Posted on 12/31/2013 7:48:54 PM PST by RushIsMyTeddyBear
Crony capitalism is a two-way road. Both businesses and officials has their benefits. You are getting a green light ahead the others and some of your mischiefs are overlooked so you have enourmous advantages but it is that makes you hooked.
It is the choice.
A lot of businesses are playing fair there, ignoring or exposing approaches of corrupt officials and doing just fine. Ask Ikea and Ford.
Russian corruption is overrated. I guess 9 in 10 cases of Russian corruption expierenced by American businesses were a game of con artists of their liberal “Russian expert” empoyees and partners pretending to know how “to solve problems” there. Most of these “corrupt officials” “bribed” this way could be very surprised if they knew.
Congrats! An excellent assessment of Russian politics today. `Wary respect’ is probably the closest the West will get to friendly relations with Moscow.
All true.
Thanks for posting. Started last year (night), finished this year (morning). A very interesting, informative, educational video and thread. Thanks to all posters. BTTT!
Happy New Year FReepers!
Good collection of links there, thanks. This one has been obvious to me for some time now, hopefully more and more people will start to see it.
I am very interested in how he will deal with the terrorism that has struck Russia...very interested...and the rest of the world should be too,,,and they should take notes of his methods.
Putin has truly made a monkey out of obama...and I can’t be any happier.
Russia has a corruption problem, throughout their government, the main difference being that in Russia there's day to day bribes and payoffs of low level officials (including police).
Apart from paying off a traffic cop, I'm curious whether regular people feel corruption, or the absence of ‘rule of law’ in Russia. It may drag on their economy, and it may do so more that our system of lawyers, lobbyists, bailouts and earmarks. Not sure, but I'd call it “close”, compared to say “everyone else who's not in China, South Korea, Europe or Canada”.
That said, Putin can put on a show. He's smooth, he's astute, he tough and smart. He couldn't fly over here, campaign, and win elections in the US, but if he started his career here instead of Russia, he'd be electable here.
Truth is like you say, on the international scene, Russia's playing the game of hard choices that we both played since the end of WWII. We'd like to think we can stop, and play the good the guy, and only hang out with other good guys. There's a lot of places were there are not good guys in a position to take over and maintain order. If you don't pick a “compromise” winner, you get who you get, and right now most of them don't like us. It's the tough game of global leadership.
For Russia, the stakes are too high to have scruples (if nothing else the stakes are “fade into obscurity or become a global player”, the stakes very well could become “live in daily fear of your neighbors, or rule the world”. For us, we don't feel it anymore. We crushed Germany and the Soviets. IBM still makes the best typewriters in the world, if we just back off, everyone will come to depend on us for manufacturing and research.
Wish I had hung around on this thread yesterday, your stuff is excellent, and we need accurate info to properly analyze Russian and Eastern European events. Kudos.
Thank you, though I am admittedly a novice in world affairs. I just enjoy researching them when an issue I’m interested in is up for discussion.
If you get any response on this, please alert me. I am also interested in a good, unbiased account of a very interesting political figure. I had no idea he had been a mayor until recently.
I’ll let you know. I have been seriously looking through scads of book reviews but have not found one that even pretends to be unbiased. Grrr ...
I would really like to know what makes this man “tick”.
Maybe I should just read one from each side.
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