[HN Gopher] Only essential services to operate from midnight
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Only essential services to operate from midnight
Author : akbarnama
Score : 74 points
Date : 2022-06-27 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newsfirst.lk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newsfirst.lk)
| danielvf wrote:
| It is so sad to watch a nation slow walk down such a well worn
| and tragic path.
|
| Bad government policies, and over spending creating inflation and
| high prices for goods, with a response of price controls to
| control the prices, which results in even fewer goods available,
| then government rationing because the goods aren't available,
| further reducing ability to produce anything of value...
|
| And it doesn't have to be this way! At each stage, you could just
| not do the next step in the spiral. Thing would be bad for a bit,
| but you wouldn't bring the nation to poverty.
| Natsu wrote:
| Sad thing is I didn't know what country we were talking about
| until I clicked into the article after reading your comment,
| because it can describe a few others than just Sri Lanka.
| Symbiote wrote:
| I'm surprised how few people know all the ISO-3166-alpha-2
| codes. LK is obviously Sri Lanka :-)
|
| (Although this has been headline news for a few days in the
| mainstream press[1], which helps.)
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/srilanka
| Natsu wrote:
| I know of the codes, but I couldn't have told you .lk was
| Sri Lanka off the top of my head, nor would I necessarily
| assume that because the site linked to is a Sri Lankan
| site, it's talking about Sri Lanka.
| RC_ITR wrote:
| Just a note, it was tax cuts (a form of government spending
| often ignored) that actually pushed the economy over the edge.
| jdasdf wrote:
| RC_ITR wrote:
| > The roots of the crisis lie in tax cuts enacted by
| President Gotabaya Rajapaksa in late 2019, which came
| months before the COVID-19 pandemic that battered the
| country's lucrative tourism industry and led to a drop in
| foreign workers remittances.
|
| The tax cuts caused annual public revenue losses of about
| 800 billion rupees, the prime minister's office said in its
| statement.
|
| The new tax regime and COVID-19's impact, together with the
| pandemic relief measures, widened the budget deficit
| significantly to 12.2% of GDP in 2021 from 9.6% of GDP two
| years earlier.
|
| [0] https://www.reuters.com/markets/rates-bonds/crisis-hit-
| sri-l...
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| And before that it was the declining fishing exports. This
| county basically has nothing else than fishing and tourism.
|
| And on top: terrible policies, populism and too many
| government positions that had to be paid by printed money.
|
| The IMF bailed them out over 15 times already.
|
| At some point we much realize that reforms failed.
| antonvs wrote:
| Here's an article about the tax cuts, which happened in
| 2019:
|
| https://www.outlookindia.com/business/sri-lanka-lost-
| around-...
|
| Excerpts:
|
| > [Finance Minister] Sabry told Parliament on Thursday that
| Sri Lanka lost about 500,000 taxpayers each in 2020 and
| 2021 after the ill-timed tax cuts were delivered.
|
| > However, even before these tax cuts, Sri Lanka was a
| country with one of the lowest revenue-to-GDP ratios in the
| world, and the 2019 tax cuts drove Sri Lanka closer to the
| bottom of this list, the report said.
|
| > Sabry on Wednesday had called the 2019 tax cuts a
| "historic mistake."
|
| It seems you would at least need to take this into account
| in any analysis of the causes of the current situation.
| jdasdf wrote:
| Sri Lankan taxes are collected in Sri Lankan ruppees, not
| in USD dollars. The Sri Lankan state does not have a lack
| of Sri Lankan rupees, and indeed it can print as many as
| it wants.
|
| Sri Lankan ruppees are not used in international trade,
| which is core to the current crisis.
|
| I understand that statists like you like to pretend like
| the cause of every problem is lack of government, but I
| can assure you, that is not the case, not here, not in
| almost every other situation.
| lsaferite wrote:
| Maybe try being a little less confrontational with people
| if you want to have actual dialog. Otherwise many people
| just write you off and, worse, flag your posts.
| H8crilA wrote:
| Now let's just wait for the African food crisis caused by Putin's
| naval blockade and the Russian army PGMs falling on grain
| storage. It will be an interesting year.
| astrange wrote:
| Sri Lanka is already having a food crisis, basically because
| they elected a government of hippies who decided to convert the
| country to organic farming by banning fertilizer use, so all
| their crops failed.
| robocat wrote:
| Before banning fertilizers, they were already importing 7% of
| their rice needs.
|
| https://srilankabrief.org/what-sri-lanka-needs-is-not-
| bannin...
| tomjen3 wrote:
| They did that, but others have pointed out that it wasn't so
| much to be green as it was to be curb imports. I actually
| think the strategy could have worked much better, but it
| would have had to be phased in over a long time and not in
| the middle of the planting season.
| jdasdf wrote:
| Putin is happy to sell grain (even ukrainian grain) to african
| countries.
|
| You don't get to simultaneously claim it's putin causing the
| lack of grain, while complaining about him selling grain.
| H8crilA wrote:
| I mean yes, tiny bits from the occupied territories which
| lost probably over 80% of their economic output (people are
| boiling water from puddles in Mariupol, do you think they
| will have a good harvest around there). In other areas they
| do use various types of PGMs to target foodstuff storage, as
| well as blockading the port in Odessa.
|
| Sorry, but this is an attempt to cause another wave of people
| sinking on their way from Africa somewhere in the
| Mediterranean on crappy boats. That will surely make western
| EU governments feel the pressure.
| tgv wrote:
| That would seem reasonable if he hasn't invaded a country
| that happens to one of the largest grain exporters, and thus
| increased the price to a level that's to high for poor
| countries.
| fasteddie31003 wrote:
| I've been reading The End of The World is Just the Beginning
| https://www.amazon.com/End-World-Just-Beginning-Globalizatio... I
| hope he is wrong about globalization falling apart, but articles
| like this are right out of his book.
| tommiegannert wrote:
| I didn't have the patience to finish The Fourth Turning [1],
| but it's arguing that the US has been working on 80 year major
| cycles for a long time. I like "end of a cycle" better than
| "end of the world." :) I'd be interested to know if there are
| related studies outside the US.
|
| Something I didn't learn about until recently [2] was
| Glocalization. Wikipedia [3] says it's been around since the
| 80s. Perhaps now's a good time to bring it out again.
|
| 1.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...
|
| 2. https://drpippa.substack.com/p/glocalization
|
| 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glocalization
| Litost wrote:
| I'm not that familiar with the Fourth Turning and this also
| originates from the US, but I did find it quite helpful when
| considering where things are, have been and might be going
| and how the US is in a cycle along with other nations:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xguam0TKMw8
|
| I'd also not heard of Glocalization, but it reminds me of a
| couple of topics that are covered in Fritjof Capra's Systems
| View of Life book (also a course), around emergent behaviour
| in complex systems and how this competes with top down
| command and control ideas (or in organisations as the formal
| and informal networks).
| yucky wrote:
| I read that and found it fascinating. Everything doesn't fit
| as neatly into the 80 year cycles as they might like, but I
| think they acknowledge that.
| causi wrote:
| So far it seems like we're doing the "worst of both worlds"
| approach, where trade becomes crazy expensive _and_ we don 't
| build domestic capacity _and_ global oil falls apart _and_ we
| don 't make up for it at home with increased capacity or export
| restrictions. We're in a situation where the US neither
| produces its own ships nor lets foreign-owned ships move cargo
| between US ports. Frankly I think Zeihan's biggest flaw, other
| than absurd simplification of complex industries, is that he's
| far too optimistic about the ability of countries, particularly
| the US, to act even remotely in their own best interests.
| Political decisions aren't being made according to what someone
| (right or wrong) thinks will benefit us; they're being made on
| the basis of validating our personal socio-political
| identities. If X is associated with your party then you push
| for X whether or not X is obviously suicidal. Scoring points
| off the opposition has become more important than survival.
| nugget wrote:
| My understanding is that the US President (currently Biden)
| can unilaterally ban oil exports and that this would
| immediately drop US oil prices to $70-80/barrel and spike
| global oil prices by 30%+. I wonder how bad domestic gas
| prices would need to be before this happens because it
| definitely feels like it would be a permanent nail in the
| coffin of energy globalization.
| benj111 wrote:
| So the rest of the world goes into recession, so that drags
| down the US with it. And/or low prices lead to low
| investment, both in to new oil and alternative energy thus
| dooming the industry long term while giving the rest of the
| world a head start in future technologies. And/or the rest
| of the world gets pissed off, imposes their own sanctions,
| look to more reliable allies, look to different reserve
| currencies etc etc etc.
| causi wrote:
| It would certainly screw over US allies but it wouldn't do
| _that_ much good for domestic prices because domestic
| refineries aren 't built to use light/sweet American oil.
| Domestic production would collapse as domestic oil sat
| unusable for months. What we need is taxes/regulations to
| force the building of refineries to process domestic crude.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| We have plenty of refineries tuned for all kinds of
| crude. The vast majority of US crude gets refined here,
| and exported as refined products.
|
| That's not to say the industry wouldn't go belly up from
| suddenly having a bunch of unused, expensive oil
| refineries, but our ability to refine US oil wouldn't be
| in peril from a lack of refineries.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Hold on, I'm in Canada, and the story here, is that we
| don't have domestic refineries, we get gas from US ones,
| now I hear you guys are told the you don't have domestic
| refineries too?!
|
| What, is everyone told this???
| codazoda wrote:
| The commenter your replying to is talking about "sweet"
| oil. According to this adage, US refineries are setup to
| process sour oil but in the US we drill for sweet oil. As
| a result we need to export sweet oil and import sour oil.
|
| I've heard from one person, who delivers oil, that our
| refineries are able to switch relatively easily. So, I'm
| unsure what the whole story is, but that's what the other
| comment was referring to. We definitely do refining in
| the US and there are several refineries near me.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If your refineries can process cheap sour oil, they can
| easily be repurposed into processing expensive sweet oil.
|
| But why would you do that, instead of selling the
| expensive oil and buying some cheap one back?
| bbarnett wrote:
| I'm sure the story is, "Tell em anything just keep the
| profits high".
| krallja wrote:
| It's all rented from a refinery in Virginia called us-
| east-1.
| grimjack00 wrote:
| >force the building of refineries to process domestic
| crude.
|
| Who would want to build a refinery when the current
| President has stated he wants to shut down the fossil
| fuel industry?
| weberer wrote:
| It would be nice to first try getting domestic oil
| production back up to 2019 levels.
|
| https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx?n=pet&s=
| m...
| nine_zeros wrote:
| > My understanding is that the US President (currently
| Biden) can unilaterally ban oil exports and that this would
| immediately drop US oil prices to $70-80/barrel and spike
| global oil prices by 30%+. I wonder how bad domestic gas
| prices would need to be before this happens because it
| definitely feels like it would be a permanent nail in the
| coffin of energy globalization.
|
| There is a big problem with banning US oil exports. Oil is
| priced in US dollars and this only works if the US
| continues to be a global political player. If the US stops
| exports, the price of oil in dollars will rise so much that
| most other countries will have no choice but to start
| importing from Russia again - and in a currency that is not
| US dollars.
|
| Overnight, the US will experience rapid inflation due to
| all the printed dollars losing value for the rest of the
| world.
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| In this case it seems more like a country that is severely
| mismanaged is now falling apart completely. I feel for the
| people in it, but this is not indicative of the real state of
| the world.
| throwaway4C4B wrote:
| While what's happening elsewhere in the world is definitely
| impacting the country, the majority of the blame should be placed
| on one family and those around it.
|
| The Rajapaksha family helped end a 30 year civil war, it was a
| bloody horrific war, however as this was the most important issue
| for most Sri Lankans at the time, helping end this meant the
| Rajapaksha's were seen as the saviors,they were at the time
| considered kings, people used to cry in joy when they see them,
| they were that loved and celebrated within the country.
|
| This gave them a lot of power and popularity, anyone with a
| Rajapaksha name ran for all types of government positions, and
| most of them actually won, people accepted them with open arms.
| At the same time with the power the Rajapaksha's had they were
| able to promote their family members, some of them who didn't
| even have a highschool degree in to high ranking positions within
| government institutions.
|
| So, half of the family was elected by the people, the rest was
| promoted due to nepotism.
|
| What happened was a decade worth of corruption, a family that
| didn't have much, some of whom worked as gas pump operators in
| the US (the current president) suddenly became billionaires. One
| of the main culprits was an animal named Basil Rajapaksha, he was
| so corrupt people called him "Mr 10%" because if any construction
| or any type of project were to start, you have to allocate 10% of
| the profits and the initial investment to Basil rajapaksha.
|
| If I were to write all the corruption, human rights violations
| and the day light robberies committed by the rajapuksha family we
| would be here all day.
|
| Sri Lanka is a majority Buddhist country, in Buddhism we are
| taught of Karma, and how what you do to others will one day
| return back to you. And as a Sri Lankan this is what I feel is
| happening to us now. The sinhalese majority of Sri lanka, killed,
| looted and raped Tamil people which led to the 30+ year civil
| war, and we encouraged and looked the otherway when the
| rajapaksha family & co killed, raped and looted the Tamil
| population in the name of stopping the war. We looked the other
| way when they destroyed someone else's future because it was
| easier than finding a sustainable solution.
|
| If I manage to survive this and one day have children, this is
| all I would tell them, "If you see an injustice, speak up, do
| something about it, because otherwise, they will come for you and
| you will be all alone".
| johanzm1 wrote:
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Some context: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2022/06/26/asia/sri-lanka-
| fuel-suppl...
|
| The country is already $700M in debt, has no cash reserves to pay
| for imports, credit by national banks being refused.
| 015a wrote:
| I think its interesting, and maybe valuable, to see that actual
| number. From another front page post today: its roughly the
| same amount of debt Voyager issued to Three Arrow Capital, who
| just defaulted. That's kind of the scale we're talking about,
| and the context that's necessary when the top comment on this
| page is someone linking an article titled "the end of the world
| is just beginning"; that yes, it sucks for Sri Lanka, and yes,
| there are some serious global issues right now that we need to
| continue to work toward remediating, but also: its very
| possible most people reading this comment had no idea what I
| was talking about when I said "three arrow capital and
| voyager". The scale between a million dollar problem and a
| global problem is incomprehensible, and that scale is important
| to consider before jumping straight to doom and gloom.
|
| It does suck for Sri Lanka. But; we can't solve every problem,
| and thus worrying about them wastes valuable time and energy
| that is better spent solving our problems. Secure your oxygen
| mask before helping others.
|
| Similarly, I think its negligent and borderline misinformation
| that the title of this post doesn't include the location.
| jfim wrote:
| There's a good video from Polymatter on YouTube that explains how
| that situation came to be: https://youtu.be/W5zxYDHwf-Y
| rootsudo wrote:
| On the other side, what opportunities exist for investors to
| invest in the situation in Sri Lanka? Is there any _easy_ way, or
| just boots on ground? What about humanitarian or green-vesting?
| tomjen3 wrote:
| It is an old British colony with no money, so cheap
| outsourcing, especially if you are willing/able to pay in USD.
| pkaye wrote:
| There are a lot of issues that led to the failure. I don't
| think investors can make a difference until they get better
| leaders to make the necessary changes.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5zxYDHwf-Y
| tomjen3 wrote:
| This is for the country of Sri Lanka. The headline should (IMHO)
| have reflected this, because it is otherwise click bait.
|
| I am aware there is a .lk domain, but there are thousands of
| domains out there and I don't think most people would know it of
| hand.
| TylerE wrote:
| Needs a (Sri Lanka) tag or something.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| The domain name specified next to the title has a '.lk' TLD.
| benj111 wrote:
| Ah yes lk== Sri Lanka. Obviously.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| For that matter it cannot be obvious that 'Colombo' is the
| name of the capital (again, of /one/ capital) or that
| 'Ceylon' was used for the place and/or that it still is.
| It's notions, like so much the rest. Things you meet and
| catch up with.
| TylerE wrote:
| Which I would bet most to the HN audience isn't familiar
| with.
| NackerHughes wrote:
| We're all part of today's lucky 10,000!
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _HN audience_
|
| The audience that by definition would go "What is that? Mh!
| Nice to know!".
| uoaei wrote:
| Technically true and also unhelpful.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| Why? A poster suggested geo-context was <<needed>>, to
| which was noted that said information is present in an
| expectable place. The "homework" of translating '.lk' is
| one click away.
| TylerE wrote:
| You know what's better than one click? Zero clicks. My
| time is a precious commodity.
| msla wrote:
| And we know all ccTLDs are accurate, like how .tv always
| means the site is owned by people from Tuvalu.
| ziddoap wrote:
| Protonmail, a Swiss company, uses a Montenegro TLD. TLD isn't
| a good geolocator.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _TLD isn 't a good geolocator_
|
| Yes. ...In general. Specifically, this one is a title that
| comes from a news company with TLD consistent to it. Had it
| been reported by The Guardian or the NYT, they would have
| titled it differently.
| HidyBush wrote:
| ah yes, '.lk' for 'sri LanKa"
| beebeepka wrote:
| I wonder if there's a "wk" and what it stands for
| bennyp101 wrote:
| Yea I had to read it first to figure it out, so now I know
| and I'm informed about another nation...
|
| Edit: urgh I know it's a shit comment, but frankly I'm so
| disheartened with seeing another country go down it's just
| depressing
| mdp2021 wrote:
| To the best of my past information, the immediately
| preceding government seeked raising consensus through
| suicidal tax cuts. Given the widespread trend in """live-
| for-the-day""" politics, another example but little new
| (dramatically or farcically).
|
| Edit: it is one case in which the following appears
| exceptionally justifiable:
|
| https://thediplomat.com/2022/06/sri-lanka-
| sends-2-ministers-...
|
| > _Sri Lanka is sending two government ministers to Russia
| to negotiate for fuel - one of the necessities nearly
| exhausted amid the Indian Ocean island nation's economic
| collapse. // The development comes as Washington and its
| allies aim to cut off energy imports from Russia in line
| with sanctions over its war on Ukraine. Since the invasion
| in late February, global oil prices have skyrocketed,
| sparking a number of countries to seek out Russian crude,
| which is being offered at a steep discount_
| JoiDegn wrote:
| We just moved our little family of four from Sri Lanka where we
| planned to make a home. My wife is Sri Lankan but has not lived
| there in the last 10 years. It was a rough decision because her
| family is still there. The situation on the ground is "stable"
| but food, medicines and of course fuel are becoming scarce. The
| crazy part is that the government seems to have no real plan but
| refuses to step down even though the public clearly wants them
| to.
| pkaye wrote:
| Didn't the previous government step down?
| sbarre wrote:
| Just curious, is there another party or group waiting in the
| wings that _does_ have a plan - and the ability - to fix this?
|
| I've seen op-eds and articles in western media, and a few in
| EMEA media, that all talk about sweeping changes and reforms
| but they all seem like the usual hand-waving or 'easier said
| than done' articles, and not really a plan for how to get
| there.
|
| My (very limited) understanding is that the current government
| has been in power less than a year(?), and so must have
| inherited a lot of these issues.
|
| Anyone seen any other articles on this that have more concrete
| information?
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