A nation stuffed with valuable minerals, its Treasury bloated with petrodollars and pumped up daily with almost $1 billion (£551 million) in oil revenues, Russia is nonethless behaving as if bankruptcy looms. Trading on the Moscow exchanges was suspended on Tuesday after the RTS index lost a tenth of its value and Kit Finance, a Moscow brokerage with political connections, defaulted on some margin calls. It was suspended again yesterday.

In vain, Russia's central bank has been trying to calm the markets by flooding the financial system with cash, but the big Russian banks were still hammered.

You might think it's all just hysteria, the infection from Wall Street, but Russia has its own problems, not least of which is the tumbling oil price.

The rout was precipitated months ago when investors became spooked by the troubles plaguing TNK-BP and the Russian Government's apparent indifference over the attack on a leading foreign investor. The conflict in Georgia provided more ammunition for bears, but the recent collapse appears to be of more technical origin.

Margin calls against borrowers have precipitated a downward spiral of liquidations. Rumours suggest that some big tycoons have been using shares in leading Russian companies as collateral for loans. As the value of the stock falls, banks have demanded more collateral prompting the asset sales.

If that is true, there will be smiles in many quarters, with the possible exception of the fans of certain football clubs.

But the more likely victims of this share price attrition will be the marzipan layer of Moscow's new managerial class, the second division of wealthy below the level of owners and oligarchs. These people will have received stocks and shares in bonus payments.

The mass of Russians who still haven't benefited from capitalism, may, therefore, indulge in a bit of Schadenfreude - or zloradstvo, as I'm told they call it in Moscow.

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