thelucky8

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18216826

Archived

Russia’s wealth gap has always been wide, but as the war against Ukraine drags on, the divide is only growing more extreme. Reports about the economy often seem contradictory: despite heavy international sanctions, the Kremlin is pouring billions into defense spending and offering ever-larger sign-on bonuses for army recruits. Meanwhile, with thousands sent to war and a crackdown on migrant workers, the country is grappling with a labor shortage. At the same time, soaring inflation has eroded wages. Yet Russia’s super-rich are only getting richer — with those on Western blacklists often even outperforming their peers. To unpack these conflicting dynamics within the Russian economy,

An interview with Jem Morrow, a researcher studying Russian society.

Question: ***Russia is facing a nationwide labor shortage, while the government has increased defense and wartime spending. Why hasn’t this resulted in broader economic benefits for lower-income workers in the country?

---

Jem Morrow: I think that the main problem people have when they think about the economic benefits of the war is that there are essentially three groups that are benefiting: soldiers’ families, workers in the military-industrial complex, and another small group, which is business owners.

The problem people have is they think that, like in perhaps some Western countries, these groups are bigger than they really are. In reality, when you look at them as a proportion of the population, even if you take into account the extended families of soldiers, the economic benefits to towns where munitions factories are sited, or indeed the broader economy that might benefit from increased spending from these groups — the mistake is that to think that this is a bigger effect than it really is. And indeed, it's a small effect.

People always look at the money being paid to soldiers. [But] as a proportion of the population, it's a tiny amount and it's still a tiny amount of money.

[...]

Even the polling companies most sympathetic to the central authorities always cite the fact that the majority of Russians have no savings and cannot financially plan for the immediate future. Yes, there are people that have got savings, but these are a minority. So, this issue of economic precariousness hasn’t changed [for the better] because of the war.

[...]

[The three things contributing to the income gap between the wealthy and the poor in Russia are] first, the difficulty in access to affordable credit (people are using microcredit to meet even their basic needs); second, the fact that inflation is very, very high by any standards; and third, the fact that most people are starting from a low income level, even in relatively wealthy cities.

[...]

There's this very old text by these two economists [Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman] from early in Putin's [second term] where they said [that] Russia's finally going to become a normal country, where people get the economic benefits of, okay, not a liberal democracy, but a kind of more typical market economy. And they obviously turned out to be completely wrong, because [...] Russia was able to remain this highly, highly unequal society.

It's not as unequal as a country like Brazil, or even Mexico, but given the high level of human development, human capital, the high level of education, the integration that was happening with the global economy in the early 2000s and even 2010s, it's not what you would expect.

[...]

We've seen that there's this good evidence that some already rich people have gotten a lot richer thanks [to the war] to the division of these productive assets that were effectively abandoned by Western companies [after they left Russia]. The famous example is the yogurt maker Danone, but also [the brewing company] Carlsberg. And then there are the gaps in the market that the exit of companies like McDonald’s has provided. So the economic blockade, partial blockade, of Russia has only provided more opportunities for the elite to buy more loyalty through redistributing assets at the top. And this process is entirely separate from the process that I was just talking about. So while people say, “You know, the Russian economy has been very robust” — it's been robust if you're a capital owner.

[...]

[The Russian wealthy] are spending [their money] on Chinese cars. They may be paying off a mortgage early. But there isn't this huge multiplier effect of the money from war salaries going into the economy. If anything, the effect is that this money is being burned through very, very rapidly by recipients who have never seen this kind of money before. Yes, it may be a lot of money for them. But it's not enough to have a massive multiplier effect in the economy as a whole.

[...]

If there is a negotiated ceasefire, or even a permanent peace, I think very, very quickly, we will see social discontent emerge in some ways. And I'm not saying that there would be unrest or anything, but there would have to be a reanalysis by the elites of their kind of complete, unbridled, rapacious appetite for the country's wealth.

[...]

People talk about the North Koreanization, and I'm kind of skeptical about that, but at the same time, if you continue to ask people to make sacrifices and see their living standards fall as a result of your foreign policy decisions as a leader, then you have to do something about that — whether that’s more repression or whether it’s making examples of kind of hate figures, or creating hate figures from among the sub-elite.

[...]

[When the war ends] that's just when the problems really begin for the regime. Because the war [...] started as a result of Putinism not having any answers for most people who live in Russia. Especially when it came to what feminist researchers call social reproduction. I want to know that my children will live in a better country than I live in and have better opportunities than I did. Your average person wants to be sure social reproduction occurs in a meaningful and positive way, and that just hasn't been possible since at least 2008 in Russia.

Archived

Russia’s wealth gap has always been wide, but as the war against Ukraine drags on, the divide is only growing more extreme. Reports about the economy often seem contradictory: despite heavy international sanctions, the Kremlin is pouring billions into defense spending and offering ever-larger sign-on bonuses for army recruits. Meanwhile, with thousands sent to war and a crackdown on migrant workers, the country is grappling with a labor shortage. At the same time, soaring inflation has eroded wages. Yet Russia’s super-rich are only getting richer — with those on Western blacklists often even outperforming their peers. To unpack these conflicting dynamics within the Russian economy,

An interview with Jem Morrow, a researcher studying Russian society.

Question: ***Russia is facing a nationwide labor shortage, while the government has increased defense and wartime spending. Why hasn’t this resulted in broader economic benefits for lower-income workers in the country?

Jem Morrow: I think that the main problem people have when they think about the economic benefits of the war is that there are essentially three groups that are benefiting: soldiers’ families, workers in the military-industrial complex, and another small group, which is business owners.

The problem people have is they think that, like in perhaps some Western countries, these groups are bigger than they really are. In reality, when you look at them as a proportion of the population, even if you take into account the extended families of soldiers, the economic benefits to towns where munitions factories are sited, or indeed the broader economy that might benefit from increased spending from these groups — the mistake is that to think that this is a bigger effect than it really is. And indeed, it's a small effect.

People always look at the money being paid to soldiers. [But] as a proportion of the population, it's a tiny amount and it's still a tiny amount of money.

[...]

Even the polling companies most sympathetic to the central authorities always cite the fact that the majority of Russians have no savings and cannot financially plan for the immediate future. Yes, there are people that have got savings, but these are a minority. So, this issue of economic precariousness hasn’t changed [for the better] because of the war.

[...]

[The three things contributing to the income gap between the wealthy and the poor in Russia are] first, the difficulty in access to affordable credit (people are using microcredit to meet even their basic needs); second, the fact that inflation is very, very high by any standards; and third, the fact that most people are starting from a low income level, even in relatively wealthy cities.

[...]

There's this very old text by these two economists [Andrei Shleifer and Daniel Treisman] from early in Putin's [second term] where they said [that] Russia's finally going to become a normal country, where people get the economic benefits of, okay, not a liberal democracy, but a kind of more typical market economy. And they obviously turned out to be completely wrong, because [...] Russia was able to remain this highly, highly unequal society.

It's not as unequal as a country like Brazil, or even Mexico, but given the high level of human development, human capital, the high level of education, the integration that was happening with the global economy in the early 2000s and even 2010s, it's not what you would expect.

[...]

We've seen that there's this good evidence that some already rich people have gotten a lot richer thanks [to the war] to the division of these productive assets that were effectively abandoned by Western companies [after they left Russia]. The famous example is the yogurt maker Danone, but also [the brewing company] Carlsberg. And then there are the gaps in the market that the exit of companies like McDonald’s has provided. So the economic blockade, partial blockade, of Russia has only provided more opportunities for the elite to buy more loyalty through redistributing assets at the top. And this process is entirely separate from the process that I was just talking about. So while people say, “You know, the Russian economy has been very robust” — it's been robust if you're a capital owner.

[...]

[The Russian wealthy] are spending [their money] on Chinese cars. They may be paying off a mortgage early. But there isn't this huge multiplier effect of the money from war salaries going into the economy. If anything, the effect is that this money is being burned through very, very rapidly by recipients who have never seen this kind of money before. Yes, it may be a lot of money for them. But it's not enough to have a massive multiplier effect in the economy as a whole.

[...]

If there is a negotiated ceasefire, or even a permanent peace, I think very, very quickly, we will see social discontent emerge in some ways. And I'm not saying that there would be unrest or anything, but there would have to be a reanalysis by the elites of their kind of complete, unbridled, rapacious appetite for the country's wealth.

[...]

People talk about the North Koreanization, and I'm kind of skeptical about that, but at the same time, if you continue to ask people to make sacrifices and see their living standards fall as a result of your foreign policy decisions as a leader, then you have to do something about that — whether that’s more repression or whether it’s making examples of kind of hate figures, or creating hate figures from among the sub-elite.

[...]

[When the war ends] that's just when the problems really begin for the regime. Because the war [...] started as a result of Putinism not having any answers for most people who live in Russia. Especially when it came to what feminist researchers call social reproduction. I want to know that my children will live in a better country than I live in and have better opportunities than I did. Your average person wants to be sure social reproduction occurs in a meaningful and positive way, and that just hasn't been possible since at least 2008 in Russia.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18216216

Archived

Russia’s economy is facing a potential surge in corporate bankruptcies, the Vedomosti business daily reported, citing experts from the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF). The CMASF is a government-aligned think tank that is headed by the brother of Defense Minister Andrei Belousov.

[...]

According to CMASF, more than 20% of manufacturing companies were paying interest costs exceeding two-thirds of their pre-tax profits (EBIT) at the end of 2024, compared to just 10% a year earlier.

[...]

The Central Bank’s decision to raise its benchmark interest rate to 21% — its highest level since the invasion of Ukraine — in October 2024 has driven up business debt burdens.

[...]

The most affected sectors include investment-intensive industries, with transport engineering companies experiencing the greatest strain, CMASF experts noted.

Businesses’ ability to generate profits to cover loan payments is also declining.

According to the state statistics agency Rosstat, the economy’s overall financial balance (profits minus losses) fell by 17% year-on-year during the first 10 months of 2024, translating to a loss of nearly 5 trillion rubles ($51 billion).

Coal companies, hit by international sanctions and declining exports, have accumulated 80 billion rubles ($823 million) in losses. Shopping malls, burdened by tax hikes and rising loan costs, are also under threat, with 800 potentially facing bankruptcy. Other vulnerable sectors include road carriers, with 30% at risk of insolvency, road construction firms, which have seen revenue halved, about 30 airlines and the IT industry.

A credit squeeze has already taken hold, the CMASF experts said, as new loan issuance to key economic sectors plummeted by 30-50% in November and December.

Borrowing on the debt market has also become increasingly challenging. Bond yields have risen, and spreads between corporate bonds and government securities (OFZs) have widened significantly.

“The combination of these factors creates significant refinancing difficulties for borrowers with high debt burdens. In the near future, this could lead to a wave of defaults and cross-defaults,” the CMASF report warned.

According to Rosselkhozbank estimates, Russian companies are due to repay a record 7.5 trillion rubles ($77.2 billion) in bonds in 2025, with 2.6 trillion rubles ($26.7 billion) due in the fourth quarter alone. A cascade of defaults could trigger a market chain reaction, the CMASF cautioned. Falling bond values would erode banks’ collateral, forcing financial institutions to tighten credit conditions further, exacerbating corporate debt woes.

[...]

Archived

Russia’s economy is facing a potential surge in corporate bankruptcies, the Vedomosti business daily reported, citing experts from the Center for Macroeconomic Analysis and Short-Term Forecasting (CMASF). The CMASF is a government-aligned think tank that is headed by the brother of Defense Minister Andrei Belousov.

[...]

According to CMASF, more than 20% of manufacturing companies were paying interest costs exceeding two-thirds of their pre-tax profits (EBIT) at the end of 2024, compared to just 10% a year earlier.

[...]

The Central Bank’s decision to raise its benchmark interest rate to 21% — its highest level since the invasion of Ukraine — in October 2024 has driven up business debt burdens.

[...]

The most affected sectors include investment-intensive industries, with transport engineering companies experiencing the greatest strain, CMASF experts noted.

Businesses’ ability to generate profits to cover loan payments is also declining.

According to the state statistics agency Rosstat, the economy’s overall financial balance (profits minus losses) fell by 17% year-on-year during the first 10 months of 2024, translating to a loss of nearly 5 trillion rubles ($51 billion).

Coal companies, hit by international sanctions and declining exports, have accumulated 80 billion rubles ($823 million) in losses. Shopping malls, burdened by tax hikes and rising loan costs, are also under threat, with 800 potentially facing bankruptcy. Other vulnerable sectors include road carriers, with 30% at risk of insolvency, road construction firms, which have seen revenue halved, about 30 airlines and the IT industry.

A credit squeeze has already taken hold, the CMASF experts said, as new loan issuance to key economic sectors plummeted by 30-50% in November and December.

Borrowing on the debt market has also become increasingly challenging. Bond yields have risen, and spreads between corporate bonds and government securities (OFZs) have widened significantly.

“The combination of these factors creates significant refinancing difficulties for borrowers with high debt burdens. In the near future, this could lead to a wave of defaults and cross-defaults,” the CMASF report warned.

According to Rosselkhozbank estimates, Russian companies are due to repay a record 7.5 trillion rubles ($77.2 billion) in bonds in 2025, with 2.6 trillion rubles ($26.7 billion) due in the fourth quarter alone. A cascade of defaults could trigger a market chain reaction, the CMASF cautioned. Falling bond values would erode banks’ collateral, forcing financial institutions to tighten credit conditions further, exacerbating corporate debt woes.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18212136

Archived

The Swedish Public Prosecutor's Office has seized a vessel as part of an investigation into damage to an underwater fiber-optic communication cable connecting Sweden and Latvia, according to a statement on its website released earlier today. A preliminary investigation has been launched, with suspicions pointing to sabotage. The damage to the cable in the Baltic Sea was discovered on Jan. 26.

The prosecutor's office stated that “a number of concrete investigative measures” are being conducted but did not disclose further details. The name of the vessel in question has not been made public. The investigation involves Swedish police, the coast guard, and the country’s armed forces.

The damaged cable, owned by the Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC), is located within Sweden's exclusive economic zone. LVRTC described the damage as significant, with grounds to suspect external interference. A Latvian Navy patrol ship inspected the vessel Michalis San, which was en route to Russia and had been detected near the cable break. No suspicious findings were reported aboard the ship.

[...]

Archived

The Swedish Public Prosecutor's Office has seized a vessel as part of an investigation into damage to an underwater fiber-optic communication cable connecting Sweden and Latvia, according to a statement on its website released earlier today. A preliminary investigation has been launched, with suspicions pointing to sabotage. The damage to the cable in the Baltic Sea was discovered on Jan. 26.

The prosecutor's office stated that “a number of concrete investigative measures” are being conducted but did not disclose further details. The name of the vessel in question has not been made public. The investigation involves Swedish police, the coast guard, and the country’s armed forces.

The damaged cable, owned by the Latvian State Radio and Television Center (LVRTC), is located within Sweden's exclusive economic zone. LVRTC described the damage as significant, with grounds to suspect external interference. A Latvian Navy patrol ship inspected the vessel Michalis San, which was en route to Russia and had been detected near the cable break. No suspicious findings were reported aboard the ship.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18211659

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18210543

Archived

Beijing prison officials slashed jailed Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun’s access to food and hygiene products late last year in a move that triggered official complaints from Australia’s top diplomat in China.

Yang was detained by Chinese authorities six years ago this week and was handed a suspended death sentence last February after being found guilty of mysterious espionage offences.

Yang’s supporters, who say he has been subjected to torture-like conditions since his arrest, are calling on the federal government to forcefully speak out about his treatment even if it offends the Chinese government.

Sources familiar with Yang’s prison conditions said his monthly spending allowance was cut from 200 Chinese yuan ($44) to 100 yuan ($22) in November for three months because eyesight problems meant he could not carry out his assigned chores.

[...]

Yang, who was suffering from the flu at the time, said he had not eaten fruit for several months and that he felt humiliated to have to ask fellow prisoners for basic food products such as soup.

[...]

Yang also reported that he could not afford to buy toothpaste despite suffering serious dental issues.

The Chinese-born pro-democracy blogger and academic worked for China’s Ministry of State Security before becoming an Australian citizen in 2002. His case was heard in secret in May 2021, with the details of the espionage charges never disclosed to the public.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18210543

Archived

Beijing prison officials slashed jailed Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun’s access to food and hygiene products late last year in a move that triggered official complaints from Australia’s top diplomat in China.

Yang was detained by Chinese authorities six years ago this week and was handed a suspended death sentence last February after being found guilty of mysterious espionage offences.

Yang’s supporters, who say he has been subjected to torture-like conditions since his arrest, are calling on the federal government to forcefully speak out about his treatment even if it offends the Chinese government.

Sources familiar with Yang’s prison conditions said his monthly spending allowance was cut from 200 Chinese yuan ($44) to 100 yuan ($22) in November for three months because eyesight problems meant he could not carry out his assigned chores.

[...]

Yang, who was suffering from the flu at the time, said he had not eaten fruit for several months and that he felt humiliated to have to ask fellow prisoners for basic food products such as soup.

[...]

Yang also reported that he could not afford to buy toothpaste despite suffering serious dental issues.

The Chinese-born pro-democracy blogger and academic worked for China’s Ministry of State Security before becoming an Australian citizen in 2002. His case was heard in secret in May 2021, with the details of the espionage charges never disclosed to the public.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18210719

Archived

Facebook is banning posts that mention various Linux-related topics, sites, or groups. Some users may also see their accounts locked or limited when posting Linux topics. Major open-source operating system news, reviews, and discussion site DistroWatch is at the center of the controversy, as it seems to be the first to have noticed that Facebook's Community Standards had blackballed it.

[...]

DistroWatch says that the Facebook ban took effect on January 19. Readers have reported difficulty posting links to the site on this social media platform. Moreover, some have told DistroWatch that their Facebook accounts have been locked or limited after sharing posts mentioning Linux topics.

If you're wondering if there might be something specific to DistroWatch.com, something on the site that the owners/operators perhaps don't even know about, for example, then it seems pretty safe to rule out such a possibility. Reports show that "multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed." However, we tested a few other Facebook posts with mentions of Linux, and they didn't get blocked immediately.

[...]

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18210719

Archived

Facebook is banning posts that mention various Linux-related topics, sites, or groups. Some users may also see their accounts locked or limited when posting Linux topics. Major open-source operating system news, reviews, and discussion site DistroWatch is at the center of the controversy, as it seems to be the first to have noticed that Facebook's Community Standards had blackballed it.

[...]

DistroWatch says that the Facebook ban took effect on January 19. Readers have reported difficulty posting links to the site on this social media platform. Moreover, some have told DistroWatch that their Facebook accounts have been locked or limited after sharing posts mentioning Linux topics.

If you're wondering if there might be something specific to DistroWatch.com, something on the site that the owners/operators perhaps don't even know about, for example, then it seems pretty safe to rule out such a possibility. Reports show that "multiple groups associated with Linux and Linux discussions have either been shut down or had many of their posts removed." However, we tested a few other Facebook posts with mentions of Linux, and they didn't get blocked immediately.

[...]

Addition to include the DistroWatch link: https://distrowatch.com/weekly-mobile.php?issue=20250127#sitenews