Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World

by Adam Tooze

In the wake of the oil price shock, the Russian federal budget was reset on the assumption of an average oil price of $41 per barrel by contrast with the June 2008 budget, which had assumed $95 per barrel. With tax revenues plunging, Putin, as prime minister, took credit for a large fiscal stimulus. A quarter of the government’s 9.7 trillion ruble budget was dedicated to crisis spending on work creation, industrial subsidies and tax cuts. Relative to the size of its economy, commonly compared with that of Spain and roughly comparable to that of Texas, the Russian crisis response was one of the largest in the world, dwarfing those undertaken by West European governments.18 It was heavily skewed toward the largest, best-connected corporations that were included in a list of 295 nationally important corporations and 1,148 regionally important firms. It was a top-down, corporatist stimulus, and Moscow made clear that it expected the oligarchs to reciprocate. Indeed, it was unafraid to call them out by name. On one notable occasion, Putin singled out four of them as follows: “Vladimir Potanin (Interros Holding), Leonid Lebedev (Sintez Group), Mikhail Prokhorov (Onexim Group), and Viktor Vekselberg (Renova Group) . . . I have known all of you for many years; in essence, we have been working jointly. Let me repeat that during the difficult conditions of the crisis we have made every effort to support you in the various directions of your business. The crisis is waning. It’s not y...