Quoth the NYT: "'It's clear that the economy is hitting a soft patch,' said Richard J. DeKaser, chief economist at the National City Corporation, a bank based in Cleveland. 'What we're seeing is the severe impact of high oil prices.'" <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/06/business/06CND-ECON.html?hp>
For any aficionado of homeward-bound roosting chickens, those oil prices are something to savor. No factors loom larger there than the folly of the Iraq invasion -- intended at least in part to *improve* the security of US Mideast oil access -- and the delayed impact of that US-aided-and-abetted swindle, the privatization of Russian industry, with its bastard offspring Yukos.
The Economist, btw, is fuming over the prospect that Yukos may be renationalized to whatever degree. Among the arguments it offers against such rash action is this rather curious "criticism" of Russian bureaucrats' POV:
"'Without counterweights and a separation of power, Putin may end up under the influence of the people around him, always consulting him and telling him he is the master of everything,' says Yevgeny Yasin, head of the Higher School of Economics. These bureaucrats, he says, are 'people who believe that their job is defending the state's interests and that business is a bunch of thieves.'" <http://economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3070487>
Carl
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