- 04 Feb 2015 17:37
#14520855
1. Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, Dear Leader of Argentina, mocks the Chinese after begging them for money, and apparently not getting any because the Chinese are not idiots and wanted, you know, things in exchange for their money such as rice and oil:
2. Erdogan, Dear Leader of Turkey, pontificates on inflation, interest rates, and the independence of the central bank:
"There are still those who don't understand that if you cut interest rates you'll cut inflation" - the joke is that it's not "still" like there are people who think that low interest rates cause higher inflation, most sane people think that.
Also about the independence of the central bank: just yesterday, Recep, you seized a private bank associated with a political rival. So don't whinge about how independent and cute your central bank is today. This seems to be a thing autocrats do unironically.
3. Alexander Lukashenko, Dear Leader of Belarus, complains about his own people:
Okay, to be fair, Lukashenko said that last Thursday. The editorial is from today (it's about The Other Ruble's problems). Still, it's perfect. "I didn't even ask you because I knew you wouldn't listen."
Bloomberg wrote:-- Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner mimicked the Chinese accent in a tweet, replacing r’s with l’s, as she met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a visit to raise investment in the recession-hit South American economy.
“Did they only come for lice and petloleum?” Fernandez wrote in Spanish on her Twitter account in reference to 1,000 businessmen who attended a conference where she spoke. A minute later, she wrote “sorry, the levels of ridiculousness and absurdity are so high they can only be digested with humor.”
Business Insider wrote:Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is making fun of Chinese accents on Twitter while on official business in the country. In a tweet on Wednesday, first reported by Bloomberg, she wrote about her trip, replacing "r"s with "l"s in the words arroz (rice) and petróleo (petroleum).
She then tweeted a non-apology:
Translation: "Sorry. You know what? It's just that the ridiculousness and absurdity is so high, that it can only be understood through humor. If not, it's very, very toxic."
The problem with this — beyond that it's incredibly insulting to the Chinese — is that it's bad for Argentina's economy.
Fernandez needs China. Badly. Since last year, Fernandez has been working with Chinese President Xi Jinping on a currency swap to get cash to her country and replenish Argentina's notoriously low reserves.
Last fall reserves hit their lowest level in some time, at about $22 billion. The country's exports, mostly commodities, are really cheap, and its balance of payments is off. Meanwhile, because of outstanding debt and legal issues (mostly with American hedge fund manager Paul Singer) it's tough for Argentina to raise money in international financial markets.
Between October and December Argentina received about $2.3 billion from China, but conditions for commodities and for the country are not improving. The country will need more.
Now is not the time to make Xi angry.
And it's not the time for Fernandez to sound flippant either. Last month the news broke that an Argentine prosecutor investigating the decades-old terrorist bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires was found dead.
The man, Alberto Nisman, was found shot to the head in his apartment in what was meant to look like a suicide. No one believed that story, in part because he was about to present the findings of his investigation to the Argentine legislature. He learned the Fernandez government had covered up the bombing, which was perpetrated by agents of Iran, to secure energy-for-food deals with Iran. Argentina is energy poor.
As yet Nisman's allegations will not be presented to a court. Two judges who have been asked to hear the case have declined. Meanwhile on Tuesday a draft of an arrest warrant for Fernandez and other members of her government was found in Nisman's garbage.
So now is not the time for jokes of any kind, really.
2. Erdogan, Dear Leader of Turkey, pontificates on inflation, interest rates, and the independence of the central bank:
"There are still those who don't understand that if you cut interest rates you'll cut inflation" - the joke is that it's not "still" like there are people who think that low interest rates cause higher inflation, most sane people think that.
Also about the independence of the central bank: just yesterday, Recep, you seized a private bank associated with a political rival. So don't whinge about how independent and cute your central bank is today. This seems to be a thing autocrats do unironically.
3. Alexander Lukashenko, Dear Leader of Belarus, complains about his own people:
Leonid Bershidsky wrote:Here's how the Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko explained the policy at a Jan. 29 press conference:
Folks, everything depends on you. If you start running from one exchange office to another trading in those unfortunate Balarusian rubles for hard currency, we will not wait for the National bank to run out of international reserve. You, households and businesses alike, will force us to let the national currency float freely to some degree. And that's what we had to do. So what do you want from me? I didn't even ask you, the population, to stop doing it, knowing that you as true Belarusians would not listen. And you went off... Last year you bought, according to the newspaper's statistics, 60,000 cars!.. Mainly from Russia, you've taken out all there was in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Okay, to be fair, Lukashenko said that last Thursday. The editorial is from today (it's about The Other Ruble's problems). Still, it's perfect. "I didn't even ask you because I knew you wouldn't listen."