Behind the Bluster, Russia Is Collapsing – washingtonpost.com — Read this entire article, it is an eye-opener especially with the emergence of a rich elite within Russia.
Excerpt:
Excerpt:
Predictions that Russia will again become powerful, rich and influential ignore some simply devastating problems at home that block any march to power. Sure, Russia’s army could take tiny Georgia. But Putin’s military is still in tatters, armed with rusting weaponry and staffed with indifferent recruits. Meanwhile, a declining population is robbing the military of a new generation of soldiers. Russia’s economy is almost totally dependent on the price of oil. And, worst of all, it’s facing a public health crisis that verges on the catastrophic.
Found by John Ligums.
Kind of remind you of somewhere closer to home John? Economy based on oil, healthcare verging on the catastrophic..
Yeah the same headline could be used with U.S. in the headline. Our economy is going down, bailout or no bailout.
I was in Russia in 1998 in places no American had ever been, and most people had one suit of clothes and no idea where their next meal was coming from. America will be in the same position in a few short years. You can thank our politicians for running our country into the ground while serving their own greed and avarice. Republican or Democrat they all see us as slave labor and a source of tax money they can steal for their own use.
Get used to it, it will take decades to get out of this hole.
Join the CLUB!!!! At least they don’t have our congress to deal with.
Just like the Cold War… the Russians are coming. Never mind that they can’t even feed their army. Ah, those were the days.
The things that worry me about Russia is that they have steady flow of money into the country, a chip on their shoulder, a well organized crime infrastructure, and waaayyyy too many deadly weapons. They can still cause way too much trouble.
I think pushing into their backyard with missiles and troops is just poking the bear for no good reason. I would back off a bit and let them quietly slide to the point where they take help in exchange for nuclear reduction or eliminations.
I’m certain they’re so pleased Gorbachev took all that advice from American free market libertarians.
They have almost broke the bank sending a ditsy dame to 6 different schools for journalism. /squirt.
Russia has always been a backwards mess. It will continue to lurch along from crisis to crisis like the previous 400 years.
Meh. That’s just what they want you to believe in order to make us feel better about our mess here. How accurate are these statements being made in the Wash Post? 😉
Sounds to me like Australia. An economy based on digging ever-bigger holes in the ground, an obese and infertile population which is largely alcoholic and itinerant. Any ‘roos in Russia?
#11 – spot on. At least Russia has a reliable water supply, so no matter what happens they’ll be able to subsistence farm. As soon as moving goods (read: fertiliser) around the world becomes economically infeasible, Australia is f*cked.
One of my Russian is pretty frightened of the current economic situation here. He says that Russia in the early ’90s was just crazy.
How many neighborhoods in the US are a few paychecks away from lawlessness?
In the international arena America is more down and dirty than anyone else. Why should we assume this would be different on a local scale?
If John D. is right and hyperinflation is coming we better start looking towards Adam’s large stock of canned goods. 🙂
#8
Specially in Venezuela thanks to Kuzco and his irrational spending.
Well at least Putin has the FSB. He has been able to quell the political power of the big russian oil industries by simply putting their executives in prison.
Big business at its very heart is coward, put a few in jail and the rest fall in line.
Too bad nobody in the USA has the guts to do it here.
I’m not buying this story. It’s a big country. You know, back in the mid ’90’s one in 200 people there was a physician. I bet they can get house calls in some places, which is more than I can say about the American Midwest. What city has more billionaires than any other city on planet Earth? Give up? Well, it’s Moscow.
The article is kind of a rant though. It points out problems that piled up in Russia since 1991, but it completely omits the facts about how Russia have been addressing those problems in the last 10 years. They have a stabilization fund to offset bad economic times. While national manufacturing industry is ruined, GM, Ford, BMW, VW, Renault, etc are building factories there and create a lot of jobs for russians. There is a shortage of skilled workers and educated professionals, because of the notorious “brain drain”, and Russia has a very active “expat” program for returning professionals. Russian students go to European and US business schools and come back to build businesses (thanks to US terrible immigration laws that don’t let them stay). The army is still weak because of the draft, but even this is changing, and they are recruiting more professionals. There is a lot of exploration of new oil and gas fields going on. It may just so happen that if the price of oil stays up long enough for it to rebuild, Russia may be able to sustain its prosperity when it finally drops.
My comment was not to say that I sympathize Putin though. No. Putin’s regime is a tyranny, his government is killing journalists, extorting property from private businesses. But he apparently figured out how to keep Russia prosperous so that the russian people willingly take his tyranny and give up their civil liberties for moderate wealth. I am sure, he won’t let the middle class become too strong and will somehow suppress it in order to avoid too much liberalism.
Aside from the billionaires in Moscow, who profits? Even the billionaires eventually realize you can’t make money if you can’t sell your product.
Who stands the most to gain?
Why is a UNAIDs rep there when the problem with TB will kill more in the short term? And why hasn’t a TB epidemic been declared?
The article leaves too many questions unanswered.
I don’t have the answers. Does anybody?