"The pie is not reaally growing, George. It's not even static. It's shrinking "

That's simply not so. The pie is growing for North America, Europe, China, Australia, Southeast Asia. It's shrinking for Russia because it went hellbent down the road to kleptocracy rather than some vestige of democratic capitalism as all those regions (with the obvious exception of China) have. Russia's problems are its own damn fault. All of them.