Boris is pretty crude, although some of the recent pictures I've seen seem to reach a new extreme. These expressions are supposed to be "reassuring to workers"? I note that Boris bombed his own parliament. He also (at least) once peed on a tarmac after getting off a plane in a you-know-what condition. I have that from an eyewitness who saw it happen at Baltimore-Washington International Airport.
Another irony about our man Boris is that he was the regional CPSU chief who in the 1970s oversaw the destruction of the building in which Tsar Nikolai II and his family were executed. This must be kept in mind when we contemplate the pictures of him bowing before the same tsar's remains as they were lowered into the tomb in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Sankt Petersburg. Barkley Rosser On Mon, 17 Aug 1998 12:45:10 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> Today's Wall Street Journal reports:
>
> "The impact of a Russian devaluation 'would be disastrous,' said David
> Malpass, chief international economist at Bear Stearns in New York in a
> note to clients last week, as it would set off another cycle of
> competitive devaluations and put pressure on emerging markets globally.
> Eastern Europe, Turkey and India would be badly hurt, while a ruble
> devaluation would 'create another price shock on commodities,' given
> that Russia is a major oil and natural gas exporter, and severely limit
> corporations' ability to raise prices in general."
>
> That, of course, was written before the Russians did devalue the ruble. Now
> that it's happened, I wonder if Malpass would stick to his characterization.
>
> It's hard to resist the conclusion - and god knows, I've tried - that a
> global deflationary script is playing itself out. What seemed initially
> like a local financial problem in a few Southeast Asian countries has
> spread, with the U.S. about the only corner of the world that's been
> spared, so far. Indeed, U.S. markets are rallying on the old flight to
> quality reflex, though I'm a little mystified why a $1.8 trillion debtor is
> considered a safe haven. Countries with big current account deficits, big
> foreign debts, bloated financial markets, and overvalued currencies are
> usually considered targets for speculators, not refuges. But truly this is
> a new era.
>
> Today's WSJ also has an impassioned letter from Jack Kemp to Alan Greenspan
> declaring that he's been way too tight, and, mixing food and drink
> metaphors, "the economy is being starved of liquidity." The supply-siders
> all seem to agree on this one; with gold down from $385 to $285 an ounce
> over the last year or year-and-a-half, their sacred metal is telling them
> that the deflation is upon us. Surely Greenspan, who says he follows gold
> closely, recognizes this. So I'm wondering if the world's central bankers
> really *want* this deflation to run its course.
>
> Can any of you Russophiles out there tell me if Yeltsin is as repellently
> crude as he seems in the TV clips?
>
> Doug
>
>
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu