Tobin or not Tobin? It's just plain irrelevant...

[Mark Jones]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> Mark, The Wall Street Journal was maundering on the other day about the
> Russian economy having no global significance because its export and
> import totals were so tiny that a Russian collapse would have no impact.
> 
> Could you (or anyone else) reply to that argument (if dismissing the
> lives of so many people counts as an argument).
> 

The WSJ is not an oracle of my devotion, but to be honest I've been
intrigued myself by the degree of weight which the
markets/pundits/politicos have been giving to Moscow's meltdown, given
the relative unimportance of Russia (it's GDP this year is just 5% of
the US GDP, its economy smaller than Brazil's). Obviously a lot of hot
money has been there, so that exaggerates impacts. But I think the real
significance is political. Maybe that's the surprise: that the big
swinging dicks notice anything more political than the shape of Monica's
gob. 

It's obviously important that Kiryenko has gone.

Mark