I have met hundred of Russians, and I have yet to meet one worthy of friendship and trust. Maybe it's just cultural, and maybe they feel the same way about westerners, but that is my experience. Repeat, let Russia die.
Yeah and the resulting vacuum would be filled by china. Not a good proposition. Russia anchors a good chunk of (worthless) parts of the world. I would rather have China significantly weakened.
I'll be going long RSX calls when it will reach Sep 1998 levels (Russia's default). What I don't get is: till recently Russia wasn't correlated with the oil or US equities and now it's correlated. Damn Putin started war in Georgia to spike oil prices, but it didn't help. HLB