Dealing With Financial Crisis: The United States vs. Russia

Stock markets the world over have experienced a crush of losses and all-around volatility in recent days. Here we look at two of the most dramatic markets — those in the United States and Russia — where views of business and government could not be more different. While the U.S. Federal Reserve doesn’t even pretend to think it could manage the entire economy by itself, the Russian system is predicated on government control born out of political and economic necessity.

Click to expand...

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/viewarticle+articleid_2633458.html

Interesting thanks

The Russian government held a series of crisis meetings in which it was decided that it would directly recapitalize the three largest state banks — Sberbank, VTB and Gazprombank — to the tune of $44 billion. Additionally, the government will sink 500 billion rubles ($19.6 billion) directly into the stock markets and another 60 billion rubles indirectly via those same state banks.

Click to expand...

Amazing how they just shut down the market . Poor Putin can't even get much attention compared to the U.S when their respective economy's tank

alanf85 said:

Poor Putin can't even get much attention compared to the U.S when their respective economy's tank

Click to expand...

I know it's not your point ... it's worth remembering that the US economy is emphatically not tanking. The secondary financial market is not "the economy". Hell, despite the eager attempts of some doofus journalists and partisan economists/politicians to create the impression for political reasons (it's elections season), the US economy is not even in recession, which is defined as two consecutive quarters of no growth. Partisans are constantly using phrases like "may be slipping into recession", "looming recession", etc - but that's political prognostication and not the same as an actual recession. In normal historical cycles we are long overdue for a technical recession, so this might well materialise, but that's not the same as an economic contraction. The 70s and 80s were far worse by any measure (then brought on by the OPEC oil embargos). Now that energy prices are dropping, things are looking rosier in the real economy. Yes, of course the derivatives markets are suffering a long-overdue correction. But, again, so many people think that's "the economy", but it's not. The USA economy is better positioned than any on earth to weather a downturn - it's the only consumer-driven economy in history, and any economic downturn will hit Europe, Russia, China, Japan and SA much harder than the average American.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12207987

Interesting article about that arthur