Skip to main content

Russian Truth

 A few weeks ago I was watching a German reporter visiting part of his wife's family in the Russian far North, places where in the winter the thermometer is often below -50c.  He was asking pointed questions about how the Ukraine war was affecting them directly, and their answer was that they were mostly unaffected.  Moreover, some products (such as lubrication oil) that had disappeared during the early days of the war were back on the shelves.

this seemingly unimportant piece of social news just went in the back of my head, and I assumed that things in Russia were hard but not that hard.  But thinking further it would seem to be some type of error.  First, the lubricant was from Shell, a company that has stopped supplying Russia for nine months now, moreover, lubricants are not high-tech stuff.  So in terms of soft propaganda, it would seem to show that things are normal-ish in Russia which is consistent with the Russian government's statement that GDP was down 2% in 2022.

Because of my current job, I have access to some IMF raw data, not in great depth, but I have some access, and the funny thing is that the IMF reported that Russia's GDP was down 2% in 2022, and Putin was expecting a GDP upswing in 2023 -- this projection was confirmed by the IMF (and the world bank). One small problem, the data doesn't confirm this...Since March 2022, Russia no longer shares its GDP data with IMF/WB just the headline number.  Therefore, the truth about Russian GDP is what Putin says!  

In 2022 more than 1,000 companies "voluntarily" left Russia, and I m not joking here there was no law forcing them to leave Russia, they just decided that they didn't want to be involved in the country anymore. 

We know that Russian automobile production is down, some say that since May of 2022, automobile plants have been repurposed because too many necessary components are unavailable -- sourced from the west.

The truth is the first thing to disappear during a conflict.  It suits Putin to say that Russia's economy has been unaffected by the departure of 1,000 western companies, that's his right, but it also shows how desperate the government of Putin is to show that everything is normal.  In reality, it is far from normal.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ok so I lied...a little (revised)

When we began looking at farming in 2013/14 as something we both wanted to do as a "second career" we invested time and money to understand what sector of farming was profitable.  A few things emerged, First, high-quality, source-proven, organic farm products consistently have much higher profit margins.  Secondly, transformation accounted for nearly 80% of total profits, and production and distribution accounted for 20% of profits: Farmers and retailers have low profit margins and the middle bits make all the money. A profitable farm operation needs to be involved in the transformation of its produce.  The low-hanging fruits: cheese and butter.  Milk, generates a profit margin of 5% to 8%, depending on milk quality.  Transformed into cheese and butter, and the profit margin rises to 40% (Taking into account all costs).  Second:  20% of a steer carcass is ground beef quality.  The price is low, because (a) a high percentage of the carcass, and (b)...
Post a Comment
Read more

Spray painting Taylor Swift G650 aircraft (updated)

 First, a bit of paint will not harm anyone.  These climate activities are going to learn two things in the next few days:  (1) Trespassing at an airport is a felony almost anywhere in the world.  That means criminal prosecution.   (2) removing paint from an aircraft is expensive.   So these climate activists are about to find out the reach of the British criminal system and it will not be pleasant, the UK has very strict laws about that, I would be surprised if cleaning the aircraft of all the paint will cost less than $100,000.     I am sure that when they planned (premeditation) this little show they had a very valid logic to doing this.  Tonight, they are probably realizing the depth of their troubles.   I understand that in the UK it's a minimum one-year jail sentence.    Also, good luck travelling with a criminal trespass charge against you.  I am relatively certain that the airline industry will ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Janet Yellen from China supporter to Hawk...

There is rarely serious news in the world these days, it seems that most newspapers are filled with headlines and little else, and then Ms Yellen went to China.  Secretary Yellen has long been known in the Biden administration as the voice of moderation when dealing with China, yet as her trip which concluded yesterday a hawk was born:  She warned the Chinese against dumping goods in the United States.    fighting words! The American administration is very concerned about the lack of Chinese domestic consumption.   Even before the COVID-19 epidemic, there were already the beginning signs of a slowdown, automobile sales were off.   China is facing domestic deflation (a clear sign of collapsing demand) China imports few consumer goods, they import raw materials and intermediary goods.   It seems that the American administration is concerned that the Chinese administration will dump consumer goods abroad to keep its manufacturing machinery ...
Post a Comment
Read more