Saturday, July 20, 2024

Russian economy starts to spin out of control

 I  (and Bloomberg and Trading Economics) can no longer find the MOEX stock exchange index for Russia, or the yield on Russian bonds.  Trading Economics makes an estimate of the index value, but warns it might not be 100% accurate.   An absence of information is invariably a bad sign.  People are happy to share good news, not so much bad news.

Meanwhile, inflation is picking up.  (The central bank of Russia's inflation target is 4%.)

The 2014 inflation was caused by a collapse in the oil price, leading to a plunge in the rouble.  The 2020 spike was of course caused by the invasion of Ukraine, once again leading to a collapse in the rouble.  Given the loss of life and overall casualties among young men, now estimated at over 500,000, and the tightness of the labour market  (real wages are still rising fast--one way Putin is buying off his population), the only surprise is that inflation isn't higher.



Insiders are selling the share market (foreigners can no longer buy or sell Russian shares because of exchange control and American sanctions), while bond yields were trending sharply higher (until the data were no longer available), usually an indication of worsening problems.




The rouble has strengthened moderately from its lows, which seems unsustainable given the inflation build up.  If oil and gas prices start to fall, as happened in 2014, the wheels will come off. 

I don't know whether oil and gas prices will plunge in the short term, but the medium-term future is surely very bleak, given the global growth of EVs.  And the short-term may be no better.  There was no major economic event that caused the 2014 oil price plunge, just a moderate decline in global economic activity.  Given the impending Chinese recession/slowdown, and sluggish recoveries in Europe and the US (?), a near-term plunge in the oil price, comparable to 2014, is surely at least possible.


Note log scale


Note log scale


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