The Economist ~ Great Power Economies & Macedonia

Day 1,162, 11:00 • Published in United Kingdom United Kingdom • by Spite313


Dear friends,

Welcome to another issue of the Economist. Please vote & sub if you haven’t already: my audience is a rather narrow group of people, so if you know someone who might be interested, let them know. Word of mouth is the best advertising. Please also consider checking out this new paper by Israeli journalist Jewyoyo. It seems to be impartial which is always nice, and covers events around the Middle-East and Asia which is a rarity in newspapers.

Today I plan to do a little recap on how the world economic powers have shifted in strength since the end of Phoenix, and also a little bit about the MM. The second half of my article is going to be a brief analysis of the Macedonian economy- something I’ve been watching fairly closely as the entire region is growing incredibly rapidly and will be an important financial hub.

To start with, let me talk to you about why economic power is so important. A strong economy, even more than a strong population, wins wars. Not only does it allow you to supply your citizens with cheap food and weapons, but also provides the government with the income it required to arm tanks, build state-owned companies and if necessary defend against economic attack. One of the best measures of national strength is the economy. When Phoenix was founded, Serbia was just rising from a middling economic power. By the time we had reaching mid 2009, Serbia had overtaken Hungary as the world #1 economy, and continued to dominate the world markets all the way to the present day. However, since the fall of Phoenix, that domination has in part been eroded not by Serbian decline but by the growth of her neighbours.


All countries with over 200g per day income, 24th December 2010 by proportion

As you can see from this image, Serbia had a commanding lead over all the other countries in late December in terms of financial clout. In fact its income was considerably higher than all of its (hostile) neighbours combined. If you’re wondering where Croatia is, it was still recovering from the conflict with Serbia at this point and doesn’t quite make the grade. I’ve included Macedonia despite not quite being rich enough (at this point) simply because of the large increase in income over the following month, and to tie in with the later half of this article.

Once of the interesting things is that if you look at it and imagine the new power blocs that are forming, you realise that a lot of the new proposed alliances formed out of the strongest economies. Poland, Hungary and Spain combined made up about 30% of the great power economies. Provided Serbia supported Hungary, this combined bloc was considerably stronger than the Croatia-Romania bloc, even with support from PANAM (represented here by USA+Brazil). In fact, on paper the NWO proposed alliance seemed to be the super alliance of old. With Serbia, it represents 46% of the great power economies, with just four countries. Including the Turkish, Macedonian, Indonesian and Russian economies in the NWO bloc would give it a decisive advantage over the remaining countries which at this point appeared likely to fragment into several smaller alliances.


The above countries one month later.

As you can see, everything changed. I spoke a month ago to a few people involved in the formation of new power blocs, and told them not to be too hasty in forming allies. The NWO “bloc” now consists of just 22% of the great power economies, down from 30%. Even with Serbia included, it only just hit’s 35%, and Serbia is not “officially” part of the core group, and is mainly affiliated with Hungary rather than NWO. The startling growth of the Romanian, Bulgarian, Greek, Macedonian and Brazilian economies has been the major factor here. Apart from Turkey, few countries lost significant income over this period. Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Greece now have approximately similar total income to the NWO bloc. Again, although they’re not included here the main 3 West European countries (UK, Germany, France) now have a combined income which is comfortably a match for Poland or Spain, which again changes the balance of power in the region.

As a final comment before I move on, it will be interesting how the internal politics of the PANAM alliance will change because of this. With Brazil almost twice the size of the USA in economic bulk, and Argentina (though not here) also rapidly growing, will the balance of power shift to the South American continent? USA has always been fiercely independent, and throughout its membership of both the ATLANTIS and EDEN bloc was famous for fighting on its own terms. With South American countries being more than twice the size of their North American counterparts in economic terms, will USA accept that their star is fading?



One thing I want to briefly mention is the current stupidity evidenced on the world MM. It really amazes me that despite everyone being aware that this is a result of “someone” making a mistake and creating currency, people continue to support the devaluation of currency by undercutting on the MM.

Nobody is buying your currency. Undercutting is just losing you money.

We can assume that over time the admins will fix this problem (probably buy buying up x amount of currency equal to the amount “someone” accidentally created) and anyone with large amounts of currency is going to be laughing. If you have a lot of currency, don’t just dump it on the markets and hope that it’ll sell for something. Keep it, be smart, invest.

It is indicative that the larger economies such as Bulgaria, Turkey and Spain have been hit hardest by the fall in value. This is simply because these economies have the most goods, and thus the most new currency magically appearing. I can understand why people, watching their currency drop rapidly in value, would attempt to sell it as quickly as possible. Yet it is the worst thing you can do. You’re simply throwing your money away. Keep hold of it and be patient. In April 2009 I shut down a Q1 weapons company because it became unprofitable. It had 230 guns in it, and the price they would have to sell at to make a profit on their production cost was about £4.50 in local currency. For over a year they sat in the company, not selling. I sold all of them for £9.50 each. Patience pays off!


Macedonia’s location for the geographically challenged

When Macedonia was first created, I had great hopes for the country, but also great concerns. A baby boom is both a boon and a curse. If your country is properly prepared, and realistic, you can hold 20% of the baby boom generation to form a new core for your country. In the case of established countries (like Serbia) a baby boom represents a new generation of citizens to mentor and integrate into the system. In new countries, or countries where the established population is smaller than the baby boom generation, there can be serious problems.

One example of this is Turkey. The recent Turkish baby boom brought inexperienced leadership to the country. The army was non-existent, power was held by citizens only a few weeks old. This is a major problem for any country entering into war. The lack of an organised army, a well managed economy and competent political leadership usually spells disaster for any country. These three things are often the “three horsemen of the eApocalypse” for any baby boom country.

So when Macedonia was formed I was worried. Although there are many old, established citizens, there was a danger that Macedonia would not be able to organise itself properly before the war began with Bulgaria. This would spell wipe-out for Macedonia, and possibly a grand exodus from erep such as we are seeing now in Turkey. Fortunately, it seems that the old-guard of Macedonia were able to properly integrate their citizens into a new country. Although there are still growing pains in the internal organisation of the country, the economy appears to be booming.

Despite a low MM value (thanks Plato) Macedonian goods are produced and sold at some of the cheapest prices in the world. It has fair (though maybe a little high eh?) import taxes, and is realistic about attracting development to the country. Income over the past few days is approximately four times the size it was in early December. This is a startling growth rate- about 40% per week national economic growth. This is a comparable growth rate to Bulgaria, although that country had a much larger economy and older players initially, and so overall income is larger.



To sum up on Macedonia: the country has a large and growing population. It is a prime market. It’s local population is fairly new and doesn’t have the wealth necessary to produce high quality goods in sufficient quality to supply their domestic demand, making it a prime export market. Although the MM value is quite low and the tax barrier quite high, selling goods to the market for MKD is a good investment assuming that the currency will rise in value over time. I myself regularly sell to the market, due to the potential future value of MKD. A slightly lower import tax (say 7😵 would do a lot for supply and cost of goods. It brings its own problems however, so it would have to be a carefully weighed decision.

Hope you’ve enjoyed this, remember to sub 🙂

Iain