About Russian agriculture, specifically seed production. Longish and detained but the basic idea is important. Russian seed production was literally wiped out by the liberal government under Yeltsin, making Russian agriculture fully dependent on the West. Russia is now trying to develop self-sufficiency in seed production after having become otherwise self-sufficient in food production.  Seed production is a weak link right at the beginning of the chain. Russian agriculture is already a...

by Joseph Joyce The Costs of the Defragmentation of the Global Economy The integration of markets across borders has slowed down, and in some cases, reversed. These changes come in the wake of the global financial crisis, Donald Trump’s embrace of trade restrictions, Great Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, the disruptions in global supply chains during the pandemic, and the invasion of Ukraine. President Biden has shown a...

Capitalism is BROKEN

from Asad Zaman  This is the first of a sequence of posts on the current economic crisis in Pakistan. Although the discussion is in the context of Pakistan, all the poor countries in grips of the modern neo-colonial global system face essentially the same problems. The financial basis of the system is outlined by Jason Hickel in Aid-in-Reverse: How the Poor Countries Develop the Rich. He describes how the poor countries receive 1.3 Trillion USD in financial inflows, aid, etc. from the...

Argentina peso in collapse wrt USD:In #Argentina, the peso has tumbled to a 12-year low of 462 ARS/USD in the parallel market. The pathetic peso has lost 52% of its value against the USD since Jan 2022. Arg. needs to mothball the Central Bank of Argentina and the peso and place them in a museum. pic.twitter.com/uPXm9kIYAI— Steve Hanke (@steve_hanke) April 25, 2023 Interest rates at 81% … better keep increasing rates and stick with it …. maybe it will work this time… come up with some new...

Lots of long faces… ie back to the drawing board…BREAKING: Japan's ispace says Moon landing may have failed, no contact with spacecraft pic.twitter.com/afscUiPSJ9— BNO News Live (@BNODesk) April 25, 2023 If they had Art Degrees instead they would simply do the same thing without making any adjustments and see if it worked the next time or the time after that.. or the time after that… dogmatically advocating for this original configuration…. would be a lot easier …

House prices on track to go negative YoY by summer, despite monthly increase in February  – by New Deal democrat House prices through February as measured by both the FHFA (gold in the graphs below) and Case Shiller (red) Indexes rose, the former by 0.5% (after a downwardly revised 0.1% in January), and the latter by 0.2% (after a -0.2% decline in January). Here’s what the monthly changes look like for each, as compared with Owners’ Equivalent...

Little Good can Come from Private Equity in the Healthcare Industry, Angry Bear Two Years ago As if we did not have enough issues with the commercial healthcare insurance industry attempting to supplant single payer Medicare (minus setting hospital budgets, doctor fees, and pharmaceutical costs to the consumer) and the VA with commercial healthcare insurance and/or Medicare Advantage and ACOs? Commercial Healthcare Insurance and Medicare...

Machinery Fails to Boost Productivity!

That [refers to data in the article] represents a geopolitical point of no return of sorts, the moment when China’s economic dependence on the United States in particular and developed markets in general slipped behind its economic standing in the developing world.Global economic growth is now coming from the Global South/East as these countries develop. China is in a position to capitalize (pun intended) on this trend, which appears to be long term owing to lower costs than prevail in the...