russia desperate? they're in decent financial shape actually.
http://www.investmentu.com/IUEL/2009/March/emerging-markets-2.htmlRussia’s Emerging Market: A Shooting Star Flames Out
While Brazil has emerged as a success story, Russia’s emerging market showed early promise, but that has given way to a somewhat bleak reality.
Indeed, since that Goldman paper was written in 2003, Russia has been transformed from a successful emerging market into a corrupt kleptocracy without the rule of law and with only oil exports propping it up.
Now that oil prices have dropped, Russia is in trouble. Its consumer prices are rising at a 14% clip on fudged official data, its currency is collapsing - down by a third in the past year - and stock prices are down 80% from their high last spring. Even Russia’s population is declining.
The bottom line: Russia is neither emerging, nor a market.
Unless oil prices recover rapidly, or the country undergoes a sudden conversion to secure property rights, it seems fated to remain impoverished, and to have its economic vigor diverted into military adventurism. It should be on nobody’s list of growth opportunities.