Foundation and Empire, part II [Stoat]

Following up on my brilliantly prescient Foundation and Empire from April, the current economic situation in Russia is worth commenting on. The Russian rouble [is] in free-fall despite [a] shock 17% rate rise says Auntie (and she really does, doesn’t she, which is silly: rates rose to 17%, not by 17%), and Timmy has some notes about 17% interest rates.

The acute problems with the Rouble stem from the oil price fall, of course, and not Western sanctions (The Graun thinks otherwise, but I wouldn’t trust them on finance). Their longer-term problems stem from them being an unreformed economy propped up by oil; and Putin bears a lot of responsibility for that lack of reform – as, of course, do the bozo Russkie electorate who keep re-electing him, bribed with their own money, the idiots. But I’ll certainly hope that sanctions are making a bad situation worse. All this leads to wild paranoia amongst the nuttier Russkies.

However, its quite hard to see a good way out of this. Well, I can see one: Putin says “oh, rats, its all going horribly wrong. I’ll pull all my troops out of Eastern Ukraine (and Crimea!?), stop propping up the bandits, and give up the hopeless yearning for the return of the Evil Empire. And reform the Russian economy and political system”. In return for which the West removes sanctions, and leans on the Saudis to cut production, and we all waltz off into the sunset holding hands. The trouble is, I can’t really believe it.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1welZol