Translated material
Central Bank revolt
The fashionable word “stagflation” has not an economic, but a political nature, and Elvira Nabiullina has absolutely nothing to do with it
(18+) THIS MATERIAL (INFORMATION) IS PRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED AND (OR) SENT BY FOREIGN AGENT ANDREY VLADIMIROVICH KOLESNIKOV OR CONCERNES THE ACTIVITIES OF FOREIGN AGENT ANDREY VLADIMIROVICH KOLESNIKOV.
The verb “to nightmare” appeared once during the reign of Dmitry Medvedev, and it related to business problems. But it should be applied to society as a whole, when, in the post-Medvedev era, political time again tipped over into the carnivorous Jurassic period. Moreover, in addition to the “nightmare” component, the system has one more mechanism - the “signaling” one. (Once a colleague, Kirill Rogov*, called such a system “nightmare signaling.”)
And recently, the Central Bank, using the strongly Aesopian language of analytical texts and such weapons as the rate, simply “signaled” the difficult situation of the Russian economy. And it was provoked by its structure, bent towards “finished metal products” (including the type that was recently transferred by Mosfilm to the armed forces). Economic ill health is contributed to by gigantic expenditures - on “defense and security”, on secret budget items and on social ones, in that part of them that is also of a military nature.
The Central Bank is going against the grain, using its relative independence. “The Riot of Elvira Nabiullina,” of course, is a signal flare of such a scale that it is absolutely impossible not to notice it. Therefore, only old people went into battle against the National Bank, and from oligarchic circles: from Oleg Deripaska to the king of the military-industrial complex Sergei Chemezov. With such a Central Bank rate, they say, businesses may go bankrupt, the export of high-tech (that is, calling a spade a spade, military) products will stop, and the same stagflation, a combination of stagnation and inflation, will set in the economy. Nabiullina will be to blame. All in all,
Instead of the recently fashionable word “homosexuality” among the establishment, which was well known to the educated girl Fima Sobak, another rich word appeared - “stagflation”.
The claims of oligarchic circles, as well as those of supporters of the establishment of multiple exchange rates (whoever has wider lobbying opportunities will receive a more favorable ruble exchange rate), do not correspond to the basics of economic theory. That is, in general, the entire economic alphabet.
First, large-scale or, as in the case of today's Russia, gargantuan government spending naturally leads to inflation.
Secondly, if these expenses are unproductive (not on education and healthcare, for example, but on military purposes), then they do not have any actual economic sense at all. Because they stimulate the production of goods that are not consumed by people to satisfy their peaceful natural needs. And these quasi-goods have as their goal (in the literal sense of the word) not life, but death of a person. Those jobs that are created for the overproduction of weapons and other paramilitary products cannot be created in a normal economy, because it supports sectors that produce peaceful products. And the income of workers in human capital sectors, for example, doctors, nurses, teachers, is stimulated. The wages paid in unproductive sectors are such that they overheat the market. The only thing left to do is hold on to the money, because demand turns out to be higher than the supply that a distorted economy can create.
So, in fact, the Central Bank is “signaling”: stop “nightmaring” the consumer society, change the economic model back to normal, change the structure and reduce the scale of government spending - then we can talk about reducing the rate, and about incentives for the production of normal goods, and about a return to the inflation target, the achievement of which now looks like unscientific fiction.
If we move from Aesopian language to human language and from economic to political economic:
it’s time to stop the military conflict - then the economy will normalize, and GDP growth will not consist almost exclusively of the production of goods that consumers do not need at all.
And so it is de facto artificial, like in the USSR - but we made rockets and raised money for the transfer of Siberian rivers, but we could not produce toilet paper, we imported meat and butter from New Zealand. If you dig a hole from the fence until lunchtime, and then bury it, it will count towards GDP growth, but you won’t call it healthy.
Stagflation is by no means the result of the movement of the Central Bank rate, but a consequence of one political decision. The economy now depends entirely on politics, including the situation on the labor market: politically motivated restrictions on labor migration; unconstitutional persecution of those who disagree with their expulsion from the country; the unproductive use of labor reserves withdrawn from the economy contributes to the creation of that same labor shortage.
Demographic indicators cannot be improved one iota if we maintain a situation where, in principle, it is impossible not only to plan reproductive behavior, but also to plan life in general. And no battles against abortion, childfree and other unfriendly Childe Harolds will help. Because they have nothing to do with the actual increase in the birth rate. In such specific processes, tango is truly danced together. And when one of the aspects of population reproduction relocated abroad or into a trench, it’s somehow completely impossible to think about replenishing the ranks of cheerfully noisy future readers of the Medinsky-Torkunov history textbook.
So stagflation may drag on, just as belts will have to be tightened after the bubble of the militarized economy inflates to the size of a balloon and bursts.
And Nabiullina will be to blame. Or, as they used to say in other times, Chubais. What is it - Soros and Gorbachev. Otherwise, we would live happily and have no boundaries, as one could read on the billboards during the presidential campaign. And they would pay not with toxic dollars, but with the multi-colored BRICS tugriks presented at the last summit in Kazan.