Business as Usual

[Update: Video of Putin sans necktie in a Members Only jacket dressing down Deripaska].

Putin traveled to Pikalyovo, where workers of the BasEl-owned cement plant blocked a motorway this week in protest over layoffs and unpaid salaries, to rap Deripaska on the knuckles.

"Why was everyone running around like cockroaches before my arrival? Why was no one capable of taking decisions?" Putin said as Deripaska stared blankly. "Has Oleg Vladimirovich [Deripaska] signed? I do not see your signature. Come here and sign it," Putin said, throwing a pen dismissively onto the table (Reuters, June 4).

While the situation looks dire in Pikalyovo and other monogorody, the price of oil continues to climb, rising $1 today:

"The oil price is going up, everything seems to be in order, so why change?" Sergei M. Guriev, dean of the New Economic School in Moscow and a board member of the state-owned Sberbank, said by telephone. "If oil prices go back to where there is no budget deficit, then it will be business as usual (NYT, June 4).

In Pikalyovo, $1.3 million in wage arrears need to be paid out. According to Merrill Lynch's chief economist, for each $1 increase in the price of oil (like in today's trading), the budget earns about $1.7 billion a year.