Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: se la crisi arriva in Iran

http://www.newstatesman.com/asia/2009/04/iran-credit-ahmadinejad-crisis
Iran's credit crunch
Abigail Fielding-Smith
Observations on the marketplace
Ali Abadi looks out across the floor of his shop in the shadow of
Tehran’s Motahari Mosque, his view of the bristling piles of dried
figs and pistachio nuts unobscured by customers. “Normally,” he
says glumly, “the shop would be full of people.”
When the global financial crisis became apparent last year, Iranian
officials touted the immunity of Iran’s “independent economy” –
isolated from the international system through sanctions and banking
restrictions. President Ahmadinejad even implied that the crisis was
due to the west’s moral degeneracy. Now, however, as Iran’s
presidential elections loom on 12 June, the country could be on the
verge of an idiosyncratic financial crisis.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005 on a populist platform of
wealth redistribution, and embarked on an ambitious spending programme
in his first year that was fuelled by high oil prices. He forced the
state-dominated banking sector to lend at interest rates less than
half the rate of inflation – essentially giving people free money. But
there was no coherent development strategy or supervision behind the
cash that poured through the system. “In 2006, liquidity increased by
40 per cent, but economic growth was only 5 per cent,” says Saeed
Leylaz, an economic analyst associated with the reform movement.
“That’s clearly unsustainable.”
“Numbers are illusions,” scoffs Mohammad Kazem Anbarlouee, editor of
Resalat, a newspaper that is pro-Ahmadinejad, echoing the government
line. “In the west the numbers showed everything was good, and there
was a crisis. Here the numbers show everything as bad, but the reality
is different.”
The numbers certainly don’t look good: inflation, which stood at 10
per cent when Ahmadinejad came to power, had shot to nearly 30 per
cent by the end of last year. Real-estate prices in Tehran have
skyrocketed. “My father has a house in central Tehran which was worth
$200,000 two years ago,” says Ali. “Two months ago, it was worth
$1.3m. In the US that would cause World War III.”
Rent has become unaffordable for many Iranians. In the Grand Bazaar in
Tehran, Mahmoud looks at the gilt mirrors and lighting he is about to
pack up, unable to afford the stall he has rented for eight years, and
shakes his head. “The economic situation is very bad,” he says.
After four years of cheap money, Iran is experiencing its own version
of the credit crunch. Non-performing loans have, according to
unofficial figures, increased by 75 per cent in the past three years:
there is simply no incentive for people to pay them back at such a low
rate of interest. Now that oil revenues have plummeted from $147 to
$48 a barrel, the government has no cash to sustain the credit supply.
Two governors of the Central Bank of Iran have been forced out of
office for opposing the lowering of interest rates, fearing
hyperinflation, but Ahmadinejad has reportedly quietly kept in place
the credit restrictions introduced last year.
Inflation has since gone down to 25 per cent. But even for small
businesses, rental prices remain exorbitantly high, and access to
credit, on which many lower-middle-class Iranians have become
dependent since Ahmadinejad became president, has been severely
reduced.
Like many, Younes, who has his own confectionery business in central
Tehran, has been affected by the credit crunch. “Over the past five
years I borrowed $10,000 a year for the business, and always paid it
back. This year they told me that ‘Ahmadinejad has stopped all
loans’,” he says. He has since been promised money, but it has yet to
materialise. Like many Iranians, Younes gets by through dipping into
savings, borrowing from friends and getting them to cash cheques for
him. But these back-up resources will not last indefinitely.
Unemployment, meanwhile, has continued to rise: unofficial figures put
it at around 30 per cent. The catch-22 situation is that measures to
combat unemployment – increasing public spending and credit supply –
will increase inflation, and vice versa. “The government has to choose
between controlling inflation or accelerating economic growth,” says
Saeed Leylaz.
Although nearly all shopkeepers say that business is bad, the crisis
is not evident on the streets, for the moment. But as the opaque
dynamics of the presidential election play themselves out, one thing
is certain, according to Leylaz: “The next government will have a
nightmare planning the economy.

 is not evident on the streets, for the moment.
ah beh, sì beh

 In Iran tra l'altro c'e' un'emigrazione forzata altissima
spiega con comodo...

 l'emigrazione.
emigrazione forzata vuol dire un'altra cosa...comunque l'Iran è un
paese di 70 milioni e rotti di abitanti, con tutti questi giovani in
miseria gli emigrati dovrebbero essere milioni. Spiega pure dove sono
andati...

 A Parigi
milioni di iraniani a Parigi?

 Evidentemente ti rifugi dietro la quantita' quando ti fa comodo.
no, quando qualcuno sta dicendo che il regime avrebbe causato
un'emigrazione forzata di massa.

 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_citizens_abroad
tra 2 e 3 milioni sono il 3-4%. Guarda un po' qui:
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emigrazione_italiana#Oriundi_italiani
e senza nessuna "forzatura"....