Word: oiling
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...many of their counterparts in the U.S. and Western Europe. Yet the drop in energy and commodity prices since the summer is exposing Russia's fragility: gas and metals account for more than three-quarters of export earnings. The boom, it turns out, was built on expensive oil and precious little else. Economic growth, which averaged more than 7% for the past five years, has tumbled, and the government now expects the economy to contract 0.2% this year. And for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the threat of large-scale unemployment looms. "Money...
This all amounts to the first serious test of Putinomics--the policies put in place by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during the two terms of his presidency, from 2000 to 2008, and continued by his successor, President Dmitri Medvedev. While oil money was pouring in, the Kremlin was able to fund generous social spending and hefty pay raises awarded by the monolithic state companies that dominate the economy. Jobs were plentiful, and over the past five years, average wages have risen 25% annually...
Today, Russia's finances look a lot less robust. The government budget was based on oil at $70 per bbl., far above the current price, and it will consequently swing into deficit next year for the first time since 2001. The stock market has dropped more than 70% in the past year, as the nation's business élite have dumped stocks to repay the huge loans they had taken out to finance acquisitions in Russia and abroad. Capital is fleeing--investors have pulled about $245 billion out of Russia since August--and the ruble is under pressure...
...moisture comes from something as toxin-free as distilled water. "There is no science behind these detoxification services," says Dr. Christine Laine, deputy editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine. Says Dr. Bennett Roth, chief of gastroenterology at UCLA: "This is the 2009 version of the snake-oil salesman...
Even detox practitioners acknowledge that there is little evidence of the effectiveness of their work. "We would love to have that kind of good research, but that takes time and money, " says Mark Toomey, director of the Raj spa in Fairfield, Iowa, which offers cleansing oil-based massages, enemas and diets. The problem is, without those studies, you may never know if you have really done something to improve your health or if you feel better simply for having done something. If it's the latter, you might as well just take a nice relaxing bath in your...