◄►Bookmark◄❌►▲▼Toggle AllToC▲▼Add to LibraryRemove from Library •�BShow CommentNext New CommentNext New ReplyRead More
ReplyAgree/Disagree/Etc.More...This CommenterThis ThreadHide ThreadDisplay All Comments
AgreeDisagreeThanksLOLTroll
These buttons register your public Agreement, Disagreement, Thanks, LOL, or Troll with the selected comment. They are ONLY available to recent, frequent commenters who have saved their Name+Email using the 'Remember My Information' checkbox, and may also ONLY be used three times during any eight hour period.
You missed the Big Tech explosion because you didn't understand what de facto monopolies wedded to economies of scale can do. You have been deplatformed by Zuck and @jack for being a racist and a white supremacist, and you don't even have their stonks for consolation. You didn't hop aboard the Tesla train because you... Read More
Currently jostling in the top rankings: Jeff Bezos (Amazon) and Elon Musk (Tesla), both at around $200B. Amazon is a mature company that dominates the US e-commerce market and has substantial fingerprints abroad (about a third of revenue). Also not to be underrated is AWS, which accounts for a third of the global cloud computing... Read More
Approaching $200 billion ($195B according to Bloomberg Billionaires Index, vs. Bezos' $185B), he has blown his way past Bezos after Tesla shares surged north of $800 today. Its p/e ratio is now above 1,600 and accounts for more than 40% of the market capitalization of all the world’s automakers combined. Brian Wang of NextBigFuture, who... Read More
Worst prediction on the history of this blog? (Consolation is that said prediction wasn't mine, though I did think it interesting enough to highlight). Anyhow, far from "going to zero", Tesla stonks have increased tenfold since May 2018. Tesla now constitutes something like 30% of the market capitalization of all the world's automakers combined, at... Read More
While predicting recessions might be a fool's errand, a generally reliable rule of thumb is that they come and go once a decade, and unlike in 2016, I do think right about now (next 12 months) is the time. 1. You have the trade war with China, which is going from bad to worse now... Read More
The magazine Profile.ru in 2015 compiled a list of Russia's most subsidized regions. It went exactly as you'd expect. # Russian Region %dep. Majority Group 1 Ingushetia 85.0% Caucasian 2 Chechnya 81.4% Caucasian 3 Crimea 80.0% Russian 4 Tyva 77.1% Other Minority 5 Sevastopol 75.0% Russian 6 Altay 73.5% Russian 7 Dagestan 70.0% Caucasian 8... Read More
And make no doubt about it - a collapse is exactly what it is, and it afflicts way more of the country than just the war-wracked Donbass. Ukraine now vies with Moldova for the country with the lowest average wages in Europe. Gabon with snow? Saakashvili is hopelessly optimistic. That would actually be a big... Read More
According to a recent n=150,000 global survey by Gallup and S&P, there is an astounding lack of financial literacy in the world. To gauge financial literacy, they asked a series of four questions on basic financial concepts such as risk diversification, inflation, simple interest, and compound interest. They were very simple and typically only had... Read More
"Imperialist Putin "Steals" Ukraine"... If only all those hysterical newspaper articles were true! In reality, the only thing he stole was Ukraine's credit card debt. He's no idiot, of course, and is in no rush to pay it off. The drama certainly hasn't ended. But a geopolitical pivot on the model of Khmelnitsky's 1654 decision... Read More
If you remember a couple of weeks ago, the Internet was rocked - for a total of about one or two days - by a wave of leaks from the ICIJ about the identities of offshore account holders in the British Virgin Islands. What juicy revelations did we have about the henchmen of the kleptocratic... Read More
If you ever manage to get a troupe as diverse as Latynina, Mark Adomanis, the Cypriot Communist Party, virtually every financial analyst, Prokhorov, and Putin united in condemning your crass stupidity and cack-handedness, it's probably time to stop and ponder. But it's safe to say that's not what the Troika - the European Commission, European... Read More
This guy isn't as clear-headed as Eric Kraus, is he? But does have company in the form of Andrew Miller, Jeffrey Tailer, "Streetwise Professor", and Ed Lucas. H/t Mark Adomanis. ----- Original Message ----- From: Dmitry Alimov To: [email�protected] Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 11:28 PM Subject: Conversation with Jim Rogers - HILARIOUS Jim Rogers,... Read More
The King returns. As this is breaking news, please feel free to discuss this breaking news while I write up a more substantive post. In summary: (1) I was 75% wrong. (I gave Putin a 25% of returning to the PM; I thought the likeliest scenario would be for DAM to continue). (2) That said,... Read More
The response to the last global crisis only consisted of kicking the can further down the road, and the chickens are showing signs of coming home to roost. Of particular note: (1) the recent upwards spike on bond yields for Italy and Spain*; (2) The political paralysis in the US that may (conceivably, if unlikely)... Read More
One thing that strikes you, as you wander the shops of any Russian city, is the sheer cheapness of booze and cigs. As little as 3 years ago, one could buy a pint-sized bottle of beer or a pack of cigarettes for just $1, while a 0.5l bottle of vodka cost as little as $3.... Read More
There is a wide divergence of views on Russia's economic future. The pessimists project near zero growth (e.g. SWP, Guriev & Zhuravskaya), or even a renewed collapse if Europe goes haywire. The inventor of the BRIC's concept (and Russia bull) Jim O'Neill of Goldman Sachs believes it will manage to eke out growth of 7%,... Read More
I've been accused of being a "Russophile cockroach", an "amoral Putin lackey", and overall bad guy. Guilty as charged! Yes, I do like Russia and don't have much good to say about the Western media's coverage of it. Yes, I don't give much of damn for the moralistic posturing that any vapid idiot Kremlinologist can... Read More
Three months ago I wrote an extensive analysis of Russia's economy during the crisis in which I said that although it is going to be damaged by the shutdown of its traditional financing mechanism - cheap credit from the West - sovereign solvency will not be threatened and there will be a strong recovery in... Read More
In this essay, I analyze three major areas of concern about the current Russian economy - the debt burden, balance of payments and future fiscal sustainability. Although on paper Russia is comfortably solvent, rolling over debt has been problematic for Russia Inc. because of the shutdown of its traditional financing mechanisms, cheap American credit and... Read More
As promised in the last post, here is a follow-up about Part II of the 17th World Bank Russia report, the reading of which cannot be stressed as too important in the current climate. Like in the last post, I summarize the main reports, using a lot of unattributed straight-out quoting of salient phrases and... Read More
Recently the World Bank's November issue of the biannual Russian Economic Report came out. At the time I was busy with other things, amongst others planning the move from Blogger to self-hosted WordPress; as such, I did not give it the comprehensive treatment that it deserved at the time. Of course, reading about these things... Read More
Just wanted to point out there is an on-going four-way debate at Streetwise Professor's blog between him, commentator Michel, myself and (at times) Timothy Post. In SWP's words, it is about "(a) the breadth of Russian prosperity, (b) its dependence on oil prices, and (c) the likely future course of oil prices" and despite the... Read More
What with all the noise about the ongoing credit crunch, all around financial apocalypse and burgeoning signs that it is beginning to spill over into Main Street like a torrent of water from a collapsing dam, I thought it's about time we take a look at this "sucker" (to use Bush's blunt term) and it's... Read More
Will Russia acquire Keflavik without the need for an amphibious invasion, as in the Clancy-verse? Potentially, they could neutralize the SOSUS (a long unrealized Soviet ambition) and reinforce their position in the Arctic-Atlantic region for just 5bn $. This is compared to the 700bn $+ the US has spent in Iraq to little discernible effect.... Read More
America's desire to have Ukraine and Georgia accede to MAP foundered on European opposition from Germany, France and (somewhat surprisingly) the UK, despite Saakashvili's implicit comparison of this to Nazi appeasement. Nonetheless, this is good for NATO as an alliance (as we've covered previously, the European desire for a rapprochement is linked to Russian logistical... Read More
I am a blogger, thinker, and businessman in the SF Bay Area. I’m originally from Russia, spent many years in Britain, and studied at U.C. Berkeley.
One of my tenets is that ideologies tend to suck. As such, I hesitate about attaching labels to myself. That said, if it’s really necessary, I suppose “liberal-conservative neoreactionary” would be close enough.
Though I consider myself part of the Orthodox Church, my philosophy and spiritual views are more influenced by digital physics, Gnosticism, and Russian cosmism than anything specifically Judeo-Christian.