Quote:
Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
There was an article about Iran in the Globe on Saturday. This Ahmadinejad character apparently isn't too popular. He has flushed the economy of the country with some crazy policies like increasing worker's salaries by 40%, which lead to wicked inflation and unemployment. They've even had gasoline shortages. They've shown student protests against him on state television, which is run by the religious nuts (who are the real power). And the young people don't like him at all, which is a problem, because 70% (wow) of the people are under 30 years old.
Obviously I'm no expert and I just read one article, but it sounds like his time in the big chair won't last too long.
But for the time being he is building a fancy mosque out in the sticks, and he expects some guy who disappeared a thousand years ago will one day climb out the well at that mosque, and Jesus will be with him.
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You could take a look at the Zimbabwe thread from a few days ago, look at the hyper-inflation and the causes from the last decade in that country and see how the economic situation in Iran is eventually going to play out.
The article you were talking about
:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servl...International/
Pages 3 and 4 are where you want to be for the economic situation . . .
Mr. Ahmadinejad has responded in an especially blunt fashion: He has increased government spending dramatically, by 27 per cent in last year's budget. He spent $1.5-billion on grants to young married couples, and forced banks to make low-interest loans (effectively grants, since repayment is not required) to low-income families and small businesses; he ordered workers' salaries increased by 40 per cent; he regulated the price of housing and set state-determined prices for numerous goods.
But the main effect of his economic policies, which have maintained the heavily state-owned economy that produces hardly any revenues beyond oil incomes, has been galloping inflation and rampant unemployment.
And in the final insult, Iran, the world's fourth-largest oil exporter, has run into severe gasoline shortages. It has had to import billions of dollars' worth of gasoline, because it has neither enough refineries to serve its people nor the investment to exploit its full reserves. More than 6 per cent of the oil it drills is lost to leakage, and there is no apparent interest in fixing the leaks because the state monopoly has little incentive to do anything.
The society, one former Finance Ministry official tells me, is “dying of petroleum poisoning.”
This is no secret to anyone living in Tehran, the most car-clogged city in the world. The government has fixed the gas-pump price at 8 cents a litre, far below the cost to produce it (Mr. Ahmadinejad introduced a bill this month to raise the price — in five years, when he will be out of office). Tehran, with 7 million people, has three million cars on the road, and 1,500 new vehicles registered every day.
In Narmak, his old neighbours, who should be his most loyal supporters, are turning against Mr. Ahmadinejad.
“This past year and a half has been very difficult for us,” says Hamid, 20, who with his father runs Istanbul Greengrocers, where the President used to shop. “Prices for all the fruit and vegetables have doubled. It's the inflation that's done it. And people can't afford to buy more than the absolute minimum of produce, because 100 per cent of their salary is taken up with rent, which has doubled.
Increasingly greater inflation numbers seem likely. It won't matter if Iranians hate Americans . . . . like the common man everywhere, they'll eventually be more concerned with their personal plight.
I had earlier posted this analysis from the LA Times with similar information:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines
Nobody is going to invade Iran. . . . that was as obvious before Iraq as it is now. Flattening it from the air is a different thing.
Still, the Iranian president would be the only guy with a nuclear bomb who sincerely believes that Armageddon is a good thing and something to look forward to . . . . in fact, as soon as possible. Mutual Assured Destruction is not a deterrent . . . . and that would be a first in the history of nuclear weapons.
Cowperson