Headline August 1st, 2012

The Whole Ideology For 'The Privatization Of Russia' 

Was Based On American Calculations! 

Millions and millions of people sufferred as the as the execution of plans took traction. The redistribution of property was in the hands of bureaucrats who made salaries of 100 to 200 dollars a month. There wouldn't be many bureaucrats who in the same situation would refuse bribes. 

All this from the media mogul, Boris Berezovsky, one of the most despised man in Russia. Equally, -if not more- despised was St. Petersburg economist Anatoly Chubais, the chief architect of the loans-for-shares program. 

Anatoly Chubais blossomed and remained Washington's and Harvard's golden boy! Chubais, who accrued Oligarch status if not wealth in Russia for becoming synonymous with the manipulation of U.S. aid and billions from the I.M.F. Chubais, along with Yegor Gaidar, Harvard Professors Jefffrey Sachs and Andrei Scheifer, and Sach's aide Anders Aslund, is known the world over, for having been then driving force behind the Russian American aid program which advocated ''shock therapy''' to push a market economy in Russia. 

Chubais had the run of both the Kremlin and the Clinton White House, where Harvard Graduate Vice President Al Gore was the point man on Russian Policy. The Group's Mentor was Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, who had been an Economic Professor at Harvard and Chief Economist of the World Bank. 

Meanwhile, Chubais's role in the U.S. aid-to-Russia program has been incisively dissected in a masterly but controversial paper by University of Pittsburgh Professor Janine Wedel, published in The National Interest: ''The ideology, that of radical privatization and marketization, applied in this instance in a cold turkey manner to a society with no recent experience of either, is well known. 

The way in which advice and Aid were given is much less familiar.'' In June 97, the U.S. Agency for the International Development suspended funding to the chief funnel for U.S. assistance, ''Harvard Institute for International Development, because two of its chief executives, Jonathan Hay and Andrei Schleifer, were accused of using inside knowledge and speculating in the Russian stock market through Hay's girlfriend and Schleifer's wife. 

Until that point, Wedel charges, U.S. aid to Russia by a small cabal of ''Harvardites'' and a handful of Russians -namely Chubais, whom they felt comfortable with. Approx 350 million dollars was managed by the 'Harvard Institute for International Development' which, Wedel says, '' left it in the unique position of recommending U.S. aid policies while being itself a chief recipient of that aid.''

Members of the clique would often switch sides, with Americans helping to write Russian proposals and vice verse. The result of which was exploitation and embarrassment. The U.S. economic aid program soon turned into a disaster largely because of this strategy.

Good night & God bless!

SAM Daily Times - The Voice of the Voiceless