I strongly disagree. Russia made major purchases to support the Ruble. Viz January '09: Russia spends $30B in a week http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=

I strongly disagree. Russia made major purchases to support the Ruble. Viz January '09: Russia spends $30B in a week http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aalw.8ABkiPs&refer=home http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aalw... $40B sold in Oct, keeping ruble in desired band http://russiatooat.blogspot.com/2008/11/massive-foreign-reserves-outflow-puts.html http://russiatooat.blogspot.com/2008/11/massive-foreign-rese... further discussion of selling to support Ruble http://www.cnbc.com/id/29099569 http://www.cnbc.com/id/29099569 That's not to say that Russian hasn't spent hundreds of billions also on loans, and even more billions on loss of FDI and declaring financial war on foreign owned companies. But my point holds. In any case, I wish Russians the best of luck; they were almost uniformly kind to me when I lived there. But I think the probability that Russia avoids another governmental crisis is shrinking.