Fears grow market crash may hurt real economy

Russia has been forced to inject billions of dollars into the country's economy after two disastrous days on the stock markets. Trading had to be suspended on Tuesday and Wednesday, as the fallout of the financial crisis in the U.S. reached Moscow, making

There are growing fears that the crisis in banking and financial systems caused by the credit crunch will spread to the everyday economy and affect ordinary people.
 
“If somebody says ‘I'm not touched by the crisis’, it's not true, because in the end it will hit me, it will hit even my mum,” says Denis Makienko, commercial director of Pipelife Rus.

Aleksandr Matveev, co-founder of the Moscow Wall Street Bar, a banker’s pub in the Russian capital, says worries over job cuts and bankruptcies are rising.

“At every table I hear Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, redemptions. Many customers are going to lose their jobs. But put it this way, if bankers do not find a place on Wall St, they'll always find a home in the Wall Street Bar,” Matveev said.

The bar has invented a special cocktail to reflect the mood of the financial crisis.  It’s called ‘Redemption’, after the unpaid mortgages which triggered the crisis. Its ingredients are Merrill Lychee and Lemon Brothers, a reference to the credit crunch’s two biggest banking casualties so far.