Blowing their wad on a war of aggression looks like a blunder now:
There are many oft-quoted indicators of Russia’s suffering economy — the nation’s international reserves have fallen by more than 25 percent since August; the major stock indices recently plummeted by 70 percent; and the ruble has been sliding — it’s now selling at exchange houses for about 30 to the dollar, compared with 23.5 five months ago.
Beyond those figures and the analysis of financial experts, however, on the streets of Moscow — a city that has known much tumult during the past century — there is for many Russians a deep sense of fear, a feeling of being underneath a gathering, dark wave of hard economic times.
Only last spring, downtown Moscow was a place where Russia’s nouveau riche walked out the door of boutiques with fists full of bags from Hermes, Cartier and Gucci. . .
That was before the war with Georgia in August, which kicked off an exodus of foreign capital; the global financial crunch, which dried up lines of credit used by heavily leveraged Russian businessmen; and, finally, the crash of oil prices that had underwritten much of the boom.
(Via Instapundit.)
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