Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

Russia accused of trade war against Ukraine

Ukrainian politicians on Thursday accused Russia of starting a trade war to pressure the country against signing a cooperation pact with the European Union, bringing relations between the two former Soviet states to a new low.

Restrictions that Moscow slapped on Ukrainian products this week have left scores of trains and trucks queued at the border, according to a leading business group, which has warned of a “complete halt of Ukrainian exports.”

Moscow has been critical of Kiev’s plans to integrate economically and politically with the EU and lessen its dependence on imports of Russian natural gas. Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin traveled to Kiev to attend a religious ceremony and again stressed that Russia should be Ukraine’s closest ally.

After Kiev pressed on with its negotiations with the EU, Russia banned popular Ukrainian confectionary products from its stores late last month, citing safety concerns. This week, it imposed tough restrictions on scores of other products, by adding Ukrainian companies to a list of risky producers.

The Russian government acknowledged traffic problems on the Russian-Ukrainian border, but did not give further details, according to the Interfax news agency. Interfax reported that Russia’s railway agency said that train cars have piled up at border crossings due to additional checks, but said the situation was “under control.”

Ukraine’s government has shied from openly criticizing Russia, still a major trade partner, saying it was working on a solution. Ukraine’s railway agency said the delays at the border were Russia’s fault.

Ukrainian opposition leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk on Thursday accused Russia of trying to bully Ukraine into joining a Moscow-led economic alliance, the Customs Union, and prevent it from signing a free-trade deal with the EU in November.

http://www.timesleader.com/news/apbusiness/9974644971895205/Russia-accused-of-trade-war-against-Ukraine&source=RSS

free books from MTS

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The top two photos are from Lviv, the third is from Kyiv.  The cellular company allowed people to browse these virtual book shelves and scan QR codes with their smart phones to download free virtual books.  Very cool.  Very hip.

Table testing

Whoops. I didn’t mean to publish this post yet. I’m doing to analysis of global M2s and imagining a new way to measure trust of various media of exchange. Will publish the whole thing soon. I want to first seek the opinion of a professional economist.

Things I don’t miss about the US: Militarized police

Swat Team Storms Art Gallery Event, Guns Drawn, Property Seized, Over ‘Dancing and Drinking’ Permit

The moment the assault rifles surrounded her, Angie Wong was standing in a leafy art-gallery courtyard with her boyfriend, a lawyer named Paul Kaiser. It was just past 2 A.M., in May, 2008. Wong was twenty-two years old and was dressed for an evening out, in crisp white jeans, a white top, and tall heels that made it difficult not to wobble. The couple had stopped by a regular event hosted by the Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit (CAID), a red brick gallery with the aim of “turning Detroit into a model city,” and arrived to find a tipsy, jubilant scene: inside, gallerygoers were looking at art and dancing to a d.j.; outside, on the patio, several young women were goofily belting out the lyrics to “Hakuna Matata,” from “The Lion King”:

Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase.
It means no worries for the rest of your days.
It’s our problem-free philosophy. Hakuna Matata!

Only then did masked figures with guns storm the crowd, shouting, “Get on the fucking ground! Get down, get down!” (I document the basic details of what happened in my story, in this week’s magazine, about the police’s use and abuse of civil-asset-forfeiture laws.) Some forty Detroit police officers dressed in commando gear ordered the gallery attendees to line up on their knees, then took their car keys and confiscated their vehicles, largely on the grounds that the gallery lacked the proper permits for dancing and drinking. (More than forty cars were seized, and owners paid around a thousand dollars each to get them back.) “I was so scared,” Wong told me. At first, she thought the raid was an armed robbery. “Out of the corner of my eye, I could see Paul getting kicked in the face.” In the dimly lit security footage, the scene looks like something out of a thriller about Navy SEALs. Paul said, “I was scared for my life.”

In my magazine article, I focus on one key question about the raid, and about countless others like it across America: Does it make sense that civil-forfeiture laws, which allow police to confiscate and keep property that is allegedly tied to criminal activity, are often enforced at gunpoint against, say, nonviolent partygoers? But there’s another important question, highlighted by the operation at CAID: What, fundamentally, are SWAT teams for? When does it make sense to use machine guns, armored vehicles, and flash-bang grenades on a crowd of people or on a family, and how are these warfare-inspired approaches to law enforcement changing America?

more from newyorker.com

MASSIVE Jump In People Who Renounced US Citizenship Last Quarter

A massive 1,131 individuals renounced their US citizenship last quarter, according to data that has yet to be officially released (though I was able to procure an advanced copy).

This is a HUGE jump.

Compared to the same quarter last year in which 188 people renounced their US citizenship, this year’s number is over SIX TIMES higher.

Not to mention, it’s 66.5% higher than last quarter’s 679 renunciations.

This brings the total number of renunciations so far this year to 1,810.

While still embryonic, it’s difficult to ignore this trend– more and more people are starting to renounce their US citizenship.

After all, the number of people who renounced citizenship this past quarter is roughly the same as the number of people who renounced for the previous four quarters COMBINED.

http://capitalismisfreedom.com/massive-jump-in-people-who-renounced-us-citizenship-last-quarter/

Ukraine seeks IMF bailout

From today’s Open Europe news summary:

Ukraine’s economy contracted 1.1% in the second quarter, year on year, according to government figures. Serhiy Arbuzov, First Deputy Prime Minister, said his government was hoping for a fresh $15bn bailout from the IMF.

A conversation with a restaurant manager in L’viv

I love new businesses and the energy of entrepreneurs. It’s exhilarating, and I’ve only been able to appreciate it since fairly recently — since deprogramming myself from all the socialist garbage I picked up in school.

Before I ever met this young manager, I was already a great appreciator of her restaurant. It was clean, simple, fun, tasty, innovative, inexpensive and had great customer service. I’m not going to name it because I want everything to remain anonymous.

It was fun listening to the back story over beers:

The owners are two guys both of whose fathers are politicians. (This part of the story is depressing to me. I want at least some sectors of the economy to be opened to the aristocratic competition of the free market: may the best restauranteur win.) So they probably have some cover from L’viv’s famously predatory bureaucrats and tax collectors. Typical of the political class, they do little work beyond making harsh demands on their underlings.

I think the reason I heard so much of the story was because this young lady suffered from months of pent-up frustration.

She unleashed a flood of evidence, making the case for her deserving better.

I agree with her, of course, but mostly I felt impressed and delighted to see her competence and the run-away success of a fairly new restaurant.

She told me about waking up at 6am and scouring supermarkets because she realized they were out of lettuce, about teaching employees to smile and greet customers, about choosing the design for the restaurant, about the amazingly small initial investment (less than $30k!), about their stunning profitability, about preparing documents, about late night phone calls from the owners, about begging for vacation time, about her salary (about $500 a month), about doing what I had assumed was lawyer-work — preparing franchising documents, about miraculously locating Ukrainian suppliers for things previously shipped from America, about receiving no appreciation, about her desire to switch to a government job (I hope she fails).

Of course there was some frustration, but this isn’t a sad story. It’s a glorious one. For her talents, dedication, and knowledge, I think she’ll eventually earn the money she deserves.

It’s also the story of entrepreneurial success. Yes, from her perspective, the owners have flaws, we may feel they don’t deserve their success, but L’viv’s restaurant business is at least a partially free market. I know an American who doesn’t even speak English whose year-old restaurant is fast becoming a L’viv icon (TexMexBBQ). He succeeded presumably without a relative in politics.

So their flaws aside, these two young men took a risk and are delivering fantastic food and service to thousands of Ukrainians and tourists.

God bless capitalism. May it not perish from the Earth.

Half-joking, I asked whether she’d be able to turn $20,000 into $40,000 in a year. She didn’t understand the question. I repeated: “If I give you $20,000, can you turn it into $40,000 in a year.” She was full of doubts and questions and qualifications. It’s clear that a personality capable of stunning coordination and discipline and management isn’t always a personality capable of taking a large sum of money, choosing a direction and saying to other people “follow me.” She needed the two owners (at least initially) just as much as they need her.

EX Waffen-SS man Hero of the Soviet Union

The chaos of war in Ukraine:

How many former Waffen SS men acheived the highest Soviet military distinction?

One did for sure. Hryhoriy Hevryk was born in Drohobych, Western Ukraine and enlisted in the 14 Galician Division in the spring of 1943.

He completed his training and in late June 1944 was sent to the eastern front then situated in western Ukraine, when the 14 Galician Div was deployed as part of XIII A.K in the Brody sector. Here in mid July, the Soviets launched a huge summer offensive and XIII AK including the 14 Galician Div was surrounded. The situation inside the pocket was chaotic. An organised breakout attempt was made but ultimately it became every man for himself. Hryhoriy Hevryk survived the battle and like several other Ukrainians from the Division, left its ranks and was hidden by some Ukrainian civilians. He initially escaped detection and managed to make his way back to his home town, but eventually enlisted as a civilian into the advancing Red Army. He was killed in action in the offensive on Berlin on 29 March 1945, near the Polish railway station Prukhna. On June 29 1945 he was posthumously awarded the highest Soviet military distinction (the only Galician to be awarded it) the Hero of the USSR.

For those of you who read Ukrainian further details can be found in the veterans publication Visti Kombatanta (Combatants News), in an article entitled “Tragedy of a Hero”, Za Vilnu Ukrainu, L’viv, 1952 No 6-7, p8.

Also, we had family friends in the US with the last-name Hevryk. I wonder if there’s any relation.