dorlomin wrote:Should be in economics and finance but Greece is also scaring the markets this weekend.
KIEV, UKRAINE — Ukraine has convinced the International Monetary Fund to release a $2 billion bailout loan that will help the ex-Soviet nation pay for Russian natural gas and avoid a repeat of a January crisis that cut off gas supplies to Europe, a top Cabinet official said Friday.
Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Hryhoriy Nemyria said he secured the deal during a meeting with the IMF's leadership in Washington, D.C. earlier this week. "Ukraine has met the primary demands of the IMF," Nemyria said in a statement.
In October, the IMF halted a $3.8 billion portion of its bailout loan to Ukraine and demanded that the country's leadership resolve its budget crisis before the funds would be released.
Nemyria's spokeswoman Nataliya Lysova said part of the money will be needed to pay Ukraine's gas bill to Russia, which comes due early next month.
Ukraine's foreign exchange reserves reached a record high, said Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov, in an interview with the First National Channel. Head of the government attributes this to the the substantial growth of export, and increase in remittances from Ukrainian citizens working abroad. In addition, Ukraine implemented a number of successful projects.
"Our foreign exchange reserves have reached a historical high. They make up about 37 billion dollars. This has never happened in the history of Ukraine previously", - the press service of the government quotes the prime minister.
"Basically, we have a positive balance of payments, I emphasize, for both goods and services, but for goods specifically, in fact, there is a definite deficit, but in general more currency enters the country than leaves, so our currency reserves are growing", - said Mykola Azarov.
According to him, the negative balance of trade in goods was due to the fact that disposable income of consumers has increased and so did the demand for imported goods.
"So, the Ukrainians have bought twice as many new cars in the past year compared to the previous year. We have increased the purchasing power of people. Whatever anyone says, the consumers are now buying more imported goods. Our import has grown by 30%", - summed up the head of the Government of Ukraine.
04 May 2011
radon wrote:
They'll probably see their currency strengthening, short term at least.
Pretorian wrote:The owner of the current president and PM there is a major exporter, so, not likely.
radon wrote:Pretorian wrote:The owner of the current president and PM there is a major exporter, so, not likely.
There is little benefit for Ukraine to have its currency strengthen, given that they already have a trade deficit in goods.
Pretorian wrote:sure thing , if you discount teachers that make $100 a month and pay $6 per pound of beef
linkIn Ukraine, the euro fell in value by more than 20 copecks
The euro dropped significantly in price on the Ukraine forex market [today]. Buy bids fell by 22-26 copecks, sell bids - by 16 copecks. Quotations of the U.S. dollar have not changed.
...
06 May 2011
linkThe hryvnia until late June to remain stable - analyst
05.05.2011 08:52
National currency will remain stable until late June....
In particular, there is no reason for the devaluation of the hryvnia in terms of components of the balance of payments.
On the contrary, in the view of the balanced supply and demand in the forex market, the excess foreign exchange inflows in the form of private remittances over the outflows from Ukraine could result in a moderate strengthening of the hryvnia.
According to the analyst, the average selling rate of cash dollar by the end of the second quarter will probably be in a range 7,95-8,00 grn.
radon wrote:The low salary may actually be an indication of hidden structural unemployment.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Every 10-15 years this place has a major revolution. And each time it’s precipitated by one basic principle: money.
All people really want is to be in a place where they can improve their lives… where their children can have a brighter future than they did.
The system in Ukraine did not provide those conditions. It was designed for a tiny political and banking elite to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.
This revolution was borne from economic frustration, plain and simple.
Yet each time this happened in the past, all they really did was change the players… not the game. They just ended up with a different set of criminals in charge.
This time around there seems to be serious effort to at least change the rules.
Many are talking about major revisions to the Constitution (leading one local journalist to ask– “Why don’t we use the American Constitution? It was written by really smart guys, it has worked for over 200 years, and they’re not using it anymore…”)
He’s right. Much of the West, in fact, has descended into the same extractive system as Ukraine.
There’s a tiny elite showering itself with free money and political favors at the expense of everyone else.
Dow 17,000 means that a handful of people at the top are making boatloads of money thanks to quantitative easing, some upper-middle class are doing fairly well, and the average guy pays higher prices for food, fuel, education, medical care, etc.
It’s not just the US. France, for example, is simply not a place where you can work hard and expect to improve your life anymore. In Greece and Spain, half of the nations’ young men are broke and unemployed.
And along they way, they have all set aside civil liberties and turned into vast police states.
Ukraine may be in the midst of turmoil right now, but they at least hit the big giant reset button and are looking to build something new.
The West, meanwhile, continues down its path of more debt, more money printing, more regulations, and less freedom. How long can this really go on without consequence?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-07-04/ukrainian-journalist-lets-borrow-us-constitution-theyre-not-using-it-anymore
evilgenius wrote:The advantage of a parliamentary system is that decision making falls into the hands of the few. It avoids the decision by committee problem. You know, that an elephant is a camel made by committee, and vice versa.
...
The disadvantage of a parliamentary system is that it basically elects a PM as king. Some countries with parliaments avoid this by having both a president and a parliament, like Russia, for instance.
In Ukraine an ethnic Ukrainian is somehow different than an ethnic Russian.
radon1 wrote:Why don't they adopt English as their sole national language. All problems solved.
A muddled timeline - blacks and natives were oppressed when the (white) Irish came.Sixstrings wrote:Your larger point about sectarianism is correct. The US has done so well, at being a melting pot, thanks to our Constitution and our principles. We were a melting pot from the beginning as colonies -- dissidents coming here from all kinds of factions. Puritans, quakers, Cathloics, all persecuted minorities.
Irish were starved out and persecuted, and came here. It's the whole Statue of Liberty thing, give me your tired huddled masses. Persecuted people trying to get away from oppression and have some freedom to live their lives and be left alone by their gov and neighbors, all found that here.
That's the American principle -- a neutral government, favoring no religion nor ethnicity, and that you get to be different and live your life with the caveat that you respect your neighbor's right to be different and do their thing.
And what unites you, in this melting pot, is that Constitution and your shared constitutional rights that everyone believes in whether you're black or white, environmentalist or gun nut, christian or muslim, whatever.
Keith_McClary wrote:A muddled timeline - blacks and natives were oppressed when the (white) Irish came.Sixstrings wrote:Your larger point about sectarianism is correct. The US has done so well, at being a melting pot, thanks to our Constitution and our principles. We were a melting pot from the beginning as colonies -- dissidents coming here from all kinds of factions. Puritans, quakers, Cathloics, all persecuted minorities.
Irish were starved out and persecuted, and came here. It's the whole Statue of Liberty thing, give me your tired huddled masses. Persecuted people trying to get away from oppression and have some freedom to live their lives and be left alone by their gov and neighbors, all found that here.
That's the American principle -- a neutral government, favoring no religion nor ethnicity, and that you get to be different and live your life with the caveat that you respect your neighbor's right to be different and do their thing.
And what unites you, in this melting pot, is that Constitution and your shared constitutional rights that everyone believes in whether you're black or white, environmentalist or gun nut, christian or muslim, whatever.
Have you changed your opinion on US policy in Libya?M_B_S wrote:http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2472120/ukraine_its_the_gas_gas_gas.html
Ukraine - it's the gas, gas, gas
Mike Whitney
10th July 2014
in Ukraine, as in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, and Syria, US policy is all about dominating the world's fossil fuel supplies, writes Mike Whitney - in this case, the gas pipelines from Russia to Europe. But the 'great aggressor', Vladimir Putin, is refusing to play his part. So what next?
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WAR!
M_B_S
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