Trump please do to Germany and Netherlands what they did to Greece and others.

2008

Just finished it after seeing your comment lol, pretty fun movie.

https://x.com/SumerianEunuch/status/2011976240211574788

Hmm I think one way to not inject additional Bolivars would be for the Government to purchase Bolivars from the forex market using the Dollars they earn. This will put appreciation pressure on the exchange rate. But I do not know how well the official forex markets are in Venezuela given the sanctions. Edit: I forgot the other side, they may be forced to inject reserves (in Bolivars) due to interest rate targeting, but regardless, exchange rate pressure will still be alleviated.

I think printing shouldn’t be seen itself as a thing, the Government decides to spend in Bolivars by budgeting (ofc, they constrain themselves by putting limits like certain % deficit or earmark it on oil revenues), then taxes it back. The issue is in a country like Venezuela, the tax collection is very poor, most of it is informal and many people evade taxes, this reduces the capacity of the Government to spend. The public wants Bolivars but can avoid taxes.

The fiscal deficit, what some call ‘money printing’ is ex-post, it comes after all the spending and taxing has taken place. When the Gov budgets, it can only ‘guess’ what the tax revenue will be based on previous revenue and some assumptions. This is the fiscal deficit ‘guess’, the actual fiscal deficit can end up being different depending on how much people want to hoard currency, how good tax collection is, tax rate, state of the economy etc.

They have done modest social democracy and improved social services. There are especially limits in employment generating measures, unfortunately. I think this year CPI-M will likely end up losing the last state Government they control. The liberals who win will not fix anything, likely making everything worse paving way for actual fascists. I do not think given the demographics and ideologies, the Hindutva fascists will be able to completely take over Kerala, but they’ll make some gains.

Good book https://annas-archive.li/md5/2ec0b08e73d727d44f868956b97676e6

News media in Kerala is very much aligned with Congress. As for CPIM support for oligarchs’ certain projects, they run a state Government not central one. CPI-M’s likely fall in the elections later this year will largely be linked to economic issues, which are particularly hard to fix given the constraints they are under. Even the most ideologically ‘pure’ Communist party will struggle with this and will be voted out. Give CPI ML Red Star or whatever smaller Communist parties the state Govt and they will have to deal with the same constraints.

The resulting fiscal crisis is being used as a convenient justification for Pinarayi government’s increased dependence on neo-colonial financial institutions such as World Bank, ADB, AIIB as well as on other global speculative-financial sources like bond markets, subjecting the state to far-right neoliberal conditionalities as dictated by global creditors and financial speculators.

Easy for them to blame, criticize from far away. But where is the state Gov upposed to get the revenue from? They can’t raise sales taxes, they don’t collect income taxes, they don’t collect corporate taxes, they can’t run deficits themselves beyond a set limit (i think 3%). KIIFB (and others) were created to make it possible to spend on surplus generating projects by borrowing using a bank like entity.

Well, if there is no demand for it, it doesn’t matter whether it’s budgeted directly or the pretend to lend against Dollars, either is ‘money printing’ in a sense. But yes, it’ll reduce pressure on exchange rate (which passes through to prices) and allow country to import more. I am not saying the oil revenue is useless, it clearly is. Spending on food, housing etc. requires input goods which needs to be imported for a country like Venezuela, if budgeted without export revenue coming in, this will cause downwards pressure on exchange rate, and hence inflation, as has been happening.

https://x.com/DropSiteNews/status/2012031162135281696

Interesting stuff. In the black market, bolivar has been appreciating. Ofc, it’s iffy to say the oil revenue funds ‘social protection, including hospitals, schools, food, housing, and workers income… infrastructure and services such as water, electricity, and roads’, the state can pretend to be constrained with its spending and only spend when receiving export revenues, but really all the Bolivar are created by BCV (Venezuelan Central Bank) and the real purpose of oil revenue is to allow the country to import more and stabilize the exchange rate . Shame they are playing pretend with this SWF stuff, probably for the foreign investors.

Keep in mind, the Venezuelan Government obtains Dollars from its exports, but its budget is denominated in Bolivars, it spends in Bolivars. So, when the Government ‘spends’ from the SWF or from its foreign currency reserves, it is really giving the Dollars it holds to the BCV who then ‘lend against’ it, it becomes their asset and it provides equivalent Bolivar (at the Central Bank determined rate) into account of Venezuelan Treasury (this is done out of nothing, ex-nihilo).

I’ve read that article and I disagree with how its presented. There are legitimate Muslim fundamentalist groups operating in Kerala, very regressive who are equivalent to Muslim version of RSS.

He claimed that these offenses are most prevalent in this district — and that illegal money is brought into Kerala for “anti-national” activities.

Very funny this is the only major thing they can pin on the state Government since they have nothing else. I agree, CPI-M does sometimes do tailism, but their hatred towards reactionary Muslim groups (see SDPI, who have killed CPIM workers) is valid.

CPI-M has always been against exclusionary policies of the BJP, they heavily opposed Citizenship Amendment Act., are pro Palestine and anti-Zionist.

This is their paper btw.

Do Indians not read the news at all?

Indians are delusional. Who tf they asking this?

https://ecfr.eu/publication/how-trump-is-making-china-great-again-and-what-it-means-for-europe/

Fork found in kitchen

I do not know why exactly it started depreciating. But liquidity in these markets is very thin and volatile.

Most of Iran’s oil trade is done outside these parallel markets. The 1.4m Rial quote is the parallel market.

With the official markets, the big exporters (oil, state trade esp) surrender parts of their foreign currencies to the Gov and importers get access to it only for certain goods (capital goods, essentials). I’m sure there is a lot of rent seeking arbitrage involved (import overinvoicing) with the imports part especially.

Parallel market sources its foreign currency from official channel partly, ofc one is rent seeking, another would be smaller exporters under invoicing their exports and getting foreign currencies via different channels, remittances.

I believe they should really merge the markets together. When you give semi-fixed rates to private sector officially, they’ll do rent seeking (see Venezuela’s CADIVI). The neoliberals blame capital controls and Government interference as if Gov is solely to blame but it is bringing private sector into something Government can do itself (import essentials and sell at stabilized prices) that creates such fraud and rent seeking.

If the state wants to import essentials it can buy from unified market, it can buy using Rial at market rate (or using foreign reserves) and sell it subsidized and rationed at its own shops. This’ll improve the liquidity instead of having parallel markets.

RSS is kind of the deep state too. They have ties to bureaucrats especially ones appointed under Modi.

The high level Central Govt bureaucrats meet consistently with RSS.

Communist Party of China delegation meets RSS (fascists) general secretary in India

Sad opportunism, it’s one thing to meet with BJP (since they are the Government) but RSS, really can’t see how Indian Communist Parties will be able to defend this.

Other than such crypto tokens, there are HYIPs (basically pyramid/ponzi scheme, pyramid since some have mlm aspect to it).

There are people who buy into many of these at once knowing it’s fraudulent hoping they get to be the winner before the whole thing falls apart. They hope one is enough to make up for losses of others.

It doesn’t work ofc

A very obvious example would be just be that in the 2000s, pension funds, mutual funds etc, created a bubble in commodities (oil, wheat) by purchasing large amounts of it (and its derivatives). Very painful for poorer countries, it wasn’t as bad as it would’ve been since 2000s also saw massive surge of $ abroad in form of foreign investments and demand in the West, so currencies stayed stable/appreciated.

Its best the rich play around with financial claims and electronic entries than real goods. Ofc, its best best if speculation didn’t exist at all.

Putin is ‘humiliated’

Going with nothing ever happens. There will be a temporary drop in stocks only. The claim is Trump is pressuring Fed into lowering rates. Nothing has happened, and even if Trump gets his low rates, it won’t do much to stop the possible recession.

Central Bank Independence is a scam.

Yes I often see that “Afghanistan resulted in dissolution of USSR because of debt” claim from Russian media. Completely rooted in “sound finance”.

Wars should be measured in real resource use. How many people are dying, how much of resources which could be put into investment and consumer goods is being spent on war. Not financial metrics like “debt to GDP”.

True, USSR experienced a balance of payments squeeze in the late 1980s due to collapse in oil prices, which in turn reduced its ability to import ie obtain resources from the rest of the world and hence living standards. But it always had its own resources.

It’s the same claim liberals make about modern Russia. “Russia won’t be able to fight Ukraine if we sanction their oil hard enough”. No, they will always be able to pay their soldiers, Government workers etc using Rubles since they control the computers used to spend Rubles. The loss of oil revenue (which in reality is a source of foreign currencies, not funding the state, though the state can pretend to be constrained by it) will only affect the exchange rate and hence ability to import, not its ability to mobilize local resources.