Nine Steps To Hades

Yes We Are Looking At The Ruffian Economy Again

Because O! delicious schadenfreude.  Also, it's calorie-free and has zero carbon footprint.  I am taking most of this from "Inside Russia", with further input from Joe Blogs and a few Twitter posts, notably Chris_0.

     Konstantin, who runs IR, is, I believe, an economist by trade, so he naturally fell upon the recent release of 2023's first two quarters of economic data by the Ruffian Ministry Of Finance.  Art!

A metaphor for Big K and the data

     One aside that he made was that the number of unsecured loans taken out in Ruffia has skyrocketed, which wouldn't be a problem in a stable or growing economy.  He'd even been fending off calls from Ruffian banks, who were begging him to take out loans - and he lives in Uzbekistan.  The Ruffian economy is neither stable nor growing, despite the propaganda being pumped out.

     Let's have a look at his remaining nine economic indicators.

2)  INDUSTRIAL GROWTH: There are a few areas where production has increased: 'Special apparel', a euphemism for 'Military uniform', is up 47%.  'Metallic products', i.e. bombs, shells and missiles - up 33%.  'Micro-electronics' i.e. weapon components, up 43%.

     Before you break out the confetti and ticker tape, however - a word you knew was coming - let's see what have gone into negative figures <deep breath>: home construction; pharmaceuticals, heavy machinery, tyres, paper and locomotives & rolling stock.  Art!

£2 million gone up in smoke that's not being replaced

3)  HIDDEN UNEMPLOYMENT:  This affects at least 4 million Ruffians.  People made to work only one day a week are now classed as 'Employed'.  People forced to take unpaid leave, which can be up to a year in duration, are still shown as 'Employed'.  Because they haven't been fired.  Ruffian logic at it's finest.

4) INVESTMENTS: Big K looks on this figure as an economic indicator, which again proves how bad things are.  In Q 1 and Q2 of 2023 investments amounted to 0%.  Foreign investors left at the beginning of the Special Idiotic Operation, Ruffians are too poor to invest themselves, and neither China nor India are interested.  As I've said before, they are not allies of Putin; they are out for what they can get.  Art!

As of February 21st 2022

5)  BUDGET DEFICIT: O boy, did Big K lick his lips about this one!  He compared this to the 'body temperature' of an economy.  The deficit in May had (apparently) not increased due to huge cuts in government expenditure.  The Ruffian Ministry of Finance is in a right pickle about this, as they cannot borrow money from anywhere.  One of their options is to simply print more money - see below - or cut government spending.  That means no money for pensions, salaries, schools, civilian infrastructure, hospitals, etcetera.  Overall cuts have amounted to 50% of the previous month's budget.  Nor is that all: federal tax receipts have fallen by nearly 20% from the prior month.  Big K predicts that, instead of the supposed target of a ₽3 trillion deficit, 2023 will see a ₽10 trillion deficit.  Erk.  That's about a $120 billion black hole.  Art!

6)  INFLATION:  Prices are rising and the Central Bank's Nabiullina is worried, which is cause for pause for thought, as her ceaseless intervention has helped the Ruffian economy to stagger along thus far.  One consequence of this is that interest rates will increase, which may drive down the enormous amount of unsecured loans being taken out.  Another driver is increased salaries, because businesses are having to chase a far smaller pool of qualified employees, and are having to hike wages to attract the right people.  Art!

Probably shot through with grey by now

7) CARGO TURNOVER: In steep decline as exports and import volumes tank.  There are marshalling yards full of empty Chinese containers sitting static on wagons, not going anywhere.  Art!

Courtesy Chris_0

     8) LOW OIL PRICES:  Customers are down; the principal market, Europe, consumes barely any Ruffian oil or gas and the overall income for energy exports has been cut in half.  China and India are gouging the Ruffians with discounts of up to 50% per barrel.  Nor are they buying the much more expensive refined petroleum products; instead they buy the much cheaper crude, refine it and then sell the resultant products, thus being in competition with the Ruffians.  Art!

9)  THE RUBLE: I have enough on this topic to do a whole Intro on it.  However, I shall limit myself to saying that on 27th June 2023 there were ₽85 to the dollar.  A week later this has dropped to ₽89 to the dollar.  Lest you be unaware, this is Very Bad News.

10)  CAR SALES: Figures for 2022 were appallingly bad, so unsurprisingly 2023 has seen an improvement - by comparison.  Big K pointed out  that the pre-SIO car sales for May 2021 were 144 thousand, whereas in 2023 they were 73 thousand.  And those cars lack all sorts of refinements like air-conditioning, airbags, electric windows, bumper sensors, CD players, GPS and perhaps even windscreen wipers.

     Konstantin explained that all these figures were before Priggy got jiggy, at which point economics took a distant third to staying alive and backing the right party.  Big K, you took the right decision when you left for Tashkent!

Big K: proof that there are decent Ruffians

     Wow, that was a bit of an epic.  Let's wheel in a bit of complete nonsense instead.

"City In The Sky"

Okay, this particular nonsense isn't exactly light and frothy, dealing as it does with a theatre-level nuclear war.

     The tall, distinguished-looking Iranian felt his blood run cold.  His jaw gaped in horror and incomprehension.  For several seconds he felt physically unable to speak.

     ‘That’s insane!’ he finally managed. 

     ‘Isn’t it,’ agreed Weitzman.  ‘Nor is that all.  The Israelis loosed off a barrage of anti-missile missiles.  At least one appears to have exploded close enough to damage an incoming missile.  The laser scope is picking up significant yaw from it.’    

      Kouroush leant against the control panel, trying to get his mind around the problem.

     ‘Why do it?’ he asked himself, or perhaps everybody present.   The junta that had taken over – and thus ensured that he fled the country rather than work on a weapons programme – were economic incompetents of the highest order, corrupt, inefficient and worthless, but they weren’t mad.  ‘The Israelis have nuclear weapons of their own, lots of them.  This can only bring about retaliation.’

      He wondered about only five missiles being launched, and then wondered if they hadn’t been  decoys, used to exhaust the Israeli counter-measures.

     ‘Ah – the Jordanian Air Force is reporting a flight of Israeli jets overflying the north-west without permission,’ said Davy.  ‘Six of them.’

     All faces turned to Dovid, whose normally dark complexion now looked wan.

     Hmmm perhaps a bit too realistic to be called 'nonsense'. 

Gosh!

I had left "The Daily Beast" up because they had a sidebar featuring bizarre-looking items that were either construction tools or torture implements.  Of course - obviously! - when I went back to it, the page had automatically updated and they were gone <sad face>.

     However, for the first time I can remember, they DO NOT have any articles about the British monarchy <gasps>.

     So instead of Prince Harold and Markley (sp?) have this instead.  Art!

     This film is getting so much hate on Youtube from reviewers; people must be destroying keyboards with the froth dripping from their mouths.  I wonder what Box Office Mojo has to say about it?

Finally -

The best I can say about the weather is that it's not raining.  So, to get by step count up - it's waaaaaay down now that I'm not working in Gomorrah-in-the-Irwell - I feel obligated to take Edders for a trot.  See you!