MOSCOW, March 30, 2009 – It’s the last day of March, and spring has finally come to Moscow – a week late, even by Western standards, but it’s come. Yesterday was a balmy 45 or so degrees, and today is even warmer. The snow is melting, and this morning I wore the light jacket I bought at the Seattle Costco on my last trip to the States over eight years ago.
I’ve been living alone for a week now except for my dog Missy, a state I haven’t experienced since the early ‘70s.
To tell the truth, I’m rather enjoying it – for a while at least. How long is it going to last? I don’t know. I gave Igor $ 1200 – that’s 1200 smackeroos, a lot of money -- to go home to Moldova, again, this time to bribe somebody to give him Russian citizenship. Then he asked me for another $ 350 last weekend to get home on and have a little money while he’s there. So that’s more than $ 1500 I’ve given him for this trip.
Before he left, he figured up how much he owes me: More than $ 4,000. That’s the bad news. The good news is that he says he’s going to pay me back 40,000 rubles (about $ 1250) on the 25th of April, which he’s already worked. Further, he says, his girlfriend’s father will be employing him as a truck driver for about 27,000 rubles – over $ 800 – a month and he’ll be living with me; so he figures he will have me paid off in August.
The bad news is that I was planning to move to Spain in July! But more bad news -- maybe: The hoops through which I have to jump to get a residency permit for Spain are getting more difficult. First, there’s verification from the Social Security Admin. about my monthly pension. The last communication I have from them is almost 12 years old – before I moved to Russia, so it’s quite outdated. I went to the U.S. Embassy here in Moscow, where a girl named Cathy promised she would get the information from the Social Security Admin. and send me an e-mail. I have received no word from her in over a month.
Okay, then how ‘bout my power of attorney, David G., who now lives in Ashland, OR – I think? I wrote him a letter a week ago outlining my predicament. I haven’t heard from him. Does that mean he’s gone bankrupt? No longer has his email? Is he dead? What do I do now?
Furthermore, I have some 200 books. I am told by TNT freight company (a Dutch firm that I’m planning to have move my stuff to Ourense) that I have to translate all the titles into Russian for Russian Customs. After my hearththrob Misha had to quit lessons because he was fired in the current economic crisis, I offered to trade him lessons for helping me. He agreed, but said he would have to do it by e-mail. Not the same!
Then sister Ivana agreed to come translate them. That was a month ago. She (he) has made no effort since then.
Then there are my paintings. I’m told probably the best way to get them out of the country is to have a dealer recognized by Customs come assess them. But who? That project is still on hold and I only have four months before July.
I also have to have a note from the Moscow police saying I’ve been a good boy for the last 11 years, which should be no problem; but again Ivana promised to help me and she’s sitting on her hands.
I also have to have a professional translator translate each page of my passport. Again, no help from anybody on this.
All in all, if I get the positive feedback from Igor that I expect when he returns later this week or next from Moldova, I may stay in Russia another year with him and save some more money.
That brings up more good news: Now that I’ve quit spending money on my “boys,” I’ll be making about $ 25,000 between now and the end of July. Of that, I should be able to save $ 10,000 under the most trying of circumstances. If so, assuming I can save another $ 30,000 next year (conservative, I think), I will have at least $ 40,000 saved by the late summer of 2010, which should certainly make things much easier.
So now a lot depends on Igor and how willing he is to be my “boyfriend” when he returns.
I’ve given up on Zhorik. Not only have I spent $ 4,000 on him since he came back from the Army, he treats me with something bordering on contempt, all the time saying he loves me and what a good and generous person I am. Maybe he really does love me, but he doesn’t let me kiss him and doesn’t let affection happen between us, even on the rare occasion when we have sex. On the other hand, Igor frequently kisses me and we have never had an argument.
What else is happening?
Now that the wheels are coming off the economic cart around the world, what do we see?
The death of capitalism looms large.
Since capitalism depends on constantly expanding growth for its continued existence, and since all the engines of growth are now declining or about to – energy, water, soil, climate, you name it -- it is now only a matter of time until it is dead. Will it die quietly? Probably not. There are too many countries now addicted to constant growth – including and especially the U.S. -- to imagine that they will all shrug a collective shoulder and say, “Oh well, onto the next.”
There will no doubt be further resource wars (Bush’s invasion of Iraq was almost certainly not the last) and possibly nuclear conflagration as the Muslim world grows ever more angry with U.S. arrogance, which reached a crescendo under Bush but is still very evident in the majority of Americans who think they deserve all the advantages the dying oil age has given them.
For a glimpse into the future, I found the following synopsis written a few days ago by Chuck Burr, distributed courtesy of the group “Culture Change,” which is headed interestingly enough by a guy named Jan Lundberg who used to publish an energy newsletter about the same time I did which focused on the oil industry. In the mid-80s, he said, he “saw the light” and became an avid anti-oiler and survivalist.
In any case, Burr sees a good possibility that the U.S. will face bankruptcy because, while U.S. federal spending usually represents about 20 % of GDP (gross domestic product), the Obama administration, in a noble attempt to bring the Bush conflagration under control, proposes increasing the percentage by almost a third, to 26% of the GDP in the coming fiscal year. Adding state, county, and municipal spending brings the total amount of government spending to “about” 36% of GDP, says Burr.
“Of the proposed $ 3.6 trillion 2009 federal budget, almost 40%, or $ 1.38 trillion will have to be borrowed because of plunging revenues. Just two years of deficit this size would equal 93% of the entire 2008 federal budget.”
We have entered a new world: “The end of cheap natural resources compounded by the debt collapse will prevent the future growth needed to pay the interest on federal, corporate, and consumer debt,” Burr warns. In the Obama administration, “We are seeing a last ditch spending effort to revive growth while other nations will still lend the U.S. money.”
And after that?
“It’s game over,” he concludes.
But the stock market is going back up, right? Things must be looking good.
Don’t be fooled, warns Burr. “The current surge from the toxic assets plan will end soon” because “it ignores the fact that the government is responsible for guaranteeing half the value of the toxic assets,” which won’t disappear, but will just be moved from one taxpayer pocket to another. “It’s like creating a market to sell shares in the Titanic….”
Burr says that a UN panel at the G20 conference this week will recommend that the world replace the dollar as the reserve current “in favor of a shared basket of currencies,” which will add pressure to the dollar. “The world knows that the dollar will lose its value over the coming months…A new world reserve currency will be a fatal blow to the dollar and may make it more difficult or impossible for the U.S. to finance our hemorrhaging deficit….”
Which is why Obama is not going to hear of it for now – and the U.S. still has enough following that it won’t happen – yet.
Aside from that Mrs. Lincoln, what can we expect in the next 10 years?
According to Burr:
The end of the airline industry as we know it; a 20-50% reduction in long-haul trucking; the “mothballing” of the international space station; $ 6 to $ 10-a-gallon gas “and the end of one or all of the big three auto makers”; closure of several national retail chains; a DOW of between 4000 and 6000; halved pension benefits; the continuation of “Great Depression II”; resurrection of the “Victory Garden,” “now called the ‘I need to eat’ garden”; mass migrations; reinstatement of the draft to fight resource wars, or mandatory national service; shortages of spare parts; gas lines and rationing.”
“Ideas such as petrocollapse and a steady state economy will have joined global warming in mainstream consciousness,” he continues. “With a decline of world oil production of 6 to 9.1% per year, we will see GDP drop from $ 14.58 trillion in 2008 to between $ 7 and $ 9 trillion by 2019.”
What can we do? Lots, Burr insists, but it must come from the bottom up: “Change will not come from top-down centralized governments. Nation states protect assets of the wealthy, tilt the table to concentrate wealth and just do not inspire local change. We have to let go of the nation state, and re-localize more than just our food production….”
What do people like you and me do now? “Find like-minded people and start the multi-generational journey to find more ways to support each other,” advises Burr.
“Unplug from the matrix, unplug from your television and the private property debt treadmill. Create community and land trusts. Make things up as you go. Repurpose the best skills to support your community. Plant a food forest instead of an annuals only garden; emphasize perennials. Work from a sense of joy.”
In the meantime, what’s happening in Russia? Is it impervious to the U.S.-spawned depression as I once thought it would be?
No, it turns out that is already too inter-connected with the West, whether Russia likes it or not. In a country of 140 million people, between six and seven million are already out of work, and that number is expected to reach 9 million “by the end of this year,” according to the Moscow Times. (In time-honored fashion, only 1.97 are officially registered – not unlike America, where an estimated 15.6 million people are now looking for work despite the fact that only about half that number – 8.5 -- are registered.)
The Kremlin is noticeably scared of an “orange” revolution from its people who are out of work and fast running out of hope.
The economy has shrunk by 8% in the first two months of 2009, according to the Economic Development Ministry. “For now, data remain grim,” said the Moscow Times, noting that industrial production slumped 13.2% year-on-year last month, the second worst reading on record but still an improvement on January’s 16% retraction.”
In the meantime, 12% of Russians think the economy is in a “catastrophic” state compared with only 1% a year ago; and nearly one-fourth – 23% -- say they would consider joining mass protests against falling living standards. Pres. Dmitry Medvedev as well as now-Prime Minister (but still boss of the country, say 45% of Russians in a recent survey) Vladimir Putin have both warned against street demonstrations stemming from the falling economy. Vladivostok has already seen the brunt of Russia’s brutal Special Forces when 1000 demonstrators joined in an unapproved protest against rising duties on the import of Japanese cars.
In the meantime, Russia’s leaders “are so attached to the nostalgia of the roaring 2000’s,” says Andrei Kortunov, president of Moscow’s New Eureasia Foundation, “that they have lost all sense of reality. They get on TV and tell Russians that spending on the four national projects will continue, and that the Strategy 2020 objectives, which were developed before the crisis, will be achieved.
“This, however, flies in the face of the harsh realities of the country’s crisis and its severe impact on the people’s welfare. Russians are becoming increasingly angry at the state as a result of their rapidly decreasing standard of living among job losses, paycuts, and runaway inflation. And the government’s anticrisis measures have been uncoordinated, shortsighted, and largely ineffective.”
Other specifics from the headlines of the Moscow Times over the last month:
With the world price of oil at about $ 50 a barrel, down from last July’s $ 150, Russia’s oil output has dropped for the first time in a decade and the country is expected to run its first budget deficit in several years, leaving the government to face an 8% drop in GDP.
Rental rates for commercial properties have dropped by about one-third in St. Peterburg, and vacancy rates are running from 10% to 30%; high-end rents have also dropped significantly in Moscow.
The number of billionaires in Russia has also been cut by more than half from more than 100 to less than 50, as over-extended oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska and Abromovich join the ranks of Kerk Kerkorian and Warren Buffett.
Gazprom, the government-owned gas company, dropped 16% sales in February from a year ago, adding to the government problems.
While vodka consumption goes up in recession-torn Russia, sales of legal vodka have dropped 21% -- an indication that in the current crisis, Russians are turning once again to bathtub vodka.
Kremlin spin-doctors – notably one each First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, to be exact – are attempting to reassure the growing force of unemployed Russians that “Russia could become the most desirable place to live by 2020,” which my private student Alex, who just landed a job in a suburban Moscow judge’s office, dismisses as “bullshit.”
Russian banks are facing a second wave of defaults from companies as the global slowdown and a drop in personal income stifle growth, predicts Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin. “The amount of overdue loan payments to banks in Russia may rise to 4.5% of the total amount in the first three months of this year, compared with 3.8% at the start of 2009,” the Central Bank said in January.
And finally, Boris Kagarlitsky, director of the Inst. of Globalization Studies in Moscow, notes that nobody believes the rosy predictions of spin-doctor Shuvolov, above, because, as in the West (Kagarlitsky didn’t say that, I did), “any serious plan for overcoming the crisis must begin by admitting that the policies of the last 15 years have hit a deadend….
“There is a false notion that Russia can flourish again as soon as high prices for gas, oil, and other natural resources return. There is also the flawed notion that Russia’s ‘free market capitalism’ can somehow coexist in a monopoly-driven economy driven by huge state-owned corporations.
“In short, the entire ideology underlying the social and economic strategy of Pres. Vladimir Putin’s era is on the verge of collapsing,” Kagarlitsky warns in the Moscow Times. “Until our leaders recognize this, the government’s policies will be limited to haphazard measures and to making ‘tactical corrections’ to a fundamentally flawed strategy.
“The Russian people have not yet fully recognized the scale of the problems they are facing and the degree to which the authorities have failed to cope with the crisis,” he continues. Who will be the first to recognize the need for radical changes – the authorities or the people? Even if leaders finally get serious about tackling these problems, there is little chance that they will succeed. After all, it is not only the ideology that must be replaced, but the leaders who are charged with implementing it. And no bureaucratic machine has ever dismantled voluntarily.”
[The following is dated, but still around since the Red Queen hasn’t published a column since she returned in mid-January.]
February 19, 2009 – The apartment is now nearly empty. Sergei left last night, a promise he has been making since last April. Even so, I had to “lend” him $ 200 for him and Sasha to have enough money to go to St. Peterburg, where they’re living as of today.
Their leave-taking is bitter sweet, however, because Zhorik, the one on whom I had pinned so much hope, has decided that he’s straight. His girlfriend Anya is moving into the room with him. The idea was that Igor would sleep with me and we would resume our sex lives. The bad news is that Igor seems to have found another place to live. So that, for the moment, at least, it seems I am alone. Nobody to love li’l ole moi and nobody whose dick I can suck.
Hopefully that won’t last long!
I had a unique experience on the metro yesterday on my way to Potemkin U. It was quite crowded and I suddenly realized somebody was feeling my dick. I looked: The guy in front of me was standing with his hand to his side and in my crotch! Aha, there is hope after all! Until I looked again: He was 45 or 50 years old. Alas and alack. It felt good, though, and I realized I was getting a hard on, so there may be snow on the roof, but there’s still fire in the fireplace!
I’ve been back from Spain for almost three months.
Did Liza Doolittle say the rain in spain falls mainly on the plain?
How ’bout the snow?
We had unseasonably cold weather during my two-week stint there from Jan. 1-13, 2009, and the airport in Madrid was closed for a day or two because of snow. I was very lucky in that I greased in and out without any problems. Sister Ivana, however, was shuttled to Frankfurt before finally winding up in Moscow many hours late.
I also returned to find my computer completely broken down. Finally, 10 days and $ 350 later, I got back on the Internet.
The first section of this column has also been lost to the ether. So I’m starting all over.
The quandary of how to tell Sergei that I wasn’t going to his wedding on the 17th of January was solved. There was no wedding. It was called off, it seems, when Katya told Sergei that she was not going to live in Moscow, but would stay in Svetlograd with her mother. Sergei said he told her that he couldn’t find work in Svetlograd, and the wedding was off.
Katya returned here on Friday, Jan. 23, the same day my Internet was restored and the same day that Igor sent me an SMS saying that he was too ill to come to my yard. Denis was here for two days with the flu and his bad leg, before Zhorik kicked him out so Zhorik’s girlfriend Anya could stay.
Zhorik and I have had sex only two or three times since I returned, but it has been perfunctory. He shows me no affection, and the last couple of times he wasn’t able to come. At this point, I don’t really care whether we have sex again. The bad news is that Igor, who has been waiting for Sergei to leave before moving back in, seems to have found someplace else to live. That’s the bad news. That’s also the good news. I don’t have to support him!
In the current world financial crisis, the value of the ruble against the dollar is dropping precipitously -- about one-third so far, which is fine by me because it means the $ 1700 that 40,000 rubles for rent represented when I first began paying it, has dropped to a little more than $ 1100 now, a more than reasonable price for an apartment in the center of Moscow. The downside is that my students also pay in rubles, so that the result works out about the same.
I found out today from Student Anastasia that it will cost about $ 1,000 to transport my household goods there, which is a lot less than I had thought.
The big news here when I came back from Spain, as it was in America, was the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as president of the U.S. and the riding out of town – unfortunately not on a rail – of George Bush. He has done so much damage not only to the American economy, but to the American reputation, that Obama will be hard pressed to “fix” it anytime soon, despite the valor of his efforts.
This plus the stark fact that we’re coming up against such real limits – peak oil, peak money, peak agricultural production, peak water – that nobody really knows what’s going to happen. The truth is that Obama may never be able to put Humpty Dumpty together again, which may disappoint voters so much that Republicans will be back in power by 2012 or 2016 at the latest. My compensation is that I’ll almost certainly be dead by then.
So let the good times roll!
On the other hand, maybe it will all happen sooner rather than later, in which case my pension won’t be worth anything. But if things are that dire, what will happen to me if I’m in Spain? Who knows?
This day years ago:
2007-4-3: Chapt. #242 - Is Peter fantasy becoming reality?
