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In RealTime posts, PIIE senior staff and colleagues discuss the fast-moving economic news, financial developments, and public policy choices confronting the United States and the world.
Russia’s growth rate has fallen suddenly and sharply, and President Vladimir Putin has become publicly agitated in response. After a time of passivity in economic policy, significant changes are to be expected. The dominant concern relates to economic growth, which has almost ground to a halt. On April 22, Putin used these alarmist words at [...]
Suddenly, Russia has become a central player in the Cypriot financial crisis. On the very evening after the Cypriot parliament rejected a proposed levy on bank deposits that the Cypriot president had previously accepted as a condition for a bailout package of €10 billion, Finance Minister Michael Sarris flew from Nicosia to Moscow. The next [...]
On March 12, President Vladimir Putin appointed Elvira Nabiullina, 49, chairwoman of the Central Bank of Russia. This is an important political appointment, and a reassuring one. Nabiullina is eminently qualified, and her selection puts the central bank in a safe pair of hands at a time of roiling uncertainty over other aspects of the [...]
Sometimes it is better to do nothing. Currently, that truth applies to US-Russia relations. Since the situation in Russia has changed in the last several months, so must US policy on Russia. The only rational US approach on Russia today is to do as little as possible. As the late Ambassador Max Kampelman wisely taught [...]
The Russian “Snow Revolution” is proceeding in slow motion. The two big demonstrations on December 10 and 24 represented Vladimir Putin’s worst nightmare: peaceful mass protests by the new professional middle class. For seven years, he has been preparing measures to counter a Russian version of the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, but to no avail. [...]
On Saturday December 10, the spell of the Vladimir Putin regime was broken. Today, the key questions that many are asking are how fast he will lose power and what will come in his place. Peaceful mass demonstrations took place all over Russia. In Moscow, probably 80,000 gathered on Bolotnaya Ploshchad near the Kremlin to [...]
While the world’s attention is focused on the European financial crisis, a storm is brewing in the Mediterranean that could cause havoc in the region and have wider international consequences. At its center are conflicting claims between the Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots over a potentially large natural gas discovery off the island’s southern coast. [...]
The exit of long-time Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin reflects a profound conflict over economic policy between Kudrin and the almighty Vladimir Putin. Prime Minister Putin, who has announced his intention to run again for president in a cooked election, chose to throw fiscal conservatism and arduous economic reforms overboard, and Kudrin was no longer [...]
On April 15, the Peterson Institute for International Economics held a full-day conference on the Russian Economy and US-Russia Relations, which I helped to organize. It was co-sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the New Economic School in Moscow as part of our joint Russia Balance Sheet project. The purpose was [...]
The ouster of the Mayor of Moscow this morning (September 28) by President Dmitry Medvedev is the most important political event in Russia since then-President Vladimir Putin had Mikhail Khodorkovsky arrested in 2003 and had his oil company Yukos confiscated. It opens up the possibility of an aggressive new campaign against corruption and a new [...]