Bad time to live in Russia

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benjamen

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Columnist urging fellow Russians to pull their money out of the banking system:
http://www.businessinsider.com/colu...aders-to-pull-their-money-out-of-banks-2015-2

"The ruble has tanked over the past year, falling over 50%..."

"...inflation surging to 15% in January."

"In December, over 100 Muscovites took to the streets to demand help with foreign-currency mortgages as the ruble crisis forced up repayments, in many cases higher than their monthly salaries."

:popcorn:
 
I honestly think much of what we read about Russia in the West is pure propaganda. The reality of the situation is that Putin is extremely popular and the west has given his administration a foreign adversary to blame domestic problems on.

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/02/06/eastern-ukraine-to-fall-to-russia-sanctions-failed/

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/02/06/putin-seeks-to-divide-conquer/

When you take into consideration the news out earlier today that Greece is going to help Russia with a pipeline that goes from Russia, to Turkey and through Greece into Europe... Russia's influence over Europe has net/net grown over the past year. You wont read that in the paper but it's true.
 
A) I wasn't really commenting on the government/Putin's power and international politics. However, I do think Putin is playing this whole scenario very, very well.

B) This thread was supposed to be about a Fiat Ponzi system, where the average Russian holding the local fiat currency has gotten hammered as of late. I also wonder why the author, of the article I linked in the first post, recommended physical dollars instead of physical precious metals, real estate, or foreign stocks?
 
Oh.. don't take my venting as bitching at you benjamin. We are all on the same side here.

Since it's Business insider commenting on a "Russian" paper that is a joint venture of the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal I think it's pretty damn obvious why they are advocating dollars over precious metals. It's obvious that they are wanting to scare people in Russia to pull their money out of banks and sell their rubles.

That article is claiming that Russians are pissed at their own government when in reality, they are blaming the US and Europe because of the sanctions. Putin's approval rating is only this high because he has an enemy to blame their problems on. Their evidence of discontent is that "over 100 people took to the streets to protest their losses on foreign currency based mortgages..." what? Is that supposed to mean something?

Russians for the most part don't use debt to purchase their homes. It's a growing industry over there but for the most part, the idea is completely foreign to them. That's because the public didn't need mortgages during the soviet era and since then, they haven't really had much access to credit markets in general.

These articles are so transparent and it's sad more people don't see past that.
 
My wife is Russian, from Moscow. Her parents are still living there part time. Inflation is bad due to the plunging Ruble. But keep in mind that this country has had so many crises that people know how to adapt. The sanctions can be felt, but they blame the evil West, not their own leader Putin. He is actually quite popular because of the Ukraine situation. My wife hates him, thankfully.

We had dinner with a Swiss-Ukrainian couple tonight. She is from the Donetzk, right in the middle of the conflict area in Eastern Ukraine. She is of Russian decent, but has a Ukrainian passport. In these passports they are marked a being "Russian". She owns several appartements there which she is renting out, but nobody is paying rent anymore. Some have fled. The Kiew government is stationing soldiers and mercernaries at empty flats. Once one payment for energy or telephone is missed, they ceize the appartements. Since most Ukrainians fled in a hurry, Donetzk is a ghost town now. She raided her bank accounts before all hell broke lose, partially because I kept on harrassing her husband for months with the "get the f... out and take all the money with you" phrase.
The Kiew government forces are dominated by actual neonazis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion who are supported by Western mercanaries, including some from the US:



Who is paying these guys? Certainly not the bankrupt Kiew government...

The Russian side is paying far less and most fighters are actually Russian patriots willing to die for Putin (idiots...). They have sophisticated weaponery from the Russian military, including heavy artillery, radar, anti-air, tanks...

It's not a fair battle, the Russians are massively superior, in terms of manpower as well as equipment. And don't discount morale... The question is: where will they stop? Will they eventually go all the way to Kiew? Might NATO intervene?
 
When was the last good time to live in Russia? Maybe for a few years after the cold war if you were a smart business man, but even that's a stretch IMO especially since you could do business without living there.
 
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