The standard history of post-Soviet Russia goes something like this. During the Soviet era, there were no real prices because of the Communists’ incessant, blanket meddling in economic activity. Nobody knew what anything was really worth. Not a loaf of bread, not a mine full of uranium. It was all owned and redistributed by the state. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the state of course disappeared. Suddenly, there were no prices, and no owners. It was like a gigantic economic free-for-all. A “Wild West,” as the saying goes. Everything was up for grabs.

As the Federal Reserve hikes its lending rate to a range of 0.25–0.50 percent, murmurs are heard around the world, with financial pundits predicting doom due to the increased pressures imposed on the cost structures of firms that are recovering from the pandemic lockdowns.

President Biden on Thursday made two big admissions about the US-led economic sanctions on Russia. The first is that the sanctions will lead to food shortages for many countries other than Russia, and that this is simply the price that Americans ought to be forced to pay.