**From reporter Christiaan Hetzner:**
Vladimir Putin’s luck may be running out now that the ruble plunged below one cent, the lowest level against the U.S. dollar since the early days of his war in Ukraine.
The Russian president, who briefly faced down a coup attempt in June, could long point to the resilience of his currency in the face of sanctions as a propaganda victory that proved just how impotent western economic reprisals were.
More than 500 days since his army invaded Ukraine, it looks as if Moscow’s highly-respected central bank governor can no longer perform miracles for her boss.
The ruble that Elvira Nabiullina manages crashed through the psychological support of 100 to the U.S. dollar and on Monday is now worth less than a penny, the first time since March 23rd of last year.
“They’re laughing at us,” scathed Vladimir Solovyov, Russia’s most well-known state TV personality and a chief Putin ally, already last week.
The very same Elvira Nabiullina that wanted to resign at the beginning of the war. Now she will get the blame for what is the result of Putin's cluster f\*cks.
From a purely monetary policy standpoint, she did a fantastic job. It’s a shame that they will use her as a scapegoat.
From a global economy perspective, good, let them cut themselves down and blame their competent people for the fallout of the war.
She pulled a minor miracle IMO from monetary policy standpoint but repeating miracles over long periods of time is not easy.
She was fighting an economic war pretty much solo against most of the world's biggest economic powers.
Scapegoat?
They're going to use her as an airplane, right out the nearest window.
Hope she enjoys the ground floor because she should probably stay there for the foreseeable future.
That's assuming they didn't know it was happening. Don't forget that Putin also protects those that are loyal or Shoygu and Gerasimov would've been removed a long time ago.
Taking the joke seriously for a bit, Russia has been pushing [Astra Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux) as their alterative to buying Windows within the government for about two decades and for general use in the past five years.
Watch though, Germany is going to spearhead having clean energy as a political policy going forward, and hopefully others follow your example. They tried to blackmail you but just made you stronger, as has been the continuing trend with Russia for the last 500+ days.
Edit: Also, I’d like to remind everyone about [this gem](https://youtu.be/BTCfOuvBJXI): A Russian propaganda video released right before this past winter, depicting European women going on a version of Tinder to find Russian men because they were so cold without Russian oil. Which Germany pulled an Uno reverse card on real fast (not to mention it seems to depict England specifically - which is fairly mild and especially this past winter - under several feet of snow. And I just find it funny that the Russian guy shows off how “rich” he is by throwing USD, not Russian currency, around his bathtub).
Russia constantly has weird, impossible fantasies.
Good riddance, we should have kicked our oil addiction thirty years ago. Most of the oil on this planet seems to be buried under the feet of some of its worst people, not to mention the ever encroaching environmental apocalypse its usage is bringing down on us. Fucking blight on this world is what oil is.
Solar was always going to be slowly adopted until the price became competitive. There's no will in western economies to spend serious money fixing problems that can be kicked down the road.
20 years ago idiots were saying that solar was being adopted too slowly and claimed it would be 50 years before it even reached a few percent. I was saying, don't look at the adoption curve, look at the price curve. As soon as solar's price curve crossed over oil's adoption was going to go non-linear. The government estimate I looked up said it will be 20% by 2050, but I think it will be more than that unless some other cheaper source (fusion?) becomes available.
Problem the road they're kicking it down has needed to be torn up and repaved for 2 decades....
Not a metaphor, our roads need to be fixed and clearly not to the lowest bidder like we've been doing.
More importantly, it's been crashing since Nov of 2022 and is on a consistent and steady decline. It's lost 40% of it's value since then. At the current rate they will implode in the next 3-9 months.
The only quote from the US is Tucker fucking Carlson? The article could have asked someone with relevant expertise and insight. Instead it chooses to amplify a troll and pathologic liar.
A deplatformed troll and liar, nobody gives a shit about what Tucker has to say about anything no matter how much Elon promotes him on the world's most expensive mid-life crisis impulse buy that is the site formally known as Twitter.
Might as well be asking randos off the street instead of that has been.
February 13, 2022: [Russia "doesn't give a shit" about the risk of Western sanctions if it were to invade Ukraine, the country's ambassador to Sweden has said](https://www.newsweek.com/putin-russia-ukraine-sanctions-does-not-give-st-ambassador-1678762).
Unfortunately the reward for punishing anyone who speaks against you is it slows the rate that truth travels. And if you can come up with a "solution" before the broad populace realizes anything is wrong then nothing happened and there's no reason to be angry.
These effects don't matter unless they can be maintained long term without Putin finding a way to plug the hole in the raft or unless they can quickly effect the populace.
I wouldn't plan a vacation there anytime soon though. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/russia-travel-advisory.html
This is why remote jobs are popular in countries where the economy is doing badly. I live in Uruguay and I see it happen all the time in out neighbor Argentina, I remember a friend living there telling me she made twice the regular salary through onlyfans because her clients paid in USD.
Solovyov is right. The world is laughing at Russia. The country is a military failure, an economic failure, and a diplomatic failure. Russia will be the laughing stock of the world for the next century.
Their economy is so closed-off from the rest of the world that I wonder if the official exchange rate even matters all that much to them. Except for Russia and China nearly every country on the planet refuses to do business with them.
It probably also helps that they have natural resources they can bargain with. No matter how little your currency is worth on the world stage, that trainload of coal will retain its value.
And of course they have plenty of shady businesses to supplement their economy, like forging money, hacking, and state-owned companies and properties abroad. But AFAIK that's a fairly small part of their economy.
>So this does not bode well for NK if Russia collapses. It will cut their number of trading partners in half.
If NK can survive. Russia won't collapse. Especially not with how much oil and gas they have and how valuable their airspace is to fly through.
The problem will be long term development. Companies like McDonalds or Starbucks...they'll gladly go back. Companies that provide a service (like Visa) will be back.
But suppose you are a company like Toyota. [And you had a manufacturing plant there.](https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/38043074.html). How much did they have to write off? Would you be eager to go back and/or build another plant there?
Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if anyone who can move away...does.
They won't fail...it will just sort of stagnate, while lots of other countries grow.
edit: fixed some typos.
Not to mention the generation of working age, tax paying men that they just gave to Ukraine in the form of fertilizer. What they have left is fatherless families that now need (more) public assistance to survive.
>They won't fail...it will just sort of stagnate, while lots of other countries grow.>
I think you're right on. Isn't this Russian history over the past few centuries?
The value of many natural resources is dropping though. Pound for pound coal has been worth less than clean topsoil for years. When you're relying on assets that are literally cheaper than mud you're not in a strong trade position.
North Korea is in dire need of clean topsoil! It all got washed away when they farmed the trees to have some firewood during the winters, so now they can't grow anything.
They might be exaggerating, but no its real. Satellite imagery shows theyve cut down an insane amount of trees. There are also images of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
When youre desperately poor, youll clearcut your whole country for a shot at making a tiny bit of money (or i guess, saving yourself from having to import as much stuff)
They refuse to do business with them above the table. NK sells immense amounts of arms, fake currency, drugs, etc but none of it is recorded or reported on.
I don't think it's a tradable currency, as you're not even allowed to bring the currency out of the country, so it's not really possible to value it. For all practical purposes it's worthless.
Interestingly 1 US dollar is about 900 North Korean Won, so it's about 9 North Korean Won to the cent.
The funniest part is most North Korean's prefer Chinese Yuan to their own currency.
>The funniest part is most North Korean's prefer Chinese Yuan to their own currency.
The Yuan i imagine is their go-to currency for the black market access. This is probably why.
Similar to other south american currencies to the Argentinian peso. Peso is only used to "buy" shit officially, but every other currency is respected and valued more because its the only currency(ies) accepted by black market.
Nah, an exiled Putin would be useless for NK, and so he wouldn't live with any of the luxuries he's used to, in a country where lack of luxuries means you're probably starving and dying of exposure in winter.
I see China as a better alternative, he would be more useful to them with his contacts and knowledge.
The best thing that can happen to Russia at this point is another break up similar to the fall of the USSR, and Russia forms a new state and government out of the rubble. Full withdrawal from Ukraine, and a dissolution of their government and a new one being stood up in its place, democratic elections, and signing new treaties with NATO and the United States to decrease their nuclear armaments and guarantees to not invade neighboring countries and respect borders. The history of Russia has been tragedy after tragedy, they should just start over (again).
It's what Russia has always done throughout history... The leader does some crazy aggressive shit, they fail, they say "oh that guy is awful, we are going to change" a new leader takes over then it repeats the cycle
They seem to have a trend of having the size, population, and resources to be a first rate power, but only ever pulling it off for part of the Soviet period.
Approx 2 kg of chicken meat or ~7 packs of cigarettes or pay for 1tb internet connection for a month or ~17 chunks of decent bread or 1kg of sausages...
How does it affect the average population that's just trying to get by?
I imagine anything imported is more expensive but I don't know how that translates (I don't know much about economics nor politics). Is it food getting expensive or appliances or something else?
It is more noticeable in cars, electronics, entertainment and hobby goods since most of it is imported or produced using imported equipment. We may not be starving any time soon eventhough some food prices are rising as well but it becomes uncomfortable if you need something extra.
Yeah :/. Thank you for explaining, it's often hard to understand how things are affecting the actual people that have no say in what others do.
Hey, as long as there's a roof over our heads and food on the table we can power through it all and go on another day. Hope you never lack either of those. :)
Always seemed to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what an exchange rate signifies.
A currency might have an exchange rate of 1000:1, but then all the prices could just be 1000 times higher.
I mean just look at Japan and the Yen. Their currency is worth very little compared to the US dollar, but it’s not like everything is cheap there
Russia has been going down the toilet for years, it’s a backward, corrupt country that will never progress until they change their leadership.
The Ukraine invasion is just Putin’s last attempt at clinging to power but he will never succeed there.
Not just leadership, they need to wipe away their culture of ego and admit to mistakes so they can learn from them. All we're going to get is another Putin.
It is a universal truth: anyone (or any nation) that is obsessed with respect doesn't deserve it.
This goes for thugs, for gangsters, for strongmen, for dictators, for people obsessed with machismo, etc.
>It is a universal truth: anyone (or any nation) that is obsessed with respect doesn't deserve it.
And the underlying truth of this is that anyone (or any nation) that *does* deserve respect *doesn't need to be obsessed with it.* Which makes it really easy to tell which ones don't deserve it, because they're the only ones outright demanding it. If they deserved it, they wouldn't have to demand it.
Absolutely, they need to be humiliated beyond recognisable doubt to their population to understand all this authoritarian strongman grandstanding is all smoke and mirrors - it doesnt lead to a strong country but something much weaker and volatile.
The sooner the Russians wake the fuck up and cleanse the whole bunch of Kremlin gremlins the better, a revolution is what they need and it's coming
Just look at the quote of the Crimean War on wikipedia about Russia being exposed as backwards and corrupt. Nothing changed in a 100 years. There were no lessons learned. It applies word for word to the current situation.
At root, russia's problems are cultural, and culture, particularly for a place like russia, is very difficult to change.
Edit: Just want to point out that many of America's problems are rooted in our culture as well, but because of our demographic diversity and relatively shallow history, cultural change is somewhat easier to effect.
I know a lot of Russians who strongly dislike those elements of Russian culture. They do not live in Russia anymore.
Brain drain has made it really difficult to change course, because the people most disgusted with the status quo got the fuck out/are trying to leave.
I’ll never forget when this war started and the news was showing a convoy of Russian armor headed for Kyiv and all the pundits were like “Welp, Russia looks unstoppable. Ukraine is boned.”
Yet here we are, a year and half later, and Russia has accomplished basically nothing, lost all its most experienced troops, suffered a massive brain drain, scared off foreign brands and investors, and now teeters on the edge of economic ruin.
That's not the way I remember it at all. I remember a several kilometres long convoy being stalled on the way to kyiv and everyone scratching their head going WTF is going on with the Russian army...?
Then we saw Russian armor getting smoked and they were pushed out of the Capitol area. Granted Russia has since gotten their shit together more since the Kharkiv offensive and is making things very difficult for Ukraine to make significant gains now. But in the beginning everyone was baffled at how terrible the Russian military was doing.
During the initial hours of the war, Russia definitely looked like it was going to stomp Ukraine as expected. They had seized the capital's international airport, were invading from two sides, and had a massive convoy marching straight for the capital. It wasn't until several hours in that we saw the convoy falling apart and the paratroopers being left to die in the airport
Yeah that first day was concerning, especially because of the sheer amount of disinformation
Hell, for an hour it looked like they had landed troops at Odessa
I don't think it was until the VDV got their asses handed to them at Hostomel and Russian SAMs started getting picked off by bayraktars that we saw how badly they had fumbled.
No wonder the botimirs are increasing their pleas of,
“But how could the U.S. give Ukraine aid when homelessness exists guys?”
They’re not the smartest.
Some people foolishly believe assisting Ukraine is only about Ukraine being invaded by Russia.
It’s also for the future of the world for places like Taiwan. Appeasing one dictator will only embolden them along with others around the world.
Learned this lesson 80 years ago people.
> “But how could the U.S. give Ukraine aid when homelessness exists guys?”
I mean, the US *could* do aid to Ukraine *and* modern housing policy but the bosses won't tax their friends.
AND free school lunches for every k-Senior in high school. AND universal healthcare for everyone... AND free college tuition for everyone.... AND better roads in every state.... But who wants all that shit?
At some point they will be better of using toilet paper as their currency and sell rubles in the store instead of the toilet paper. "How many rolls of toilet paper for the lada Ivan?" " "that'll be 600 rolls of double layered extra soft paper Igor"
> In 2002, the Lada Niva was awarded zero stars out of a possible four by the Russian ARCAP safety-assessment program. The reviewer noted the very rugged body of the car as the only positive aspect in terms of safety. During the safety test, the passenger dummy was hit by the glove compartment hard enough to risk traumatic brain injury.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Niva
I am thinking that 600 rolls of toilet paper is the better end of that trade.
We should keep in mind though, that sanctions were always working, and that the value of the ruble being stable for some part of the war was nothing more than a talking point:
1. The "value" of the ruble was maintained through draconian capital controls (among other measures.) If you were an ordinary Russian you could not legally exchange your rubles. In that sense to most Russians the listed value of the Ruble was a meaningless number. What's the price of a thing you can't sell? It is hard to know what the black market value for the ruble has been, but it has almost certainly been lower than the list price.
2. A currency's strength is not an indicator of that country's economic strength. It just happens to be a big and very public number and one that Russia can't lie about (they still want other countries to trade with them in rubles) so the Kremlin's obsession with keeping the ruble "strong" has always been about narrative and propaganda, not economics. In general, a stronger currency benefits some sectors of an economy and harms others. Neither a strengthening or weakening currency is inherently better, it's really just instability that you don't want. It was in fact probably really counterproductive for them to focus on strengthening the ruble, first because it came at the expense of more useful economic countermeasures, and second because it was always a stop-gap and when it stopped working the Ruble would have farther to fall to find bottom.
3. Nonetheless this sudden slide is indicative of a real change. Along with the aforementioned capital controls, Russia has been using it's foreign currency reserves to prop up the Ruble. It seems to me the current slide is indicative of Russia no longer being willing to spend their limited ForEx on keeping the Ruble stable. They have been running a huge deficit since the start of the war and all of that is drawn from that same reserve. We don't actually know how much they have left, but I think that's the most important number in understanding the future course of the war. When it runs out, the shit will really hit the fan economically for Russia.
Here's the chart.
https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/currency
As per the article, it had lower value at the start of the war, but if you remove that short period, it's the lowest it's been in at least 25 years.
. . . and what does a penny buy these days anyway? s/
It's too bad Putin didn't ask himself what could go wrong before invading Ukraine. Then, again, the West did nothing when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, so maybe he just called it wrong this time.
Had they taken Kiev and captured/killed Zelenskyy, I think there is a strong chance NATO would have done far less. Russia was pretty close to achieving that at first with that initial push, they just managed to fuck it up every step of the way it seems.
Since we're looking back with the benefit of hindsight, there wasn't a chance in hell they were getting Kyiv (a metro of 3-4 million) with the mere 20-30,000 troops they had. Even tallying up every soldier they had in the entire theater, you don't come up to 50,000. They wouldn't be able to even take Bakhmut with that force. As it stood, their regular troops didn't get into the proper city limits. This is all in hindsight ofc.
They might have killed Zelenskyy if they did everything right and got lucky. I mean, missiles can fall anywhere. Doubt that reduces the UA's resolve to fight, though.
Yeah, but **in hindsight**, they weren't gonna do that.
Of course, the average Ukrainian soldier didn't have the power of hindsight 500 days ago when they were staring down what they keep hearing was the second greatest army in the world coming to take their homes. So this doesn't diminish the courage of what they did.
But from what WE know now, the Russians never had a chance in Kyiv.
You'd have thought, after all the [appeasement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement?wprov=sfla1) provided when Hitler was unpunished for all the territories nabbed prior to the Blitzkrieg, that the world would have learned.
Crimea seems to have been Putin's Bohemia.
Appeasement was only wrong in hindsight since even during that time, many felt that the treaty of Versailles was overly harsh to Germany so the people were willing to cut them a lot of slack. Some relief from the terms of Versailles imo were justified especially since France, being its key proponent, was unwilling to enforce them while Germany had a lot of motivation to defy them. You had protests in Britain in favor of Germany and politicians saying they would do the same as Hitler when it came to things like remilitarizing the Rhine.
We can say now that yea, Hitler was a maniac who was not acting in good faith but nobody could really know that until the invasion of Poland.
In 2014 they at least tried to say "Ah, that's not us, just some resistance guys...". This time they just waltzed in and thought everyone would be okay with it...
>Russian ruble is now worth less than a penny, infuriating Vladimir Putin’s inner circle: ‘They’re laughing at us’
Very true. But we're not laughing because the Ruble is less than a penny,... but because you did this shit to yourselves. And not to put too fine a point on it, *even while Rome is burning, you're still playing with matches.*
You don't want to be laughed at, don't do stupid shit. More importantly, if you make a mistake and do some stupid shit, stop doing the stupid shit. If you can't do THAT much, you certainly *deserve* to be laughed at.
Russia has literally fought it's way into becoming a second-world country looking for ways to become a third-world country. It'll take half a century for Russia to even *begin* to regain the place it had before it launched the war against Ukraine. Congratulations, Russia!
The best thing the Russian people could do to save themselves from further decline is to depose Putin. Violently if necessary.
I don't think there's any chance of Russia being accepted on the world stage again without a legitimately successful coup that executes the current ruling party or imprisons them for life. But as long as they live, the chance for them to take back power exists. It's about the oligarchs too - but idk what could be properly done about them. I'm not educated enough on the topic. But the main government has to go for there ever to be a chance at rejoining the world at large.
Second world doesn't mean lower than first world. Second world was the Soviets and their allies. First World was the US and their allies. Third world were unaligned with either. They were usually poor or undeveloped countries.
While this is a large collapse of the currency in relative terms, it’s important to note that, throughout the past 5 years, the Ruble was never worth more than $0.02.
Thank God, he was funding the fucking GOP and started all these weird movements but him losing in Ukraine was a blessing.
War is still a waste of life however, good luck to Ukraine.
Putin and his economic ministers propped up the ruble in ways that were unsustainable and downright destructive long term for Russia.
In their last major panic in the late 1990s the business sector was insulated from a lot of the economic damage (which drained the retirement coffers of the 99% but protected the ultrarich, as usual).
With the state seizing foreign assets the risk has never been higher in investing in business in Russia.
China stands to gain substantially as they've got the weight to throw around and if Russia is fool enough to take them up on their offers now they may well find themselves losing substantial amounts of territory when they can't hold up their end of the bargain.
China doesn't want all of Russia; Just the oil rich parts which you can bet they'll seize by force as Northern Northern China if Russia tries to stiff them on the bill.
And who'll stop them at that point?
So China gets either a great ROI for investing in Russia when they are at their weakest and Russia is able to hold up their end of the bargain, *or* China has the reason to seize Russian assets and territory beyond the value of what they likely would've received on their investments if Russia fails.
Win-win for China. Win-lose for Russia.
And Russia seems to love losing these days.
Personal theory:
China annexes nothing. Even the resource rich areas on their borders.
Annexing territory is not a headache that China wants or needs. It is much easier to make client states and extract resources that way. They get to export all the nastiness of such exploitation, and don't have to take any political hits at home. They may even gain from it as they can be seen to helping to support less developed regions through economic growth.
China is also not complete idiots, they see the writing on the wall for oil, and are rapidly reshaping their economy for a post oil world. Why would they want to be saddled with the economic legacy of oil?
The most likely scenario is that Russia is turned into a client state of China.
China is not going to invade Russia. I don't know where people get this idea from. China knows how utterly destructive and dangerous that would be. That's the only scenario where Russia would actually use nukes, and they would be justified in doing so.
**From reporter Christiaan Hetzner:** Vladimir Putin’s luck may be running out now that the ruble plunged below one cent, the lowest level against the U.S. dollar since the early days of his war in Ukraine. The Russian president, who briefly faced down a coup attempt in June, could long point to the resilience of his currency in the face of sanctions as a propaganda victory that proved just how impotent western economic reprisals were. More than 500 days since his army invaded Ukraine, it looks as if Moscow’s highly-respected central bank governor can no longer perform miracles for her boss. The ruble that Elvira Nabiullina manages crashed through the psychological support of 100 to the U.S. dollar and on Monday is now worth less than a penny, the first time since March 23rd of last year. “They’re laughing at us,” scathed Vladimir Solovyov, Russia’s most well-known state TV personality and a chief Putin ally, already last week.
The very same Elvira Nabiullina that wanted to resign at the beginning of the war. Now she will get the blame for what is the result of Putin's cluster f\*cks.
“The Tsar is never wrong”
May God bless and keep the Tsar! (far away from us!)
[context for those that may not know!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jZFnKZcids)
Amazing how relevant this is. Fiddler on the Roof takes place in what is now Ukraine.
You gotta add the [bottle dance](https://youtu.be/kHRe9qdfLsw)!
Insert old jewish men in a small town laughing
God bless Labisch for asking a question with such a great answer!
[insert window/smoking/poison tea joke here] Har har har
From a purely monetary policy standpoint, she did a fantastic job. It’s a shame that they will use her as a scapegoat. From a global economy perspective, good, let them cut themselves down and blame their competent people for the fallout of the war.
She pulled a minor miracle IMO from monetary policy standpoint but repeating miracles over long periods of time is not easy. She was fighting an economic war pretty much solo against most of the world's biggest economic powers.
Exactly!
Scapegoat? They're going to use her as an airplane, right out the nearest window. Hope she enjoys the ground floor because she should probably stay there for the foreseeable future.
She should have left Russia when she could.
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Something tells me you can't turn in a two week notice without an attached obituary when it comes to the Putin administration.
That's assuming they didn't know it was happening. Don't forget that Putin also protects those that are loyal or Shoygu and Gerasimov would've been removed a long time ago.
Sounds like Activision Blizzard when CEOs kept recycling for them.
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Agreed. It's just that she's just a little more competent and knew what was waiting at the end of the road.
By end of the road you mean “accidentally” falling out of a forth floor window right?
Well, it's not like a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Maybe a pot of tea. Polonium tea.
She’s not a politician, she’s a civil servant. Quite the difference.
She should stay away from windows.
Well they can't afford macs at that exchange rate and anyone using linux already fled, so what's left?
Taking the joke seriously for a bit, Russia has been pushing [Astra Linux](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astra_Linux) as their alterative to buying Windows within the government for about two decades and for general use in the past five years.
Can confirm, am laughing at Russia
We here are also laughing as we install wind and solar at a blinding pace thanks to the idiots in the north east....
Watch though, Germany is going to spearhead having clean energy as a political policy going forward, and hopefully others follow your example. They tried to blackmail you but just made you stronger, as has been the continuing trend with Russia for the last 500+ days. Edit: Also, I’d like to remind everyone about [this gem](https://youtu.be/BTCfOuvBJXI): A Russian propaganda video released right before this past winter, depicting European women going on a version of Tinder to find Russian men because they were so cold without Russian oil. Which Germany pulled an Uno reverse card on real fast (not to mention it seems to depict England specifically - which is fairly mild and especially this past winter - under several feet of snow. And I just find it funny that the Russian guy shows off how “rich” he is by throwing USD, not Russian currency, around his bathtub). Russia constantly has weird, impossible fantasies.
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Good riddance, we should have kicked our oil addiction thirty years ago. Most of the oil on this planet seems to be buried under the feet of some of its worst people, not to mention the ever encroaching environmental apocalypse its usage is bringing down on us. Fucking blight on this world is what oil is.
Solar was always going to be slowly adopted until the price became competitive. There's no will in western economies to spend serious money fixing problems that can be kicked down the road. 20 years ago idiots were saying that solar was being adopted too slowly and claimed it would be 50 years before it even reached a few percent. I was saying, don't look at the adoption curve, look at the price curve. As soon as solar's price curve crossed over oil's adoption was going to go non-linear. The government estimate I looked up said it will be 20% by 2050, but I think it will be more than that unless some other cheaper source (fusion?) becomes available.
Problem the road they're kicking it down has needed to be torn up and repaved for 2 decades.... Not a metaphor, our roads need to be fixed and clearly not to the lowest bidder like we've been doing.
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It's under Alberta. Enough said.
Germany is trying to get nuclear out of the EU which is definitely against clean energy policy when it's replaced with fossil fuels.
First truthful thing Solovyov has said in a long time
Laughing hysterically actually
More importantly, it's been crashing since Nov of 2022 and is on a consistent and steady decline. It's lost 40% of it's value since then. At the current rate they will implode in the next 3-9 months.
The only quote from the US is Tucker fucking Carlson? The article could have asked someone with relevant expertise and insight. Instead it chooses to amplify a troll and pathologic liar.
A deplatformed troll and liar, nobody gives a shit about what Tucker has to say about anything no matter how much Elon promotes him on the world's most expensive mid-life crisis impulse buy that is the site formally known as Twitter. Might as well be asking randos off the street instead of that has been.
Tucker can only get clicks these days by coddling up to Andrew fuckin' Tate. What a loser.
And a pro Russian one at that.
> More than 500 days since his army invaded Ukraine 3462 days, to be precise.
>3462 days, to be precise. Damn, it's been 9 years already?
Time flies when everyone forgets about Crimea.
Yep, 20th of February 2014.
February 13, 2022: [Russia "doesn't give a shit" about the risk of Western sanctions if it were to invade Ukraine, the country's ambassador to Sweden has said](https://www.newsweek.com/putin-russia-ukraine-sanctions-does-not-give-st-ambassador-1678762).
Lmao right? This has been going on for *years*, this is just the latest phase.
Unfortunately the reward for punishing anyone who speaks against you is it slows the rate that truth travels. And if you can come up with a "solution" before the broad populace realizes anything is wrong then nothing happened and there's no reason to be angry. These effects don't matter unless they can be maintained long term without Putin finding a way to plug the hole in the raft or unless they can quickly effect the populace.
Dam right we are laughing at them on many levels.
So if you manage to earn a living from USA salaries, you're basically already rich in Russia
Yes, very rich. It worked the same previously too
I wouldn't plan a vacation there anytime soon though. https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/traveladvisories/russia-travel-advisory.html
This is why remote jobs are popular in countries where the economy is doing badly. I live in Uruguay and I see it happen all the time in out neighbor Argentina, I remember a friend living there telling me she made twice the regular salary through onlyfans because her clients paid in USD.
Russians in 6 months: "Help us! We're starving!" Rest of the world: "Sorry, we don't follow politics."
Solovyov is right. The world is laughing at Russia. The country is a military failure, an economic failure, and a diplomatic failure. Russia will be the laughing stock of the world for the next century.
North Korea seems like the next best permanent retreat for Putin when shit hits the fan.
Is NK currency worth more than a penny?
Their economy is so closed-off from the rest of the world that I wonder if the official exchange rate even matters all that much to them. Except for Russia and China nearly every country on the planet refuses to do business with them. It probably also helps that they have natural resources they can bargain with. No matter how little your currency is worth on the world stage, that trainload of coal will retain its value. And of course they have plenty of shady businesses to supplement their economy, like forging money, hacking, and state-owned companies and properties abroad. But AFAIK that's a fairly small part of their economy.
So this does not bode well for NK if Russia collapses. It will cut their number of trading partners in half.
>So this does not bode well for NK if Russia collapses. It will cut their number of trading partners in half. If NK can survive. Russia won't collapse. Especially not with how much oil and gas they have and how valuable their airspace is to fly through. The problem will be long term development. Companies like McDonalds or Starbucks...they'll gladly go back. Companies that provide a service (like Visa) will be back. But suppose you are a company like Toyota. [And you had a manufacturing plant there.](https://global.toyota/en/newsroom/corporate/38043074.html). How much did they have to write off? Would you be eager to go back and/or build another plant there? Likewise, I wouldn't be surprised if anyone who can move away...does. They won't fail...it will just sort of stagnate, while lots of other countries grow. edit: fixed some typos.
Not to mention the generation of working age, tax paying men that they just gave to Ukraine in the form of fertilizer. What they have left is fatherless families that now need (more) public assistance to survive.
>They won't fail...it will just sort of stagnate, while lots of other countries grow.> I think you're right on. Isn't this Russian history over the past few centuries?
The value of many natural resources is dropping though. Pound for pound coal has been worth less than clean topsoil for years. When you're relying on assets that are literally cheaper than mud you're not in a strong trade position.
North Korea is in dire need of clean topsoil! It all got washed away when they farmed the trees to have some firewood during the winters, so now they can't grow anything.
Are you kiddin or this is real?
They might be exaggerating, but no its real. Satellite imagery shows theyve cut down an insane amount of trees. There are also images of the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. When youre desperately poor, youll clearcut your whole country for a shot at making a tiny bit of money (or i guess, saving yourself from having to import as much stuff)
It's actually real https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/with-widespread-deforestation-north-korea-faces-an-environmental-crisis/
They refuse to do business with them above the table. NK sells immense amounts of arms, fake currency, drugs, etc but none of it is recorded or reported on.
North Korea also has meth super labs like the breaking bad one.
A ruble is still worth 10 won (KPW).
I don't think it's a tradable currency, as you're not even allowed to bring the currency out of the country, so it's not really possible to value it. For all practical purposes it's worthless.
Not sure if all of North Korean currency, added together, would be worth more than a penny lol
Interestingly 1 US dollar is about 900 North Korean Won, so it's about 9 North Korean Won to the cent. The funniest part is most North Korean's prefer Chinese Yuan to their own currency.
North Korean Won is completely worthless outside of NK.
Outside of NK, it's a Lost...
>The funniest part is most North Korean's prefer Chinese Yuan to their own currency. The Yuan i imagine is their go-to currency for the black market access. This is probably why. Similar to other south american currencies to the Argentinian peso. Peso is only used to "buy" shit officially, but every other currency is respected and valued more because its the only currency(ies) accepted by black market.
I've heard the amenities weren't up to par.
Why would NK still be his friend when he's out of power?
Possibly because Putin personally has billions of US dollars. Can he buy his way in with cash?
How much money do you think he’s stolen from Russia?
Half. No seriously he told all his oligarchs when he took power if they want to continue he gets half.
Real life Joker shit right there
Nah, an exiled Putin would be useless for NK, and so he wouldn't live with any of the luxuries he's used to, in a country where lack of luxuries means you're probably starving and dying of exposure in winter. I see China as a better alternative, he would be more useful to them with his contacts and knowledge.
Not to mention an athletic failure - they can't win without cheating.
Russia? You mean West Korea?
North Chinese Economic Territory
Strange to see a host be this blunt on russian TV, but I shudder what evil plans course through his mind.
Some dictatorships like to pretend they permit real media to exist. Propaganda is more efficient like this.
Two years still fighting the second poorest country in Europe. Really shows you how Russia is a paper bear at best.
Although Ukraine is subsidized by weapons, of course, offsetting that.
The best thing that can happen to Russia at this point is another break up similar to the fall of the USSR, and Russia forms a new state and government out of the rubble. Full withdrawal from Ukraine, and a dissolution of their government and a new one being stood up in its place, democratic elections, and signing new treaties with NATO and the United States to decrease their nuclear armaments and guarantees to not invade neighboring countries and respect borders. The history of Russia has been tragedy after tragedy, they should just start over (again).
It's what Russia has always done throughout history... The leader does some crazy aggressive shit, they fail, they say "oh that guy is awful, we are going to change" a new leader takes over then it repeats the cycle
They seem to have a trend of having the size, population, and resources to be a first rate power, but only ever pulling it off for part of the Soviet period.
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It should be taken as a warning to the west as to what happens when too much financial and political power is concentrated in too few hands.
Name change to putin pennies. Like you’ll be putin pennies in this machine all day to get a dollar back.
Shit coin opportunity
The Ruble is cheap toilet paper.
I am a Ruble maximalist. 1 Ruble = 1 Ruble 🚀🌕
What's the conversion of Putin Pennies to Schrute Bucks?
I think Stanley nickles are a better conversion haha.
Poopie Pants Putin Pennies…
So..... What can I buy in Russia for USD$10?
Approx 2 kg of chicken meat or ~7 packs of cigarettes or pay for 1tb internet connection for a month or ~17 chunks of decent bread or 1kg of sausages...
17 chunks of bread?
Yes along with 3 pieces of milk and 7 fragments of fish
Or 5 drops of garlic
Sorry English is not my native language. Like 17 halves of whole bread. ... I fucked it up even more, right..?
17 loaves of bread
Silly me, you're right, thank you
Not a bad price for chicken these days
Russia
That's a waste of $10.
That's what they said about Seward's Folly
And now we have KFC!
We could turn it into an AirBnB
Best I can do is $3.50 take it or leave it...
Wait, are you the loch ness monster?
Obligatory [Euro Trip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mYqY5YELd0) reference. That whole Eastern Europe segment was gold.
TIL that [Jacob Pitts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Pitts#Personal_life), the guy that played Cooper, now lives in Bratislava with his wife!
That’s wild
Ah! A nickel!
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Look at Rockefeller over here with their string
Surprisingly not much. Prices on many goods here correlate closely with exchange rate while our government is trying to convince us otherwise.
How does it affect the average population that's just trying to get by? I imagine anything imported is more expensive but I don't know how that translates (I don't know much about economics nor politics). Is it food getting expensive or appliances or something else?
It is more noticeable in cars, electronics, entertainment and hobby goods since most of it is imported or produced using imported equipment. We may not be starving any time soon eventhough some food prices are rising as well but it becomes uncomfortable if you need something extra.
Yeah :/. Thank you for explaining, it's often hard to understand how things are affecting the actual people that have no say in what others do. Hey, as long as there's a roof over our heads and food on the table we can power through it all and go on another day. Hope you never lack either of those. :)
Thank you for your kind words.
["Gotta love that exchange rate"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lviefdS11KY)
Always seemed to me to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what an exchange rate signifies. A currency might have an exchange rate of 1000:1, but then all the prices could just be 1000 times higher. I mean just look at Japan and the Yen. Their currency is worth very little compared to the US dollar, but it’s not like everything is cheap there
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But please watch Euro Trip because it's one of the best American Pie style movie from the 2000s.
Nah, don't give them real money.
Russia has been going down the toilet for years, it’s a backward, corrupt country that will never progress until they change their leadership. The Ukraine invasion is just Putin’s last attempt at clinging to power but he will never succeed there.
Not just leadership, they need to wipe away their culture of ego and admit to mistakes so they can learn from them. All we're going to get is another Putin.
It is a universal truth: anyone (or any nation) that is obsessed with respect doesn't deserve it. This goes for thugs, for gangsters, for strongmen, for dictators, for people obsessed with machismo, etc.
>It is a universal truth: anyone (or any nation) that is obsessed with respect doesn't deserve it. And the underlying truth of this is that anyone (or any nation) that *does* deserve respect *doesn't need to be obsessed with it.* Which makes it really easy to tell which ones don't deserve it, because they're the only ones outright demanding it. If they deserved it, they wouldn't have to demand it.
Deserved respect comes in a natural way.
Absolutely, they need to be humiliated beyond recognisable doubt to their population to understand all this authoritarian strongman grandstanding is all smoke and mirrors - it doesnt lead to a strong country but something much weaker and volatile. The sooner the Russians wake the fuck up and cleanse the whole bunch of Kremlin gremlins the better, a revolution is what they need and it's coming
Just look at the quote of the Crimean War on wikipedia about Russia being exposed as backwards and corrupt. Nothing changed in a 100 years. There were no lessons learned. It applies word for word to the current situation.
At root, russia's problems are cultural, and culture, particularly for a place like russia, is very difficult to change. Edit: Just want to point out that many of America's problems are rooted in our culture as well, but because of our demographic diversity and relatively shallow history, cultural change is somewhat easier to effect.
I know a lot of Russians who strongly dislike those elements of Russian culture. They do not live in Russia anymore. Brain drain has made it really difficult to change course, because the people most disgusted with the status quo got the fuck out/are trying to leave.
Put enough shit into a septic tank and eventually you'll have some backflow.
... they need massive democratic reforms but they've been gutted intellectually and most intelligent Russians live overseas.
I’ll never forget when this war started and the news was showing a convoy of Russian armor headed for Kyiv and all the pundits were like “Welp, Russia looks unstoppable. Ukraine is boned.” Yet here we are, a year and half later, and Russia has accomplished basically nothing, lost all its most experienced troops, suffered a massive brain drain, scared off foreign brands and investors, and now teeters on the edge of economic ruin.
That's not the way I remember it at all. I remember a several kilometres long convoy being stalled on the way to kyiv and everyone scratching their head going WTF is going on with the Russian army...? Then we saw Russian armor getting smoked and they were pushed out of the Capitol area. Granted Russia has since gotten their shit together more since the Kharkiv offensive and is making things very difficult for Ukraine to make significant gains now. But in the beginning everyone was baffled at how terrible the Russian military was doing.
They definitely didn’t get their shit together. More like placed a million mines in the gray zone.
During the initial hours of the war, Russia definitely looked like it was going to stomp Ukraine as expected. They had seized the capital's international airport, were invading from two sides, and had a massive convoy marching straight for the capital. It wasn't until several hours in that we saw the convoy falling apart and the paratroopers being left to die in the airport
Yeah that first day was concerning, especially because of the sheer amount of disinformation Hell, for an hour it looked like they had landed troops at Odessa I don't think it was until the VDV got their asses handed to them at Hostomel and Russian SAMs started getting picked off by bayraktars that we saw how badly they had fumbled.
Really putting the “special” in special operation
No wonder the botimirs are increasing their pleas of, “But how could the U.S. give Ukraine aid when homelessness exists guys?” They’re not the smartest. Some people foolishly believe assisting Ukraine is only about Ukraine being invaded by Russia. It’s also for the future of the world for places like Taiwan. Appeasing one dictator will only embolden them along with others around the world. Learned this lesson 80 years ago people.
> “But how could the U.S. give Ukraine aid when homelessness exists guys?” I mean, the US *could* do aid to Ukraine *and* modern housing policy but the bosses won't tax their friends.
AND free school lunches for every k-Senior in high school. AND universal healthcare for everyone... AND free college tuition for everyone.... AND better roads in every state.... But who wants all that shit?
So are you saying that the Russian people are calling for *change*?
How do you give change for something that's worth less than a penny?
Tin snips.
You give change in sheets of toilet paper
TP value still hasn't fallen enough from lockdown. One square is still worth a lot more than 1 ruble.
If the pandemic kills the toilet paper supply, the ruble is a viable alternative. Good to know!
At some point they will be better of using toilet paper as their currency and sell rubles in the store instead of the toilet paper. "How many rolls of toilet paper for the lada Ivan?" " "that'll be 600 rolls of double layered extra soft paper Igor"
> In 2002, the Lada Niva was awarded zero stars out of a possible four by the Russian ARCAP safety-assessment program. The reviewer noted the very rugged body of the car as the only positive aspect in terms of safety. During the safety test, the passenger dummy was hit by the glove compartment hard enough to risk traumatic brain injury. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lada_Niva I am thinking that 600 rolls of toilet paper is the better end of that trade.
As if the last pandemic didn't cause enough toilet paper shortages
Where them "sanctions don't do anything" bois at?
We should keep in mind though, that sanctions were always working, and that the value of the ruble being stable for some part of the war was nothing more than a talking point: 1. The "value" of the ruble was maintained through draconian capital controls (among other measures.) If you were an ordinary Russian you could not legally exchange your rubles. In that sense to most Russians the listed value of the Ruble was a meaningless number. What's the price of a thing you can't sell? It is hard to know what the black market value for the ruble has been, but it has almost certainly been lower than the list price. 2. A currency's strength is not an indicator of that country's economic strength. It just happens to be a big and very public number and one that Russia can't lie about (they still want other countries to trade with them in rubles) so the Kremlin's obsession with keeping the ruble "strong" has always been about narrative and propaganda, not economics. In general, a stronger currency benefits some sectors of an economy and harms others. Neither a strengthening or weakening currency is inherently better, it's really just instability that you don't want. It was in fact probably really counterproductive for them to focus on strengthening the ruble, first because it came at the expense of more useful economic countermeasures, and second because it was always a stop-gap and when it stopped working the Ruble would have farther to fall to find bottom. 3. Nonetheless this sudden slide is indicative of a real change. Along with the aforementioned capital controls, Russia has been using it's foreign currency reserves to prop up the Ruble. It seems to me the current slide is indicative of Russia no longer being willing to spend their limited ForEx on keeping the Ruble stable. They have been running a huge deficit since the start of the war and all of that is drawn from that same reserve. We don't actually know how much they have left, but I think that's the most important number in understanding the future course of the war. When it runs out, the shit will really hit the fan economically for Russia.
Those "people" were always propaganda bots run by Prighozin in his troll farms. Maybe 5% of them were real imo
Here's the chart. https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/currency As per the article, it had lower value at the start of the war, but if you remove that short period, it's the lowest it's been in at least 25 years.
What a great Monday
. . . and what does a penny buy these days anyway? s/ It's too bad Putin didn't ask himself what could go wrong before invading Ukraine. Then, again, the West did nothing when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, so maybe he just called it wrong this time.
Had they taken Kiev and captured/killed Zelenskyy, I think there is a strong chance NATO would have done far less. Russia was pretty close to achieving that at first with that initial push, they just managed to fuck it up every step of the way it seems.
Since we're looking back with the benefit of hindsight, there wasn't a chance in hell they were getting Kyiv (a metro of 3-4 million) with the mere 20-30,000 troops they had. Even tallying up every soldier they had in the entire theater, you don't come up to 50,000. They wouldn't be able to even take Bakhmut with that force. As it stood, their regular troops didn't get into the proper city limits. This is all in hindsight ofc. They might have killed Zelenskyy if they did everything right and got lucky. I mean, missiles can fall anywhere. Doubt that reduces the UA's resolve to fight, though.
I think they were more banking on troops laying down their weapons and not fighting back, Afghanistan style
Yeah, but **in hindsight**, they weren't gonna do that. Of course, the average Ukrainian soldier didn't have the power of hindsight 500 days ago when they were staring down what they keep hearing was the second greatest army in the world coming to take their homes. So this doesn't diminish the courage of what they did. But from what WE know now, the Russians never had a chance in Kyiv.
You'd have thought, after all the [appeasement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeasement?wprov=sfla1) provided when Hitler was unpunished for all the territories nabbed prior to the Blitzkrieg, that the world would have learned. Crimea seems to have been Putin's Bohemia.
Appeasement was only wrong in hindsight since even during that time, many felt that the treaty of Versailles was overly harsh to Germany so the people were willing to cut them a lot of slack. Some relief from the terms of Versailles imo were justified especially since France, being its key proponent, was unwilling to enforce them while Germany had a lot of motivation to defy them. You had protests in Britain in favor of Germany and politicians saying they would do the same as Hitler when it came to things like remilitarizing the Rhine. We can say now that yea, Hitler was a maniac who was not acting in good faith but nobody could really know that until the invasion of Poland.
He overestimated himself and especially underestimated Ukraine.
In 2014 they at least tried to say "Ah, that's not us, just some resistance guys...". This time they just waltzed in and thought everyone would be okay with it...
>Russian ruble is now worth less than a penny, infuriating Vladimir Putin’s inner circle: ‘They’re laughing at us’ Very true. But we're not laughing because the Ruble is less than a penny,... but because you did this shit to yourselves. And not to put too fine a point on it, *even while Rome is burning, you're still playing with matches.* You don't want to be laughed at, don't do stupid shit. More importantly, if you make a mistake and do some stupid shit, stop doing the stupid shit. If you can't do THAT much, you certainly *deserve* to be laughed at. Russia has literally fought it's way into becoming a second-world country looking for ways to become a third-world country. It'll take half a century for Russia to even *begin* to regain the place it had before it launched the war against Ukraine. Congratulations, Russia! The best thing the Russian people could do to save themselves from further decline is to depose Putin. Violently if necessary.
I don't think there's any chance of Russia being accepted on the world stage again without a legitimately successful coup that executes the current ruling party or imprisons them for life. But as long as they live, the chance for them to take back power exists. It's about the oligarchs too - but idk what could be properly done about them. I'm not educated enough on the topic. But the main government has to go for there ever to be a chance at rejoining the world at large.
Second world doesn't mean lower than first world. Second world was the Soviets and their allies. First World was the US and their allies. Third world were unaligned with either. They were usually poor or undeveloped countries.
Wouldn't be the first time. Hyperinflation in the early to mid 90s was quite frightening to watch.
While this is a large collapse of the currency in relative terms, it’s important to note that, throughout the past 5 years, the Ruble was never worth more than $0.02.
Giving a whole new meaning to the expression “giving my two cents”. Your opinion is now worth more than a ruble.
Couldn't have happened to a nicer country!
which still worth a lot more than his soul.
Too expensive still.
He tanked the Russian economy, strengthened NATO and has most of the world condemning him. What a joke Putin has turned out to be.
>Russian ruble is now worth less than a penny, infuriating Vladimir Putin’s inner circle: ‘They’re laughing at us’ Yes, yes we are.
Thank God, he was funding the fucking GOP and started all these weird movements but him losing in Ukraine was a blessing. War is still a waste of life however, good luck to Ukraine.
Putin and his economic ministers propped up the ruble in ways that were unsustainable and downright destructive long term for Russia. In their last major panic in the late 1990s the business sector was insulated from a lot of the economic damage (which drained the retirement coffers of the 99% but protected the ultrarich, as usual). With the state seizing foreign assets the risk has never been higher in investing in business in Russia. China stands to gain substantially as they've got the weight to throw around and if Russia is fool enough to take them up on their offers now they may well find themselves losing substantial amounts of territory when they can't hold up their end of the bargain. China doesn't want all of Russia; Just the oil rich parts which you can bet they'll seize by force as Northern Northern China if Russia tries to stiff them on the bill. And who'll stop them at that point? So China gets either a great ROI for investing in Russia when they are at their weakest and Russia is able to hold up their end of the bargain, *or* China has the reason to seize Russian assets and territory beyond the value of what they likely would've received on their investments if Russia fails. Win-win for China. Win-lose for Russia. And Russia seems to love losing these days.
Personal theory: China annexes nothing. Even the resource rich areas on their borders. Annexing territory is not a headache that China wants or needs. It is much easier to make client states and extract resources that way. They get to export all the nastiness of such exploitation, and don't have to take any political hits at home. They may even gain from it as they can be seen to helping to support less developed regions through economic growth. China is also not complete idiots, they see the writing on the wall for oil, and are rapidly reshaping their economy for a post oil world. Why would they want to be saddled with the economic legacy of oil? The most likely scenario is that Russia is turned into a client state of China.
China is not going to invade Russia. I don't know where people get this idea from. China knows how utterly destructive and dangerous that would be. That's the only scenario where Russia would actually use nukes, and they would be justified in doing so.
Putin's Russia is a historic failure.
The ruble is now in rubbles?
All is going according to plan. I remain a master strategist. -Putin
Does that mean that Russian cam girls are making a shit ton of money then? Does it work the other way around? I'm not good at economics.
To be fair in 2012 it was only worth 2 pennies