Some high quality economic analysis of Russia’s consumer-driven inflation problem by blogger Edward Hugh:
In this post we will look at the general macro economic situation of the Russian economy, and we will see that, with output in the resource sector effectively at or near its peak, the main drivers of Russian growth are now construction and domestic consumption. Since long term labour supply issues mean that Russia is unable to comfortably grow at its current rate of expansion the end product is rising inflation and structural distortions in the development of the manufacturing sector. Policy limitations at the level of fiscal demand management and exchange rate adjustment mean that this whole process is only being accelerated rather than contained and as a result the living standards improving boom could easily, under unfavourable circumstances, be converted into precisely its opposite: an impoverishing bust.