Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby Belligerent Savant » Mon Oct 03, 2022 1:34 pm

Belligerent Savant » Sun Oct 02, 2022 9:49 pm wrote:To call this commentary facile would be too charitable.


Brief drive-by to retroactively retract my statement above. Don't have time to read the replies to my last posting yet, but I should refrain from such rhetoric, generally. We're all just fellow humans here, trying our best to make sense of the madness. I am, at times, passionate about the harms of pervasive/perpetual manipulation of information (as managed by those pulling the levers and their myriad proxies), and how it negatively impacts our ability to think clearly, which in turn enhances the potential for divisiveness, etc.

Will aim to do better.
User avatar
Belligerent Savant
 
Posts: 5214
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:58 pm
Location: North Atlantic.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby DrEvil » Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:25 pm

Harvey » Mon Oct 03, 2022 1:36 pm wrote:
DrEvil » Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:06 am wrote:...and then threatens to use nukes if Ukraine tries to take it back...



Do you have a source for this claim, with an uncontested translation?


I may have jumped the gun on that one.

As far as I know Russian military doctrine is to use nukes if the state itself is threatened, and the assumption then is that he includes the recently annexed areas of Ukraine (plus Crimea) in that. He hasn't clarified if he will use them to defend those areas or not, which I believe is the point: make people think he might do it if they don't back off, but never make it clear one way or the other. It's the same thing the US did with Taiwan before Biden started mouthing off. Make the Chinese think the US could get involved, but never make definite statements either way.

But that's really the problem, not knowing for sure. It opens up the door to all kinds of horrible miscalculations. It's incredibly easy for things to escalate if one side is just guessing what the other side's reaction will be and gets it wrong.

Edit: here's a quote via The Grayzone:

In his Sept. 21 speech, Putin did not make an explicit threat to use nuclear weapons. He vowed to “make use of all weapon systems available to us,” in the event of “a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people.”

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/27/us-u ... eace-deal/

So the question is, does he regard his newly acquired land as falling under the "territorial integrity of our country"? My guess is no, he's not that stupid. Ramzan Kadyrov got slapped down by Dmitry Peskov after saying they should use nukes. Crimea, not so sure. Giving up something that's been Russian for eight years already is probably a lot harder to swallow.
Last edited by DrEvil on Tue Oct 04, 2022 6:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3971
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby DrEvil » Mon Oct 03, 2022 6:36 pm

Belligerent Savant » Mon Oct 03, 2022 7:34 pm wrote:
Belligerent Savant » Sun Oct 02, 2022 9:49 pm wrote:To call this commentary facile would be too charitable.


Brief drive-by to retroactively retract my statement above. Don't have time to read the replies to my last posting yet, but I should refrain from such rhetoric, generally. We're all just fellow humans here, trying our best to make sense of the madness. I am, at times, passionate about the harms of pervasive/perpetual manipulation of information (as managed by those pulling the levers and their myriad proxies), and how it negatively impacts our ability to think clearly, which in turn enhances the potential for divisiveness, etc.

Will aim to do better.


While I appreciate the retraction I wouldn't worry too much about it. It's not like I'm all hugs and fucking roses in my comments either. But in the interest of mutual niceness, I get the feeling we both ultimately worry about the same things, we just disagree on some of the details, which makes you a horrible person.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3971
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby Belligerent Savant » Sat Oct 08, 2022 5:20 pm

.

I am indeed a horrible person in the eyes of a number of people. For expressing what I express (and taking a firm stand on certain positions out there in the 'real world', particularly over the last ~couple years).

Meanwhile --

Image
User avatar
Belligerent Savant
 
Posts: 5214
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:58 pm
Location: North Atlantic.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby drstrangelove » Mon Oct 10, 2022 4:58 am

objective recap

Act 1
Russia invades Ukraine and takes control of substantial Ukrainian territory beyond the separatists regions on its border and Crimea.

Ukraine receives influx of military hardware and mounts an offensive while Russia holds elections in separatist regions.

Act 2
Russia retreats ground forces to separatists regions while Ukrainian ground forces retake control of territory formerly occupied by Russia in their initial offensive.

Nordstream pipeline explodes. Russia blames West, West blames Russia.

Russia announces partial mobilisation.

Russia officially annexes separatists territories while at the same time Ukrainian ground forces start to recapture parts of them.

Crimea bridge explodes. Russia, West, and Ukraine all agree Ukraine was behind it.

Russian Military General in charge of Ukraine war is replaced by Air force General.

Act 3

Explosions rock multiple Ukrainian cities, including Kyiv

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukrai ... bc0880ac8c
User avatar
drstrangelove
 
Posts: 981
Joined: Sat May 22, 2021 10:43 am
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby Grizzly » Fri Oct 14, 2022 9:28 pm

There was a UN vote to condemn Russias annexation of four regions.

143 condemned
35 abstained
5 voted against.

Combined population of abstained or voted against was over 4 billion.

That is more than half of the worlds population.

The 5 countries that voted against included:

Belarus
Syria
North Korea
Russia

Abstentions included:

China
India
Pakistan
Thailand
Cuba
Vietnam
Armenia
Algeria

Watch analysis on this
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby DrEvil » Sat Oct 15, 2022 12:56 am

Seen another way - countries that voted against that aren't Russia: roughly 63 million people, or about 0.8% of the world's population. It climbs to a respectable 2.6% if you include Russia.

The abstentions aren't support, more like telling a friend they fucked up without cutting them out of your life because they still have that good weed you like.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3971
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby BenDhyan » Sun Oct 16, 2022 7:50 am

DrEvil » Sat Oct 15, 2022 2:56 pm wrote:Seen another way - countries that voted against that aren't Russia: roughly 63 million people, or about 0.8% of the world's population. It climbs to a respectable 2.6% if you include Russia.

The abstentions aren't support, more like telling a friend they fucked up without cutting them out of your life because they still have that good weed you like.

Whilst some abstentions may indeed be due to not wanting to hurt Russian relations, I would have thought that many would be due to not wanting to hurt relations with the US/Europe by voting against. But it appears in the case of China, the abstention was not enough to avoid the wrath of the wannabe rulers of planet Earth.

A senior NATO official clashed with a Chinese envoy over Beijing’s reluctance to follow the lead of Western countries and denounce Russia over the Ukraine conflict, Bloomberg reported on Saturday. Speaking at the annual Arctic Circle Assembly, Admiral Rob Bauer, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, reportedly accused China of “undermining the rules-based international order,” adding that Beijing does not share the West’s values.

He Rulong, China’s ambassador to Iceland, challenged Bauer. “Admiral, with due respect, your speech and remarks are filled with arrogance,” he replied, as cited by Bloomberg. The NATO official replied that China has insisted that it supports “the principle of sovereignty and the importance of the internationally recognized borders in the world. So why is it possible then that China still is not condemning Russia’s attack in Ukraine?”

https://www.rt.com/news/564747-china-nato-ukraine-conflict/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS
Ben D
User avatar
BenDhyan
 
Posts: 867
Joined: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:11 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby DrEvil » Sun Oct 16, 2022 8:21 pm

Good point, and no surprises from the admiral, although hearing any US official talking about the "rules-based international order" is hilarious, especially now that Russia has taken the US playbook and started using it in Ukraine. They even took the parts they're not supposed to: fucking the whole thing up.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3971
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby JackRiddler » Mon Oct 17, 2022 12:43 am

The abstentions are an incipient bloc, whether or not they are happy about the invasion (and who could be, really?).

The U.S. is trying really hard to get China hostile. The new sanctions supposedly just forced every American executive and engineer at Chinese superconductor companies to resign! I saw a piece calling it an "annihilation" of the Chinese industry. I'm sure they were key personnel, for them to have been hired, presumably recruited, as Americans in the first place. Can't know for sure, but it seems to me this will set back the Chinese industry by one to six months. It's pathetic.

(EDIT: And then end up accelerating the Chinese industry and making it more independent and robust, I thought I was implying, but Dr Evil made that point explicitly in the next post. Sanctions are a backfire machine, more than ever.)
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby DrEvil » Mon Oct 17, 2022 12:51 pm

The only thing it will achieve is to accelerate the domestic Chinese industry in the long term. It started years ago when the US denied an export license for Intel to supply Chinese supercomputers, so they made their own chips and ended up with the, at the time, world's fastest supercomputer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunway_TaihuLight.
"I only read American. I want my fantasy pure." - Dave
User avatar
DrEvil
 
Posts: 3971
Joined: Mon Mar 22, 2010 1:37 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Ukraine as maximized neoliberal bustout

Postby JackRiddler » Sun Oct 23, 2022 6:54 am

Upshot: This CPR pub Tooze covers below indicates the Western friends are planning to leave absolutely nothing unprivatized or unplundered in the Ukraine. One curious thing the neoliberal age has shown is that no matter how thoroughly you think they've stolen and sucked everything dry already, there's always more left to plunder, down to the last unguessed-at dreg of humanity, dignity, air supply, and imagination. (At least until the nukes fly, and I'm sure they've got plans for afterward.)

Don't have time to format the following long copy-paste, so use punctuation and logic to figure out what's quote within the quote.

Or hey, use the link, duh silly me, and see the graphics too.
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartb ... d=50739530

My version includes one interruption to make a comment, at the point that everyone who read it interrupted themselves to ask, did I really just read that?


[GODDAMN that took 15 min extra to post here, because of some interpolated forbidden code in the copy-paste that I finally discovered was the tiny Ukr flags in the quoted tweets, which were actually visible in the draft, if tiny. Whole new level of FNORD we've reached.]


Chartbook #163: Warfare without the state - New Keynesian shock therapy for Ukraine's home front.
Adam Tooze
Oct 22

As the war in Ukraine rages on, the question on the battlefield is whether Russia resorts to nuclear escalation. [Only possibility?] In Washington the political consensus is crumbling. After the midterms will a re-energized Republican party pull back from support of Ukraine? Meanwhile, Ukraine celebrates its military triumphs but is increasingly concerned about its mounting economic and social difficulties. In Washington during the IMF and World Bank meetings earlier this month, all three questions - nuclear risk, GOP risk, and economic and financial risk - converged.

It is clear that Ukraine, unlike Russia, faces an urgent economic and social crisis. The World Bank and IMF at their latest meeting confirmed dark predictions that Ukraine’s GDP will likely shrink by 35% this year. More than ten million people are displaced and need relief. As one report notes: “According to estimates by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), more than a million workers have been dismissed from previous employment and more than half of firms have cut nominal wages (in many sectors by 50%) since the war started. Many firms report operating under reduced hours.”

Furthermore, it is increasingly clear that the policies with which Kyiv has successfully met the early stages of the war are not sustainable. Inflation is surging towards 30 percent and more. The national currency, the hryvnia, has fallen in value by roughly 70 percent. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s foreign exchange reserves are being burned up in the effort to slow the depreciation of the currency.

There is gamesmanship on all sides. In negotiating for concessions from creditors Kyiv has no incentive to paint its situation in rosy colors. But there is little doubt that the situation is truly serious. By the winter Ukraine’s parlous economic and financial situation may well begin to undermine its ability to continue the war.

There is an obvious solution in the form of foreign aid. But will that be forthcoming? If not, what does realism dictate? And specifically what is the role of Western commentators and experts in such as situation? I am prompted to ask these questions both by reflecting on my own engagement with the issue and by a close reading of a report issue by CPR on September 14th co-authored by an all-star group of American and European economists.



The report is clearly motivated by real concern for Ukraine’s situation. But I fear that its proposals threaten to undermine what it seeks to defend. When democracy is under attack we need to tread carefully on political economy. The CPR authors do the opposite. Contrary to what you might expect, namely that war would lead to a search for solidaristic social and economic measures to shore up the Ukrainian home front, the CPR team demand radical deregulation. In this respect they outdo the imagination of even a radical observer such as Slavoj Žižek who in a recent piece in project syndicate fondly imagined that the war had led to a temporary retreat of neoliberal designs on Ukraine. History, it seems, is more radical than that. Licensed by formulaic assumptions about endemic corruption and inefficiency on the part of the Ukrainian state, the CPR authors propose to sever any association between war-making and the state as anything more than a residual safety net. The 21st century has thus given birth to a new strange new vision of warfare without the state. This is all the more striking for the fact that it emerges unbidden out of a far more familiar set of questions.

***

The most urgent issue at hand is, after all, how to pay for Ukraine’s war. Ukraine’s tax base is weak. Military spending is surging and cutting non-military spending is easier said than done.

Elina Ribakova @elinaribakova
7. There is little that can be done on the expenditure side in Ukraine. Cutting spending during the war is neither realistic nor prudent.
2:32 AM ∙ Oct 17, 2022
h/t @elinaribakova of the IIF an essential follow!

Foreign funding covers only a fraction of the resulting deficit. Local investors are not keen to buy Ukrainian local-currency bonds, on account of inflation. So borrowing from the central bank, the NBU, i.e. printing money has become the last resort of (inflationary) war finance.

Elina Ribakova @elinaribakova
4. Ukraine needs funding, but also a credible macro framework. One cannot be caught in a program like Argentina or Egypt where the lack of a credible macro framework meant the gap was an ever-increasing number. The NBU is the largest "donor" to the budget it prints money.
Image
2:21 AM ∙ Oct 17, 2022
30Likes4Retweets

No central bank wants to preside over rampant inflation. Since the summer, the NBU had been urging the Zelenskiy government to raise the interest rates on the debt that it issues to make the loans more popular. The government has demurred.

Back in September, I argued in Chartbook #149 that the social and economic pressure on Ukraine would likely exacerbate divisions within the elite and notably those between the government and the central bank. At the time - those were the days of Ukraine’s spectacular military advances on the Northern front - I felt some nervousness about even bringing up the issue. But then, on October 6, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, Ukraine’s central bank governor Kyrylo Shevchenko resigned and disappeared from the scene, to reemerge on facebook somewhere outside the country. He claimed medical grounds, but it also emerged that he is facing a corruption investigation.

Some very well-informed observers note that this may be all there is to it, a corruption case - see for instance the commentary by @DaveDalton42 who is a great follow on Ukraine’s political economy. But one does have to wonder why a corruption investigation, of which there are presumably many ongoing at any one time, should have been allowed to unseat such a critical official just ahead of the IMF meetings. Strikingly, Anders Aslund, who can hardly be accused of lacking sympathy for Kyiv, interpreted Shevchenko’s departure in political terms.
Twitter avatar for @anders_aslund
Anders Åslund @anders_aslund
The Ukrainian Rada accepted NBU Chair Kyrylo Shevchenko's resignation for "health reasons" with 263 votes. He was only allowed 2 years on the job. His two excellent predecessors received each only 3 years on the job. Nobody was allowed serve a full term. epravda.com.ua/rus/news/2022/…
4:11 PM ∙ Oct 6, 2022
66Likes7Retweets

Likewise, the well-connected Bloomberg team of Volodymyr Verbyany, Jorge Valero, and Daryna Krasnolutska did not shrink from a political reading of the reshuffle at the NBU. Tensions between the government and the central bank go back to June and the new boss at the bank, Andriy Pyshnyi is well connected in Zelenskiy’s circles.

With Zelenskiy’s government continuing to put pressure on the central bank to stretch its capacity to finance the war-battered budget, it’s not clear how Pyshnyi, a 47-year-old ally of the president’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak, will react. “This is the main problem and threat,”said Dmytro Boyarchuk, executive director of the economic-research company Case Ukraine in Kyiv. After serving on Oschadbank’s board in the early 2000s, Pyshnyi began his political career when President Viktor Yushchenko appointed him deputy head of the National Security and Defense Council. He and his allies later joined forces with the political party that became the driving force of the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” that ousted pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014. He resumed his banking career soon after, serving as Oschadbank’s chief executive officer until 2020. While Pyshnyi is a political and business veteran, he doesn’t have universal support among economists, some of whom said a candidate with more of a technical background would be a better fit. “The main monetary body should be governed by an economist, who understands macroeconomic processes, not by a business person like banker,” Boyarchuk said.

Given the instability of Ukraine’s economic policy team and the apparent resolution in favor of Zelenskiy loyalists, who immediately announced that they were holding interest rates at their current levels, the question now becomes whether Kyiv can establish what Elina Ribakova of the IIF (the chief lobby group of international finance) describes as a “credible macroeconomic framework”.

***

If you were looking for such a framework one of the places you might be tempted to go would be the September 14 report published by the CPR team. They formulate Kyiv’s dilemma in dramatic terms.

For over 160 days, Ukraine has been resisting Russian aggression. A prolonged war is increasingly likely, a prospect that calls for a recalibration of the country’s macroeconomic strategy. Specifically, the current policy mix, which relies on running down foreign reserves and other temporary measures, is progressively untenable. Unless altered, this course will result in a major economic crisis that will cripple Ukraine’s ability to sustain its war effort over an extended period.

They then go on to argue:

The government can hope for foreign aid in necessary amounts, but this may be wishful thinking: the moral support for Ukraine is only partly translating into a strong financial lifeline. The recommendations in this report will help Ukraine adjust to this reality.

So, with Ukraine’s survival and Europe’s future at stake, what does “realism” dictate?

The report is divided into four parts. The first three components, as they pertain to macroeconomic stabilization and the question of how to pay for the war are, in fact, easy to agree with. The Ukrainian state clearly needs to strengthen its revenue base. It needs to ensure a modicum of price stability. It should let the exchange rate depreciate whilst preventing mass capital flight by means of tough capital controls.

To their credit the CPR team note the need for progressive taxes to finance the war.

Ukraine has a flat personal income tax with a rate set at 18%. The existing military levy (introduced in 2015) is also a flat 1.5% of income. If the government cannot make these taxes progressive, it can introduce a progressive ‘war surcharge’ (for example, the surcharge would apply only to income or capital above a certain threshold) that may be easier to accept politically and could be rolled back after the war. Higher taxes on luxury items can also help to make taxation more progressive.

Beyond tax revenues the team aims for an ambitious agenda of domestic resource mobilization.

The aim should be to increase the collection of tax revenues and for remaining shortfalls to be financed primarily through non-monetary means: preferably through external aid, but if not, through domestic debt issuance, with much less reliance on seigniorage (printing money).

How exactly domestic savers are to be persuaded to subscribe to war loans at a time of rapidly rising inflation, remains unclear. Handwaving towards the example of the US in World War II is largely beside the point. Most likely, Kyiv will have to rely on forced savings.

Sensibly enough they argue for a “durable nominal anchor” i.e. price stability.

The aim should be for relatively low inflation. In a time of national mobilisation, the main responsibility for attaining price stability falls on the fiscal authority, which can strongly influence inflation through the tools it chooses to raise resources from the domestic private sector. The government should aim to enhance national savings rather than rely on monetary financing from the central bank. In coordination with fiscal authorities, the central bank should implement a flexible framework to support macroeconomic stability. A managed float of the exchange rate is consistent with this goal.

Third, external imbalances should be addressed through a combination of strict capital outflow controls, restrictions on imports, and some flexibility in the exchange rate to avoid jeopardising internal macroeconomic stability in the face of huge fiscal needs. A comprehensive standstill on external debt payments is essential.

All of these are sensible, stability-orientated policies that seem well-designed to secure a platform from which to sustain the war effort. All the more jarring is the fourth section of the CPR report in which the team depart from the task of macroeconomic stabilization to discuss the adjustment of Ukraine’s economy to the shock of the invasion. In this section, all notes of sensible caution are abandoned in favor of a breezy radicalism and a fatalistic view towards the Ukrainian state itself.

… although wartime governments usually take over the allocation of resources, Ukrainian circumstances call for more market-based allocation mechanisms to ensure cost-effective solutions that do not overburden the state capacity, exacerbate existing problems (such as corruption), or encourage (untaxed) black market activities. To this end, the aim should be to pursue extensive radical deregulation of economic activity, avoid price controls, and facilitate a productive reallocation of resources Ukraine’s very survival – and Europe’s future – is at stake. Extraordinary challenges must be matched by extraordinary policies and extraordinary support from Ukraine’s international partners.

Faced with the shock of Russian invasion rather than seeking to strengthen the Ukrainian state, the authors call for it to stand back.

Historically, wartime governments have relied on a mix of central planning and market-based allocations. In many cases, governments had to play a critical role in the economy to mobilise resources to produce weapons and munitions, given market incompleteness and imperfections (and lack of confidence in the market mechanism during WWII, which occurred in the aftermath of the Great Depression). But allocating resources through rationing and executive direction requires institutional capacity. Ukraine currently lacks such capacity to micromanage flows of goods and services to meet the needs of the defence and civilian sectors. Hence, the capacity of the government to direct the economy should be used sparingly … market-based mechanisms can be helpful in reinvigorating the economy, thus providing a larger tax base. To this end, the government should minimise regulation and other red tape that can constrain or slow down the reallocation of labour, capital, and materials in the economy. On balance, market-based allocations are preferred.

This puts a rather different complexion on their fiscal policy advice. When it comes to non-military government spending the report takes a stern view.

The need to provide safety nets is urgent and clear: the UN estimates that approximately 12 million Ukrainians need humanitarian assistance. Still, the government can be more efficient in its provisions. For example, it recently decided to fix prices for utilities and other public services. Apart from undermining the financial health of state-owned enterprises and private firms that provide these services and goods and creating a need to recapitalise these providers, this blanket approach is costly because it effectively subsidises households and businesses that can afford higher prices, and because it creates disincentives for saving energy and other critical resources. Current financial assistance to refugees and internally displaced people roughly corresponds to providing basic income. While this approach was adequate in the early chaotic days of the war, the cost of basic income is high. There is no differentiation between vulnerable and relatively well-off refugees … Furthermore, this type of assistance does not create an adequate incentive for refugees to look for jobs, while getting displaced workers back into the labour force should be a priority for the government. To this end, the government can tie continued assistance to job search and employment in public works.

As far as possible the report argues the basic functions of Ukrainian government should be outsourced.

Doctors Without Borders can provide basic medical services, while the UN and Red Cross can provide (and pay for) medical supplies. Spending on cultural programmes (such as protecting museums and galleries) can be covered by international organisations and NGOs.


WOW! Cute! Talk about insulting! Let's have the gift shop cover the full costs of the Metropolitan Musem of Art, and to propel the Titanic, just sing an outboard motor over the stern. Left unasked by our economist bozos in this ridiculous statement of how NGOs will just come in and replace a functioning state is what might be "provided" instead by MIC, already such a fine manager of the conflict, the reshuffled next-gen UKR oligarchs, JPM et al, Amazon et al, ExxonMobil et al, and -- why not -- the human-organ-trade cartels. Because of course that's the actual direction here, not leaving the NGOs in charge of anything that might make the last buck left to drain out of Ukr.

And given the exodus of a large part of the population, reserved categories of civilian spending cannot be sacrosanct:

Although military spending is the highest priority and hence must be protected from budget cuts, the government may need to re-examine other currently protected items of spending categories. Furthermore, spending should not be tied to pre-war guidelines or objectives (e.g. X% of GDP should be allocated to Y). For example, given that many children and young adults have left the country, the number, locations, and budgets of schools and universities can be recalibrated, freeing up resources for other uses.

On price controls the CPR teams argues against responding to the social crisis by limiting price movements. It offers a familiar series of arguments about inefficiency and market distortions etc., but then adds this high-tech zinger

… price controls are often justified by the need to ensure solidarity and equal access to goods. However, governments during WWII and other wars lacked the technology to target aid to those most in need. The current level of digitalisation provides alternatives to price controls, such as targeted transfer payments, that can protect vulnerable groups of the population at a lower cost in terms of economic efficiency.

The CPR team thus seems to imagine a Ukrainian society and economy adjusting to the shock of the war, assisted by high tech and NGOs, but with the Ukrainian state itself pruned back as far as possible. And this vision becomes explicit when it comes to the question of deregulation.

As a result of the Russian invasion, some sectors and locations in Ukraine have little to no economic activity currently. The released resources must be employed elsewhere, and government policies should facilitate this large-scale reallocation of resources. The government has encouraged businesses to move to Western Ukraine, where security risks are lower, but this policy has had only modest effects (fewer than 1,000 firms have moved). This problem can be addressed by a radical liberalisation of markets to accelerate the flow of the workforce and capital towards sectors/regions where the economy can operate robustly. For example, the government dramatically loosened labour market regulations (e.g. firms can fire workers relatively easily and unilaterally suspend elements of labour contracts; workers who would like to quit do not need to give advance notice to their employers). This approach should be applied to other areas. Land regulation, access to electricity, and other infrastructure should be streamlined to allow easier reallocation for firms. … Perhaps, the government can appoint a high-level official (e.g. ‘deregulation chief’) to coordinate and push for deregulation.

In conclusion the team ends by arguing

The marathon of this war requires prudence and caution in public finances, a durable nominal anchor, a resilient financial system, a careful management of external balances, and flexibility and efficiency in the allocation of scarce resources. Various branches of the government must coordinate their efforts to this end.

The CPR reports thus ends with a jarring and, it seems, largely unselfconcious juxtaposition: On the one hand, when it comes to macroeconomics, what is called for is prudence, caution, durability, resilience. On the other hand, when it comes to the fate of the Ukrainian economy, the CPR team envision a radical liquefaction of labour market regulation, the land market etc.

Ukraine has turned out to be a very competent military actor but the experts continue to doubt its capacities as a social or economic actor. So best to strip to strip those regulations down to the bone. The CPR’s proposals would seem to amount to a vision of warfare without the state.

You might say that this is the apotheosis of the “MIT synthesis” as classically proposed in Paul Samuelson’s textbook, in which macroeconomic stabilization is combined with an uninhibited embrace of conventional, markets-first microeconomics.

But since several of the CPR authors are associated with “new Keynesianism” in the US and since they invoke WWII and New Deal experience as a guide, let it be said that their position is the antithesis of Keynes’s own position. He argued for active macroeconomic management precisely because he considered an assault on the collective structures of society as ruinously dangerous.

***

One might criticize the recommendations as a remarkable example of the maxim that one should never let a crisis go to waste. They are a typical, top-down technocratic proposals for radical social upheaval justified by the claim that the end justifies the means. One might describe them as an attack on the social fabric of Ukraine under the mantle of martial law and limited freedom of the press. You might think of them as an anti-politics. Except that they are not. In fact, as the reference to the evisceration of Ukraine’s labour law suggests, the CPR team are explicitly taking sides with the highly politically contentious deregulatory agenda of the Zelenskiy government and its supporters in parliament and in Ukrainian business.

The labour market measures which the CPR team cite as a model for their deregulatory drive were first touted in 2020 but stopped in their tracks by domestic opposition and the COVID crisis. They were reintroduced in 2021, in part with inspiration from a consultancy funded by the British embassy, which, in the mounting tension with Russia, spied an opportunity to bounce the measures through. They were finally signed into law in August 2022 over protests from European labour movement. The one international agency which has not had its grandstand moment in Kyiv this summer is the International Labor Organization (ILO).

The legislation that was signed into law by Zelenskiy at the end of August effectively removes 70-80 per cent of the country’s workforce—employees of small- and medium-sized enterprises—from the protection of national labour law. As Thomas Rowley and Serhiy Guz report in Social Europe.

According to an ILO technical note, the legislation ‘appears to exclude a significant share of the Ukrainian workforce from … the general labour law through the establishment of a parallel and less protective regime’. It will institute the possibility of ‘termination at will’ of employment and ‘unilateral change by the employer of essential terms and conditions’ of work.

Under pressure from opponents of the reform, the law that Zelenskiy signed into effect obtains only for the duration of the war. But it will create facts on the ground. And it is clear that the struggle is already beginning in Ukraine about the terms of postwar reconstruction. Ukrainian labour lawyer and activist George Sandul described the final goal of the draft reconstruction plans as a ‘Mad Max-style dystopia’ where ‘everybody will negotiate on their own without any rules’.

Melodrama aside, the advocates of the new laws speak frankly about their agenda.

In an interview published on the Ukrainian parliament’s website on 28 July, Halyna Tretiakova, head of the parliamentary committee on social policy, claimed the ILO was a barrier to Ukrainians striking individual employment agreements and protecting their employment rights through more flexible means. ‘People don’t want to negotiate their employment through collective agreements, but through civil law, royalties, author rights,’ Tretiakova said. ‘But the International Labor Organization, created in 1919, in the epoch of industrialisation, says no … [The ILO says] a person is economically dependent on their employer and should therefore come under Ukraine’s labour code, developed in 1971.’ Tretiakova told openDemocracy that ‘international agreements’ such as the ILO conventions were ‘part of our legislation’ but that claims at the European Court of Human Rights against Ukraine for breaches of social and employment rights were ‘snowballing’. She said: ‘We have to re-examine the obligations of the state, and they have to match the capacity of the state at this specific historical moment. To ensure the number of claims don’t rise, we have to “reset” the labour code and [Ukraine’s] social model, which was not done during the country’s transition from socialism to a market economy. Whether this will require Ukraine leaving some forms of international agreements is a question for the executive branch, which will have to clearly define what we have funds for—and what we don’t.’ Critics have claimed that deputies in the Ukrainian parliament have used Russia’s invasion, which has displaced millions inside and outside the country, as a ‘window of opportunity’ to pass potentially controversial reforms. Before the war, Ukrainian trade unions organised protests against attempts by the ruling Servant of the People party to cut back on workplace and trade union rights. The draft reconstruction plan names ‘low loyalty of workers to the reforms’ and the ‘active position of resistance taken by trade unions’ as ‘key constraints’ on economic development.

***

Any program of economic policy involves a politics. Arguing for international assistance for Ukraine in its struggle with Russia is itself a political choice. Macreconomic stabilization is anything but innocent. But, in a Keynesian spirit, I would argue that there is a difference between setting the broad parameters of macroeconomic policy, especially if it is done in the progressive spirit implied by the first three points of the CPR program, and the kind of no-holds-barred deregulatory agenda that they tout in their program for Ukraine’s social and economic future. Furthermore, we should also insist that there is no necessary relationship between the two. As the Ukrainian advocates of deregulation are clearly aware, the deregulatory agenda involves a radical reconstruction of the post-Soviet order in their country. And they may, of course, have a point. But to conduct this kind of reconstruction under wartime conditions when the scope for public debate, strikes and opposition is limited, short-circuits democracy. Since defending democracy is part of Ukraine’s appeal this is bitterly ironic. It is also a gamble. It risks driving wedges into the national solidarity that is, if history is any guide, necessary to sustain the war. Of course, it may be the case that in the 21st-century and particularly in the post-Soviet space, the logic of politics and war is different. In any case, as a highly divisive policy it is fundamentally at odds with the image of patriotic national mobilization that Zelenskiy’s team have been so effective at communicating and which has been so appealing to much of the rest of the world. It is remarkable that such a high-profile group of international experts as the CPR authors should choose to add their weight to such a program in the name of economic necessity.

© 2022 Adam Tooze
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.

To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.

TopSecret WallSt. Iraq & more
User avatar
JackRiddler
 
Posts: 15983
Joined: Wed Jan 02, 2008 2:59 pm
Location: New York City
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby Belligerent Savant » Thu Oct 27, 2022 6:19 pm

.

Per the recent comments in the "Liberals/Leftists in America" thread:

https://thegrayzone.com/2021/12/06/war- ... th-russia/

War in Ukraine? NATO expansion drives conflict with Russia

AARON MATÉ·
DECEMBER 6, 2021

Russia is seeking a legally binding pledge that NATO will stop expanding east, including to Ukraine. If the US refuses, is war next? Richard Sakwa joins Pushback.

Russia is seeking a legally binding pledge that NATO will stop expanding east, including to Ukraine. If the US refuses, is war next? Scholar and author Richard Sakwa analyzes the growing Russia-Ukraine conflict and how Russiagate fueled it.

Guest: Richard Sakwa. Professor of Russian and European politics at the University of Kent. His books include “Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands” and his latest, “Deception: Russiagate and the New Cold War.”

Video:

User avatar
Belligerent Savant
 
Posts: 5214
Joined: Mon Oct 05, 2009 11:58 pm
Location: North Atlantic.
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby Grizzly » Thu Nov 03, 2022 11:41 am

Why is NO ONE stopping this? NATO readies MASSIVE attack, Putin sounds alarm
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

― Joseph mengele
User avatar
Grizzly
 
Posts: 4722
Joined: Wed Oct 26, 2011 4:15 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

Re: Russian-Ukrainian War: Live Thread

Postby Joe Hillshoist » Sun Nov 06, 2022 3:34 am

Bots manipulate public opinion in Russia-Ukraine conflict

Researchers from the University of Adelaide have found bots have had a major online presence during the war between Russia and Ukraine.

The researchers analysed 5,203,764 tweets, retweets, quote tweets and replies posted to Twitter between 23 February 2022, and 8 March 2022, containing the hashtags
#(I)StandWithPutin, #(I)StandWithRussia, #(I)SupportRussia, #(I)StandWithUkraine, #(I)StandWithZelenskyy and #(I)SupportUkraine.

“We found that between 60 and 80 per cent of tweets using the hashtags we studied came from bot accounts during the first two weeks of the war,” said co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, an MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences.

“This drove more angst in the online discourse and even impacted discussions surrounding people’s decision to flee or stay in Ukraine.

“We observed increases in words such as ‘shame’, ‘terrorist’, ‘threat’, and ‘panic’.

“Pro-Russian human accounts were having the largest influence on discussions of the war – particularly on accounts which were pro-Ukraine.

“To our knowledge, this is the first body of published work which addresses online influence operations in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

“In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat.

“However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale. As a result, these environments can be used to manipulate discussion, as well as cause disruption and overall public distrust.”

“In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale."
- Co-lead researcher Joshua Watt, MPhil candidate in Applied Mathematics and Statistics from the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Sciences.


Fellow co-lead researcher, Bridget Smart, a Masters student in Applied Mathematics and Statistics, added: “Our research identifies that this is happening during the Russia-Ukraine war and provides a statistical framework which quantifies the extent to which this is happening.

“This work extends and combines existing techniques to quantify how bots are influencing people in the online conversation around the Russia-Ukraine invasion.

“It opens up avenues for researchers to understand quantitatively how these malicious campaigns operate, and what makes them impactful. This research has identified that social media organisations may need to be better equipped for detecting and handling the use of bots on their networks.

“It has identified that governments may need to have stricter policies on social media organisations, and that social media can be a vital tool during conflict.”

The paper titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war” has been published in arXiv and will be presented at The International Conference on Social Informatics in Glasgow from 19-21 October.


https://www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/ne ... e-conflict
Joe Hillshoist
 
Posts: 10594
Joined: Mon Jun 12, 2006 10:45 pm
Blog: View Blog (0)

PreviousNext

Return to General Discussion

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 44 guests