Thanks for your comment.

Ad hominem remarks are not useful to me. If you want to chatter about emotional states, do so on your own blogs.

I would consider it folly to look at Russia’s market solely through the prism of a “strong man” paradigm. Which is what you do in this post

Obviously false. While no post can include every ‘paradigm,’ both the first and last paragraphs describe the concepts of the Core and the Gap, which are system-level concepts.

After all, we wouldn’t really be comfortable saying that the SEC Chairman is singularly to blame for the US financial collapse?

A comparison to the power of Prime Minister Putin with Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Chris Cox, with respect to their domestic economies is absurd.

I would consider it folly to look at Russia’s market solely through the prism of a “strong man” paradigm. Which is what you do in this post. Whether you meant to or not is another question, but that is the effect you leave with the reader.

The economic situation is much more complex than what you state. Oil prices, for example, are undoubtedly the major pressure on Russian markets now. The collapse of the US financial system is also a major player as systemic risk implies flight to quality. These two problems, alone, would more than account for the break down in market confidence there. Of course, the “strong man” paradigm is a more simplistic explanation, but it doesn’t fully account for the economic evidence. And I’m not at all arguing that the political risk in Russia hasn’t had an impact. But it is by no means the cause in and of itself.

After all, we wouldn’t really be comfortable saying that the SEC Chairman is singularly to blame for the US financial collapse? Nor would we be comfortable saing that the “culture of greed” was singularly to blame. There are a combination of factors. From where I sit, I would say the single most relevant item that could be viewed as a true “cause” of the collapse is failure to exchange the CDS market. That is supposed to happen at EOY. But who knows if it will now.

As I read your comment, it consists of two insults and an emotional reaction. Do you have a substantive point?

amusing though, to blame it all on putin. but this is not an amusing time we’re in.