>Most of the international debt activists I talked to in mid-1998
>were extremely excited when Boris Yeltsin defaulted on US$41 billion
>in foreign portfolio bets (with those unbelievably high interest
>rates), especially because it was the key factor in bankrupting the
>Nobel speculators at LTCM, and because it set the stage for a series
>of subsequent defaults - from Argentina to Nigeria to Zimbabwe -
>that at least partially alleviated the awful pressure from
>international financiers. Absolutely tragic that geopolitics and
>venality have brought the Russian elites back to this point, now.
But Yeltsin was a horror, a total disaster for Russia. Putin's no angel, but Russia's in lots better shape now than it was under Yeltsin. Isn't this view of "international debt actitivists" rather provincial?
Doug