There have been many moments in local politics when we have all been watching the news or reading the paper and found our jaws dropping while we utter: “Did he just say what I think he just said?”

That sensation is not something on which we have a monopoly. Think of how the Americans must be feeling this week after former Russian president and current prime minister, Vladimir Putin, criticised the US financial system for its “irresponsibility”.

Things have certainly taken a turn for the surreal when a former Soviet KGB officer criticises the “bad” capitalists of the US. Let us be clear too — he is not criticising them because capitalism is sucking the blood out of the workers and is an immoral force.

No, he is criticising them because they are bad at capitalism. The Russian stock market, like stock markets the world over, has been badly hit by events in Wall Street.

Nonetheless, it is one of those moments in which you find yourself pinching yourself. Remember the massed Russian tank divisions that were poised to invade the West and bring the joys of Communism to the downtrodden? Yes, it was not that long ago when the Evil Empire was poised to cast its blood-thirsty paws over — sorry, I mean free — the workers of London and Limavady. All the while Western apologists defended the capitalist system as being the best show in town.

How embarrassed the Americans must feel as their one-time enemy chides them for being so bad at the money game they had persuaded the Russians to play. You can just hear the Russian financiers give off to their American counterparts: “Look, comrade capitalist, you wanted us to become good little bourgeois and we have. And what is our reward? Falling stock options! I might have to put off buying that dacha in the countryside or that apartment in Chelsea because of your poor understanding of capitalism.”

Dirty Russkies. That sort of criticism has got to hurt the Yanks more than the Red Army storming the White House.