Quote Originally Posted by Rythmic View Post
Sorry rasoforos I call your bluff. Africa is completely different. The majority of African nations do not own their resources, which ensures they mostly do not receive the benefit of those resources. Russia on the other hand has most of it's resources either in the hands of the state or Russian Corporations, which enriches their economy.
Words words words...

..'they dont own their resources'... many very rich countries do not have ANY significant resources...

We could have a great economic topic where we could discuss the reasons behind Russia's economic success under Putin. This is not the place.

You should not, however, say that it has nothing to do with Putin. Good governance is very important for growth and has been proven time and again, both historically and in relevant economic research (I think Krugman has some nice quantitative observations on the fact).

The argument that 'these countries do not control their resources' is also self defeating because one of the major reforms under Putin was to take control of the country's national resources from the billionaire plutocrats. So... ...since you imply that national control of resources is necessary for growth (which is not really the case from an economist's point of view) and since my pal Vladimir did just that, then he did contribute to Russia's high growth rates.

QED

Anyway lets go back to saying bad things about Gordon