Despite the corruption, Russia's real growth rate is 6.4%, nearly double that of the U.S. Plus, the ING Russia-A Fund is up 61% this year. (A China mutual fund leads all with over 105%.)
Actually, Russia is growing even faster. Now with the nationalization of its oil infrastructure, Russia will grow much faster than before.
Thanks for the data. I'll restate my point. I wouldn't put assets into Russia without some kind of business loss insurance covering the assets. I remember hearing from a friend who worked on a joint science venture with the Russians. He was a network engineer working for NASA at the time. One of the issues they had was the $100,000+ Cisco router they sent over went down. He called his Russian counterpart to see what the problem was, and the guy said "what router?".