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Strategies & Market Trends : Investment in Russia and Eastern Europe -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Real Man who wrote (723)	10/3/1998 1:38:00 PM
From: Rob Shilling	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1301

Vi, I almost agree with you. The slow response of the IMF and world community to Russia has just been incredible. I think the world wants help very much, but they can't give financial help to a communist government and most of the ideas floated seem more communist than reformist. It was only when Brazil (a major U.S. trading partner) starting falling that the U.S. decided something needs to be done fast. So we me see a relatively strong Brazil receive a $30 billion bailout, while Russian continues to beg for the $4.8 billion that was supposed to come in September. Russia, may have to default on its foreign debt as you say. I also agree that commodities are coming back. But nobody so far has picked up on the fact that the recent move up in commodities can help Russia a great deal. Also, one thing really bugs me. I know that before the crisis Russia was pulling in around 12 billion rubles in tax revenues every month. Most of these tax revenues were from commodity producers. Now that the ruble devaluation has weakened the ruble by a factor of 2.5, it would seem that the tax revenues in ruble terms would balloon. So without doing any major changes the budget deficit should look much better. Add in higher oil prices and some cash from the alcohol monopoly and you have a balanced budget. Am I correct here ??