Vodka, Erotic Dreams and One-Liners

Few people had heard of former KGB officer Vladimir Putin when he became prime minister in 1999. But with his taciturn, slightly intimidating face, one thing seemed certain: He didn't look like a comedian.

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There is a Wikipedia entry devoted to Putinisms, although, unlike Bushisms, most of Putin's famous utterances are characterized by menacing precision rather than a blundering command of his native tongue.

Putin is indeed adept at one-liners, though sometimes they are far from funny. When CNN's Larry King asked Putin in 2000 what happened to the Kursk submarine, Putin replied with an eerie smile, "It sank."

In Medvedev, Bush Sees ‘a Smart Guy’

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: July 8, 2008

TOYAKO, Japan — President George W. Bush looked into the eyes of Russia’s new president, Dimitri A. Medvedev, on Monday and saw, he said, “a smart guy.”

President Bush and Russian President Dimitri Medvedev shake hands Monday during the G-8 summit at the lakeside resort Toyako, on the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

The two presidents spent more than an hour together here in their first face-to-face meeting since Mr. Medvedev succeeded Vladimir V. Putin. Afterward, they said they had agreed on the need for Iran and North Korea to abandon their nuclear ambitions, but did not bridge their differences on Mr. Bush’s proposal to build a missile defense system in Eastern Europe.

“I found him to be a smart guy who understood the issues very well,” Mr. Bush said.

The exchange brought to mind Mr. Bush’s first meeting with Mr. Putin, at Brdo Castle in Slovenia in June 2001, when Mr. Bush famously said he had “looked the man in the eye” and “was able to get a sense of his soul.”

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See toon at top...

from the Moscow Times...

Is the United States Russia?

The question seems provocative, if not outrageous. Yet the person asking it is Simon Johnson, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In an article in the May issue of The Atlantic, Johnson compares the hold of the "financial oligarchy" over U.S. policy with that of business elites in emerging countries. Do such comparisons make sense? The answer is yes, but only up to a point.

"In its depth and suddenness," argues Johnson, "the U.S. economic and financial crisis is shockingly reminiscent of moments we have recently seen in emerging markets." The similarity is evident: large inflows of foreign capital, torrid credit growth, excessive leverage, bubbles in asset prices, asset-price collapses and financial catastrophe.

"But," adds Johnson, "there's a deeper and more disturbing similarity. Elite business interests -- financiers, in the case of the U.S. -- played a central role in creating the crisis, making ever-larger gambles with the implicit backing of the government, until the inevitable collapse." Moreover, "the great wealth that the financial sector created and concentrated gave bankers enormous political weight."

Now, argues Johnson, the weight of the financial sector is preventing resolution of the crisis. Banks "do not want to recognize the full extent of their losses, because that would likely expose them as insolvent. ... This behavior is corrosive. Unhealthy banks either do not lend (hoarding money to shore up reserves), or they make desperate gambles on high-risk loans and investments that could pay off big, but probably won't pay off at all. In either case, the economy suffers further, and, as it does, bank assets themselves continue to deteriorate -- creating a highly destructive cycle."

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As Gus mentioned in earlier blogs on this site, the boom and bust cycle is more productive than steady growth in "emerging markets" while it can be counter-productive in older established economies. Some universities around the globe have quantified this conundrum with specific strong mathematical models. The rut that has engulfed the world economies has unfortunately proved this theory and we're paying a hefty price for the carelessness of gambling bankers... and of woeful governments that gave them the rope to hang everybody with.

I have also expressed on this site that Russia needs to find its 'international" song-line, like that was used by US Hollywood to glorify the wild west conquest and other alien invasion such as the fictitious "independence day"... And they need to be more subtle in the glory machine... Like have a few flaws that show their men/women of steel are humans after all. The trick is to give enough without turning them into dorks in quiet times. The Supermanov and Clark Kentski syndrome... 

see toon at top.