past Putin's current term which is six years from early 2018. The monetarist maggots are
clearly plotting to wait it out for some potentially soft successor who will go back to sucking oligarch cock and thus
bending over for NATzO. They are sorely mistaken if they think it will be that easy.

I were Putin I would completely purge the Ministry of Finance. Their behaviour is clear sedition.

kvs wrote:I think the clowns at the Ministry of Finance will be steam rolled by Putin if they attempt to delay this by 5 years or more.

He has already told them about removing the budget restrictions to medicine and defence...

They are Anglophile, English speaking, monetarists who secretly hate Russia and all things Russian and who represent the interests of the oligarchs and the moneyed class (real estate in Spain, dual citizenship in UK or Israel, kids in private school in Switzerland or the UK). The moment Putin is gone they will pop up like mushrooms after a rain looking to redirect that money flow offshore.

Hole wrote:https://www.stalkerzone.org/those-waiting-for-the-collapse-of-russia-can-relax/
Good stuff

The author is clueless about inflation.   The "inflation" in the USSR had nothing to do with fiat circulation.   Rubles were vouchers
and there was a command economy.   The idea that USSR production depended on ruble revenue like capitalist economics is
simple BS.   Nobody's salary depended on sales income at any level.  

Soviet inflation was of the physical variety.   People were paid regardless of effort, so they did not care about their jobs.   This
resulted in the parking whole trainloads of produce in marshaling yards to rot and for production lines were Soviet manufacturing was
out-competing Detroit of the 1970s in the race to bottom quality.  This resulted in shortages of goods and services.  So there was
a type of diffusion on the economic function to produce goods and services.   The inflation was degradation.

The decrease in gold reserves reflected this decay since the USSR had to import grains and other goods which it failed to
produce itself thanks to sub-optimal economics (the USSR could, in principle, grow all of its own wheat like modern Russia).
Imports could only be bought for gold since the west did not care for rubles.   And the USSR did not have enough trade
with the west to make rubles a viable unit of exchange.

The author brings up the $500 billion dollar total private and sovereign debt of Russia.   No other country on the planet is ever
evaluated for the debt of the private sector.   That debt is not secured and defaults cost the national economy nothing other
than degradation of standing of its companies if enough of them default.   Talking about private debt in the same breath
as sovereign debt is nonsense.  Instead of being a parrot for NATzO fake stream talking points, the author should consider
the fact that Russian companies paid off over $240 billion of their debt after 2014 without any economic contraction.
It was about $740 billion in 2013 and is now under $500 billion.   GDP accounting considers this offshoring of principal
to be a total negative.   So Russia's GDP lost $240 billion x 65 (average forex of rubles to dollars) = 15.6 trillion
rubles.   The annual Russian GDP was over 25 trillion in 2019 but the average from 2013 is lower.    But Russia's real
GDP grew during this period.   That tells you how much real growth Russia's economy has.

So the ranking of 10th place in terms of exchange reserves is an utterly meaningless one.   Russia clearly does not need
its exchange reserves to pay off debt.   So the confounding of sovereign debt with total debt is patent retardation.

kvs wrote:So the ranking of 10th place in terms of exchange reserves is an utterly meaningless one.   Russia clearly does not need
its exchange reserves to pay off debt.   So the confounding of sovereign debt with total debt is patent retardation.

Awara Group made a nice study about debt corrected GDP of the West and it was appalling. As it would be to include private debt + state liabilities in the US debt count, the zeroes in the keyboard run out... Russia is in as good a financial shape as a country can be.

LMFS wrote:

kvs wrote:I think the clowns at the Ministry of Finance will be steam rolled by Putin if they attempt to delay this by 5 years or more.

He has already told them about removing the budget restrictions to medicine and defence...

He did? When?

https://tass.com/economy/1187791

Russia halts denunciation of tax agreement with Cyprus
Cyprus has agreed to Russia’s terms on raising the tax on dividend and interest to 15%, Russia’s Finance Ministry informed Monday

miketheterrible wrote:He did? When?

https://ria.ru/20200811/1575630758.html

"At the same time, now budget revenues have begun to recover, and I would ask you not to cut, but if something has already been proposed, to restore funds associated with the purchase of medicines for privileged categories of citizens and for cancer. This needs to be restored," the president said.

"There are some other areas, for example, the defense industry, but we will talk about this separately with the Prime Minister," he added.

miketheterrible wrote:https://tass.com/economy/1187791

Russia halts denunciation of tax agreement with Cyprus
Cyprus has agreed to Russia’s terms on raising the tax on dividend and interest to 15%, Russia’s Finance Ministry informed Monday

If this is effective immediately an not in 2024 then it is a good development. Obviously Cyprus cannot afford to stop being and offshore
for Russian money so it eventually had to bend.

LMFS wrote:

miketheterrible wrote:He did? When?

https://ria.ru/20200811/1575630758.html

"At the same time, now budget revenues have begun to recover, and I would ask you not to cut, but if something has already been proposed, to restore funds associated with the purchase of medicines for privileged categories of citizens and for cancer. This needs to be restored," the president said.

"There are some other areas, for example, the defense industry, but we will talk about this separately with the Prime Minister," he added.

This should be done without pleading. It should be done with multiple heads rolling.

Plus there are rules specifying what the head of state can do and what is responsibility of the government... respect for the law needs to start from above or is worth nothing. But I agree that the time for these leeches in the ministry of finance to keep slowing Russia down is over and they need to finally understand it.

LMFS wrote:Plus there are rules specifying what the head of state can do and what is responsibility of the government... respect for the law needs to start from above or is worth nothing. But I agree that the time for these leeches in the ministry of finance to keep slowing Russia down is over and they need to finally understand it.

Rules have to make sense and be useful. How the f*ck can some ministry act autonomously from the elected government.
That is a de facto deep state. Like I pointed out before, in Canada the Prime Minister does not ask the ministries to do
what he wants. He appoints the ministers who then appoint the deputy and assistant deputy ministers. They impose
the will of the elected government on the policy pursued by the ministries. In Russia it looks like Putin does not even
have the power of the Canadian Prime Minister. Some tyrant!

Is it known ratio between state govern economy and private economy in Russian economy ?

Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves exceeded $ 600 billion for the first time

Viktor wrote:Is it known ratio between state govern economy and private economy in Russian economy ?

Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves exceeded $ 600 billion for the first time

It was 70% private by the end of the 2000s. Since the government has continued selling of state companies this
fraction has not dropped. But key companies are state owned much like Crown Corporations in Canada.