Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

Pull up google, bing, google scholar, any think tank, world bank, cia database, or follow any the top economists, geostrategists, particularly (can’t remember his name off the top of my head) from Yale. (a) Moscow wasn’t reporting numbers (b) we don’t know the quality of the numbers.

I didn’t say I disagreed. I said it didn’t match with what I’ve seen from all sources. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong. It means I haven’t seen anything like that anywhere I can test the legitimacy of the data.

There is substantial confusion over GDP and GDP at PPP. RU has very low internal costs of energy and profits from energy, which mask the weakness and lack of industry in the economy and the decline of built and infrastructure capital across the country as revenue is redirected from the regions to Moscow and StP.

So it’s possible someone arrived at such numbers by some use of PPP instead of straight GDP – and it’s also possible it’s total nonsense. I don’t know until I see the source of the data.

Reply addressees: @guytrem50534326 @RayJPolitics1