And the Money Kept Rolling In (and Out)

Kirill Pankratov and his new article "Collapse" is devoted to the economic crisis in Argentina 2001 compared with Russian crisis 1998. I agree with Pankratov on almost every of his theses and conclusions.
"Russia in 1999 seemed "finished" for good. It just "didn't get" the global economy -- that was the wisdom of the time. There was incredible amount of gloating, masked with crocodile tears of
sympathy. The remains of Russian economy were compared in size to Iceland or even Namibia. All this was heard from the same mob of annals that today squeal hysterically about a suddenly resurgent, menacing, evil Russia, back from the dead.
By late 2000 all our eyes were on Argentina, which was just entering a trap. Right after the Russian default, in September 1998, Boris Fyodorov, one of the "young reformers," invited the Argentinean wonder boy Cavallo to advise Russia on "sound economic policy" and particularly in setting up a currency board. How things changed since then... Already at that time, in the fall of 1998, they began to unfold contrary to expectations of the global plutocracy, and largely unnoticed by it. As thousands of expats rushed out of Moscow in the wake of the financial crisis, the real economy began to show signs of life.
It had nothing to do with oil -- the prices stayed very low at least until late 1999. In fact the rebound had more to do with the very fact that the bums were out -- all these consultants and advisors, bloated with condescension and self-importance, sure that only they could drag backward reluctant Russia into the modern world."
In that issue of "Exile" there's also another Pankratov's article "Baltic Countries". It's rude, excessive, not very consistent but still interesting from the ethnographic point of view - what smart Russian intellectuals think about what happens in the Baltic states.