Putin’s errors over Ukraine could herald big change for global finance
The inventor of the Brics acronym says sanctions against Russia have exposed nations' dependence on the western economic system
During the brief heyday of Russia as a Bric", the acronym I dreamed up in 2001 to describe the possible future largest emerging economies in the world - Brazil, Russia, India and China - I would go to Russia reasonably frequently.
In 2008, I was asked by the organisers to give a special presentation on where Russia's economy might be, by 2020, to the St Petersburg Summit, Russia's own version of Davos. To my slight embarrassment, I hadn't really appreciated that they would be quite irritated if I didn't suggest that Russia was likely to be in the top five largest economies of the world by 2020, which I did realise afterwards, when my presentation and comments caused a bit of stir in the post-event coffee areas and media.
I don't know where the idea of freezing the central bank's foreign exchange reserves originated, but whoever thought of it has come up with a cracker, alongside the bold move by leading western nations to agree to remove key Russian banks from the Swift plumbing network of the financial system.
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