As Marxist economist Michael Roberts explains in a recent post, core inflation in Western economies isn't going down:
This is what worries central banks. And what it also shows is that interest-rate hikes have little effect on reducing inflation, which rose because of food and energy prices, something central banks cannot control and are now falling for reasons nothing to do with central banks. Instead, central bank rate hikes are increasing the cost of borrowing to spend for households and invest for companies. Indeed, as ECB chief Lagarde said at her press conference, monetary tightening was being ‘very efficient’ in squeezing the real economy. As I have argued in a previous post, profits are now being squeezed as price inflation abates. And rising interest rates are squeezing companies at the other end.
Sure, if consumer spending and business investment slumps, then core inflation will eventually fall, but only as economies drop into recession. Even then, the major economies may enter a slump in production and a rise in unemployment this year, but still have inflation rates well above the levels of two years ago – the worst of all possible worlds.
Here is the map of the Ukraine conflict, courtesy of Wikipedia.
Here is the archive of important pieces of analysis from throughout the war that we've collected.
February 6th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 7th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 8th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 10th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
February 11th's update is here on the site and here in the comments.
Links and Stuff
Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
Examples of racism/euro-centrism during the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Add to the above list if you can, thank you.
Resources For Understanding The War Beyond The Bulletins
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. I recommend their map more than the channel at this point, as an increasing subscriber count has greatly diminished their quality.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have good analysis (though also a couple bad takes here and there)
Understanding War and the Saker: neo-conservative sources but their reporting of the war (so far) seems to line up with reality better than most liberal sources. Beware of chuddery.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are fairly brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. The Duran, of which he co-hosts, is where the chuddery really begins to spill out.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent journalist reporting in the Ukrainian warzones.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Telegram Channels
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
Pro-Russian
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ Gleb Bazov, banned from Twitter, referenced pretty heavily in what remains of pro-Russian Twitter.
https://t.me/asbmil ~ Now rebranded as Battlefield Insights, they do infrequent posts on the conflict.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/riafan_everywhere ~ Think it's a government news org or Federal News Agency? Russian language.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ Front news coverage. Russian langauge.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of the really big pro-Russian (except when they're being pessismistic, which is often) telegram channels focussing on the war. Russian language.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine
Any Western media outlet that is even vaguely liberal (and quite a few conservative ones too).
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
Last week's discussion post.
"MOSCOW, Feb 6 (Reuters) - Slumping energy revenues and soaring expenditure pushed Russia's federal budget to a deficit of 1.76 trillion roubles ($24.78 billion) in January, as sanctions and the cost of Moscow's military campaign in Ukraine choke the economy's prospects.
Citing preliminary data, Russia's finance ministry said on Monday oil and gas revenues were 46.4% lower at 426 billion roubles in January than in the same month last year, which it put down primarily to lower prices for Russia's Urals blend and lower volumes of natural gas exports.
Non-oil and gas revenues were 28% lower at 981 billion roubles, attributed to lower domestic VAT and income tax takings. Overall, budget revenues for the month were down 35.1%, while spending was 58.7% higher in January 2023, at 3.12 trillion roubles, already more than 10% of the full-year spending plan."
Apparently they are selling gold and currency reserves to fix the budget.
This sounds like a significant blow to the Russian economy, much unlike how western economic warfare has proven to be a paper tiger in previous months. But I'm not an economy guy, what is the explanation for this, is it a temporary downturn as export routes are realigned and is the new situation sustainable for Russia in the long run?
I would imagine so; there's going to be a period of transition because new pipelines have to be built, like the one across Mongolia and the one to Pakistan, as well as the Turkish gas hub idea coming into reality.
The IMF projected a barely positive GDP increase for Russia this year I think (as opposed to a negative one), and they did it for a reason, but we all know that GDP is far from the best measure of an economy.
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All the oil India was buying up was at a very reduced rate, but that is going to change once Russia establishes more permanent LFG deals with Asia.