In the somewhat troubling presence of Prime Minister Little Emil Boc, the Romanian Academic Society (SAR) this week launched its eighth annual forecast report. Amongst other things, it sees unemployment remaining below the European average, and warns that the global financial criss should not be used as an excuse to postpone reform.
The full report is here in Romanian, a summary in English is here.
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“Don’t” worry, LYK. Slowly, slowly we get there: hit this. Let us see what happens when Isarescu runs short of money to sustain the RON in a country the economy of which is (or rather used to be) supported by a sand castle made next to exclusively of foreign cash (either officially or via Western Union transfers). I am eager to see how low the RON goes and what that woodbrains Boc does after increasing all wages/pensions he could, playing the smart ass in foreign relations and behaving like a puppet; it was the worst time ever to have such an idiot as PM. As for banks, Transilvania is already shouting for help.
This miniature human being calling himself Emil boc is nothing but a very corrupt lazy individual. He’s now for almost two months in office and all he knows of doing is giving PRESIDENTIAL ORDONANCES”! He supposedly graduated a law school yet never passed the bar exam. He’s knowledge of law is well below average individuals’ that never went to law school. God blessed those minds that voted for his party so next time they will give Romania a decent PM. Until then, lets hope the guy breaks his neck just in time before he brings Romania on the brink of disaster.
I can’t make a booking because I don’t know where I’m gonna eat
?
Usualy I get hungry before or after a long walk through the city and out of 7-8 choices for a restaurant it’s hard to find a free table on Saturday evening.
And people in Romania will give up their fancy lifestyle because they don’t have money to sustain it. One thing is to spend all your money on a fancy lifestyle, but when your money are not that much or safe anymore that’s another thing. I already know people who gave up their fancy lifestyle and cut their nights out to a minimum because they’re not sure whether tomorrow they will still be employed.
I buy clothes just for the label too! Of course, I have to like them and they have to fit me well and represent my style, but if they’re not from a well known brand, I don’t buy them!
For example, in Unirea Shopping Center there’s a store selling some very [very!] nice clothes which could wear a Cavalli or Versace label without any problem, but I can’t buy them because it says “Mondo” on them or something…
But you know what’s my problem? Nobody actually sees my clothes! I don’t go out in clubs and I prefer to take walks by myself so the only places where I can show off with my clothes are the casinos. So every time I buy something new my mind is thinking “what will the girls from the casino entrance say when I take off this Lanvin jacket :X ” and of course – when I go to the casino and take off my jacket – I’m very careful to place it with the inside label out so they can see it
And a few days ago I was thinking that I have many brand name clothes but only very few have the brand stated on the outside. They all look good but on most of them the brand is stated only on the inside label and people who see me on the street don’t know what brand they are. And a girl told me that brands are written on the outside of only second-line clothes from the big fashion houses, first line clothes don’t have brands all over them and if I want to show off I should start looking for second-line clothes like the ones made by Ittiere factory in Italy :-s I didn’t know that, if they were a certain brand and I liked the clothes, I bought them first-line or second-line, now I’m gonna look for second-line clothes mostly
Or simply make a booking
Change the restaurant or try to talk to the manager (and not to the waiter). If they have a website, send them an e-mail, with many of the smaller restaurants, that is checked by the manager or they will pass it on to him / her. But trust the waiter and, with very few exceptions, nothing will ever happen, because he / she aims at the Saturday clients’ higher tip more than at a regular customer’s (lower) tip. Before trying to deal with people, put yourself in their shoes and try to think like them (even though their logic might sound ridiculous, stupid or strange). I think that, as big as the crisis might get, the last thing Romanians will do is giving up their show off behaviour (eating out in fancy restaurants or driving expensive cars just to be seen, buying clothes just for the label and not because they fit them well etc.).
The problem is that economy manuals actually say that emerging economies de-couple from the faith of established economies in times of crisis as money should flow in to speculate the opportunities.
However, this crisis is nothing as the manuals say it should be. From where I see it, there will be 2 long-lasting consequences:
- the rule according to which “from 1$ you keep two cents and the rest you place in investments” – Dinu Patriciu, will change dramatically so we’re gonna see even more exploiting of employees by companies, this time worldwide not only in Romania;
- doors of the banks will forever be shut to entities who can not bring a guarantee at least 3 times bigger than their loan;
So expect probably at least 20 years of economic stagnation or 0.1% – 0.2% growth for established economies, expect consumption to remain at the levels we see today and unemployment, in the best case, at the levels we see today.
From a social point of view, expect islamic radicalism to come out with statements like “Allah is big and did this to you, very good that He did!”, expect a few years of bombings of Western objectives, but only a few years because the West won’t represent very much as they will hardly be able to maintain their countries afloat.
Also expect oil around 35$ a barrel (not 200$ as Erse Bank said – we can see from this statement that Erste Bank is on the verge of bankruptcy, maybe God will show them that it’s not nice to take by paying bribe what Ceausescu made), expect the auto industry to re-position itself in 2 big sectors: luxury and economic, with nothing else between and also expect the stupid Romanians to deposit some savings instead of spending them all in night clubs and trips to God knows where.
At least Saturday evening I’m gonna be able to find myself a place in the restaurants that I like.
Did you notice there’s a big injustice happening against regular clients of restaurants? I and other people like myself eat out all week but Saturday evening wherever we go, we can’t find a table in a restaurant because it’s full of Saturday-evening-only clients! So we go home, order a pizza or some Chinese food and we become grumpy and get fat while watching a football game or something.
If I had a restaurant I would offer my clients a card. And everytime they come to my restaurant that would appear on their card and people who came into my restaurant at least 2 times that week would have their table reserved on Saturday evening until 20:00 o’clock. After 20:00 o’clock if the tables aren’t full I would allow other clients too.
Wait until one of the big banks here crashes and until employment slides a bit further than their expectations. As for the Romanian Government (well, under Tariceanu), not earlier than in the end of last year it was pretty confident that the country’s economy would and will not be affected by the global crisis; Basescu stood by the same point. One must be a total idiot to believe that an emergent economy will not be touched by such a crisis, but those believing such farts are even worse. As for Romania, my two bani: construction will be down even further than it is, many people working abroad will be back to join the unemployed before late (and, oups, there will be little foreign cash coming from abroad to artificially sustain trade and Romanians’ private investment), the financial crisis will be worsened by a few big collapses (both local and “imported” via big foreign companies and banks), and the Romanian political bullshit will add the topping on the cake. As for the huge bureaucratic apparatus of the state, they said they would cut off the extras and those enormous wages of the Autoritatea Nationala for X and Y. I have a friend working for one of these institutions: in the end of December 2008 they were informed about the final wage reductions due to happen in January. In early January they were given new work contracts (or annexes to the old ones), stating that their base wage had increased starting with December 1, 2008, precisely for the amount of extras they were to no longer receive. For some reason I feel the same thing happened in most (if not all) the Romanian state offices. For otherwise they would be all out in the streets, isn’t it?
Romania is probably the worst positioned country among the both waves of new EU members to face the oncoming financial crisis. It has got extremely high prices for things such as basic foodstuff to property; a dysfunctional huge state sector employing the largest part of the workforce and preying on the private sector; a massive Euro & Swiss Franc indebtedness of the population and companies; no industrial production base and a fatally shrinking export market in Western Europe that is entering one of the worst recessions in memory. It is surprising that the good people from SAR have such optimistic opinions about a dysfunctional body such as the Romanian economy. My guess, this being Romania, is that many among them, or even SAR itself, are in a more or less client-sponsor relationship with the government and that report’s conclusion is a consequence of that, protecting the meagre funding that comes from Victoria Palace.
Valentin Mandache
http://www.viapontica.wordpress.com