The new chief economist for the International Monetary Fund, Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas, made a spectacle of himself in an interview with Reuters, by rejoicing over Russia’s presumed coming demise as a result of the West’s sanctions policy, and confidently predicting that few countries would opt for breaking with the bankrupt trans-Atlantic financial system and “jumping to the other side.”
“As long as these sanctions are in place – and they could be in place for quite a long time – then the Russian economy is going to be on a very different growth trajectory,” Gourinchas told Reuters. “We’re viewing this as … something that is really hurting the Russian economy going forward and could hurt it even more if the sanctions are escalated.” He added: “The shock is already pretty sizeable … and we don’t expect that there would be a bounce back from where the Russian economy is.”
