Some observations based on a recent visit to Moscow by my wife, Marina:
There is no sign of crisis in Moscow itself. Foreign exchange dealers in many places refusing to take US dollars for rubles. Prices are all in rubles. Lots of luxury goods are available from all over the world and there are no discounts on prices. Women walk the streets with full length fur coats. Luzhkov has the lights on the major buildings on all night, now all cleaned up. The operators at the Tizhinsky Market are all Bulgarians and there is a new set of stores full of luxury goods. Pensions are being paid on time, although salaries and wages are still in arrears in many cases.
Local observers joke that the economy is operating on M minus one. The local economists are also predicting a major crash soon for the US, rising foreign debt, negative savings rate, stock market out of control, etc.
At Moscow State University there is a generation split. The faculty is mostly pro-Primakov and pro reviving some kind of central planning and currency controls. The latter is under discussion by Primakov. The grad students are mostly very neo-liberal.
Needless to say, Moscow is not typical of Russia in general, an island of prosperity in a sea of increasing woe. Barkley Rosser
-- Rosser Jr, John Barkley rosserjb at jmu.edu