RT reports:
Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded Ukraine’s government bond rating one notch from Caa2 to Caa3, citing the current political crisis and deepening economic instability as reasons for its negative outlook.
The Caa rating is a credit risk grading pertaining to investments that are both very poor quality and entail a high credit risk. The current downgrade drops Ukraine from Moody’s “extremely speculative” rating to “default imminent with little prospect for recovery.”
Moody’s said the downgrade was driven by three factors, which “exacerbate Ukraine’s more longstanding economic and fiscal fragility.”
The first factor is Ukraine’s political crisis, citing the recent regime change in Kiev and subsequent events in Crimea. The agency went on to cite Ukraine’s stressed external liquidity position, which faces continued decline in foreign currency reserves, the withdrawal of Russian financial support and a spike in gas import prices. Moody’s further noted that this assessment accounts for the near-term liquidity relief recently hammered out with the IMF. Finally, due to a “sizable fiscal deficit,” the agency expects a significant contraction of GDP and a sharp currency depreciation as the debt to GDP (Gross Domestic Product) ratio hits between 55-60 percent by year’s end.
On Thursday, Gazprom CEO Aleksey Miller announced Ukraine would begin paying $485 per thousand cubic meters of natural gas starting from April. The price rise followed a cancelation of the Black Sea hosting deal. On Wednesday President Vladimir Putin signed a federal law ending Russia’s commitment to the Kharkov Agreement, as the Black Sea port of Sevastopol is now under jurisdiction of the Russian Federation. This follows another steep hike on April 1, when the price Ukraine paid for gas went up 44 percent to $385, after Kiev failed to meet its debt repayments.
Last December, Russia offered Ukraine’s Yanukovich-led government a $15 billion loan and a 33 percent discount on natural gas: a lifeline to help its faltering economy. Moscow went through with the purchase of a $3 billion Eurobond from Kiev, though Russia later froze both the gas deal and the credit- line, due to events on the ground.
On Friday, Ukraine said it had started emergency talks with European Union neighbors on the possibility of importing natural gas from the West.
Based on these factors, Moody’s said the country was unlikely to see Ukraine’s sovereign debt rating improve in the near future, stating its outlook for the country was negative. Any improvement would only come if long-term political and economic improvements were forthcoming. In January, Ukraine also saw its sovereign rating fall by one notch.
After Ukraine reached a preliminary deal with international lenders to unlock $27 billion in assistance late last month, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced last week a $14-18 billion standby credit for the country.
However, in order to secure the IMF credit, the country of 46 million was forced to cancel fuel subsidies to private citizens and businesses, sparking a 50 percent hike in oil and natural gas bills.
Ukraine has also promised the IMF it will cut its budget deficit to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2016.
“The country is on the edge of economic and financial bankruptcy,” Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said in Kiev last week. “This package of laws is very unpopular, very difficult, very tough. Reforms that should have been done in the past 20 years.”
Yatsenyuk warned GDP could shrink by 3 percent in 2014, while inflation could hit up to 14 percent.
Ще не вмерла Україна?
O boy, now Obama’s got a perfect excuse to ok the Keystone XL and encourage even more fracking. Not that it works, is the least bit safe to extract or ship, or even cost-effective. Nor, of course, have we got the terminals from which to ship, or Ukraine the terminals or even ports to receive it. Eh, why let facts get in the way of instant profit — The. American. Way. UGH.
Interesting, that they also expect Germany to pay for their ‘democracy’ it (*) – being the only ‘liquid’ non-bankrupt EU member. Echo’s of WW2 ‘obligations’, as emerged in Greece during its ‘adjustment’ period? Isn’t it about time Germany stood up and said, “Enough, already!”
However, like the Japanese, who have their own foreigner Fort ‘Nato’ troops in situ protecting them from …, the EU-Nato complex is more difficult to break away from. Obviously Xi is moving in his trains to help. He’s probably interested in discussing some Ukrainian ‘food’ country to back haul to China.
As for Ukraine, I guess the local currency will be so devalued that a few German scrap Euros will go a long way for bail-out purposes … and for cold and hungry Ukrainians repatriating their ‘slave’ wages back home to family. Sad really,
(*) (quote) Poroshenko also told Bild that he did not foresee a Russian military foray into eastern Ukraine. However, Poroshenko did not show any inclination that he was a pacifist when it comes to economic warfare with Russia. He said that Germany must be willing to pay a price in imposing economic sanctions against Russia, even if that meant economic turmoil as a result of a boycott of Russian natural gas. Poroshenko said that Germany should be “willing to pay a price for democracy.” (end quote)
http://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2014/04/03/ukraine-presidential-candidate-poroshenko-tamps-down-nato-membership-hopes.html
How long before Putin’s final words (10 February 2007, 43rd Munich Security Conference, subtitled) begin to sink in with the European youth who are vegetating at 50% unemployment? See around [30:16 – 30:35] at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH0eHekt84g
The whole speech is worth viewing, imo, and especially for the few shots of the audience and certain key-player reactions. However, only his concluding statement referring to “all the people” (“security” and “prosperity”) seems to only offend these public representatives of the modern global-national ‘1%’ elite. Western Governments today are clearly not of, nor for, the people, … nor the commoners’ pursuit of ‘happiness’ it seems. Does it have echoes of ‘communism’ and workers’ ‘paradise’?
Imo, the issue is not ideological (as in Maxism etc), the issue is more cultural: the concept is basically “out of date, already!” The global Plutocracy has already taken over the USA and the EU (and effectively wherever their Nato exists on the ground (and in the mind) – don’t the Russians get this? There is a lot of money banking the Chinese ‘1%’ do.
EU perspective: Russians talking about “everyone” is either naïve or ‘bullshit’ (as their occasional superior smirks suggest). “Comrade Putin, some animals are more equal than others!” (If you are not with us then, by definition, you are against us!)
There are ‘values’ gaps at the global 1% level: plutocrat-to-plutocrat. However, the idea that the actual purpose of the State (and its government) is “prosperity and security for all” is the most fundamentally subversive.
“NO! … It’s only for the rich in gated communities!” Unqualified ‘democracy’ is so passé. There is national democracy: US democracy; Arab democracy; Chinese democracy, … and Russian democracy, etc. Basically, here it is American Democracy vs Russian Democracy.
In a blog comment, I read (paraphrasing) if Putin could communicate his democratic vision and values better to the Anglosphere (and conceptually separated the US Government from the average Joe-American) then, for a start, he’d straight up have at least 80-million heavily armed red-neck Americans listening very carefully. Perhaps that helps explain why so much msm effort is applied to keeping ‘wax’ in their ears and ‘horns’ on his head?
r.
Did Russia offer Ukraine slavery?
Are Europe and the United States offering Ukraine slavery?
The Emperor is very well dressed. It is the people who have no clothes.
Strange…
With a Google Chrome browser under Linux I cannot access the http://crimea.name/ website whereas with the same machine and an Opera browser it loads perfectly.
Also the “checking” website http://downforeveryoneorjustme.com/ pretends crimea.name is down!
Does anybody else has such “weird” behavior with different browsers for “incorrect websites”? :-)
Has Ukraine died? Was it ever alive? Maybe it will get partitioned and absorbed eventually like Poland was once. If I were living there, I’d head South or East as just physically being in Russia means a better chance at survival as what’s about to befall Ukraine reminds me of the Rape of Russia by the USA/EU during Yeltsin’s misrule. As the Moody report explains, regardless the government, Ukraine is in for hard times, even if the coup hadn’t occurred.
The cultural aspect mentioned by r in his/her comment is important. Russians view Russia as Mother Russia–not the Fatherland–which is an important distinction lost on all too many. The same is true of the historical nature of the paternal/fraternal relationship between the Tsars and their subjects combined with the moral focus of the Orthodox Church. Thus the longstanding tradition of communalism, which is progressive and conservative simultaneously and totally at odds with Neoliberalconism. It is this historic Russian communalism that makes it closer to Asian thought and culture than that of Europe and the USA. Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is wrong for it’s the clash between the Russian/Asian vision versus the European/US vision that is the real point of conflict. IMO, the Russian/Asian vision is viable for the longterm and has the best chance of dealing with Climate Change, whereas the US/European view will destroy the planet’s ability to support humans.
Good riddance to bad garbage. I hope the Ukros finally enjoy their feverishly yearned for status as “True Western Subjects” at long last, the implications of which are outlined further down.
Over to the Leader of the Pack, George Soros himself.
Dear Ukros, you have served my class interests — those of the ruling imperialist bourgeoisie — marvellously. Now, since we have, shall we say. little use (beyond the very short time range) for thugs raging and fuming about “Holodomor”, you’d better show some tangible gratitude to your overlords, myself included: Off you go to improve your CVs through toilet cleaning and commodified sex. And rest assured that, from now on, any protesting will be dealt with instantly and without compunction.
Thanks once again. May Bandera relieve your excruciating pain at my discretion.
They’ll get some of this too, care of Soros and co. Like in the best French University.
<< À SciencesPo, la « Queer week », c’est la diffusion de films pornographiques « queer », des ateliers de travestissement dans les salles de classes, des photos de partouzes dans les halls d’entrée, de nombreuses conférences de militants LGBTIQ extrémistes.>>
More about this at e&r France.
Ukraine will get the standard ‘disaster capitalism’ treatment with the deliberate intent of immiserating the vast bulk of the population to enrich the parasites. The 0.001%, both Ukrainian compradores and their foreign overlords, will screw the proles, as they have been with increasing viciousness since the global over-class decided in the 1970s to end the post-war social accommodation, and return to the neo-feudal dispensation that they have preferred since time immemorial.
This social hatred is basically the hatred and fear of others that underlies much psychopathology. The rich, in the main, viscerally detest the rest, which is an interesting simulacrum to Judaic religious belief. The dominance of Judaic elites in the USA, and, latterly, in Europe, arises, I would imagine, from a happy coincidence of psychology, where the vast ranks of the ‘outsiders’, the untermenschen as the Germans say, are regarded as sub-human, as much as from their economic prowess based on nepotism.
Need one list the atrocities committed by the ruling global elites since the 1970s? Endless military aggression and butchery. The eternal imprisonment and brutalisation of millions of Palestinians. The global economic order that has impoverished billions, and kills thirty thousand children every day from easily treated disease, the consequence of economic injustice, pitilessly imposed. And ever growing inequality amongst plenty, as an insatiably greedy elite misappropriates more and more of the global common wealth. And, in the process, rapidly turning the planet into an ecological disaster zone, soon to be rendered uninhabitable for our species. The Ukrainian masses will soon see just what Western ‘freedom’ amounts to, which is why chauvinistic and jingoistic aggression is being promoted there so assiduously. Xenophobia always appeals to the vicious dullard fraction of society, the forelock-tuggers who will never criticise their betters.
@Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations is wrong for it’s the clash between the Russian/Asian vision versus the European/US vision that is the real point of conflict
The Anglo-Saxon world was very late in ackowledging the seminal works of Rene Guenon:
Orient et Occident. Paris: Éditions Trédaniel, 1924.
East and West. Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004.
La crise du monde moderne. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1927.
The Crisis of the Modern World.
Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004.
One should obligatorily add
Le Règne de la Quantité et les Signes des Temps. Paris: Éditions Gallimard, 1945.
The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of the Times. Ghent, NY: Sophia Perennis, 2004.
There were the first diagnostics of the “modern world” from a traditional point of view.
WizOz
@ Anonymous 05 April, 2014 12:49
I cannot access the http://crimea.name/ website whereas with the same machine and an Opera browser it loads perfectly.
I get a 502 error. This is usually due to an overloaded server and the error is generated from the server side script when apache has no more slots to run the users request.
common under busy machines not configured properly or during denial of service attacks.
@E
So why do you think the Russian art form does not go for the shallow and external things compared to Bollywood or say Hollywood. Why Hollywood does it for this purpose ?
Which way (Russian , US or Indian ) do you think will last out ? Say couple of centuries from now onwards which art form do you think would be valued more by the humanity (Russian , US or Indian) and why ?
I am actually worried about the type of disconnection in the Indian masses about the World where we live. The average Indian prefers to watch only BBC , CNN and so forth to know about the World. Hollywood and Cricket is the ultimate reference point for average Indian. This just limits the overall Indian tradition from being enriched by beneficial cultures like that of Russia.
Without advocating for outright foreign invasion , how to better it ?
Take care
Debanjan
Debanjan, the degradation of popular culture is, in my opinion, a deliberate tactic of the Bosses, in order to facilitate their rule over humanity. As that old reptile Brzezinski advocated years ago, the masses are to be indoctrinated and subjugated Amongst other means, many more coercive) by what he called ‘titietainment’ a sordid amalgam of titillation and entertainment. The titillation is there to stoke the fires of greed, lust, individualism and xenophobia. It has a role like soma in Brave New World, only our soma doesn’t make you more good-natured- it makes you more ambitious, competitive, acquisitive and antipathetic to others. In the end the Bosses reckon that an intensely competitive society full of atomised individuals who see others as competition or outright enemies, suits their character formation well, particularly when the rules of the game are so comprehensively rigged to the elite’s advantage.