Riot on the ship

The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) suddenly opposed the current intervention mechanism in the stock market. In a rather peaceful, long and outwardly boring document “proposals for maintaining financial stability in Russia” (the Bureau of the RSPP of 10/15/2008 was adopted) there is a fragment that has not entered the tape of key Russian agencies and a uniform rebel on the ship. Here it is: “In order to avoid artificial strengthening of individual market participants related to the state, it is impractical to attract state -owned banks or allocate federal budget funds for state -owned companies to buy their shares from the market. In addition, in order to avoid risk concentration, it would be incorrect to use the development bank as an intermediary. Interventions should be carried out through an independent state institution that has the necessary licenses and does not have a potential conflict of interests. It seems necessary to create the State National Fund for Stabilization of the Stock Market. ”

What does that mean? The top of a large Russian business does not believe Vnesheconombank, he is a development bank? Maybe. However, why, then, in the same document, several pages previously expressed full support for VEB actions in the field of repayment of external debt (read the debts in the article by Sergei Aleksashenko on page 14): “It seems necessary to turn the mechanism of refinancing by Vneshephon Bank from temporary to permanent. Vnesheconombank should allocate the financial resources of the intended purpose for a period of 5 to 7 years. ”

In the conversations “not for recording”, sources in the RSP note that creating a new organ instead of VEB is a long and ineffective thing. During the crisis, the main thing is not to be late. The member of the Bureau of the RSPP Igor Jurgens said in an interview with The New Times: “Yes, there is certainly a potentially conflict of interests, and it is quite dangerous to hang something on the VEB: it saves, it redeems, it gives loans, he must form public programs and finance them. There you can trace a conflict of interests. But we have no other development institution. This one was created for five years. Of course, now in a crisis you can create more quickly, but I do not really imagine how it can be done when everything must be decided for two-three or four weeks. ”

There are doubts. But the fact of the rebellion is symptomatic: it turns out that the reason for this business showing is that large entrepreneurs and their trade union (certainly loyal to the Kremlin to the brain of the bones) are really afraid of nationalization (read the risks of nationalization in the article by Yegor Gaidar on page 4), are really not sure that the assets taken under control of the state will return to legal private owners.

It is exactly October 15, when the RSPP opposed state interventions in the shares market, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev presented the Order of Merit to the Fatherland IV degree to President Alexander Shokhin.

About the crisis and what threatens ordinary citizens - in the main topic of the number on p. 4–23, 36–39.