Oh, so now you aren’t walking away. What made you change your mind?
I think you’re deliberately misinterpreting what I said - and, if that’s true, I’m not surprised. This post sure sounds to me like an invitation to join (and thus contribute to, but not necessarily financially) your seasteading project. Do you disagree? If so, why?
And how is that, exactly?
And once again, that’s entirely irrelevant to his point! Do you see how it doesn’t refute his point whatsoever? And if you weren’t trying to refute his point, then just what were you trying to do?
That’s just it. I’ve been making post after post expressing just how I do take issue with the content of your statement with respect to the context in which it was made. You keep throwing red herrings my way as if I’ll actually fall for one. Come on, I think you should know better than that. There’s no way you’ll distract me from my point, because I won’t let you. Understand?
Now then, why don’t you tell me where you think Bogart was claiming any kind of likelihood of the Iranian government doing what he suggested.
My first thought was that the recent inflation was an indirect result of economic sanctions. Due to the problems in Syria and Turkey, which as a result of the sanctions, is irans biggest markets, this has led to economic problems in iran.
Yes, it was a question as to whether he’d be interested to join your effort. That’s an invitation to join, isn’t it? What real difference is there?
Well, why would you say it if you agree that it’s not relevant?
Thanks for finally admitting that.
Please note what I added in the brackets in quoting you above. I will do this every time you pretend to be clairvoyant.
Now then, my own experience has been that a person says something like “Never gonna happen” when he wants the other person to shut up. Saying instead something like “Never gonna happen, so there’s no use talking about it” makes his intention explicit. That’s what I figured you wanted to convey to Bogart. It wasn’t just that you think it’s never going to happen, but because you think it’s never going to happen, there’s no use in anyone (including Bogart) ever talking about it. I may have gone out on a limb in accusing you of doing that so people would focus (more) on your seasteading venture, but I maintain that you didn’t want Bogart (or, by extension, anyone else) to talk about how the Iranian government (and perhaps, by extension, other governments) could improve its monetary situation.
As I said above, I think a person says something like “Never gonna happen” to convey the hidden message of “It’s of no use talking about this” which in turn conveys another more hidden message of “Stop talking about this”. If that’s really not what you wanted to convey to Bogart, then please, by all means, lay out your case.
Very simple. In January the Iranian Central Bank (ICB for convenience from now on) announced an 8% devaluation of the rial. In August they announced a further round of inflation which is why we are seeing this huge drop.
Why is that? Iran has been cut off from foreign banking and its economy is extremely weak. Natural gas and crude oil are the only exports of any importance and they have been seriously weakened by both sanctions and a drop in demand. They need cash to pay for welfare, military expenditures, bureacrats etc.
Of course inflation is distorting the price system: despite having huge quantities of natural gas and crude they cannot sell abroad, fuel prices have increased about 300% since the beginning of the year. As I said before Iran has a very weak economy: despite its oil wealth its petrochemical industry is both completely obsolete and woefully inadequate to supply the internal market.
Part of the inflation is going into direct cash subsidies to citizenry: somewhere between 80 and 90% of the Iranian people receive 730000 rial monthly fron the government. This scheme was launched in 2010 in the aftermath of the failed “color revolution”: it’s not very different from Western welfare in scope. The Iranian leadership is buying consent and binding as many people as possible to itself.
Obama intended to use these sanctions against the State of Israel and perhaps the people of Iran. That was what he and Ahmadinejad wanted. That said, Bibi’s IQ can’t be what he alleged it to be. Maybe half of it at best.
The Neo-Axis powers are going to crash and burn and neo-communism will thrive in the countries in which it is popular… for a time at least. True Revolutions are rare and are never permanent. The same is true of counter revolutions althouh counter revolutions have lasted longer historically. Perhaps when Bibi crashes the State of Israel and when Romney crashes Washington there will be a good voluntaryist revolution by correction of the Enlightenment Era and the Church of Rome era… unless the earth really is about to end and the Judeo-Christian Bible is true.
War has often been used by regimes to bring the country together ideologically in order to prop up support for a government. Might be that war with western powers is exactly what Iran wants, in order to keep the regime from failing.
In any case, looks like war is intevitable under these circumstances. Either Israel will bomb them, or they’ll bomb Israel.
Until now importers of foreign goods bought dollars from the government (which obtains dollars from oil and gas sales) at highly subsidized rates. Importers of “essential” items (food, medicines etc) could get huge discounts this way (up to 50% off market prices) while everybody else still got a favorable deal. Now the Iranian government has decided to divide imports in ten categories according to how they are judged “essential” to the country. Importers of good belonging to the two highest categories will now have to buy dollars on the open market. These good include mobile phones, furniture, cars and, curiously enough, all clothing items. Importers of the remaining eight categories will still be able to buy dollars from the government at favorable rates, though nowhere near as favorable as in the past. Iran had roughly 100 billions dollars in its coffers in January but all analysts agree a good chunk has gone by now. At this rate Iran will completely deplete its dollar reserves in a year at most.
And there’s more. The recent Nobel prize recipient, the EU, not wishing to be outdone by Barack Obama in celebrating this prestigious award by murdering innocents, is preparing another round of sanctions which will effectively forbid any interaction between European and Iranian firms, both private and public. Needless to say this idea is the brainchild of Avigdor Lieberman, who so far has more or less run EU politics towards Iran directly from his office in Tel Aviv meeting no opposition whatsoever. Has the Samson Option been used once again to blackmail the world?