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Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

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Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#281

Post by FooHentai »

pjc50 wrote: post #256
londons_explore wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UK has a whole government department to answer your questions: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/united-kingdom-food... Result: The UK grows enough wheat alone to give enough calories to support its population, with plenty to spare. It also produces all the major food groups in quite large quantities. If cut off from the world, the UK people wouldn't starve, but they might have to switch out their caviar f…

That's quite an impressive report and it's good to see someone's taking this seriously, even if they might end up ignored by whoever the agriculture secretary of the day is. > but they might have to switch out their caviar for something else That's frivolous: the report talks about meeting 100% of caloric requirements from grain in an emergency scenario. The mostly-bread diet would be comparable or worse than WW2 rat…

One weakness in the report (unless I just missed it) where it covers 'essential inputs' and their costs: it does not address what proportion of those inputs are imported. Considering a hypothetical where the UK is isolated, it seems like a significant omission.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#282

Post by TMWNN »

FlyingSnake wrote: post #275
TMWNN wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Industry in Germany and much of the EU about to grind to a halt. It's been striking how little discussion there is of this in /r/europe and /r/germany. (The latter has pinned a megathread for the topic, the classic way of killing discussion.) /r/de is slightly better, if only because of the absence of the constant "I don't know German but want to move to Germany and get a job" posts. I don't mean to say that there's…

> It's been striking how little discussion there is of this in /r/europe and /r/germany. I suspect it's because most Germans don't hang out there and those forums are populated mostly by expats.

I am aware of that regarding /r/germany (thus my mention of the constant "I want to move to Germany" posts); that said, there is no shortage of English-language news coverage of the issue. Same for /r/europe.

While I do not have personal experience with /r/germany's moderators as I do with /r/europe's, if they are similar (likely, given how much inbreeding there is in big subreddits' mod teams), I suspect that submissions of said news coverage is being suppressed to avoid blurring The Message(TM).

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#283

Post by philliphaydon »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #274
philliphaydon wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Countries can say "no" to "using Chinese companies". Except they aren't as the contracts prohibit open bidding. > The Atlantic's article says that Chinese lenders are often willing to restructure the loan. Except when they are not willing, which is most often the case. They restructure when things are seemly fine but if shit hits the fan like in the case of Sri Lanka, they wont discuss it. But the CCP prob jots it…

They restructured African debts when Africa got into trouble due to COVID, so the claim that "they only restructure when things are fine" is emperically false. Regarding being able to negotiate: high-profile African commentators, such as Gyude Moore, have pointed out on multiple occasions that it's perfectly possible to say no to an offer, after which the Chinese offer new terms. You should check out his videos some…

So because they restructured some they must restructure all despite the fact they refused to restructure Sri Lanka. So Sri Lanka is stuck paying like 5% interest vs japans 0.7%.

I know you love the CCP but it’s hilarious how much credit you give them despite not wanting to live in China.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#284

Post by dreen »

HPsquared wrote: post #193
sumanthvepa wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sri Lanka is not a dictatorship. They have regular elections. The Rajapakshas might have been authoritarian, even corrupt. But they won the last election in a landslide. Sri Lankans cannot entirely absolve themselves of blame for repeatedly electing a populist regime.

Are the two mutually exclusive? I don't see why a democracy can't elect a dictator, even a different one every couple of years. In ancient Rome the title dictator was a short-term thing.

In Rome there were two periods when the title of Dictator was used. First during the Republic where it indeed was a temporary role with limitations, then resurrected during the Empire as title only to justify authoritarianism.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#285

Post by FooBarWidget »

philliphaydon wrote: post #283
FooBarWidget wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They restructured African debts when Africa got into trouble due to COVID, so the claim that "they only restructure when things are fine" is emperically false. Regarding being able to negotiate: high-profile African commentators, such as Gyude Moore, have pointed out on multiple occasions that it's perfectly possible to say no to an offer, after which the Chinese offer new terms. You should check out his videos some…

So because they restructured some they must restructure all despite the fact they refused to restructure Sri Lanka. So Sri Lanka is stuck paying like 5% interest vs japans 0.7%. I know you love the CCP but it’s hilarious how much credit you give them despite not wanting to live in China.

I can also turn this around: what about the non-Chinese lenders who own much more Sri Lanka debt? Do they restructure? Why single out China specifically? Why is it necessary for China to allow restructuring all debt? Would you impose this standard on all other lenders?

It is entirely possible to be fed up with anti-China propaganda while not being specifically a CCP supporter.

It is also entirely possible for an overseas American to say positive things about the US without living there.

If I do live in China you’ll just say that I'm being forced to say these things. Since you can't, you mock me for not living there, making up some arbitrary requirement that doesn't make sense. This is intelectually dishonest.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#286

Post by denton-scratch »

> I do not understand why Sri Lanka did this very dumb thing.

I thought the reason was that Sri Lanka's fertilizer and pesticide supplies were all imported, and were therefore contributing to the BoP crisis. I'm not for a moment suggesting the ban wasn't dumb!

The Rajapaksa family are a bunch of cruel, racist, venal despots. I fail to understand why Sri Lankans kept electing them to power.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#288

Post by SkeuomorphicBee »

pfdietz wrote: post #96
soldehierro wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me, the organic transition had nothing to do with agricultural practices and all to do with economics, with the logic being that fertilizer was an expensive import, and by banning fertilizer they could hemorrhage foreign exchange reserves a little less. Of course, they also earned a lot less because the bone-headed transition lead to a marked reduction in yield, only worsening the forex problem the ban of agr…

Organic fertilizer requires that the N, P, and K actually came from somewhere. Often, that's from something else that used non-organic fertilizer. So if a country goes all organic not only are yields down on the fields using organic fertilizer, the supply of organic fertilizer itself could dry up.

Nitrogen can come from the air by using nitrogen fixing crops in a rotation, so it can never run out (N2 is the most abundant gas on the atmosphere). The problem is that growing nitrogen fixers take a lot of land time that could otherwise be growing crops. Also not as nitrogen rich as fossil fertilizers (gas N2 is quite stable, difficult to fixers to extract in high quantities).

I know nothing about P and K though.

Re: Sri Lanka is having a textbook currency crisis, triggered by policy mistakes

#290

Post by nova22033 »

davmar wrote: post #4

Here's a Sri Lankan giving an in-depth analysis about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpZ5oiUGqW4 . I like this guy, think he's got good opinions.

This is not a very good take. His solution is for SL to join a China led block that somehow has India and China as allies?
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