The last post postulated that there is an economic solution to some problems by encouraging people in developed markets to look at moving to less developed markets to take advantage of purchasing power parity. Much of what is taking place in the United States is similar as that taking place in the European Union. European […]
A PPP Solution?
February 15, 2016 by Leave a Comment
What if you could move to a different country and live better than you are now for $10,000 a year and even save more? Let’s take a step or two back. Average monthly pay in Ukraine is under $300. The #1 difference in Ukraine is that someone in almost every Ukrainian family owns their place […]
Musical chairs - jobs/immigration
February 15, 2016 by Leave a Comment
The last post focused on issues of immigration and jobs, the free market and globalization. Now, we’re going to look at the United States as an example of what happens when immigration is mostly a one way street, coming in; and job creation is mostly a one way street, going out. In 2013, officially, (when […]
Pickles. And… Coffee?
February 12, 2016 by Leave a Comment
There’s a lot of talk in the United States these days about immigration and jobs – people coming in and jobs going out. Some points are very similar to what is developing in the European Union, suffice that it is easier to relate prevailing issues in one country than it is 28 different countries. Consequently, […]
Odessa ain’t a bad place to be.
February 10, 2016 by Leave a Comment
It bewilders many Ukrainians why a westerner would want to live in Ukraine when so many Ukrainians want to go west. Having lived in Odessa going on eleven years prompts one very good question from my Ukrainian friends – This is one of my favorite topics and deserves reiterating from time to time - though […]
DCFTA (Cloudy) Integration
February 8, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Integration – the third hurdle facing Ukrainian (and European) companies applying to the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. Along with the legal/regulatory and monetization hurdles, this will prove more difficult for Ukrainian companies as the Ukrainian government has slowed the progress of Visa Free travel for Ukrainians, as covered by Nikolai in mid-January. The […]
DCFTA Problems and Opportunities - 2
February 3, 2016 by Leave a Comment
The legal and regulatory components of the DCFTA are usually business/industry-specific, but Ukrainian companies have several commonalities on matters of capitalization. While capitalization issues apply to most startups and SMEs, they are not entirely absent even from the largest Ukrainian businesses or even Ukrainian branches of otherwise European/International companies. Start-ups. Practically inherent to startups worldwide […]
DCFTA Problems & Opportunities 1
February 1, 2016 by Leave a Comment
From now on, we will refer to all of our problems as opportunities. - Pointy-Haired Boss, Dilbert The EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement went into effect on January 1, 2016. All components of it won’t roll out fully for about 10 years. Enabling free trade and actually engaging in free trade are […]
Ukraine, System Specs and Trojans
January 29, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Filling in for Nikolai while he’s on the (Silk) Road. Nikolai advised to write on matters of Ukraine that I know best. While he will be popping in periodically, the next few weeks will tend to focus on matters of tech, business and possibly some logistics. A few of the issues applicable to government and […]
Technical Difficulties
January 13, 2016 by Leave a Comment
Please be advised that OdessaTalk.com is currently experiencing technical problems and we apologize for the inconvenience. Our backup site is https://odessablog.wordpress.com/ The problem is a persistent and intermittent “Error establishing a database connection” - leading to the site being up one minute and down the next; sometimes staying up and sometimes staying down. We are […]