Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Sorry, Putin. Russia’s economy is doomed

 
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/12/15/russias-economy-is-doomed-its-that-simple/
 
 
Sorry, Putin. Russia’s economy is doomed
 
A funny thing happened on the way to Vladimir Putin running strategic 
laps around the West. Russia's economy imploded.
 
The latest news is that Russia's central bank raised interest rates from 
10.5 to 17 percent at an emergency 1 a.m. meeting in an attempt to stop 
the ruble, which is down 50 percent on the year against the dollar, from 
falling any further. It's a desperate move to save Russia's currency 
that comes at the cost of sacrificing Russia's economy.
 
But even that wasn't enough. After a brief rally, the ruble resumed its 
cliff-diving ways on Tuesday, falling another 14 percent to a low of 80 
rubles per dollar. It was 60 rubles per dollar just the day before. The 
problem is simple. Oil is still falling, and ordinary Russians don't 
want to hold their money in rubles even if they get paid 17 percent 
interest to do so. In other words, there's a well-justified panic. So 
now Russia is left with the double whammy of a collapsing currency and 
exorbitant interest rates. Checkmate.
 
It's a classic kind of emerging markets crisis. It's only a small 
simplification, you see, to say that Russia doesn't so much have an 
economy as it has an oil exporting business that subsidizes everything 
else. That's why the combination of more supply from the United States, 
and less demand from Europe, China, and Japan has hit them particularly 
hard. Cheaper oil means Russian companies have fewer dollars to turn 
into rubles, which is just another way of saying that there's less 
demand for rubles—so its price is falling. It hasn't helped, of course, 
that sanctions over Russia's incursion into Ukraine have already left 
Russia short on dollars.
 
Add it all up, and the ruble has fallen something like 22 percent 
against the dollar the past month, with 11 percent of that coming on 
Monday alone. As you can see below, the Russian ruble has fallen even 
further than the Ukrainian hryvnia or Brent oil has this year. The only 
asset, and I use that word lightly, that's done worse than the ruble's 
50 percent fall is Bitcoin, which is a fake currency that 
techno-utopians insist is the future we don't know we want.
 
And this is only going to get worse. Russia, you see, is stuck in an 
economic catch-22. Its economy needs lower interest rates to push up 
growth, but its companies need higher interest rates to push up the 
ruble and make all the dollars they borrowed not worth so much. So, to 
use a technical term, *they are screwed no matter what they do* . If 
they had kept interest rates low, then the ruble would have continued to 
disintegrate, inflation would have spiked, and big corporations would 
have defaulted—but at least growth wouldn't have fallen quite so much.
 
Instead, Russia has opted for the financial shock-and-awe of raising 
rates from 10.5 to 17 percent in one fell swoop. Rates that high will 
send Russia's moribund economy into a deep recession—its central bank 
already estimates its economy will contract 4.5 to 4.7 percent if oil 
stays at $60-a-barrel—but they haven't been enough to stop the ruble's 
free fall. Russia might have to resort to capital controls to prop up 
the value of the ruble now, and might even have to ask the IMF for a 
bailout, too.
 
Putin's Russia, like the USSR before it, is only as strong as the price 
of oil. In the 1970s, we made the mistake of thinking that the USSR's 
invasion of Afghanistan meant we were losing the Cold War, when the 
reality was that they had stumbled into their own Vietnam and could only 
afford to feed their people as long as oil stayed sky-high. The USSR's 
economic mirage, though, became apparent to everybody—none less than 
their own people, who had to scrounge in empty supermarkets—after oil 
prices bottomed out in the 1980s. That history is repeating itself now, 
just without the Marxism-Leninism. Putin could afford to invade Georgia 
and Ukraine when oil prices were comfortably in the triple digits, but 
not when they're half that. Russia can't afford anything then.
 
Putin might be playing chess while we play checkers, but only if we lend 
him the money for the set.
 
 
 

 him the money for the set.
 
La Russia in questo momento si sta comportando come un forte pugile che lascia sfogare un brocco, fargli finire tutte le energie prima di stenderlo.
Le solide basi lasciate in eredità dal Comunismo non possono essere scalfite.

 La Russia in questo momento si sta comportando come un forte pugile che lascia sfogare un brocco
 
Piccoli deliri farneticanti dei pusher delle minchiate da bar sport a 
parte, la vicenda russa è una sorta di apologo morale dal quale trarre 
insegnamento. Putin ha voluto fare una politica da grande potenza CON UN 
PAESE CHE HA IL PIL DELL'ITALIA, e per di più in stragran parte 
dipendente dalle esportazioni di petrolio e gas. E ora che i pasciuti 
allori dei centodieci (e più) dollari a barile sono un ricordo lontano, 
l'economia - ovviamente - si sta sgonfiando come un soufflè fuori dal 
forno. Serva da monito a chi vuole risolvere i problemi italiani con 
l'uscita dall'euro, il ritorno autarchico alla liretta e altre 
taumaturgiche amenità varie. Un paese è davvero forte quando ha 
un'economia ben strutturata e diversificata che funziona, slegata dal 
cappio della mera esportazione di una o due commodities, con aziende 
competitive, uno stato efficiente e pochi mafiosi in circolazione. Il 
resto sono chiacchiere e battutame da bar sport, per l'appunto.
 
 
 

Coltrane wrote:
|| Il 17/12/2014 19:15, Gennaro ha scritto:
||
||| La Russia in questo momento si sta comportando come un forte pugile
||| che lascia sfogare un brocco
 
[...]
|| Un paese è davvero forte quando ha un'economia ben strutturata e
|| diversificata che funziona, slegata dal cappio della mera
|| esportazione di una o due commodities, con aziende competitive, uno
|| stato efficiente e pochi mafiosi in circolazione. Il resto sono
|| chiacchiere e battutame da bar sport, per l'appunto.
 
Ossia quello che non saremo mai (più), casomai lo fossim già stati.
Amen
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
-- 
Don Fizzy ©
"Non c'è trucco non v'è inganno"
       /)/)
     (  '.')
   o(_('')('')   That's all, folks!
Nessun bit è stato maltrattato
per spedire questo messaggio.
 
 

 Amen
 
Non è vero: il salvinio - in vero lamierino ossidabile e a tiratura 
illimitata - cioè quello che presto sostituirà l'euro nei sogni bagnati 
di tavernello dei semianalfabeti legaioli, farà dell'Italia la nuova 
Eldorado con una floridissima economia tutta basata sull'esportazione 
della polenta taragna e delle ampolle d'acqua del Po. Non abbatterti e 
attendi fiducioso.