Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin said the dollar is in “good shape,” further affirming that there’s no substitute for the world’s reserve currency.

Moscow - A top official said Russia was at or close to the bottom of the financial crisis, adding that the Kremlin was happy to see foreign creditors take stakes in major companies to claw back bad loans.

In comments to foreign media, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said the government was increasingly upbeat about the Russian economy and hoped it would start growing again by the end of this year if the global economy doesn't sharply deteriorate. As oil prices have risen above $50 a barrel and the ruble has steadied against the dollar, the Kremlin says there are tentative grounds for optimism, sounding an increasingly confident note about its handling of the financial downturn.

Moscow is out to put the United States and European Union under external financial control. COMMENTS ON MOSCOW'S PROPOSALS FOR THE APRIL G20 SUMMIT [The things Russia is going to offer at the G20 summit are correct but they will probably be turned down all the same.]

Russian version

This month, Sergei Polonsky, one of Russia’s largest and most indebted property developers, is trying to prevent powerful western banks from calling in their loans.

Finance Minister Kudrin expects economic recovery of Russia simultaneously with that of the United States.

Speaking at the Global Investment & Finance Forum in Moscow, Deputy Premier and Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin announced that the rate and date of recovery of the Russian economy would be more or less analogous to those of American and European economies.

As an American here in London who happens to be an economist and is known as a conservative believer in democratic capitalism, I seem to be the guest-of-choice on television programmes hunting desperately for someone, anyone, willing to support the US system. The critics to whom I find myself responding range from politicians on the left, who are delighted that capitalism has run into difficulties, to those on the right, who blame the US for the loss of their friends’ City jobs. Some complain that by bailing out Bear Stearns, America let loose the force of moral hazard on the world, encouraging sinners to sin again while others complain that by not bailing out Lehman Brothers the US cost thousands of well-paid Brits their jobs. Some complain that the Paulson rescue plan rewards the greedy bankers who unleashed the American disease on Europe, while others complain that by not passing the Paulson plan on the first try we exacerbated the problems of European financial institutions.

Here's a number to ponder: 25,500. That's how many miles of expressways China has built since 1988. The same statistic for Russia? A few hundred. As the Chinese have carried out a building campaign unparalleled in history, Russia—with its billions of dollars in oil wealth—has done little to improve its infrastructure. Now, the Kremlin is embarking on an ambitious program to bring its highways, railroads, and airports into the 21st century. "A modern transport infrastructure is the real road to Russia's future," President Vladimir V. Putin said on Nov. 13 while visiting a highway construction site in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk.

Oil prices have been levitating since President Bush used the words "Iran" and "World War III" in the same sentence. But geopolitical jitters aren't the only reason oil has risen by more than $30 a barrel in the last year -- and $10 in the last month alone. Prices had been approaching $90 even before Bush's bluster, Turkey's massing of troops on the Iraq border and the announcement of new U.S. sanctions on Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Demand for oil is robust; supplies are not. So economists cannot calculate exactly how much of the price run-up can be blamed on the "geopolitical premium" that oil traders add to every barrel when they fear war or other instability that would disrupt supplies.

At Friday’s summit between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and JosÊ Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, the words «tension» and «energy» will once again be heard in the same breath. For today the biggest issue dividing Europe and Russia is natural gas, the same commodity that tied them together through even the tensest days of the cold war.