Russia: Uncertainty Is Still At Dangerous Levels

The situation has never been that bad during the “Putin-era”, when will the political uncertainty fall back to a reasonable level ?

The policy uncertainty index for Russia is brutal:

The 2009 crisis was a joke compared to this Ukraine-oil thing.

Even the 1998 default was not comparable to what is happening now.

How can this be possible ? Well the answer is that it’s not completely Russia’s fault:

China is now in a worse situation than Russia, mainly because of the falling prices in the housing industry.

However, another emerging economy like India is not really experiencing any crisis, so we can answer two questions:

1) Is this uncertainty crisis only a Russian problem ? No.

2) It this uncertainty crisis an emerging market problem ? Not really.

This is a problem involving a significant part of the emerging economies, but not all of them. However, we’re pretty sure that a positive development in the oil prices and/or in the Ukraine crisis would give some air to all the emerging markets.