Moscow yuppies and the economic crisis

It seems to me that our generation of young Russian twens will be psychologically hit the hardest by the economic crisis. Today's Moscow yuppies and recent university graduates - how can they be ready for a crisis?

We were to young to feel whole gravity of the 1990s in Russia - no matter how hard it was, we were still children then and had our parents to care for us. I remember how we got humanitarian aid handed out in school in 1991 or early 1992. It was several tins of Danish Tulip meat conserves and a pocket of dry milk for every pupil and it was really the first time since very long before that we drank milk (no matter how bad) and ate meat. And - strangely - I did not feel suffering at that time. To the contrary, after that for a long time (psychologically the feeling went away only a couple of years ago) I had some inner impression that having bananas or yogurts on our table is luxury and that one could perfectly live without these now seemingly simple food products. And we really could survive without them and as a child I wasn't stressed about that.

In the crisis of 1998 many of us were still teenagers with our parents caring for us. I can not say for that time because we left to live abroad exactly 5 months before the August crisis.

Anyway, today my generation is a generation who became truly adult and economically active in the prosperous 2000s with oil prices above USD 100 per barrel enriching whole Russia and our sweet home Moscow in first line. It's only tiny 8 years since 2000, but the ones who just really started living in these years could get the impression that these wealthy years would last forever. It's bad when people take "special" for "normal".

We're not used to live in a crisis, we're used (or started getting used) to have our vacations in Egypt or, better, Spain, to take loans and buy cars and apartments. Our generation is a generation of young glamourous Moscow investment bankers, fund market analysts and brand managers. But it's not only about the top young bankers and analysts - there are much more middle class young people who work as white-collars in small (or big) companies just doing their jobs from 9am to 6pm and renting a flat, and they are going to be hit much harder than top professionals.

Psychologically many of us do not really know what it is to live in a crisis, to get fired having a loan to pay back. Only few of us can imagine what it is to go and work as a construction worker or to trade vegetables on a bazaar (*lol* I hope it won't get that bad, but still).

Of course, people have survived in worse times than these. Our grandparents had survived a world war and our parents survived the hopeless totalitarian USSR. What is a stupid economic crisis compared to a war or to decades of an isolated totalitarian system that seemed to stay there for centuries? We'll survive the challenge anyway and will hopefully remember these times as interesting and adventurous.
Read more...

Russian ruble lost 41% of its value against US dollar in 6 months

Bloggers write that today it's 6 months since the Russian ruble exchange rate starting falling against the US dollar. In June 2007 one dollar was worth 23.12 rubles and now it's 32.57 rubles.

During the same time the oil price went down from above 145 $/bbk to 45 $/bbl.

As sad as it is for Russian economy. The miracle couldn't have last too long without serious diversification of the economy.
Read more...

Why Israel Finally Started Its Anti-Terrorist Operation in Gaza

15 seconds: the time for people of Sderot, the Israeli town near Gaza strip, to get to bunkers to hide from rockets shot by Palestine terrorists.



Hamas rocket attacks were the reason for Israel's counter-terrorist Operation Cast Lead in Gaza.

The situation reminds of South Ossetia in August 2008. Ossetian militia were shooting at Georgian military units and villages for several weeks before Georgia's president Mikheil Saakashvili first called them to finally cease fire and then started the military operation. However, in Russian state media the whole was called "Georgian aggression against South Ossetia".

Now we had the Palestinians bombing Israeli towns for several months and intensifying the attacks after the end of ceasefire between Hamas and Israel in December. Once Israel finally decided to strike back we got the media around the world crying about "Israeli aggression" and about "Israel killing innocent people".

Here another even more shocking movie to get a feeling how the situation is seen from the Israeli side:



Let there be peace as soon as possible and let the terror finally stop.
Read more...