How Putin Engineered a Russian Recession

This a pretty benign time for the global economy. Interest rates are uniformly low. The U.S., China, and Japan—the three largest economies in the world—are all growing. Developing markets in Africa are surging. The European debt crisis seems to have ended. In this climate, one of the only ways to get a recession is to engineer one.

Which is precisely the trick Vladimir Putin may have just pulled off with Russia’s $2 trillion economy.