weekend commentary - Russian method of dealing with financial crisis ...
(snip)"ST PETERSBURG, Russia, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev ordered police on Friday to stamp out any social unrest or crime arising from the global financial crisis.
"We have a stable state ... We do not need a return to the 1990s when everything was boiling and seething," Medvedev told a meeting of senior officials.
"The law enforcement agencies should keep track of what is happening," he said.
"And if someone tries to exploit the consequences of the financial crisis ... they should intervene, bring criminal charges. Otherwise, there won't be order."
The longest economic boom in a generation has helped the Kremlin maintain political stability but some analysts say the financial crisis could give rise to a wave of social unrest.
Russia's benchmark RTS <.IRTS> stock exchange has fallen about 70 percent since May, making it one of the worst performers among emerging economies.
High oil prices which fueled Russia's economic boom have fallen from a peak of over $140 in July to just over $60 now.
The impact on ordinary people so far has been limited, partly because share ownership is not widespread and few people have private pensions. But firms in some sectors have started laying off staff.
EXTREMISM
Russian Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev told Medvedev at the meeting, in Russia's second city of St Petersburg, that higher unemployment could lead to a rise in crime.
He also said there was a risk of greater extremism and racial tension centred on the millions of immigrants working in Russia, most of them from former Soviet republics.
"The mounting consequences of the world financial crisis could well have an unpredictable effect," he said. "Anti-crisis groups have been set up in the regions ... to intercept any early indications of destabilisation."
Analysts say the financial crisis poses no political threat to the Kremlin for the time being because opposition parties are too weak and divided to mount a serious challenge."(snip)
Re: weekend commentary - Russian method of dealing with financial crisis ...
and it's not only Russia ...
(snip)"Pitchforks starting to come out here in El Salvador.
Thu, Nov 6, 2008 - 03:51 PM
My good buddy just called me and said that the textile factory he used to be CFO for a couple of years ago just went under today. The nearly 2500 employees are looting the installations taking everything they can and his old boss the President of the factory has already skipped the country. The factory was US owned and it produced for Fruit of the Loom amongst others."(snip)
... from a professional investors' BBS
Re: weekend commentary - Russian method of dealing with financial crisis ...
Russia, along with other countires will be feeling this BAD! It will be a slow recovery for the entire world economy, and it may get worse before it gets better. That is going to depend on what policies the next administration trys to push. We will just have to wait and see.
Re: weekend commentary - Russian method of dealing with financial crisis ...
^^^ well, Obama has already brought up such subjects as renegotiating NAFTA, imposing tariffs, making imports without tariffs or quotas contingent on the labor / environmental policies of the source country etc. If this were actually enacted, it would indeed go very badly for such countries as Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Vietnam and a host of others !
(snip)"Sen. Obama, the Democratic party frontrunner, and his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, have expressed some support for trade liberalization during their careers, as public opinion and congressional politics have shifted markedly against free trade. A coalition of anti-free trade activists and labor unions also has used the long primary season to wring commitments from the two candidates on an astonishingly detailed list of trade issues, making it hard for them to reverse course.
The two Democrats are on record saying they would rewrite the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico -- if not pull out of the deal -- remake Nafta arbitration panels, oppose trade pacts that President Bush wants to push through Congress, designate China as a currency manipulator and examine whether World Trade Organization commitments impinge on issues as diverse as local-content rules and subsidies for colleges.
While only Sen. Clinton has said she would take a formal "time-out" on new trade deals, a President Obama would likely do the same thing, given the commitments he has made.
Sen. Obama "wants the right kinds of trade policies," says his chief international economic adviser, Daniel Tarullo, a former Clinton White House economic aide. "We need to address shortcomings of past trade agreements and the international environment," especially Chinese foreign-exchange policy, he says.
The Illinois lawmaker stresses that any trade deal must include provisions to protect unions' rights to organize and bargain collectively. Violations could be enforced through trade sanctions.
That's significantly different from current practice. Few trade deals cover labor; Nafta does, but the chances of assessing damages under the accord are remote.
The provisions "can help put pressure on countries to keep improving worker conditions," Sen. Obama argued in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," a view he repeats regularly on the campaign trail. But his stump speeches don't include the doubts he expressed in his book. The changes "won't eliminate the enormous gap in hourly wages between U.S. workers and workers in Honduras, Indonesia, Mozambique or Bangladesh," he wrote.
Some businesses worry that the requirements could make it impossible for the U.S. to sign trade deals with developing countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and India that have growing markets but lousy labor records. "Without presidential leadership to push hard on opening new markets, we're afraid we'll fall behind," says John Castellani, president of the Business Roundtable, a trade association of large exporters.
The U.S. would be limited to negotiating with "a richer man's club" of countries in Europe in Asia, says Gary Hufbauer, a trade expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a Washington free-trade think tank."(snip)
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