Posted on 03/30/2014 2:57:46 PM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
Moscow (AFP) - Russia has started counting the cost of seizing Crimea from Ukraine to its already stuttering economy, anxiously hoping that the West will refrain from implementing a second wave of sanctions that would cause even greater damage.
Moscow, already excluded from the G8, is planning for at least economic semi-isolation from the world for the next years with President Vladimir Putin this week saying Russia should create its own credit card system.
Western sanctions have so far only imposed visa bans and asset freezes on senior officials -- some close to Putin -- but the fear of further action hurting the wider economy is already causing damage with the stock market down 6 percent in March.
The most immediate hit has been on capital outflows which are estimated by economists and officials to have surged to $60-70 billion for the first quarter, more than for all of 2013 combined, as investors took fright at the uncertainty.
Russian Economy Minister Alexei Ulyukayev last week became the first top official to admit the Crimea intervention would badly hit GDP, slashing to ribbons the government's previous 2014 growth estimate of 2.5 percent.
He said growth would be a measly 0.6 percent in 2014 if capital flight was around $100 billion for the full year, a figure that some economists see as wildly optimistic given the current trends.
The economy would contract by 1.8 percent if capital flight reached $150 billion for the year due to a projected eight percent decline in investment, he added, echoing a prediction by the World Bank.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Last time I checked, the Russians actually have a manned space program, while the U.S. does not.
And maybe in 20 years, that program will be at the same level of technology the US program was when it was killed by a shortsighted politician.
Right, because moronic over-simplifications and stereotypes are so much better than applying actual thought.
Russia has exceptional metallurgists, engineers, physicists, has about half of the globe's nuclear arsenal (8500 to our 7700... the other 8 Nuclear Club members total only 1100 weapons all together), a space program, etc etc etc. Dismissing a huge nation that has (or recently had) super-power status, while they have a motivated old-school leader, and while their primary opposition is a weak little quisling like Obama, is very short-sighted. Georgia was the beginning. Nobody blinked. Crimea is now the test of the West... and we have now all seen zero indication that anyone in the world will do anything but talk if Putin decides to go around snapping up real estate. The only limit on them now is Putin's ambition.
Russia also has an age mortality of 50 something.
Russia was given the opportunity to be China and blew it. The Slav mentality is incapable of emerging into the present. Somehow even though there are flashes of brilliance, dullness prevails.
If ever, it will be 50 years at least for Russia to catch up to the current present.
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