Western reports say Russia is in deep trouble because foreigners are fleeing its stock market following the recent conflict in Georgia. Maybe so. But none of this was very visible to me on a recent Moscow visit.
Shops cater to the newly rich on central Moscow streets that 10 years ago were lined with beggars and peddlers. Construction trucks clog the 12-lane Moscow ring road built well into the countryside. A subway system shuttles hordes of commuters at minute intervals into central Moscow from high-rise developments across that countryside. High wages attract workers from former Soviet republics. The dynamism is almost as palpable as in China.
True, the stock-market collapse was impressive. But it hurt few other than a handful of speculators and the get-rich-quick oligarchs given dominant shares in the economy during the disastrous Yeltsin years.