In his speech, Putin appeared eager to neutralize those fears by naming and dismissing them. He offered sweeping promises to "pursue the monetary policy prudently, maintain a predictable rate of the national currency, consistently fight inflation and secure the fulfillment of social obligations."
There was a time when Russia's leader could afford to make big promises. With oil booming up to $147 a barrel last summer, Russia luxuriated in a budget surplus and stockpiled one of the world's richest reserves. The Kremlin is used to having money to spare.
But the government has been dipping deep into its reserves as it tries to stabilize a free-falling economy. The reserves dwindled more than $20 billion last week alone, to $453.5 billion.
While Putin was seeking to calm Russians' fears through state-run television, his finance minister warned reporters that the budget would probably slip into the red next year. The deficit could be the equivalent of 1% of gross domestic product, Alexei Kudrin said.
Criticism was already stirring among political opponents of Putin, who still dominates in Russia despite having been replaced as president early this year by Dmitry Medvedev.
Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov told the Interfax news agency that the cash distributed by the government to big banks has failed to help the real economy or trickle down to street level.
"This is a glaring example of the absence of effective control over the banking community on the part of the executive," he said. "The fact itself that the prime minister . . . devoted his report at the congress entirely to ways of steering the country out of crisis attests to enormous difficulties the Russian economy and financial sector are currently facing."
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megan.stack@latimes.com
