Mass Media

Sergey Karaganov, Dean of the HSE Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs, comments on today’s global economic and political changes and challenges.

Anatoly Vishnevsky, Director of the HSE Institute of Demography, comments on the Putin's article about the demographic policy.

Martin Gilman, Director of the HSE Center for Advanced Studies, on the relations between economics and politics.

Martin Gilman, Director of the HSE Center for Advanced Studies, comments on the results of the recent G20 summit and Russia's economic situation.

Leonid Grigoriev, Professor at the HSE Faculty of World Economy and International Relations, comments on oil prices' impact on the Russian economy.

Sergei Karaganov, Dean of the HSE Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs and Natalia Volchkova, a Professor at the New Economic School in Moscow, talk about how the averted debt ceiling impasse was perceived in Russia.

For economies moving from state control to capitalism, there is a tricky balance between too much and too little intervention.

Sergey Alexashenko, Director for Macroeconomic Research at the HSE, comments on the candidacy of Grigory Marchenko to lead the IMF.

Sometimes through a combination of good policies and some good luck, countries may acquire safety margins as insulation from the financial vicissitudes of the global economy. In circumstances that Russia enjoyed for much of the previous decade, the harsh masters in the form of the international capital markets could be largely ignored. Unfortunately, this long period of good fortune is rapidly coming to an end. Starting in 2011, Russia’s margins, on current trends, will be exhausted, and the country will be exposed to similar pressures that are felt by most countries further to the West.

Over the weekend, the world’s financial leaders met in Washington for the International Monetary Fund’s annual meeting. There were many pious speeches asserting that with the global economy exhibiting stagflationary features, cooperation was critical. Recent data underscore the fragility of the U.S. economic recovery. Europe could be facing even stronger headwinds. Meanwhile, commodity prices — and not just gold — reached new peaks last week. Oil posted a five-month high of $84, and financial markets are on a rip with bonds and equities flourishing. Only the dollar has dropped precipitously against most currencies, including the ruble.

A ruble exchange-rate crisis in two or three years is not inevitable, but if inflation is allowed to accelerate and real interest rates - adjusting for the effects of inflation - become negative again, an exchange-rate crisis just becomes a question of time.

Martin Gilman, the Head of the SU-HSE Centre for Advanced Studies, comments Russia’s anti-crisis efforts within G20 framework.

Among the G-20 countries, representing 80% of global output, Russia stands out as an anomaly in at least one way: Russia continues to have a problem with high rates of inflation.

For those of us who were veterans of the Russian financial crisis of 1998, it certainly feels eerily familiar right now. Certainly the virulence of the sudden collapse of the country's equity and bond markets since August, the abrupt halt of seemingly unstoppable economic growth, the flight of foreign investors, the hemorrhage of foreign reserves and the pressure on the ruble exchange rate and subsequent depreciation of the rate seem to bring back memories of the events of 10 years ago.

Those expecting a bold initiative to come from the meeting of the Group of 20 in Washington that President Dmitry Medvedev will attend Saturday will be disappointed. Even the International Monetary Fund's managing director warned in a recent Financial Times article that comparisons between the G20 summit and the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 are overblown.

Last Friday, U.S. President George W. Bush lost no time in signing into law a highly flawed but seemingly inevitable $700 billion bailout package and $110 billion of add-on spending. Now, we all will have to live with the unintended consequences.

"In general, financial management has been well-handled," said Yasin, who is now head of studies at Moscow's prestigious Higher School of Economics. "The biggest success has been the handling of the [international] reserves and the creation of the stabilization fund."

For once in history, Russia appears to be on the right side of a global price trend. As one of the world's major producers of commodities -- not least oil and gas -- the country is reaping a windfall as commodity prices soar worldwide. But is this price boom another bubble that will burst just as we have seen in real estate markets in a number of countries? Is Russia prepared to deal with the consequences of price volatility?

Mr. Yakovlev, a director at the school's Institute for Industrial and Market Studies, said the news isn't all bad. There have been strides in the manufacturing sector since 1998, when the ruble's crash forced Russian companies to increase their productivity because imported goods - especially food products - were no longer affordable.

Russia is the largest country in the world by land area and the seventh largest in terms of population. It may also have the eighth-largest economy, which is rapidly climbing up the rankings. But its size does not insulate it from the financial turbulence that is increasingly seizing up the world economy.