Will Obama be able to improve US-Russia relations?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/8133457.stm

Maybe, so long as no one makes a point of Nigaz...

I actually suspect the Russians are in a better situation becuse they are an overt kleptocracy where the ordinary person doesn't expect the rulers to be anything but corrupt and self-serving.

In (Soviet) Russia joke laugh at you.

Two things I always remember from Sociology I / 101 were white collar crime and the inability of the punishments to match the crime when it was something which did not directly result in loss of life, but did do an awful lot of harm to an awful lot of people.

Thus Madoff earlier this week and the Rover four this:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/07/sfo_to_probe_mg_rover_collapse.html

What is needed, IMO, is to have an ahedonic / economic calculus of deaths / suffering and then the allowance for the victims to cumulatively inflict death of a thousand cuts or similar on these people, so no one person is resposible.

Who is the greater criminal, the one who robs a bank or the one who founds one, indeed?

Certainly those bankers who manipulated leverage - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/07/why_bankers_arent_worth_it.html - were criminal.