patrick.net

" https://billricejr.substack.com/p/mcflation
The price of the McChicken sandwich increased the most - from $1.00 in
2014 to $2.99 in 2024 - a price increase of 199 percent."

President Donald Trump’s new post on Truth Social threatening new economic sanctions on Russia shows that Putin has finally met his match. It now looks as if Donald Trump may not be bullied by Putin’s empty holster of threats, bluster, and bluffs. (Unlike fucking Potato --RWSGFY)

Trump has come to realize he holds the leverage while Putin stares down bankruptcy and total collapse. Putin’s regime, according to our research, is on pace to run out of cash by the end of the year, if not sooner, if stronger sanctions are implemented.

Putin has been obfuscating how weak the Russian economy is by hiding and fudging the numbers. Putin now refuses to disclose major economic indicators as required by the IMF and as Russia used to release regularly. This ranges from foreign trade data, monthly output data on oil and gas, capital inflows and outflows, financial statements of major companies, central bank monetary base data, foreign direct investment data, domestic value added by industry, and lending and loan origination data. Even Rosaviatsiya, Russia’s federal air transport agency, has stopped publishing data on air passenger volumes.

Our new analysis shows the true nature of the Russian economy. Putin is strangling his own nation with inflation approaching Weimar Germany’s collapse. As Trump pointed out, Russian inflation has gone through the roof with annual inflation near 10%. Even food is becoming prohibitively expensive, with milk and dairy inflation near 20%; bread and bakery inflation near 15%; and fruit and vegetable inflation near 30%. Inflation across gasoline, housing, and utilities is similarly in the double digits. These skyrocketing costs are borne entirely by regular Russian citizens, not by Putin’s cronies.

someone just noticed that if you could hold a McChicken sandwich without any asset depreciation, McChicken would have beaten the SPX over the last five years

“Take nominal GDP less inflation - that gives you real GDP. So if inflation is being understated, as a lot of us think, that means that real growth is being overstated. Let's just say the economy is growing at 6% nominal, which includes inflation, and inflation's really four and a half percent - then you know the real GDP is only about one and a half percent. It's not that great, not that far above inflation, and I think that's why a lot of people - they look at these reports of how buoyant the U.S. economy is, and they go, ‘well, not for me.’”

David Hay