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Sri Lanka might be the first of many poor countries facing hard times due to the Russian war in Ukraine. African countries, in particular, might face starvation if Ukrainian grains don't get to them.
Compared to many countries, I feel lucky to be living in America.
Sri Lanka might be the first of many poor countries facing hard times due to the Russian war in Ukraine. African countries, in particular, might face starvation if Ukrainian grains don't get to them.
Compared to many countries, I feel lucky to be living in America.
As with Syria, those Africans will probably flood to Europe, creating a refugee crisis.
We are lucky! While the green energy advocates have done some damage to nuclear power and coal power has been shut down before the replacement was commissioned, overall America has abundant energy and productive enough farming areas to provide for us all. Sri Lanka is not that lucky. Most countries are not, in fact.
Sri Lanka is in the middle of a full-scale collapse after the president announced the nation is “bankrupt,” having run out of both money and energy. Hundreds of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets, and things have devolved into a dystopian nightmare.
In the last several hours, the presidential palace was taken over by a sea of people, angry at the government for putting them in such a precarious position. And as I’ll explain, Sri Lanka’s woes were not only avoidable but were purposely brought on to please climate change fanatics in faraway lands....
I don't know anything about Sri Lanka politics but I do know that Americans need to do severe housecleaning in November. Do not allow them to distract you from the truth. America is worth an educated vote.
“For the past decade, according to Murtaza Jafferjee, chair of Colombo-based think tank Advocata Institute, the Sri Lankan government had borrowed vast sums of money from foreign lenders and expanded public services. As the government’s borrowings grew, the economy took hits from major monsoons that hurt agricultural output in 2016 and 2017, followed by a constitutional crisis in 2018, and the deadly Easter bombings in 2019.
In 2019, the newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa slashed taxes in an attempt to stimulate the economy.
“They misdiagnosed the problem and felt that they had to give a fiscal stimulus through tax cuts,” Jafferjee said.
In 2020, the pandemic hit, bringing Sri Lanka’s tourist-dependent economy shuddering to a halt as the country shut its borders and imposed lockdowns and curfews. The government was left with a large deficit.
Shanta Devarajan, an international development professor at Georgetown University and former World Bank chief economist, says the tax cuts and economic malaise hit government revenue, prompting rating agencies to downgrade Sri Lanka’s credit rating to near default levels – meaning the country lost access to overseas markets.
Sri Lanka fell back on its foreign exchange reserves to pay off government debt, shrinking its reserves from $6.9 billion in 2018 to $2.2 billion this year, according to an IMF briefing.
The cash crunch impacted imports of fuel and other essentials and, in February, Sri Lanka imposed rolling power cuts to deal with the fuel crisis that had sent prices soaring, even before the global crunch that ensued as Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.“
Status:
"Smartened up and walked away!"
(set 28 days ago)
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Reputation: 14221
Quote:
Originally Posted by ocnjgirl
Sounds more complicated than the above intimates:
“For the past decade, according to Murtaza Jafferjee, chair of Colombo-based think tank Advocata Institute, the Sri Lankan government had borrowed vast sums of money from foreign lenders and expanded public services. As the government’s borrowings grew, the economy took hits from major monsoons that hurt agricultural output in 2016 and 2017, followed by a constitutional crisis in 2018, and the deadly Easter bombings in 2019.
In 2019, the newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa slashed taxes in an attempt to stimulate the economy.
“They misdiagnosed the problem and felt that they had to give a fiscal stimulus through tax cuts,” Jafferjee said.
In 2020, the pandemic hit, bringing Sri Lanka’s tourist-dependent economy shuddering to a halt as the country shut its borders and imposed lockdowns and curfews. The government was left with a large deficit.
Shanta Devarajan, an international development professor at Georgetown University and former World Bank chief economist, says the tax cuts and economic malaise hit government revenue, prompting rating agencies to downgrade Sri Lanka’s credit rating to near default levels – meaning the country lost access to overseas markets.
Sri Lanka fell back on its foreign exchange reserves to pay off government debt, shrinking its reserves from $6.9 billion in 2018 to $2.2 billion this year, according to an IMF briefing.
The cash crunch impacted imports of fuel and other essentials and, in February, Sri Lanka imposed rolling power cuts to deal with the fuel crisis that had sent prices soaring, even before the global crunch that ensued as Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.“
This is wiki - who usually is more liberal - this is not a nice man no matter how much your left sided media tries to cover it up.
"During his presidency he increased the power of the executive through the 20th Amendment and nepotism rose as Rajapaksa family members took positions of power. Economic mismanagement drove the economy to bankruptcy, causing Sri Lanka to declare default for the first time since gaining independence in 1948. Shortages and inflation caused Sri Lankans to protest, which the Rajapaksa administration attempted to suppress through authoritarian means such as state of emergency which allows the military to arrest civilians, imposing curfews, restricting social media, assaulting protesters and journalists, and arresting online activists. Gotabaya Rajapaksa refused to step down despite heavy protests, and after an organized attack by loyalists of Mahinda Rajapaksa against peaceful protestors resulted in a violent mass retaliation against the Rajapaksas and their loyalists, the government deployed the military in armoured vehicles with shoot-on-sight orders"
This has been coming for years but many of the things he put in place were to enrich the few rich people while denying the poor resources to feed their families. The last thing this guy needed to worry about was the climate
This is wiki - who usually is more liberal - this is not a nice man no matter how much your left sided media tries to cover it up.
"During his presidency he increased the power of the executive through the 20th Amendment and nepotism rose as Rajapaksa family members took positions of power. Economic mismanagement drove the economy to bankruptcy, causing Sri Lanka to declare default for the first time since gaining independence in 1948. Shortages and inflation caused Sri Lankans to protest, which the Rajapaksa administration attempted to suppress through authoritarian means such as state of emergency which allows the military to arrest civilians, imposing curfews, restricting social media, assaulting protesters and journalists, and arresting online activists. Gotabaya Rajapaksa refused to step down despite heavy protests, and after an organized attack by loyalists of Mahinda Rajapaksa against peaceful protestors resulted in a violent mass retaliation against the Rajapaksas and their loyalists, the government deployed the military in armoured vehicles with shoot-on-sight orders"
This has been coming for years but many of the things he put in place were to enrich the few rich people while denying the poor resources to feed their families. The last thing this guy needed to worry about was the climate
I doubt he really cared about the climate. AOC's own campaign manager said climate change was about getting control of the economy.
“For the past decade, according to Murtaza Jafferjee, chair of Colombo-based think tank Advocata Institute, the Sri Lankan government had borrowed vast sums of money from foreign lenders and expanded public services. As the government’s borrowings grew, the economy took hits from major monsoons that hurt agricultural output in 2016 and 2017, followed by a constitutional crisis in 2018, and the deadly Easter bombings in 2019.
In 2019, the newly elected President Gotabaya Rajapaksa slashed taxes in an attempt to stimulate the economy.
“They misdiagnosed the problem and felt that they had to give a fiscal stimulus through tax cuts,” Jafferjee said.
In 2020, the pandemic hit, bringing Sri Lanka’s tourist-dependent economy shuddering to a halt as the country shut its borders and imposed lockdowns and curfews. The government was left with a large deficit.
Shanta Devarajan, an international development professor at Georgetown University and former World Bank chief economist, says the tax cuts and economic malaise hit government revenue, prompting rating agencies to downgrade Sri Lanka’s credit rating to near default levels – meaning the country lost access to overseas markets.
Sri Lanka fell back on its foreign exchange reserves to pay off government debt, shrinking its reserves from $6.9 billion in 2018 to $2.2 billion this year, according to an IMF briefing.
The cash crunch impacted imports of fuel and other essentials and, in February, Sri Lanka imposed rolling power cuts to deal with the fuel crisis that had sent prices soaring, even before the global crunch that ensued as Russia launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.“
Sri Lanka, an island nation of 22 million people, is in the grips of an economic meltdown. This slow-motion train wreck first began in November 2019 when Gotabaya Rajapaksa won a decisive victory in the country’s presidential elections. He immediately placed family members into key government positions and suspended Parliament. Then in August 2020, his Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna party—the Sri Lanka People’s Front—posted a landslide victory. The win gave Rajapaksa the ability to amend the country’s constitution, which he quickly availed himself of. In total control, President Rajapaksa and his brother Mahinda, the prime minister, went on a spending spree that was financed in part by Sri Lanka’s central bank. The results have been economic devastation.
...
The government embarked on a number of wasteful megaprojects. A Times of India report on those projects includes an international airport, a seaport, numerous unnecessary roads and bridges, and a cricket stadium that “has had only a few international matches and is so remote that arriving teams face the risk of wildlife attacks.” Many of these projects were named after the Rajapaksas, an association that would come back to bite them.
...
In 2019, Gotabaya Rajapaksa acted to slash taxes while ramping up spending in a bid to gain greater control over Sri Lanka’s government in its next elections.
Tax cuts were basically a gimmick because they were...
...increasing spending without having the tax revenues to cover the cost get the money they want by borrowing it. Sri Lanka’s national debt ballooned as it increasingly borrowed from foreign lenders to fund Rajapaksa’s spending. But in 2020, the coronavirus pandemic devastated the country’s economy, especially its large tourism industry, a major source of foreign currency. Without that foreign currency coming in, Sri Lanka’s government was soon starved of the money it was counting on to pay its loans.
It's government mismanagement of money. Just like it is in the U.S. Government mismanagement of money is what will do us in.
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Premium WATCH: Protesters Storm Presidential Palace in Sri Lanka After Climate Hysteria Destroys the Nation WATCH: Pro
