In recession

It’s officially official

JUST WHEN experts watching the American economy start to take deep breaths (“U.S. may skirt recession again” says Reuters; “Another inflation indicator cooling” says the Democrat-Gazette), in other major countries, if not major economies, the news isn’t so good. And, in one case, the bad news couldn’t have happened to a better regime.

The Russian economy is in freefall, say those who watch it. The official take by the official government in official news releases says the economy of that country fell by 4 percent in the third quarter of this year. And it retracted by 4.1 percent in the second quarter. Most folks will tell you a recession is defined by two backto-back retractions in two quarters.

That’s just what the world gets officially from Russia. There is no telling— literally no telling, because Russian government economists want to keep their heads—what the real numbers are.

Remember in the 1970s and 1980s when grain forecasts would come out of Moscow every year, and the rest of the world rolled its eyes? And the mere people of the USSR couldn’t find bread at the grocers? Or all the times the Soviets explained how its economy was doing better than any country in the West, only to have that economy collapse the first time it was tethered to reality?

Putin’s War has led to Putin’s economy. Both are killers.

Vladimir Vladimirovich’s guard over the economy was doing okay before he decided to invade Ukraine. Then it crashed. That happens when the big spenders in the world put sanctions on trade.

According to dispatches, nothing was helped in Russia when hundreds of thousands of young men, some in highskilled occupations, hurried out of the country when Comrade Putin began a call-up of “reserves,” which often meant picking up men on the streets.

The Express in the UK reports that some Russia-watchers expect the economy to get even worse in the fourth quarter of this year, and into the first quarter of next. Because even though Moscow can expect Asian countries to buy its fossil fuels, they don’t buy as much, and don’t pay as much, as Western countries.

Russia’s economy, it’s said, could contract by maybe 3 percent the rest of the year.

But again, this comes from Russian numbers. And that information is as reliable as any other information that gets approved by Mr. Putin’s office. According to the Express:

“. . . There is scepticism over the true state of Putin’s economic woes, with the Kremlin prone to hiding potential missteps and weaknesses. In August, a Yale School of Management study using ‘unconventional’ data sources said Russia was publishing ‘increasingly cherry-picked’ figures, ‘selectively tossing out unfavourable metrics while releasing only those that are more favourable.’” Who pays?

The Russian people. Always the Russian people.