by Patrick J. Buchanan – August 28, 1998

Last June, in a piece titled “Let Russia Default,” this writer noted the obvious. Awash in debts, running a huge deficit, Russia should be allowed to default; and not one more U.S. tax dollar should be put at risk by the IMF trying to hide Russia’s bankruptcy.

Russia’s chief financial officer, Venianin Sokolov was quoted in that column as conceding that all the IMF billions pumped into his country had been lost, wasted, or stolen “at the highest levels” of what he called an “entirely corrupt regime.”