Mr Woodruff plumps for money as the weak link, tracing Russia's descent into a barter economy.

ECONOMIST: Russian economics

Ms Duong's agents, then, spontaneously organise themselves into a barter economy.

ECONOMIST: Social science

What was once a prosperous island considered a gateway to three continents, in the near term, will be reduced to just a couple of notches above a barter economy.

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Over half the Russian people today subsist outside of a money-economy system, surviving by barter and by getting whatever food they can from relatives, friends and neighbors or from what they grow on patches of land in the countryside.

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The fiscal wing of government has a huge incentive to move its economy away from barter.

ECONOMIST: Free exchange

For example, with too much inventory and too little cash, barter can be part of a survival strategy in a bad economy.

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Others have dropped out of the money economy and rely on barter, through an exchange network that drew in as much as a third of the population at its peak earlier this year.

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