Thursday, March 26, 2015

John Helmer — The Yeltsin Tax Returns To Russian Politics – Wage Arrears Rise, Putin Support Declines

According to the Helmer theory of Russian political economy, first propounded in 2002, people who haven’t been paid spend their time blaming the Kremlin for their pain. When arrears rise, the president’s approval rating falls.....
Dances with Bears
John Helmer

3 comments:

mike norman said...

Deliberately delay paying wages and salaries to government workers for lack of funds?? Lack of...RUBLES????

Are you fucking kidding me?

Proving once again (and something I've said over and over) that Putin is neither smart nor capable. (And not for the reasons they make up in the West.)

Matt Franko said...

LOL!

At least our morons know how to borrow from the Federal retirement funds to make payroll....

Tom Hickey said...

The whole world including Russia is under the spell of monetarism. They are fearful that increasing the deficit will adversely affect the value of the ruble and further exacerbate inflation.

But the Russian economy has been doing more or less OK owing to ruble devaluation, and the recent rise in the ruble has been undercutting this somewhat. They should not be looking for a higher ruble, although controlling high volatility is desirable.

There seems to be room to increase the deficit without sparking a ruble collapse, and also to bring down the policy rate.

See Jon Hellevig – Russia Economic News Brief, which I linked to here recently.