The all-seeing eye of problems

Many experts are already predicting that the current global financial crisis will become the most serious in the history of mankind. As Morgan Stanley equity strategist Graham Sacker put it, it represents "once-in-a-generation risk aversion and a complete loss of confidence in the financial system as it stands." Nevertheless, the crisis also allows us to see with our own eyes all the problems that have accumulated during growth. The cyclical development of the world economy left no chance to prevent the inevitable fall. However, both here and abroad this was not recognized for a long time.

Another important thing that a crisis allows you to do is to test the strength of the leadership of each specific country, to find out whether the political system can quickly and correctly respond to emerging challenges, overcome difficulties and use all possible means to solve the assigned tasks. In our case, the crisis allows us to find out how the Russian political elite, formed in the throes of the first decade of the 2000s, is able to behave in the face of the need to combat global problems.

From the beginning of the new millennium to the present day, strengthening the vertical of power was considered a panacea for all domestic political problems. This was due to fear of the “uncontrollable 1990s,” the threat of further collapse of the country, as well as the formation of alternative centers of power to the state led by oligarchs, who, with varying degrees of success, took over a significant amount of power. Now the situation has changed radically: many compare the level of centralization either with the tsarist or with the Soviet one. Most of the power resources are concentrated in the hands of specific people and a specific party. At the same time, there is a solid “stone wall” that, according to politicians, no crisis will overcome - the Stabilization Fund, now divided into the Reserve Fund and the National Welfare Fund. Despite the often skeptical attitude of citizens who have long no longer expected the authorities to sincerely care about their well-being, in recent years an opinion has emerged that the accumulation of years of high oil prices can, if not prevented, then at least reduce the damage from the crisis, thereby Moreover, this is exactly what these savings were created for.

The reasons why the fund was created come to mind – the 1998 default, especially since the current crisis in the world fell almost exactly on the anniversary of one of the saddest pages in recent Russian history. The difference is that the 1998 crisis was purely Russian, while the current one has affected almost all countries of the world.

Almost all experts agree that the causes of the crisis lie in the very essence of liberalism as a political and economic ideology. Liberalism presupposes a minimum of government participation, a minimum of regulation and the free movement of capital. This led to the following consequences: firstly, the stock market ceased to be what it was created for, namely a place where companies can obtain the funds necessary to develop production. Instead, it has become a speculative platform in which huge fortunes are made by playing on short-term differences in stock prices. Secondly, the result of the absolute unregulation of the stock market was the policy of securitization, namely the conversion of all available and even expected funds into securities. So-called derivatives, which are virtual money, were issued against the future income from production. There were $600 trillion worth of these derivatives issued worldwide, while real world GDP for 2007 was only about $60 trillion. The global pyramid scheme, in which debt was financed by new loans and the issuance of derivatives, has finally collapsed.

One problem for all

Of course, the problems faced by Russia and the West are different. After all, the stock market and banking are relatively undeveloped in our country. The latter circumstance gave hope that the crisis would hit us the least.

At the same time, for the United States this situation was predetermined, as such titans of the financial market as Warren Buffett and George Soros spoke about it. America's financial system is the most developed in the world, so shocks in this area will affect a very large number of people. At the same time, the US political elite understood perfectly well that the world economy, chained to the Fed by dollar chains, would collapse into the same hole into which their own exchanges and banks were about to fall . However, nothing significant was done until August 2008, when collapse became a tangible reality.

Despite different starting conditions, many actions of Russian politicians and their American colleagues are similar. The elites of both the Russian Federation and the United States made the most of the crisis to strengthen their ideological positions.

The election campaign in the United States in recent months has been built around the differences in the economic programs of the candidates. John McCain lost to Barack Obama, not least because of his extremely liberal economic program. After Black Monday on September 15, he stopped making statements about the need to reduce government regulation and tax breaks. However, this did not help him: Barack Obama seized on the pre-crisis statements of the senator from Arizona, adding to them the last eight years of George W. Bush's policies. The Democratic candidate's conclusion was that it was the Republican administration that was to blame for the crisis. In general, the set of measures proposed by Obama is called “socialist” by many. His program includes increasing government spending, increasing income taxes for those earning more than $250,000 a year, and increasing government control over the economy as a whole. McCain promised to reduce taxes on medium and small businesses. At the same time, both candidates supported Paulson's memorable "plan to save the American economy."

In the Russian version, the current administration made political dividends on the crisis. The triumphantly belligerent rhetoric of August–September gradually gave way to accusations in October. Criticism of American politics, the economy, as well as claims to a leading role in world economic relations have grown unprecedentedly in the last couple of months. " Everything that happens in the field of economics and finance began in the USA. This is a real crisis that our economies are facing. And what is most sad is that we see an inability to make adequate decisions. This is no longer the irresponsibility of specific individuals, but the irresponsibility of the system that claimed “, as you know, for leadership ,” Vladimir Putin said on October 1.

In the USA, as in the Russian Federation, the word “nationalization” is generally absent from the speeches of politicians, since it borders on “socialism,” which is so unloved by the American elites. They talk about “buying out shares”, “supporting companies”, but in essence all this is precisely nationalization: the state acquires a controlling stake in a company, which in fact becomes state-owned. Naturally, George Bush and Vladimir Putin say that this measure is temporary. The real shock to Americans was the nationalization of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as well as the recent initiative to use $250 billion to buy back bad shares of nine of the largest American banks, including the bankrupt Marril Lynch and Goldman Sachs. . It is possible that this is not the last action in this direction. This policy is much more painful for Americans than for Russians, because America is used to being proud of its role as the flagship of liberalism and state non-interference.

In Russia, the active role of the state in the economy is perceived by some as a blessing, by some as a misfortune, but by everyone as something taken for granted. The colossal reserves of the National Welfare Fund (NWF) and the Reserve Fund (RF), as well as positive trade and budget balances, gave real hope that the crisis would bypass us . When it became obvious that this scenario was not feasible, one measure was most actively used to stabilize the economy: multi-billion dollar injections. From the beginning of the crisis to the end of October, Russia has already spent about 5 trillion rubles, or about 6% of GDP, on fighting it. At the same time, until the end of September, the authorities continued to assure that there was no need to use funds from the National Welfare Fund of the Russian Federation. They started talking about it on October 11, when Alexey Kudrin nevertheless announced the possibility of investing part of the NWF funds in shares, and mostly in bonds. It was noted that investments in one company will not exceed 5% of the fund, namely 175 billion rubles. At the auction for the placement of these funds, the following was revealed: 116 banks out of 2,000 applicants met the necessary conditions for receiving a loan, and a significant portion of these 116 were “systemically important” banks such as VTB or Vnesheconombank, already with considerable state participation, so in relation to It would be a bit far-fetched to talk about nationalization for him.

Such different colleagues

Otherwise, the US and Russian governments acted completely differently. As an example, we can take the volume of funds invested in overcoming the crisis. Of course, the absolute figures of funds spent to combat the crisis in the United States exceed those in Russia, since the scale of the economies still differ significantly. However, for example, in the banking sector, the US government plans to leave about $250 billion out of the $700 allocated by Congress (with total bank losses of $650 billion). This represents about 1.4% of US GDP. At the same time, it was repeatedly emphasized that this money is the first and last that will be used to buy back shares.

The Russian government, despite statements about a “safe haven” that was allegedly not affected by the crisis, has already planned expenses of about $180 billion to help banks for 2008–2009, which amounts to exactly 10 times more, about 14% of Russian annual GDP. What explains the generosity of such a scale remains to be seen, because throughout Western Europe, where banks operate with much larger funds than in Russia, aid did not even come close to Russian figures. For example, the UK spent about $64 billion on the purchase of banking assets, which is 2.3% of its GDP.

Also, the understanding of helping those in need among US and Russian politicians is quite different. Despite the huge volume of financial subsidies to banks, the US government in most cases did not buy shares that carry voting rights. Mac were “nationalized In the full sense of the word, only Fannie Mae and Freddie . ” Otherwise, the government tried, whenever possible, to buy preferred shares, whose dividends are on average higher, but which at the same time do not give the right to participate in the management of the company.

The government of the Russian Federation took a different path: the money was mainly allocated to place temporarily free budget funds on deposits in order to prevent a liquidity crisis, and mainly in the accounts of systemically important banks, namely VTB, VEB, Gazprombank and Rosselkhozbank. These banks are already practically state-owned. At the same time, the banks that received the funds are in no hurry to implement the anti-crisis program to save their “smaller brothers”, instead absorbing them entirely. Among such transactions is the recent purchase of the apparently stable and successful Sobinbank by Gazprombank, using funds allocated to combat the crisis. One can also recall VEB’s recent acquisition of Svyaz-Bank and GLOBEX, although in this case both of the latter were on the verge of bankruptcy. These operations caused a new wave of rumors that the crisis was actually covering up another redistribution of property.

And finally, the differences in the political cultures of the United States and Russia in the decision-making process showed themselves very clearly. The American "Paulson Plan" was not approved by the House of Representatives in its first version, since the Republican part of the House called it "socialist." The decision was also influenced by thousands of demonstrations on Wall Street with slogans “No cash for trash . ” The plan was adopted a week later with significant changes, including, for example, the use of allocated money in small portions with the ability to block subsequent receipts if it is seen that the previous ones did not help, as well as the creation of a control board to combat inappropriate spending. The entire House of Representatives took part in the amendments, and periodically one or another point of the plan was unilaterally blocked by either the Democratic or the Republican part. Almost immediately, an operational headquarters was created to combat the crisis, which included representatives of business structures.

In Russia, the situation was somewhat different. If in the USA we can conditionally single out only three major measures to combat the crisis (the nationalization of Fannie and Freddie, the Paulson plan and 250 billion for the purchase of “bad” assets of leading banks), then in the Russian Federation almost every decision was made day. In mid-October, Alexey Kudrin even admitted that he personally introduced most of the adopted draft decisions on the crisis . At the same time, it cannot be said that there were absolutely no attempts to resort to collegiality. On September 20, major representatives of Russian business Viktor Vekselberg, Vagit Alekperov and Ruben Vardanyan proposed to Dmitry Medvedev to create an operational headquarters, similar to the one existing in the United States, so that the government and businessmen solve problems together. The President promised to think about it, immediately entrusting the execution of this initiative to his administration. As a result, on October 21, a council to counter the crisis was indeed created, but it included exclusively government officials.

Intermediate conclusions, or rather, lack thereof

Be that as it may, at least one thing can be said absolutely for sure: whether it is good or bad, Russia is included in the world economy completely and irrevocably. Another thing is that Russia itself can now influence little: our RTS and MICEX rates usually rise or fall following their foreign counterparts. Whether we like it or not, inclusion in the world economy at this stage means those very financial chains that connect all the exchanges and capitals of the world with each other, and most of all with America. North Korea suffered the least from the crisis.

It is very difficult to assess the effectiveness of the actions of politicians in the United States and the Russian Federation, since given the interdependence of players on the world stage, it is impossible to determine whether a separate set of measures of one country or the combined efforts of all countries had an effect. Despite this, we can say for sure that there is a renaissance of public administration and the statist approach to economics. The paradox is that they were transferred to the most seemingly liberal sphere - stock markets and banking. They are trying to solve problems at the expense of the state. In the United States, it tries to stay on the sidelines, interested solely in the stability of the system as a whole and returning everything to normal, and in Russia it tries to use the crisis to further strengthen state-owned companies, which are already approaching the status of monopolists. On the one hand, this seems to be an adequate measure, since the still very weak banks and the stock market of the Russian Federation are not able to cope with the crisis on their own.

What also deserves attention is how the country’s legislative bodies passed on the initiatives of the executive branch. In Russia, it was as if there was no State Duma - all measures with minimal or no amendments were immediately adopted. The discussions around the “Paulson plan” in the US Congress were so intense and lengthy that some no longer believed that it would be accepted. Such obedience of the Russian people's representatives could be due to a combination of two reasons: the dominant role of one party in parliament and, perhaps, a sincere belief that those “up there” know exactly what to do and it is better not to interfere with them . This silent consensus of the two branches of government made decision-making unusually prompt: usually, not even a couple of days passed from bad news from abroad to the decision to allocate additional billions.

It is too early to draw conclusions, since, firstly, the crisis is not over yet, and secondly, it is difficult to separate the successful policies of the state and the world community. In this case, you can take certain derived indicators for evaluation. For example, in Russia, since the beginning of the crisis, the three banks mentioned above have gone bankrupt, while in the United States, over the same period, there have already been fifteen, and while in our country these were medium-sized banks, in America they are among the largest. Of course, this was due to the difference in the scale of the crisis, but at the same time, some part of this success, without a doubt, is the result of the policies of Russian government bodies.