Russian Economy General News: #10

par far wrote:No please don't do that, get Russia's birth rate up.

Hole wrote:Well, after the next crash there is a slight (read: big!) possibility that Trumpistan will fall out of the top 10 GDP countries rather quick.

The price of Brent crude oil rose above $ 62 per barrel

Kimppis wrote:So India overtaking the US by 2040-50 is certainly plausible, even likely and inevitable, but I do think their overall human capital is limited (wrongthink here, let's not go there any more than that) so that the economy will slow down after reaching maybe Brazil's level of per capita GDP (relative to the US level at that time).

Kimppis wrote: So overall I think the earlier long-term forecasts are still more accurate, the ones from maybe 5-10 years ago. Which incidentally are more optimistic about Russia, and even China as well.  

Hole wrote:The real economy of Trumpland is around 5 - 6 Trill. All the rest is debt and financial voodoo. If the big bubble bursts the only way forward for them is to acknowledge the facts and start from there.

(Bloomberg) -- Jeffrey Gundlach said yet again that the U.S. economy is gorging on debt.

Echoing many of the themes from his annual "Just Markets" webcast on Tuesday, Gundlach took part in a round-table of 10 of Wall Street’s smartest investors for Barron’s. He highlighted the dangers especially posed by the U.S. corporate bond market.

Prolific sales of junk bonds and significant growth in investment grade corporate debt, coupled with the Federal Reserve weaning the market off quantitative easing, have resulted in what the DoubleLine Capital LP boss called “an ocean of debt.”

The investment manager countered President Donald Trump’s claim that he’s presiding over the strongest economy ever. The growth is debt-based, he said.

Gundlach’s forecast for real GDP expansion this year is just 0.5 percent. Citing numbers spinning out of the USDebtClock.org website, he pointed out that the U.S.’s unfunded liabilities are $122 trillion -- or six times GDP.

“I’m not looking for a terrible economy, but an artificially strong one, due to stimulus spending,” Gundlach told the panel. “We have floated incremental debt when we should be doing the opposite if the economy is so strong.”

Stock Bear

Gundlach is coming off another year in which his Total Return Bond Fund outperformed its fixed-income peers. It returned 1.8 percent in 2018, the best performance among the 10 largest actively managed U.S. bond funds, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Gundlach expects further declines in the U.S. stock market, which recently have steadied after reeling for most of December since the Great Depression. Equities will be weak early in the year and strengthen later in 2019, effectively a reversal of what happened last year, he said.

“So now we are in a bear market, which isn’t defined by me as stocks being down 20 percent. A bear market is determined by the way stocks are acting,” he said.

Rupal Bhansali, chief investment officer of International & Global Equities at Ariel Investments, picked up on Gundlach’s debt theme in the Barron’s cover story. Citing General Electric’s woes, she urged investors to focus more on balance-sheet risk rather than whether a company could beat or miss earnings. Companies with net cash are worth looking at, she said.

Despite the surge in outstanding debt last year, markets aren’t signaling any particular concern over the U.S. government’s creditworthiness. The yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries dropped to 2.70 percent on Friday from a 2018 high of about 3.26 percent in October.

Hole wrote:Worked great for the upper 0,001%.

Putin’s special envoy proposed start-up development measures

MOSCOW, January 15 - RIA News . Developing start-ups in the Russian Federation is possible through the “digital footprint” and “pumping” of universities, as well as managing demand from corporations, so you can stop the process of moving these projects abroad, said the special presidential envoy for digital and technological development, director of direction " Young professionals "Agency for Strategic Initiatives (ASI) Dmitry Peskov.
According to him, the state does not know how many startups are in the country, who works for them, who their investors are, where they place their production and what critical technologists are used by this particular startup. As a result, startups grow to a certain level and go abroad.


"It is impossible to fight this prohibitively in any way, but it is necessary to create conditions under which startups could grow in Russia and sell their goods on global markets. We would like to propose a number of solutions that would solve this problem. The first task is to know what a startup is and what kind of people it is, that is, learn how to assemble a “digital footprint.” And the first task facing the platform is to collect this digital footprint, ”he said, speaking at a meeting of the ASI supervisory board.
The second solution is to develop universities in the Russian Federation, since the number of start-ups in the country is very small. “We have a very low offer. Startups are just very few, they are incredibly small. You know how to joke on the market - German Oskarovich has already bought everyone alive (Gref, head of Sberbank - Ed.). When people talk about frames for the digital economy, the same "This means that we can no longer focus only on 10-15 leading universities. We need to go deep, we need to reach strong, motivated students in each region," he said.


The special representative of the president, together with the Ministry of Higher Education and Science, proposed to “pump out” a team of all the leading regional universities in SkolTech. “That is, conditionally, 100 universities, from 21st to 121st place, of supporting universities, regional, technical, including including mechanisms for their financial incentives to the results of these educational programs and retraining,” he said. The "intensive" program will involve work with approximately 1.5 thousand managers for two weeks, 18-20 hours a day.

The third solution is demand management. It is planned to create interest in start-ups from large corporations. According to ASI, the activity of corporations is "infinitely low," for example, 18 out of 124 large organizations have venture funds. "Digital technologies - they after all reduce the total market volume. That is, digital monopolies are being formed, let's speak frankly. And the place for small ones is narrowing. In this sense, we need to generate demand, but the only way to generate demand is to work with our large technological state corporations and not only state corporations ", - he concluded.

"The first results (of the experiment) exceed all the most daring expectations, " said Makarov.

ccording to a REGNUM correspondent on January 14, this was announced during the meeting of the State Duma budget committee by its head Andrei Makarov (United Russia).

"The first results (of the experiment) exceed all the most daring expectations, " said Makarov. According to him, the number of citizens who voluntarily registered as self-employed increased significantly in 2019.

“On the first working day of the new 2019, people registered almost twice as many as in the previous two years,” noted Makarov.

However, he stressed that only the Federal Tax Service can announce the official figures and the results of the experiment.

Russia and Zimbabwe sign platinum mining agreement

GunshipDemocracy wrote:

par far wrote:No please don't do that, get Russia's birth rate up.

unless Russia jump starts fertility rate to Niger/Mali level 6-7 children per woman then  I'm  afraid immigration is inevitable

Hole wrote:Well, after the next crash there is a slight (read: big!) possibility that Trumpistan will fall out of the top 10 GDP countries rather quick.

unfortunately, not in our lifetime



So where are those experts claiming that barrel will drop to $20-30?! and  yes for 100rubles?

The price of Brent crude oil rose above $ 62 per barrel

https://ria.ru/20190111/1549219675.html

higurashihougi wrote:In Soviet times there were some sort of financial fee for families who do not have enough kids... wonder is it still applicable at today's circumstances ?

par far wrote:One the things I don't get is why can't western countries get their own population growth higher?

Russia really needs to push family into the younger generation, there is nothing stopping, Russia from getting Russian women to have 3-4 kids. The Russian church, the Russian government needs to play a role here.

Austin wrote:US sanctions: Russia sees the most dangerous scenario

https://www.gazeta.ru/business/2019/01/15/12129025.shtml?updated

French media predicted Russia a new trade balance record

Bank of Russia purchased record-breaking gold volume in 2018

par far wrote:"CRISIS WITHIN RUSSIAN ELITES RIPPLES OUTWARD."

Is this something we should be worried about?

https://southfront.org/crisis-within-russian-elites-ripples-outward/