[lbo-talk] From shock therapy to consumer cure: Russia's middle class starts spending

[Chris Doss]

I really do think that a lot of the Western journo and
pseudo-intellectual pundoid animus against Putin is
simply traceable to the fact that in the 1990s they
had all the money and influence, and were treated like
gods, whereas today nobody in Russia gives a flucking
fuck about them. It's like they take high Russian
living standards as a personal insult. I also think
there's a bit of anti-Slav racism lurking beneath the
surface, actually.

--- Peter Lavelle <untimely_thoughts at yahoo.com> wrote:


> Chris, what is going with Buckley? He was so
> anti-Putin and anti-New  Russia (meaning the country
> becoming no different from the West).   I stopped an
> email exchange with him a year ago because of his
> contra  approach. Now I see he has seen the light.
> What is going on at the FT? 
>   
>   An interesting aside. I took a cab home this
> afternoon. (Better for me  to write my programs at
> home - coffee to my left and smokes to my right  -
> all in silence). The cabby said to me that it must
> be great to be a  foreigner here. I asked why. He
> said you get all the great girls  because of your
> money. I said that it is the Russians who have all
> the  money. Chris and I are still here because
> Russia still needs some  foreigners. We aren't the
> rich ones, not by a long shot. Most  foreigners here
> serve a purpose to modernize the economy or have 
> language skills. Some make good money, most don't
> anymore. 
> 

 
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