mai said:
Kaz, I got the idea, you don't need to repeat it multiple times for me. Aslund’s article despite the pretence of being strictly economical is all about politics excluding first few paragraphs. It’s typical and predictable, since Aslund much like our gaming journalists live in their own intellectual and informational ghettos, rarely taking a peek on outside world. There're really not much factual economical information that could be reviewed or critisized, so I critisize what's left. And, yes, of course, it's build on the reforms of the past, tell me, which economy is built on the reforms of the future? :D It doesn't mean that reforms of the past aren't dead-end with expected and catastrophic results. Putin achievements are in different field. As I said, it's political article and should be viewed as such, because Putin's decisions that are in the article again are political decisions, which though affects economy. These descisions are mostly last moment reaction to a no-win situation of the late 1990s - early 2000s, so he rightfully might claim the economical results of the last decade regardless of how they might be perceived. And the idea of him getting lucky to get in the office when the "transformation" was over is, pardon me, but a rather bad excuse. Will publish couple of the reviewes and thoughts of Aslund's sources I was able to find among my old posts, translated and updated for Aslund article. Might come in handy. |
Some economic changes are built on the present. By presidents who make important changing reforms while in office.
Note how Bush is mostly blamed for the economic collapse... and Obama is trying to get credit for there beign any kind of recovery.
As for your articles... I see debates in them... but none of the articles or points seem to remotely deal with the economy. So... I don't see the point.
There was plenty of economic references in the article. It's just stuff you didn't critisize, because you couldn't.
To recap the economics arguement,
The reforms of the past, the Yelstin reforms and such were part of a process Putin finished. His early economic reforms (which were the successful ones) were ones that were pre-planned ahead of his presidency. At best you could give him credit for keeping with the plan.
His later economic reforms a move back to government ownership (2003 and on) have hurt the economies growth, Russia only benefitting due to the commodities boom... however hurting further growth that could of existed.
An example of something you could try to argue is....
"The Russian renationalization has had a limited, but negative impact on the economy, which is most evident in the current stagnation of oil and gas production, but also in banking, and machine building. Fortunately, two-thirds of the Russian economy is still in private hands, including the metals, retail trade, and construction sectors. The aggregate indicator that has suffered the most is investment, with Russia's official investment ratio remaining rather low despite the economic boom."
Why, if not due to renationalization, did Russian Oil production stagnate and investment stagnate, despite booming economic times in which private companies would generally increase their buisness? Is it a coincidence that Russian Oil Production growth rates dropped significantly as soon as Russian Oil companies faced renationalization? If so? Why?
If not, don't you have to concede renationalization has hurt the Russian economy? Same with investments.
