Comments by "D. von N." (@D.von.N) on "Econ Lessons" channel.

Folks, oil production isn't targetted, it is its refinement and that is mostly for the domestic production. Pootin still can sell his low quality Ural oil, and he does. Less of it, but it didn't mess up with global prices as much. Don't mix the production of oil with the capacity to refine it.
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RuSSia would be better off if it was more self sufficient in most production. But Pootin got himself into the corner when he forgot he needed the west more to run his lifeline (oil and gas) industry, than the west needed his oil and gas. But that was already discussed in the past. Just reminded mysel that the supposedly genius and master strategist miscalculated just a few steps ahead. Everything goes according to... laws of nature.
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One could recover a currency with economy. There is a war economy in RuSSia, i.e. one way wasting reserves, flooding the society with money and getting nothing for it. It is a catastrople, and under unprecedented sanctions at that. Master strategist miscalculated the whole world.
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It is an artificial bubble. About 70% of the workforce is on the govt payroll and many had their salarias rised due to shortages of workforce. Also some were lucky to get a payout for their men on the front. Poor folks suddenly got their hands on more money and they spend, spend, spend. But it is just the country's financial black hole. Nothing much to show for it with a vacuum building inside. Banks were throwing money on the nation in unsecured loans and they have nothing to pay it back. And Kremlin won't have enough resources to bail banks. They either will go down or Kremlin will have to start printing money, which comes with other issues. And now the previously allies are pulling out under the threat of the secondary sanctions, China and Turkey alike, also Kazachstan. Tha recent attack in the concert hall sent further waves to the surrounding countries and the level of racism spiked, going after the immigrants on which the RuSSian economy stood.
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RuSSians are selling much less than they used to and importing much more than they used to along crashing Rubble, now importing kartoffeln (potatoes) and maslo (butter). Tons and tons and tons of them, because they sent their farmers to the meat grinder and dragged another portion of workforce into the military production. Kremlin is printing money like crazy. in an attempt to delay inevitable. 30% inflation with 21% interest rate, with millions of unsecured loans that the citizens have been trying to patch with further loans, and banks were giving the loans out like smarties. Wild Wild East.
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Just taxes won't make it. Nobody can and want to lend him money so he will have to start printing rubble like mad to balance the budget. And that will spirall the economy to the abyss. Turkey will look with envy how bad one country can get.
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On one side you say it is OK to pay high rent but less than a minute before you tell people to grow their own food. How much food did you grow in Boston for yourself?
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That pile of dirt they called dam, which burst and made the flood in RuSSia much worse than it could have been, was so expensive, but they could do it with 50x less money. That 50x the expenditure went into somebody's pocket. Remember the story of 1.5 million military uniforms 'disappearing' from one of the Siberian storage in 2022? The chance is they never existed. But they got paid for by the RuSSian taxpayer. That reminds me the massive healthcare expenditure in the US. Only a fraction of it is spent on actual value of the reatment in relation to the production cost. Most of it is on inefficient and bloated bureaucracy and hyped up meds cost, because the country had it in law it couldn't challenge pharma in these extortionate prices. So Americans pay huge amount of money on healthcare but it doesn't show on the health status of the nation. Even infant mortality is quite high in comparison to other developed economies. Many people are struggling innpain and with delayed treatment becuse they cannot afford the cost of the treatment. And going bankrupt from medical bills is incomprehensible by my European brain. Why do you allow it? It all hurts the economy.
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How does looting African gold, diamonds and anything to be sold by RuSSia fit into this equation?
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@ycplum7062 my comment from yesterday disappeared. I said I was familiar with this mechanism, so no news to me. But the reasoning goes further. You are talking in absolute numbers. That is not going to happen, like all oil and gas extraction collapsing. That didn't happen even before USSR went down. If anything will affect the extraction it will be sanctions, not eradicating refineries. Pootin still needs and will sell crude oil, even more if he cannot process it himself. Some wells will be shut, but not all of them. And OPEC will very happily fill the gap if they find it suitable for their plans. Pootin is in it alone and he can only blame himself. He needs revenue and oil has been the dominant commodity. As long as the wells function, he will keep alive as many as he can, under given circumstances.
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Just a note: as our ancestor didn't have electricity, they were equipped with other tools to withstand winter. Millions who grew up with electricity today don't have those alternatives. Worth of consideration. Otherwise I agree. The peace can only be achieved by honoring the 1991 borders. RuSSia must learn a hard lesson and stop nurturing imperialism in their hearts. They have the largest country in the world, with great riches. They don't need more of somebody else's. Attempts of doing so will bring their demise.
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For a man who said has visited RuSSia often or for some time (whichever is true, I remember you said something of this sort) you are very bad in pronouncing their names, one barely knows who you are talking about. Repeat after me: Elveera Nabeeh-uleena.
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Listening further, from a European point of view, the trickle down economics produced more inequality and hard work no longer guarantees you plenty. You are ignoring large and growing part of the population, also in the USA, that struggle to secure the basics, despite working their a$$ off. Many today can only dream about affording their own home with even two salaries, let alone just one, like it was in the past decades. Incredible number of people go without medical treatment or were forced to file for bankruptsy due to medical bills, some had to sell their home. So overall America is doing fine, but the inequality in wealth is astonishing. Don't forget about those less lucky than yourself. They are real, their struggle is real. Now I am learning like pharma and health professionals are in it together, promoting statins and low cholesterol, based on skewed research statistics, with a dementia as a ticking time bomb as a consequence. Not everyone has the agency to resist the push that is not addressing the real issue (corrupt food industry) but creating future issues by pushing to fix what isn't broken.
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There is a Canadian, having his channel here, he dragged all his family, a wife and 8 kids to RuSSia, singing odes how RuSSia is great, for traditional values. He cannot bear the LGBT and stuff, also life in Canada became expensive... wait for the economic collapse in RuSSia, you'll be glad to go back to Canada. Broke. He is totally delusional. Millions RuSSians with functioning brains and resources fled the counry. Brain drain. Delusional folks are going back into the lion's den.
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No figures coming out of Kremlin should be believed. Any words, frankly. Remember how Pootin laughed at us when we were saying he was going to invade Ukraine? He denied any such intent while gathering 200k soldiers by the UA borders, blaming West from undermining his security. He is now nationalising big businesses via fabricated court cases, even self made companies, not privatised after the fall of USSR, that they privatised the assets unlawfully. Like the GOP, Pootin surrounded himself with his loyal puppets who are now running the circus. Bad times are ahead of poor RuSSian folks, who allowed themselves to get cooked like frogs. Don't let that happen to your country.
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I am pretty skeptical about fusion on any meaningful scale within the next 50 years or more. People need to read the less positive articles also, not just the hype, to get a better picture.
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This Chinese capitalist mindset should remind to everyone that the 'communist' is just a label to deceive. They don't even get a hospital treatment before paying upfront in too many cases. Chinese economy is a hardcore capitalism and the government is authoritarian from top to bottom, not a communist one, where people own everything. People don't rule the society, they are dispensable servants and they go missing each single day. RuSSia is heading the same direction, NK 2.0.
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Re: debt: RuSSia can only dream about having debt. Nobody wants to lend to the country even if they wanted to borrow. How about that? And it will soon need finances pouring in, a lot of it. Just they won't. Pootin will have to start printing more money and let's see whether RuSSia will beat Zimbabwe in inflation afterwards. LMAO.
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@jarcadipane2849 one propagandist probed the nation with a suggestion the other day in the RuSSian TV, that people should donate some of their money for the country, like patriots... I think that gives us a hint what the nation can expect from those thieves in Kremlin. Interest? Dream on! Kremlin will help itself, ike Xi did, taking a third of people's social scurity from their accounts. And they can do nothing about it.
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Those conquistadors... looks like they got it wrong back then as the modern false Christians do it. You don't serve god when you are getting rich. That's not what Jesus asked you to do.
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In the so called 'good times', if there were any such times in RuSSia, they had 0.5 or 1% growth at most. Now they are trying to tell us that the depletion of state reserves on scrap metal ending in Ukraine, with a massive brain drain, demography collapse, inflation, enormous uptake of unsecured loans, increased taxation, lack of medicines for diabetes or hypertension (let alone cancer), reduced financing of social care, healthcare, education, and anything else but the war effort, is a growing economy?
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And thirdly, you seem to be amazed by the nuclear fusion. As a cosmology and particles physics nerd, I can tell you it is not that simple. Fusion happens in nature in massive objects like our Sun, via gravity. That is an extreme amount of energy we don't have much of at our disposal, to make this technology work for us on a larger scale. We just don't. It looks good in the lab on a small scale, but using it to power entire cities or countries? And planes, ships and trucks? I don't see it coming anytime soon. If we even managed to create a reactor large enough to power a city, there are safety concerns and other limiting factors. There are limits in physics and that also means no interstellar travel for us without causalties or failures of other sort. It is a hostile environment out tere, and either travelling fast or slow would mean death to the crew from the radiation out there. Creating a shield like in the star trek requires a lot of additional energy, at the expense of propulsion. That shield we enjoy on Earth is again a legacy of the mass of matter we sit on. Mars has lost this feature for being smaller and cooled down already.
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@nicolasolton Indeed! LOL
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I don't remember when I watched a Hollywood movie last time, never been to Disneyland, I prefer documentaries and similar educational content, BBC has plenty. As a kid I remember playing a game, a wolf catching eggs on 4 slots at an increasing speed, an electronic game, it had written Elektronika in azbuka and the wolf was a character from very funny Soviet cartoon series Nu Pogodi (wolf chasing a bunny and setting up traps). My neighbours had a similar game, a diver trying to reach a treasure avoiding the tentacles of a massive octopus. That was 80s and 90s. But I also bought sharpie highlighters back around 2000, made in USA and they still work! A bit chunky ones, plenty of ink in them, not used heavily. Last year I bought cheap highlighters in Wilko, made who knows where (probably China) and one was dry already. Things were made to last in the past, but also a country of origin could mean a better quality. Although I don't expect modern Sharpies last as long. I mentioned the RuSSian device in reference to a previous video of this kind. There were better times in that part of the world.
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@Алексей-ч2ф9л I cannot tell 30 years later, but it was produced in the USSR and exported. Back in those days Sojuz invested into R&D and had a bunch of clever people doing stuff. They were the first sending Sputnik up, to the panic of the West.
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So is China, just softer. But people still go missing there, for organs and whatnot.
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RuSSia, like China, have deeply rooted sense for exploitation and cheating. The old soviet credo was: if you don't steal, you are depriving your family. Chinese are basically the same. They hardly invent anything of their own, they copy all they can and have a credo: if you can cheat, cheat. Ask serpentza, a youtuber. Adulteration of goods is rampant, cheating, even maintaining or fixing lifts is faked with catastrophic consequences for users. Someone is seen collapsing on the street, nobody comes to their help because they are afraid the collapse is staged and the helper will get sued for caused injuries, literlly to earn extra money. This is evryday China for you. Being xenophobic is socially engineered by CCP, to blame the outside world for all the failure of CCP's own making, like in RuSSia, like in North Korea.
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@EconLessons yes, but youaren't the whole universe.
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God doesn't exist. You simply harvest whay you sow. Simple as that.
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What do I own from RuSSia? At the moment nothing, but there might be a PC locked down by a ransomware attack. They ramped up the cyber crime targetting the wide world, like Chinese, to gain intellectual property or a revenge because as you say, they don't have much of their own. The vast majority of technological advancements they have been using is western. Either stolen secretly or via companies forced to share their know how if producing or operating there.
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I am having a lot of fun learning Linux, so I can avoid buying new computer when Microsoft would like me to. I have invested into extra RAM, some external back up storage (everyone should have them regardless of their operating system) and showing a middle finger to the monopoly. I can affortd a new computer, but I decided otherwise. Even my phone is several years old, never found it attractive to upgrade every year like a slave.
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The poverty in RuSSia is decreasing only on the paper, because of depletion of the social security fund. Pootin is throwing money which he no longer has on the economy just to keep the war going - a pure waste and it is just a bubble. Banks are at the brink of collapse for throwing unsecured loans on people who patched previous loans payments with new loans.
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Is this about RuSSia or are you trying to give us some lessons on food manufacturing and processing, that is present worldwide?
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@ycplum7062 I have been familiar with this mechanism, I am learning nothing new, but thanks for the reminder. The thing is, Pootin is desperate to sell as much as he can. Some extraction will be affected, obviously, but he will try to supply on the market all he can, so the international market will feel it less than they are worried. What could make them feel it more is either the stores depleted and no new wells drilled, or failed technology on particular wells due to western sanctions (or sabotage). Pootin needs to sell his oil as much as he can as nobody can give him a proper loan anymore and businesses pulled out of the country. And he is haemorrhaging money like if there was no tomorrow. All this war is incredibly costly and his revenue got a massive hit. There was a propagandist on the Ru TV saying people should give some of their money to the country, to save it. They are already trying this rhetoric to see how it sits with the population. The CCP just took third of people's money overnight, asking nobody. That is what autocrats do.
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Also I wouldn't use Switzerland as an example of wealth, since their wealth is based on dirty money from all around the world. It is easy to bang that drum when you have dirty money pouring in, turn a blind eye on it and make profit from it. Nope, Switzerland is not the right example.
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You have left out healthcre in RuSSia that sucks. Not only due to the sanctions and the lack of basic medication like insulin or bp meds, but even many doctors there have fake documents, not rely qualified to do the job. The brain drain created a vacuum in the sector and the news was they wanted to fast track surgeons to qualify in 1 year back in 2023. Figure that out. Many were dragged to the front and when you graduate, you are tied to be pulled out to the war any time, you cannot say no or your license will be cancelled. The country basically owns you. Add corruption on top of that, for the empoverished folks having no spare money for bribes and you have a disaster unfolding in front of your eyes.
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Russian citizens had responsibility maybe 10-20 years ago. After a careful social engineering, they have no say into anything these days. They get arrested and get a prison sentence for just liking an antigovt post. If you think they have some power to protest, go and try it yourself. Let us know the result.
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No confidence in RuSSian economy? Say there is no confidence in RuSSian government. Stuff get confiscated on daily basis. All those boeings that were kept within the country, never returned to the owners, literally stolen... now breaking down due to poor maintenance and lacking spare parts. Who would want to go there and risk losing the entire business? Western companies were selling their manufacture for a symbolic $1 just to get out and not coming back anytime soon. Rubble is a lost currency. Elvira Nabiullina did almost miracles with the currency previously, but she now ran out of tricks. The state reserves to fuel the war economy will soon run out and banks are in a big trouble for throwing money on the nation via unsecured loans and for most of these poor folks who are unable to pay it back the only way out is to get conscripted. All those economic figures coming out of Moscow are just a smoke and mirrors. China also lies about its economic figures.
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You cannot sustain this model forefer... when do you think North Korea's model will break?
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Nobody really trades with Rubble, so Kremlin can do to its value whatever they want. It doesn't change anything on the fact RuSSia is importing more than ever and selling less than ever, with record low unemployment that they announced 60 yo a middle age, so sick and powerless people are forced into labour.. In a cou try with lower lifespan due to medical neglect and alcoholism, besides depleting the male workforce on the frontlines. Who cares what Rubble is doing? Kremlin keeps paying out bribes in millions to individuals to go to die in Ukraine. About 40% population on the govt payroll, military comples doing 3 shifts nonstop, with nothing in return for the economy. Elvira is out of ideas how to keep the country afloat.
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Indeed. RuSSia has been taking advantage of the abundant natural resources, sitting back with their feet on the table, and extremely corrupt at that. Like leeches, screwing each other. The old soviet 'communist' credo was: if you don't steal you are depriving yourself and your family. My home country was influenced by that mentality and still suffers, 30 years later after the collapse of the USSR. And now the tzar wants it all back. 5he cold war was a bit different, there was investment into the space programs, but their recent attack on the Moon (as you cannot call it anything else) was just a propaganda show off, not a genuine space program that needs investment, dedication, transparency to a degree and years and years of focus. You cannot just take almost abandoned project, rush some money through its rusty pipes to remind the natin their past glory under the current situation of a failed 3 day special military failure, and expect it to deliver.
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British emporium thrived because it was more successful in exploiting others worldwide. Innovation and technology was just a side project. Many countries without this past are now better economically than Britain is, infamously called the dirty man of Europe in the 1970s and still has quite a poor recovery rate after the pandemic, thanks to the corruption. Brexit didn't go well and still means disdvantages more than otherwise, inflation is higher thn in the US, economy is struggling, poverty still on the rise... since it cannot exploit as much as in the golden era of building the 'commonwealth', all these crooks can do is to turn against their own citizens.
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@nattygsbord I don't disagree completely, but like in the cold war era the competition between the East and the West sped up R&D. So did the need of rapid transport of the loot from around the world by the British. Where there is a motivation, there is the might. It is easy to make money on the backs of millions exploited workforce, either from India or Africa. This parasitism brought riches to the country and when you have money, you have power and can purchase brains, or keep propping up your own. When you don't need to do mundane jobs like average plebs to survive, when you can get the best education and gather knowledge grom all aroud the world, you have a significant advantage. While the golden era of Islam was a natural result of a geography where trade crossed the roads and the religious fundamentalism got a break, Britain hammered its industrial progress through exploitation.
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@gnice8765 who knows? You won't get true stats from Kremlin. Debt isn't necessarily bad if you have a functioning economy, which RuSSia doesn't. Even that $60 bn package for Ukraine is mostly funds to upgrade American army by American companies, so the old stock (still of a better quality and performance than the RuSSia one) is given to Ukraine, America saving itself the cost of decommissioning it. So the Kremlin shills in the US senate voting against it are basically preventing their own country to modernise itself. It should be a treason.
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I would guess RuSSia doesn't have as much of gold reserves since it keeps plundering the African ones, and I see African trolls cheering up for RuSSia on social media... turkeys calling for Christmas.
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I am all for Ukraine, we donated money on red cross when the war broke and I am a NAFO member for donating on their night vision. But I find your videos too chaotic, jumping from one thought to another without much connection or explanation. What is obvious to you isn't necessarily obvious to everyone when 6ou shower us with sentences that suddenly fom in your head. One quarter into this video I still have no idea what piece of paper you hold in your hand, just guess it is some lottery ticket or something... And of course you care abou money, you are an economist, as you say. All of us earthlings do.
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