which was mostly the work of a swiss company yeah i have to say i think the olympic flame is kind of burnt out over the years although i have to admit that saying the torch in the space was kind of neat i think that when and if the world ever becomes an ideological battle ground again and then the olympics will become worth watching but for now it's just generic sports from generic countries a generic stadiums but that's just my opinion. this is the place that has been consecrated to god for almost a thousand of years people came here twenty some years ago to reestablish the master quiet on this island. and people feel the love of christ working through. people say you can. come and something happens on this island that makes them return to it again and again they say the below saves them. join me james brown on

a journey for the soul. only. live. lucky. live. live live. live

. flow in well on the money with the business of russia is business i'm people of russia's economy continues to expand though just barely this is prompted the government to rearrange budget priorities in continue down the path of economic reform on top of this ukraine is back in the news in a very big way in talks with iran move the oil price. to discuss these issues in more i'm joined by dmitry babich he is a political analyst with voice of russia radio station we also have jacob now he is the chief economist with morgan stanley russia and we also have here just love nice of bowler keizer chief economist at deutsche bank russia the state of russia's

economy flatlining well i mean look we've had we've had maybe three disappointments this year i think when you sort of put it on the table one is growth we all know about that investment being negative but but other sources of growth also not not far on all cylinders we've seen also the current account decline it's not so much on the trade side but it's more in service is in income it's gone down to under two percent g.d.p. and we've also seen inflation this autumn pick up again despite having a pretty good harvest so that's that's that's three pieces of of unfortunate economic news but i think actually there's a pretty good strategy out there i think that we shouldn't over interpret the bad news so to go through them first of all the growth a lot of the driver of the slowdown has been the government putting the brakes on on government spending and that process is now over so i think the slowdown in

investment will pick up a little bit now and that will help growth pick up a little bit next year on inflation i think we have a central bank that's building credibility it's go. it's difficult inflation talking next year but it is we think possible to deliver it with a prudent budget keeping monetary growth under control with a good harvest with the utility. freeze or cap on price increases so on growth we see it being patted on inflation we seeing it being better i think that the biggest change may be on the ruble where with the we could current account and still high inflation compared to what we see in america and and europe we're probably going to see the ruble weakening more rapidly as we've seen the last few months going into twenty fourteen and that's a change from what we had in the post-crisis period when we had a pretty flat ruble. the bitter pills already been swallowed apparently well i

think i would agree here with jacob that we do have some possibility to accelerate on the world fronts including in what has recently been probably the weakest link which is investment so investment construction this is probably going to recover in the course of next year i think this tariff freeze that we're going to have next year on the electricity on gas is going to provide some breathing space for the manufacturing sector even though this is a temporary phenomenon this is one of the things that will be supportive then on the consumer side i think the consumer is still quite quite strong and while there are some worries about some of the cuts on the in the social sphere. i think generally interims of the. strength that we see is specially in the regions of the russian consumer that's cause for optimism and that perhaps we will have

some you know stimulate the looting in the beginning of the euro were. a little bit sort of laid out will provide some some impetus and there's a good. beginning to the year well then hopefully the year will go in a bit of a better way to make you mean the political spin not come on say that. i am always be wild that when i read in the western press that after coming back to paul started to tighten the screw loose because we never had a more liberal team running the economy now well these team has a lot of importance and one of the bad things about this team is that these people can see their only themselves to be professionals others they say they just don't understand what they're talking about but we have basically quite a mist of gaidar direction running the economy the economy economic development minister mr. easy disciple of gaydar we have had to be are now building up from

there you know high school of economics running the central bank and with these people you may have lots of trouble with production but you'll always have stable finance you have big credential reserves you sometimes have guards in social spending but very rarely you have told to collapse or also over them really really it's worshipping the balance sheet that is this is the most important thing the balance sheet balance the balance sheet is. a great foundation that i probably russia's main competitive advantage that it should explore it to a greater degree but on top of this foundation i think starting from next year the hope is that they will be able to build something in the form of infrastructure push infrastructure development that's the key issue i think longer term yeah i think i think the one interesting change that we're seeing is a big focus on tax compliance and bearing down on the gray economy at the moment because there's a bit of

a difficult position because revenue growth is weeks or revenues are weak but they have expenditure ambitions and they want to run a balanced budget or a gentleman let's change gears here you know what it's like about iran and oil. we were talking before the program how. an agreement or a tentative agreement with the western powers and world powers in iran could have ricochet effects ok because we have met with your lover of coming out the foreign minister saying well you don't need anti-ballistic defense on any war in any more in europe but then again the price of oil has dropped to because it's positive news the possibility of hostilities in that part of the world have gone down at least as this interim agreement has been pushed forward what about russia how does it affect russia when they're looking at the oil price here well clearly russia is very dependent on oil prices still and including interims of its real economy in terms of the dynamics of g.d.p. so my sense is that clearly in the markets you see significant growing pessimism on

the oil price outlook the fact that the geopolitical premium as it is called these of the oil prices is likely to contract further and accordingly of that is the case perhaps the hope to some degree in russia i think is that this somewhat lower will price will probably generate some pressure on russia to try to generate some reform measure of some structural reforms of course i think part of the question here is the scale of the adjustment in the oil prices if it's too radical. probably it's not something that is desirable and constructive in terms of how policy will evolve but if we're talking about ninety to ninety five dollars per barrel which is where increasingly the market seems to be looking for the oil price for next year i think this is probably the right balance between kind of keeping the macro relatively stable but also exerting somewhat greater pressure on russia to improve its policy

gave it. both ways obviously yeah i mean i think. the funny thing is that the price of oil actually rose. it fell very briefly off the announcement rose which is you know. lots of factors affect it but it does look around looking where in the world a moment like that there will markets reasonably tights and we have saudi producing at record highs and committed to one hundred dollar a barrel price and the same is true of u.a.e. and kuwait that they are producing at record highs and those are the three who are members of the opec cartel who can adjust their production in defense of a price target so i think that's a far far out there that's going to hold up the price of oil and prevent one of the more radical scenarios of all price falling and us guess the other thing to say is that it's still some way before we actually get additional rein in oil coming back into the market that's the interesting thing to me here in this that this is part of the geopolitical dynamic here i mean if beyond this interim agreement. really an

oil comes back on the market here again the ricochet effect here comes here because you know the saudis are not going to be equally like it for many other reasons is because not just oil but you know russia will have to deal with that too because it will be lower pressure on iranian oil coming to the market well i kind of agree with jake up i also tried to keep track of the prices and my impression is that all prices are driven up not just by absence of the product on the market but sometimes they're driven out by instability and the truth is iran is not the source of instability despite all the bad sides of this regime to liberal cities iran has not attacked anyone since one thousand seven hundred ninety everyone was afraid that iran would attack someone in the meantime the united states attacked and number of countries israel attacked a number of countries but. iran never technion it was a victim of aggression by saddam hussein so i think the prices will not go down

dramatically because the real source of instability are still there we still have the conflict in syria we still have. instability or with the media east and i think these factors may drive the prices are up much better than about out of the result of some of your own private jacob let's go to fracking in the united states the united states being self-sufficient in energy relatively soon a lot of punditry go out there so this is a very bad news for russia here heidi how does america's growing. energy wealth impact other markets in particular russia is what do you know that it's interesting because we've got a spread in the financial markets between w.t.r. which the domestic u.s. oil price and the global oil price brant and i think that's a sign that you continue to have this very strong production in the middle of the american continent which can't make it out to global markets and and really what

happens is when the infrastructure gets built the american price comes up to the global level rather than the global price coming down to the american life or so i would say that it's very exciting what's happening in the states the shale oil production in the classical lowborn pays its a global has not yet happened in another country that mix of factors that you have in the states hasn't been replicated elsewhere in fact in russia with a passion of sweet underlying west siberia you probably have one of the places where it's most likely to get replicated but i think until it's replicated outside america you're not going to see it became packed on the global price and the other thing is the decline rates and these formations at quite high and so the cost of the oil is quite high and so there's a fall in the price that there will then you might lose that production quite quickly so it's not clear that it's going to drive down global course of your business no panacea i mean as so many american politicians would like to say well

exactly there are a lot of difficulties with how this is going to be implemented this is probably in terms of the global implications certainly not a short term proposition but more of a longer term development with a lot of question marks there and i. i think ultimately again i tend to look at this is a challenge in response if there is a challenge that is building for russia globally the response has to be a greater efficiency and where the development of its fuel softer diversification geographically. more oil to china and. also greater diversification and more broadly away from oil and gas towards other sectors of the economy and this is really the fundamental issue for us in the longer term are gentlemen i have to jump in here we have to go to was short break and after that short break we'll continue our discussion stay.

it was a. very hard to take a. long look like that that would make sure no.

one of. the people of. if you're thinking about an alcoholic drink associated with russia it's probably not going to be one that springs into your head but they've been making it here on the black sea coast for more than two thousand kids and there's an industry which really can compete with the best the rest of the world has to offer i've come to meet some of the people going the greats and to see if i can find out the secret to the perfect. but listen i.

think it's. ben bernanke has become a god and instead of walking on water he's walking on paper no more paper yeah. yeah yeah but i don't think we're going to have a lousy like moment you know where they put him in the crypt and then he goes up to heaven i think they're going to put this guy into the crypt and the economy is going to go go south though obliterate a. torch is on its epic journey. one hundred twenty three days. through two hundred cities of russia. really fourteen thousand people or sixty thousand coming. in a record setting trip. air. space.

olympic torch relay. on our. technology innovation. developments from around russia we. covered. welcome back to on the money where the business of russia is business on peter lavelle reminder we're talking about russia's economy but before that let's have a look at the following report. russia's growth prediction for twenty thirteen is coming in lower than expected according to the russian ministry the konami developments the forecasted real g.d.p.

growth for twenty thirteen is down to one point eight percent. as for the upcoming year official growth predictions are that the economy will expand to range from two point eight to three point two percent next year's budget deficit will amount to zero point five percent of g.d.p. based on the oil price assumption and budget spending plans the official prediction is that at an average of ninety three dollars per barrel the budget will run a deficit of three hundred and ninety billion rubles the revised forecast has lower expectations also in government and foreign investments and it predicts lower retail trade growth lower growth in real incomes and slower industrial production. as for long term investments low inflation will play an important part in the current forecast lowers the expected accumulated change in the level of consumer prices in twenty thirteen to twenty thirty my more than twenty five percent this

means investors are expected to revise their predictions experts say indeed the forecast net capital inflow figure has been lowered varian significant lng at the same time russia has rising eight positions to rank fifty six best country in the latest survey of taxation environment it is part of the world bank's doing business effort the improvement was due to reduction of administrative red tape but as the russian newspaper veta mr writes the survey of one hundred eighty nine countries found that russian companies continue to have a high tax burden. the ministry of the canonical development has managed to improve russia's standing on the world bank's ease of doing business ranking which the ministry uses is a key performance indicator russia jumped twenty places in the world bank's ease of doing business serving it is now number ninety two out of one hundred eighty five countries this is happened at

a time of concerted reform effort and widespread improvements in access to electricity according to a new report from the international body. of the money r.t. . gentlemen let's start out with the biggest news of the month and that is ukraine jacob how do you read this i mean where does ukraine stand right now because it didn't sign the association agreement with the european union is pivoting to talk about the customs union with russia but there's no real movement there it's about talks to have talks where does ukraine stand it's in a precarious situation they've got a big current account deficit they've got big external debt repayments they got falling reserves they got exchange rate peg it's a precarious situation they need to find external financing. going to get and they've got a presidential election coming up which means i think it's going to be difficult for them to do the tough measures the i.m.f. would tomorrow and raising domestic gas prices and reducing budget expenditures so

we think that they'll be some form of deal with russia but it's very unclear on the timing of the details of that deal or how do you come out on this because it's it's neither here nor there right now exactly with a lot of noise in between i'd like to point out it almost seems like ukraine is trying to have the benefit of an alliance with europe and to get the financing from there but also to get some support from russia and. it seems like there could be a case where by none of these benefits me come ukraine's way and the of course that all the. and on how they play their cards in the near term but my sense is that indeed one of the most likely scenarios is that russia well it has always had some support to ukraine there are indications that there may be further support

in the form of more favorable terms on gas supplies etc so there is scope for russia to in the near term to to provide the support but of course in the end of the day i think a lot of the people realize that the ultimate choice by ukraine is a very difficult proposition because it's a country that part of it is in the west part of it is in the east and to make a choice in one direction is something that creates significant turmoil within the country as we can see when asked all three of you is a compromise out there because it seems so polemical if you look at some of the leadership i mean brussels to it is a snub they were in salted because so much work had been done on this agreement in the future and away from movie to me is that is there a compromise here is not only to always say is that you ukraine is in the east it is in west it's staying exactly where it is ok it's a geopolitical problem but people live there and they have leaderships there and

you have an economy can you find a compromise to fit both tried to be short on that i think it's possible to find some kind of a solution if the three parties the e.u. ukraine and russia sit together and find what they can find out what they can do what are don't think that is going to happen the main problem is with the e.u. will because the insists it's between us and ukraine russia has nothing to do with that and the reaction of the e.u. to the recent events was just so inadequate that i don't expect them to correct their position instead of looking for their own mistakes and allies in their own shortcomings they just put all the blame. and you know coach it's not us it's them we could compromise i think personally i think that will probably have to wait until after the presidential elections now before there's a clear political choice in ukraine and so i think we're in a holding pattern until that innocent you think that in the in the meantime i mean

i think you realize is that you are good advice for you when they afford it to me but i mean you can we do our ukraine is to use that time until the presidential elections to decide on key issues right but my sense is that indeed it's probably the best scenario for ukraine would be to have all of the main players in the go shading table coordinating the process of integration with the e.u. with the washer and then potentially you can get spillover positive effects of say russia and the e.u. progressing towards a real substantial economic integration agenda five to six years ago the issue of free trade zone between russia and the e.u. was seriously discussed in russia in new europe right now it's completely out of the agenda why is that the case perhaps the positive scenario would be that why ukraine via all of these discussions you can have that kind of a positive affect these of you russian e.u. relations with jacob it doesn't work that way i mean you work in the world of

finance you work in the world of finance the human eye working in the world of media and we know how people in media spin this i mean it has to be black and white it has to be binary this is driven from the western perspective by politics well i would say that certainly the global media plays a very negative role in your screen i mean they're the consequences of their so-called orange revolution the consequence was that ukraine still hasn't wanted full democracy but relations between russia and the west more so for nothing and now because of all these spin about very on the whole region but putin it will be even more difficult now the. before the viewing assignment for the three parties for the ukraine and russia to sit together and find a solution. i would remind you that just one hundred years ago before the first of all the war there were very difficult problems but there was the portage problem the ukrainian problem the sort of problem but as it turned out it's possible to see

all these problems if all the parties together and just come up positive and that there are many thanks to our guests and thanks to our viewers for watching us here on the money see you next time stay. i was thinking somehow i had to come back because mom was waiting for me. i just knew that everything would be fine for some reason they were so confident because we were going to get married officially after he came back how could he come back the mere thought of it never crossed my mind. that the militants decided to try and break through. screaming grenade.

explosions blow them all run his back toward. and it was all over all should we know that our comrades on our commander leave us no matter how tough it gets we're team. getting was a senior in his military trio. he knew that if he didn't smother that grenade with his body more of just comrades would die he gave his own life to save his friends. just. put it under a bushel harmon in washington d.c. spanking new polish face i just i'm going to bone.

it was. a pleasure to have you with us here on t.v. today i'm sure. we'll all told you my language of war but i will only react to situations i have read the reports so i'm not you know for instance i'm no i'll leave that to the state department to comment on your latter point i come on to say it's mr kerry you have a car is on a dock in melbourne. they go no more weasel words when you need a direct question be prepared for a change when you throw a punch be ready for a battle freedom of speech and a little down to freedom to question. weeks between thanksgiving and

christmas in the united states a confluence roughly twenty percent of annual mall traffic during that period of time people are much less rational when they shop certainly modern people are often spending money. and spending it on things they don't need to accomplish what they have.

dozens wounded on the arrested ukrainian police crackdown on protesters in kiev as tens of thousands keep up their demands for the country's leadership to resign after rejecting an e.u. association deal. with some prisoners reportedly agree to spy for the u.s. an exchange for cash and freedom. to you or may have been better for you critics condemning the cia tactics. have got out while innocent men. indefinitely. and bahraini authorities leave the main opposition leader in jail despite him being eligible for release international says it's clear the monarchy isn't interested in justice.