XPost: ba.politics, dc.media, soc.penpals   
   XPost: alt.burningman   
   From: peederphiles@sfmayor.org   
      
   This ignorant democrat "president" fails to understand that you   
   don't fuck with people's money.   
      
   Why is Ukraine’s economy in such a mess?   
      
   UKRAINE’S problems are not just political. In recent weeks its   
   economy has taken a hammering. Until mid-January its currency,   
   the hryvnia, was fixed at 8:1 with the dollar; it now trades at   
   about 10:1. The government has recently issued short-term debt   
   at interest rates as high as 15%; this year its bonds have done   
   about as badly as Venezuela's. Many analysts are worried that   
   the country will soon default on its debt.   
      
   The economic turmoil reflects recent political instability. But   
   Ukraine’s economic problems were long in the making. Dodgy   
   economic policy, distaste for reform and endemic corruption have   
   brought the country to its knees.   
      
   In the immediate post-Soviet era Ukraine was a massively   
   unproductive economy. Like most former Soviet republics it   
   suffered huge output declines and soaring inflation. But Ukraine   
   was among the hardest hit of the lot. Hyperinflation in the   
   early 1990s resulted from lack of access to financial markets   
   and massive monetary expansion to finance government spending,   
   in the face of sharply declining output. The Ukrainian   
   population was scarred by the experience of hyperinflation. In   
   response, in 1996 the Ukrainian central bank replaced the old   
   currency, the karbovanets, with the hryvnia and pledged to keep   
   it stable in relation to the dollar. The currency continued to   
   wobble through the late 1990s, however, and particularly amid   
   the Russian rouble crisis of 1998.   
      
   Kind of like what Barack Hussein Obama has done to the United   
   States of America.   
      
   http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2014/03/ukraine-and-   
   russia   
      
         
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)