The head of a leading Russian privately-held...

Pyotr Aven, president of Alfa Bank, one of Russia"s top thirty banks, and formerly an economics minister in the Russian government in the early 1990s, said in an interview with Ekho Moskvy radio station the rapid growth of Russian stock indexes amid a steep decline in the country"s gross domestic product in 2009 was a dangerous trend.

"We can look at the GDP and stock market dynamics. Our GDP fell while stock indices grew several times over last year. This situation, when the GDP and market indexes differ, is dangerous," he said.

"The market must reflect fundamental economic trends. When such dynamics differ, we can say that a bubble is surfacing."

The banker said that both Russia and the world economies were braced for several difficult years to overcome the effects of the global financial and economic crisis, which some analysts compare to the Great Depression in the United States in the early 1930s.

Russia"s GDP fell an estimated 9% in 2009 as the country

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