A mysterious abbreviation behind my back will probably immediately please economists. For non-specialists, let's explain. This is not just a sovereign credit rating of Russia from Standard & Poor's agency. This is the rating for which tonight the forecast was raised from stable to positive. Even from the sidelines it's clear that the Russian economy is improving.
But today we will present another rating, which is new for us, from the American agency Bloomberg. It is called the misery index. It takes into account the level of inflation and the level of unemployment. If we take 10 countries, it won’t fit on the screen, five isn’t enough, let's take 7. These are the happiest states on the planet in this sense.
The hardworking northern states Denmark and Iceland. Between them there are Taiwan, hardworking Japan, neat Switzerland, and innovative Singapore. But, most surprisingly, Thailand is ahead of all. Bloomberg explains this by self delusion. They say that in Thailand, of course, they like to smile, the rate of unemployment is assessed using their own method. But this is not so important. In fact, Thailand is under the sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States, but it broke through.
And here's another very interesting fact. This is the dynamics of the rating change, both positive and negative. The leaders of the negative dynamics are Poland, Mexico, and Britain. The leaders of the positive dynamics that have positive statistics are Norway, Peru, China, and Russia. At the same time, both Russia and partly China are also under sanctions. That is, it turns out they don't work.
