Tag: ruble crisis

“We must assume they can put two and two together”

I’m not assuming anything, but it’s nice to dream.

bad_math_225_wallpaper_i7wo4

Vladimir Putin’s social compact with the Russian people is clearly defined: Putin agrees to give the Russian people rising living standards, jobs, regular pensions and economic stability. In return, the Russian people look the other way as Putin and his inner circle steal the country blind, destroy alternate media, and suppress all internal dissent. Those who witnessed (as I did) the economic chaos, unpaid pensions and salaries, runaway inflation, and harassment by mafia and petty officials of the Yeltsin years understand the appeal of Putin’s social compact. But Putin is no longer keeping up his end of the bargain. Will the Russian people continue to look the other way? That is the question.

[…]

Putin has not held up his end of the bargain he made with the Russian people. Let’s see what their reaction will be. We must assume they can put two and two together.

—Paul Roderick Gregory, “Ruble Hits New Low—Putin Can’t Keep His Promise to Russian People,” Forbes, December 16, 2014

Actually, literally everyone in my class last night, most of whom have something to do with business of some kind, have put two and two together quite easily, judging by what they were saying. (And some of them invoked the unwritten “social compact” Gregory refers to, above.) But this was also combined with the usual native fatalism, as if it were impossible to imagine anything beyond or better than the now totally bankrupt rule of the “world’s most powerful man.”

Mind you, it is one and the same über-capitalist magazine that has these contradictory wishes: hoping ordinary Russians can muster a resistance that it wouldn’t be happy to see in most other places or under different circumstances.

Image, above, courtesy of Law, Gospel: Action

A Steady Diet of Nothing

dog meat

As the ruble has been crashing through the floor the past couple days, Petersburg Channel 5 wanted its viewers focused on what really matters: the allegedly rampant eating of dog and cat meat in “civilized” (wink, wink, sneer, sneer) Switzerland.

Broadcast and posted on December 15, the story‘s headline, above, reads: “Furry farm. In Switzerland, they want to ban Christmas meals of cat and dog [meat]. On the eve of Christmas, they want to ban residents of Switzerland [from eating] one of the national holiday dishes. It turns out that the civilized Swiss are not averse to treating themselves to the meat of pets.”

The piece ends with a warning that cat and dog flesh aren’t “national holiday dishes” only in Switzerland. This form of barbarism is also a problem—you guessed it—in Ukraine.

Meanwhile, back in the realm of news that would matter to Petersburgers who haven’t lost their minds, as late as yesterday afternoon (December 16), Channel 5 was claiming the ruble had gone on a “counterattack” yesterday morning.

ruble attack

Apparently, this tactic of downplaying the real news has been the pattern in other Russian mainstream news outlets:

While the ruble collapsed 10 percent on Monday, making headlines around the world, some Russians may have been unaware of the recent intensification of their currency’s woes.

A prime-time news bulletin broadcast by state-owned Channel One at 9 p.m. on Monday only featured a short segment on the currency drop — the fifth item on the news program — after reports about the terrorist attack in Australia, the killing of a terrorist suspect by law enforcement authorities in Russia and two announcements by President Vladimir Putin on military parades and construction targets.

When the report on the ruble was shown it blamed the decline in value on the falling price of oil —despite the ruble’s fall being significantly sharper Monday than that of Brent crude and actually starting against the background of strengthening oil prices.

The apparent unwillingness of Russian state-owned media to give airtime to the ruble’s troubles — particularly among television channels, which are traditionally much more tightly controlled by the Kremlin — likely reflects the political sensitivity of the issue, and a desire to avoid fueling panic.

Most Russians get their news from state television, which has closely mirrored Putin’s anti-American rhetoric during the Ukraine crisis.

In a popular sleight of hand, state-owned news outlets have preferred to phrase ruble falls in recent months as euro or dollar rises. “Western currencies gained in value at breakneck speed all day Monday,” one report on state-controlled NTV read late Monday.

The Central Bank’s emergency overnight decision to raise interest rates to 17 percent was reported by most major television channels Tuesday morning, but in many cases was quickly pushed down the news agenda by reports of snap military drills in Russia’s western Kaliningrad region.

—Howard Amos, “Russian State Media Downplays Extent of Ruble Crisis,” The Moscow Times, December 16, 2014

Thanks to SC for the heads-up on the Swiss dog meat story.