Russian “president” Dima Medvedev wrote about what he called the “global economic crisis on his blog on October 23, 2008. He blamed the United States entirely for causing the crisis, said Russia was only a minor victim and only because it had become open to the outside world, and said Russia would avoid any more serious consequences. He did not give a single specific statistic on any consequences Russia had experienced to that point, making no reference to the catastrophic decline in Russia’s stock market or the massive FOREX reserves Russia was expending, nor did he acknowledge that the Russian economy’s performance at that time was far worse than most other nations. He states: “We have taken a number of measures that should restore confidence in the near future in the financial sector and normal lending.”
Since then, the bottom has fallen out of Russia’s currency, reserves are down by half and the stock market has been virtually obliterated. Meanwhile, Medvedev has put up four additional posts: one about sports, one about what he does in a typical day, one about how students can finance education and one about his trip to Latin America. For more than three months, he has totally ignored the country’s economic status on his blog.
Here is Medvedev’s October 23rd blog post in full (staff translation, corrections welcome):
I would like to talk about what is now worrying the world – the global financial crisis. Most countries are faced with the fact that the gross errors – errors committed by several states (especially America) – have led to serious problems. The size of the U.S. financial market and its impact on the world economy is very high. That is why when the crisis happened in the U.S., the rebound hit the economies of almost all countries.
Five or seven years ago, the impact of this crisis might have been negligible in Russia. Now the situation is different: we are a country with an open economy. On the one hand, this gives us enormous advantages, on the other – it forces to react and deal with the problems faced by other leading states. Now everyone is focused on one problem: how to get through the global financial crisis with minimal losses.
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