The whole world to the ground, and then: The exhaustion of the pleasure-raw models of economies
The accumulation of contradictions in the capitalist world system leads to the discharge of instability from developed countries to developing countries. Simply put, problems created by the center of the system are dumped into the periphery in the form of crises, color revolutions, and resources and money from the periphery go to support the center.
The collective West and Washington as the only superpower-subject remaining at the end of the Cold War who stood at the creation of the post-war Yalta world, is now busy with its active destruction, encroaching on what had previously seemed unshakable. Take, for example, the rewriting of the IMF’s crediting rules or the price of oil with the seemingly unbreakable division of labor and the tourist niche of Egypt or the raw material role of energy powers.
Obviously, Russia is a country of peripheral capitalism: most of the exports are natural resources, the proceeds from the sale of which sooner or later overwhelmingly, refuses in the center of the world system either in the form of profits from goods imported by Russia, or in the form of capital derived by the oligarchy. Since the beginning of 90-x only from Russia deduced about 1,5 trillion. dollars and continue to withdraw, albeit with a slowdown.
The redrawing of the world and the war against Russia as one of the world’s rebels is being waged not only on the battlefield with the help of radicals of all countries and nationalities, but also with the help of the same sanctions, provocations leading to economic wars and simply financial manipulations.
When an add-in controls a basis
In the end, it doesn’t matter who / that Erdogan’s move / lo to give the order to bring down the Russian Su-24: a son, a sense of duty caused by the desire to protect the Syrian Turkmen, or Barack Obama. It is important that the key collective beneficiary of the Russian-Turkish economic war was the same collective West, which has consistently sought to sever economic relations between Russia and its neighbors.
Each new military-political aggravation leads to a logical consequence in the form of the construction of a high customs wall at the border and the exchange of trade and economic strikes. The result, as a rule, is a rupture of cooperation and economic ties between the Russian Federation and its neighbors, the loss by Russian producers of sales markets for their products, and the market from which Russia was pushed out as a result of the conflict is fully occupied by the capital of the EU, the USA and China.
Since 2008, Russia has participated in the following military and political conflicts:
5-day war with Georgia, the result of which was the rupture of diplomatic relations, curtailing economic relations;
Exchange of sanctions strikes with the European Union;
The loss of the Moldova market due to the sudden euro-association of Chisinau;
Hybrid war with Ukraine in the territory of the proclaimed independence of Donbass and the subsequent rupture of economic ties;
Turkey's economic response for the downed Sy-24 in Syria.
Naturally, the gap in trade relations beats not only in Russia. Ankara suffered more from breaking ties with Turkey than Russia. In the case of Ukraine, the outcome of the war is painful not only for Kiev, whose share in exports to the Russian Federation in a few years decreased from the order of 30% to 12,9%, but also for Russia, whose exports to Ukraine decreased by 66% in the summer. Only exports of agricultural products from Ukraine to the Russian Federation fell by 70%. At the same time, exports from Ukraine to the EU fell in 2015 by 30%. Georgia has a similar picture: wines, mineral water and tangerines are not strategic products and you can easily manage without them or simply change their supplier.
Disturbs another. The whole point of the creation of the Eurasian Union comes down to a gradual separation from the world market and the erection of a wall in front of import for the sake of developing its economy. However, the capacity of the domestic market of the EEU, even with regard to Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, is far from the more or less self-sufficient 200 million. and, moreover, does not compensate for the loss of Ukraine and Turkey, not only as real, but even as a theoretical sales market for products that could be produced by Russian producers. Thus, the list of potential members of the Eurasian Union is reduced, and the promise of Hillary Clinton in every way to hinder the Eurasian integration is actually being implemented.
The EU’s anti-Russian sanctions, Erdogan’s refusal to build the Turkish Stream, the Akkuyu nuclear power plant’s uncertainty and Ankara’s intention to abandon Russian gas in the future, reorienting to Qatar and Azerbaijan, once again prove that the rupture of the economic ties of politicians in war conditions the political superstructure dictates the will to the base - business and economy.
In addition, the loss of the Russian Federation market of neighboring countries leads to the loss of positions of Russian capital, which will replace the capital from China, the EU and the United States. Actually, the last two years pass under the sign of ousting Russian capital not only from the EU, where it penetrated during the expansion over the period of fat oil years, but also from the post-Soviet republics.
However, this is only one of the directions of the economic blow to Russia and is by no means the most powerful. Where the blow caused by the fall in oil prices will be stronger. And not only Russia, which suddenly turned out to be in the same boat with seemingly backward and distant Mexico, will suffer, but all other oil countries that previously felt more than confident.
The end of oil paradise
The last meeting of the OPEC member countries and the legalization of actual excess oil production, presented as an increase in quotas for 1,5 million barrels per day, led to a logical outcome: oil fell to the 40-dollar baseboard, and then lower. Together with oil, the Russian ruble fell, and the Kazakhstani tenge prepared to fall, good, now nothing will hold it.
Now that oil has once again updated its cost record, the key question is not when it will return to the old, pre-crisis prices (the impossibility of such a return, it seems, everyone has already realized), and not whether OPEC countries will produce for 1,5 million barrels / day more, starting from the new quota volumes and how low the price of oil can fall.
For the time being, the Russian economy has not been torn to shreds, but the power has been significantly undermined, despite the bravado of insignificant sanctions damage. I believe that the key indicator of economic damage will not be the abstract percentage points of GDP and inflation, but more than real statistical data:
The number of poor people in Russia in January-September 2015 amounted to 20,3 million, which is 2,3 million people more than in January-September 2014;
The number of the Russian middle class (this, we recall, the consumer category - ed.) Due to the crisis by the end of 2015, will be reduced by a quarter - to 15 percent of the total population of the country;
In October, real wages of Russians fell by 10,9 percent compared to October 2014 of the year;
At the end of the year, real incomes of the population will decrease by 4-5 percent;
About 20% of Russians of working age remain economically inactive, and a third of the population remains outside the labor market;
With the downsizing in the fall, 2015 was confronted in almost 40% of Russian companies, wages declined every fourth.
And this picture is not only in Russia. In Belarus, for example, the unemployment rate almost doubled in a year, however, as well as forced part-time employment in industry.
In terms of many indicators, Kazakhstan, which seemed to be more prosperous in terms of personnel and management, does not lag behind Russia, which, by the way, has the same economic structure as Russia, and, therefore, will experience similar problems. The only significant difference is that Astana is not cut off from the world capital market, which allows it to borrow, while Moscow has restricted this right, leaving only the domestic loan market and China.
Nevertheless, Kazakhstan:
Since the beginning of the year, the public debt has increased by 37% - from $ 18,3 billion to $ 25,1 billion;
Devalued tenge with 186 tenge / dollar. to 309 tenge / usd. USA. Over the past two years, tenge has more than doubled in price;
Due to the collapse of energy prices in January-September, 2015 significantly reduced the export of its goods to 36,4 billion dollars against 62,7 billions in the same period last year. Kazakhstan reduced imports of goods to 25,7 billion dollars against 32,1 billion in January-September last year.
In management decisions, Kazakhstan and Russia follow the same road. In Kazakhstan, for example, for the first half of this year, the production of gasoline decreased by 8,7%, and its imports amounted to 1,1 million tons, but the government is not going to provide Kazakhstan’s oil-producing gasoline with its own hands, preferring to sell all three state-owned refineries. Actually, the executive power in Kazakhstan is engaged in the same way as its colleagues in Moscow: forcing privatization. December 4 sold 50 mineral deposits in Kazakhstan, and Moscow plans to privatize more than profitable Sovcomflot next year.
Next year, in Kazakhstan, it is planned to reduce the order of 40 thousands of oil workers, the salaries of oil and gas workers will be reduced by 31%, the total income of subsoil users will decrease this year by more than 52%. Taking into account the fact that oil in Kazakhstan is produced in the western regions of the republic (mainly in the Atyrau region), which are traditionally richer, but the profits are redistributed by Astana and Almaty, and the local power belongs to the Aday family, the reduction in 40 of thousands of oil industry workers (the elite of Western Kazakhstan society) may lead to a repetition of Zhanaozen, but on a much larger scale. The reader will forgive me for such a long excursion into Kazakhstan regional studies, but Zhanaozen is exactly the same company town as the Russian Karabash or Votkinsk. And in the Russian Federation there are 75 single-industry towns, and 313 has populated areas with a rapidly deteriorating socio-economic situation.
Thus, in Russia, in Kazakhstan, the crisis will be shifted onto the shoulders of the population, for even the optimistic head of the Ministry of Finance Siluanov sees no prospects for rising oil prices, and the new president of the Russian Federation in 2018 will have to either increase taxes or reduce social spending. However, this process of raising taxes and reducing costs is already underway, as evidenced by the resolute intention to raise the retirement age and not index pensions for working pensioners. Just falling due to cheap oil revenues will have to compensate for the expense of other sources, and at the same time to go on records for the production of hydrocarbons.
As a result, Russia, and even Kazakhstan as a twin brother, has no free resources for development outside of various cups and foundations of a “black day”. The jugs will be depleted: by the middle of 2017, Russia will remain without the Reserve Fund, by the end of 2018 will lose most of the National Welfare Fund. It is worth considering that the more the oil price falls, the sooner the accumulated money runs out. At the same time, the Kazakh counterpart of Russian Gazprom, Kazmunaygas, is up to 2020 of the year, targeting 30 dollars per barrel of oil, while Russia is hoping for 50 dollars per barrel.
In general, people really have to live more modestly, but not for a year or two, but, it seems, much longer. Therefore, the Russian economy will be dilapidated next year, the number of contradictions between the government and the masses, as well as elite groups within the government itself, will increase, as will the problems of economic development that have been previously camouflaged by the arriving petrodollars that continue to multiply.
The end of the tourist paradise
The situation with countries that have built themselves into the global division of labor as amusers is no better. So, the CEO of the British tour operator Thomas Cook Group, working with 1841 of the year, Peter Fankhauser reports about the strongest crisis in the tourism industry in the last 30 years.
And the cause of such a crisis is the destruction of the current world order, and its consequences are:
The reduction of outbound tourism from Russia by more than 40% for the year from the fall in oil prices and the devaluation of the ruble;
Terrorist attacks in Paris, which resulted in hotels and cafes of France losing half of its customers, while Europe's largest air carrier lost over a month 50 million euros;
Undermining the airliner over Sinai led to the fact that hotels in Egypt are filled only 10% .;
Losses of Turkey, which in the future will reach 10 billion dollars due to relations damaged with Russia.
The times of the tourist paradise are coming to an end, and it seems that neither subsidies at 6 thousand dollars for jet fuel, nor the desire to minimize losses, will save them by canceling the all inclusive service.
The world will become less and less safe places, and the middle class will continue to shrink even in the US, where its share has shrunk to a maximum in 40 years.
***
The beginning of the redistribution of the world leaves little chance for the survival of third world countries that do not have real sovereignty, which guarantees the nuclear shield and the development of the manufacturing industry with a focus on the domestic market.
Alas, in the case of Russia, the time for industrialization, which only lazy people did not write about in the past years, and the turn to the East, which remained rather on paper than in reality, is largely lost.
The Russian Federation is flying full steam ahead in perhaps the biggest crisis since its inception in 1991. Yes, cheap oil in our stories it was already there, but there was no cheap oil with wars on two fronts - Syrian and Novorossiysk, as well as the loss of the usual markets, sanctions, and the prospect of destabilization of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and the growth of internal instability.
The answer to the question of whether Russia will be able to survive the redistribution of the world with such an economy and elites is determined solely by the faith of the respondent and the percentage ratio of optimism and pessimism in it.
But the new world seems to be no better than the old one.
PS Viktor Marakhovsky
A colleague should add one consideration. The positions of not only Russia and the “rest of the weak” weaken. They also weaken as it were, “strong” (no matter what growth figures they draw, the decline in the standard of living even in the advanced states of the “center of the system” is noticeable and is the subject of multiple internal discussions). This, among other things, speaks of a simple thing: the Third World War will not be "a war of the strong against the not very strong", but rather a world sabotage war with the deriban of those weak that will "crumble". And the answer to the question of whether Russia will stand in such a war depends mainly on the will to self-preserve its own people.
The trick is that during the period of world war the ideas about "weakness" and "strength" are sharply different from the time when the powers that are more successful in trading on the stock exchanges of their "Internet giants" are strong.
The collective West and Washington as the only superpower-subject remaining at the end of the Cold War who stood at the creation of the post-war Yalta world, is now busy with its active destruction, encroaching on what had previously seemed unshakable. Take, for example, the rewriting of the IMF’s crediting rules or the price of oil with the seemingly unbreakable division of labor and the tourist niche of Egypt or the raw material role of energy powers.
Obviously, Russia is a country of peripheral capitalism: most of the exports are natural resources, the proceeds from the sale of which sooner or later overwhelmingly, refuses in the center of the world system either in the form of profits from goods imported by Russia, or in the form of capital derived by the oligarchy. Since the beginning of 90-x only from Russia deduced about 1,5 trillion. dollars and continue to withdraw, albeit with a slowdown.
The redrawing of the world and the war against Russia as one of the world’s rebels is being waged not only on the battlefield with the help of radicals of all countries and nationalities, but also with the help of the same sanctions, provocations leading to economic wars and simply financial manipulations.
When an add-in controls a basis
In the end, it doesn’t matter who / that Erdogan’s move / lo to give the order to bring down the Russian Su-24: a son, a sense of duty caused by the desire to protect the Syrian Turkmen, or Barack Obama. It is important that the key collective beneficiary of the Russian-Turkish economic war was the same collective West, which has consistently sought to sever economic relations between Russia and its neighbors.
Each new military-political aggravation leads to a logical consequence in the form of the construction of a high customs wall at the border and the exchange of trade and economic strikes. The result, as a rule, is a rupture of cooperation and economic ties between the Russian Federation and its neighbors, the loss by Russian producers of sales markets for their products, and the market from which Russia was pushed out as a result of the conflict is fully occupied by the capital of the EU, the USA and China.
Since 2008, Russia has participated in the following military and political conflicts:
5-day war with Georgia, the result of which was the rupture of diplomatic relations, curtailing economic relations;
Exchange of sanctions strikes with the European Union;
The loss of the Moldova market due to the sudden euro-association of Chisinau;
Hybrid war with Ukraine in the territory of the proclaimed independence of Donbass and the subsequent rupture of economic ties;
Turkey's economic response for the downed Sy-24 in Syria.
Naturally, the gap in trade relations beats not only in Russia. Ankara suffered more from breaking ties with Turkey than Russia. In the case of Ukraine, the outcome of the war is painful not only for Kiev, whose share in exports to the Russian Federation in a few years decreased from the order of 30% to 12,9%, but also for Russia, whose exports to Ukraine decreased by 66% in the summer. Only exports of agricultural products from Ukraine to the Russian Federation fell by 70%. At the same time, exports from Ukraine to the EU fell in 2015 by 30%. Georgia has a similar picture: wines, mineral water and tangerines are not strategic products and you can easily manage without them or simply change their supplier.
Disturbs another. The whole point of the creation of the Eurasian Union comes down to a gradual separation from the world market and the erection of a wall in front of import for the sake of developing its economy. However, the capacity of the domestic market of the EEU, even with regard to Armenia and Kyrgyzstan, is far from the more or less self-sufficient 200 million. and, moreover, does not compensate for the loss of Ukraine and Turkey, not only as real, but even as a theoretical sales market for products that could be produced by Russian producers. Thus, the list of potential members of the Eurasian Union is reduced, and the promise of Hillary Clinton in every way to hinder the Eurasian integration is actually being implemented.
The EU’s anti-Russian sanctions, Erdogan’s refusal to build the Turkish Stream, the Akkuyu nuclear power plant’s uncertainty and Ankara’s intention to abandon Russian gas in the future, reorienting to Qatar and Azerbaijan, once again prove that the rupture of the economic ties of politicians in war conditions the political superstructure dictates the will to the base - business and economy.
In addition, the loss of the Russian Federation market of neighboring countries leads to the loss of positions of Russian capital, which will replace the capital from China, the EU and the United States. Actually, the last two years pass under the sign of ousting Russian capital not only from the EU, where it penetrated during the expansion over the period of fat oil years, but also from the post-Soviet republics.
However, this is only one of the directions of the economic blow to Russia and is by no means the most powerful. Where the blow caused by the fall in oil prices will be stronger. And not only Russia, which suddenly turned out to be in the same boat with seemingly backward and distant Mexico, will suffer, but all other oil countries that previously felt more than confident.
The end of oil paradise
The last meeting of the OPEC member countries and the legalization of actual excess oil production, presented as an increase in quotas for 1,5 million barrels per day, led to a logical outcome: oil fell to the 40-dollar baseboard, and then lower. Together with oil, the Russian ruble fell, and the Kazakhstani tenge prepared to fall, good, now nothing will hold it.
Now that oil has once again updated its cost record, the key question is not when it will return to the old, pre-crisis prices (the impossibility of such a return, it seems, everyone has already realized), and not whether OPEC countries will produce for 1,5 million barrels / day more, starting from the new quota volumes and how low the price of oil can fall.
For the time being, the Russian economy has not been torn to shreds, but the power has been significantly undermined, despite the bravado of insignificant sanctions damage. I believe that the key indicator of economic damage will not be the abstract percentage points of GDP and inflation, but more than real statistical data:
The number of poor people in Russia in January-September 2015 amounted to 20,3 million, which is 2,3 million people more than in January-September 2014;
The number of the Russian middle class (this, we recall, the consumer category - ed.) Due to the crisis by the end of 2015, will be reduced by a quarter - to 15 percent of the total population of the country;
In October, real wages of Russians fell by 10,9 percent compared to October 2014 of the year;
At the end of the year, real incomes of the population will decrease by 4-5 percent;
About 20% of Russians of working age remain economically inactive, and a third of the population remains outside the labor market;
With the downsizing in the fall, 2015 was confronted in almost 40% of Russian companies, wages declined every fourth.
And this picture is not only in Russia. In Belarus, for example, the unemployment rate almost doubled in a year, however, as well as forced part-time employment in industry.
In terms of many indicators, Kazakhstan, which seemed to be more prosperous in terms of personnel and management, does not lag behind Russia, which, by the way, has the same economic structure as Russia, and, therefore, will experience similar problems. The only significant difference is that Astana is not cut off from the world capital market, which allows it to borrow, while Moscow has restricted this right, leaving only the domestic loan market and China.
Nevertheless, Kazakhstan:
Since the beginning of the year, the public debt has increased by 37% - from $ 18,3 billion to $ 25,1 billion;
Devalued tenge with 186 tenge / dollar. to 309 tenge / usd. USA. Over the past two years, tenge has more than doubled in price;
Due to the collapse of energy prices in January-September, 2015 significantly reduced the export of its goods to 36,4 billion dollars against 62,7 billions in the same period last year. Kazakhstan reduced imports of goods to 25,7 billion dollars against 32,1 billion in January-September last year.
In management decisions, Kazakhstan and Russia follow the same road. In Kazakhstan, for example, for the first half of this year, the production of gasoline decreased by 8,7%, and its imports amounted to 1,1 million tons, but the government is not going to provide Kazakhstan’s oil-producing gasoline with its own hands, preferring to sell all three state-owned refineries. Actually, the executive power in Kazakhstan is engaged in the same way as its colleagues in Moscow: forcing privatization. December 4 sold 50 mineral deposits in Kazakhstan, and Moscow plans to privatize more than profitable Sovcomflot next year.
Next year, in Kazakhstan, it is planned to reduce the order of 40 thousands of oil workers, the salaries of oil and gas workers will be reduced by 31%, the total income of subsoil users will decrease this year by more than 52%. Taking into account the fact that oil in Kazakhstan is produced in the western regions of the republic (mainly in the Atyrau region), which are traditionally richer, but the profits are redistributed by Astana and Almaty, and the local power belongs to the Aday family, the reduction in 40 of thousands of oil industry workers (the elite of Western Kazakhstan society) may lead to a repetition of Zhanaozen, but on a much larger scale. The reader will forgive me for such a long excursion into Kazakhstan regional studies, but Zhanaozen is exactly the same company town as the Russian Karabash or Votkinsk. And in the Russian Federation there are 75 single-industry towns, and 313 has populated areas with a rapidly deteriorating socio-economic situation.
Thus, in Russia, in Kazakhstan, the crisis will be shifted onto the shoulders of the population, for even the optimistic head of the Ministry of Finance Siluanov sees no prospects for rising oil prices, and the new president of the Russian Federation in 2018 will have to either increase taxes or reduce social spending. However, this process of raising taxes and reducing costs is already underway, as evidenced by the resolute intention to raise the retirement age and not index pensions for working pensioners. Just falling due to cheap oil revenues will have to compensate for the expense of other sources, and at the same time to go on records for the production of hydrocarbons.
As a result, Russia, and even Kazakhstan as a twin brother, has no free resources for development outside of various cups and foundations of a “black day”. The jugs will be depleted: by the middle of 2017, Russia will remain without the Reserve Fund, by the end of 2018 will lose most of the National Welfare Fund. It is worth considering that the more the oil price falls, the sooner the accumulated money runs out. At the same time, the Kazakh counterpart of Russian Gazprom, Kazmunaygas, is up to 2020 of the year, targeting 30 dollars per barrel of oil, while Russia is hoping for 50 dollars per barrel.
In general, people really have to live more modestly, but not for a year or two, but, it seems, much longer. Therefore, the Russian economy will be dilapidated next year, the number of contradictions between the government and the masses, as well as elite groups within the government itself, will increase, as will the problems of economic development that have been previously camouflaged by the arriving petrodollars that continue to multiply.
The end of the tourist paradise
The situation with countries that have built themselves into the global division of labor as amusers is no better. So, the CEO of the British tour operator Thomas Cook Group, working with 1841 of the year, Peter Fankhauser reports about the strongest crisis in the tourism industry in the last 30 years.
And the cause of such a crisis is the destruction of the current world order, and its consequences are:
The reduction of outbound tourism from Russia by more than 40% for the year from the fall in oil prices and the devaluation of the ruble;
Terrorist attacks in Paris, which resulted in hotels and cafes of France losing half of its customers, while Europe's largest air carrier lost over a month 50 million euros;
Undermining the airliner over Sinai led to the fact that hotels in Egypt are filled only 10% .;
Losses of Turkey, which in the future will reach 10 billion dollars due to relations damaged with Russia.
The times of the tourist paradise are coming to an end, and it seems that neither subsidies at 6 thousand dollars for jet fuel, nor the desire to minimize losses, will save them by canceling the all inclusive service.
The world will become less and less safe places, and the middle class will continue to shrink even in the US, where its share has shrunk to a maximum in 40 years.
***
The beginning of the redistribution of the world leaves little chance for the survival of third world countries that do not have real sovereignty, which guarantees the nuclear shield and the development of the manufacturing industry with a focus on the domestic market.
Alas, in the case of Russia, the time for industrialization, which only lazy people did not write about in the past years, and the turn to the East, which remained rather on paper than in reality, is largely lost.
The Russian Federation is flying full steam ahead in perhaps the biggest crisis since its inception in 1991. Yes, cheap oil in our stories it was already there, but there was no cheap oil with wars on two fronts - Syrian and Novorossiysk, as well as the loss of the usual markets, sanctions, and the prospect of destabilization of the Caucasus and Central Asia, and the growth of internal instability.
The answer to the question of whether Russia will be able to survive the redistribution of the world with such an economy and elites is determined solely by the faith of the respondent and the percentage ratio of optimism and pessimism in it.
But the new world seems to be no better than the old one.
PS Viktor Marakhovsky
A colleague should add one consideration. The positions of not only Russia and the “rest of the weak” weaken. They also weaken as it were, “strong” (no matter what growth figures they draw, the decline in the standard of living even in the advanced states of the “center of the system” is noticeable and is the subject of multiple internal discussions). This, among other things, speaks of a simple thing: the Third World War will not be "a war of the strong against the not very strong", but rather a world sabotage war with the deriban of those weak that will "crumble". And the answer to the question of whether Russia will stand in such a war depends mainly on the will to self-preserve its own people.
The trick is that during the period of world war the ideas about "weakness" and "strength" are sharply different from the time when the powers that are more successful in trading on the stock exchanges of their "Internet giants" are strong.
Information