“The former chairman of the Moscow department of the International Monetary Fund, Martin Gilman, stated that every member of the Russian government, who was involved in the decision-making process ten years ago, played a big role in the crisis.

The economic crisis of 1998 became a result of certain decisions, the official believes, although bad luck was also involved. Mr. Gilman said that even world’s biggest men of genius would have faced difficulties if they had attempted to solve Russia ’s problems in the 1990s.

The official described the default of 1998 as the price which Russia had to pay to evolve from its old system to the new globalized economy.

‘It was the price which Russia paid for moving forward,’ the former chairman of the IMF in Moscow said.”

I think it is interesting that he mentions that Russia had to become part of the “new globalized economy,” but it leaves so much unsaid. (i.e. why a globalized economy is inevitable, and what the Russians were doing to legitamately oppose that)

The IMF is a good old boy network of super powerful people who extraxt “aid” from us, then loan the money out to nations whose corrupt leaders are bribed to let our companies “modernize” their infrastructure. (In other words, totally flip the lives of the people there upside down!) These leaders are killed if they do not play ball with their new masters. Anyone intereseted in the subject should read “The Confessions of an Economic Hitman” by John C. Perkins.