Strategy for ostrich

Last year's gloomy forecasts , unfortunately, are justified. Sales in the oil market drove quotes to 30 dollars, and most analysts agree that this is not the end. The largest American and European investment banks are focused on oil price of $ 20–25 per barrel. The same figures sounded at the recent Gaidar forum . The site, which gathered the entire economic block of the government, led by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, clearly demonstrated the confusion of the authorities and the absence of at least some meaningful plans, extending further than the second quarter of this year.

Almost the main topic of the discussion that unfolded on the forum was the question of whether to proceed to the 10 percent sequestra of the budget immediately or wait for April: what if the oil prices will still increase and will not have to reduce anything? For the first option, it was clear, the Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov, responsible for the execution of the budget. For the second - the Minister of Economic Development Alexei Ulyukaev, who is entrusted with the task of ensuring the growth of the economy. At the same time, Siluanov was frightened by the recurrence of the 1998 crisis, and Ulyukaev expressed his timid hope that he would still cost.

In addition, the government once again announced large -scale privatization plans, which should bring the Trillion rubles to the budget. The VTB and Sberbank state -owned and Sberbank will be put up for sale - Rosneft. The fact that there will be when the reserves and the trillion received from privatization end (which must still be obtained) if the oil price by then does not rise to $ 50 per barrel in the budget, no one thinks. And, by the way, in vain.

If the current trading war in the oil market is delayed, Russia is likely to go through the Andropov “tightening of the nuts”, and through the collapse of a giant and ineffective public sector, and through political disasters

Remembering the 1998 crisis, the head of the Russian Ministry of Finance looks like an incorrigible optimist: a year after that crisis of oil quotes, they went to growth, which lasted one and a half decades and ensured the rapid growth of the first five -year plan of the 21st century, and Putin's “stability”, and even the means to “get up with the knees”. Only now completely different analogies beg. As in 2014, in the mid-1980s, OPEC countries, led by Saudi Arabia, stopped limiting oil production and launched a trade war with independent exporters who systematically selected a fraction of the world market from the cartel. The drop in oil prices began in the fall of 1985, and by the end of 1986, the barrel lost two-thirds in price (as not to recall the current decline from 100 to $ 30 per barrel). The restoration of the oil market took twenty (!) Years, and only a quarter of a century later began to grow oil prices. During these quarter centuries, the USSR was gone, the former builders of communism managed to live on Western humanitarian aid, work as shuttles and find out what hyperinflation is.

The authorities began only when the economic situation forced them to this, when the ineffective Soviet state economy was unable to participate in the "Arms Race", wage war in Afghanistan, and even feed their own citizens. If the current trading war in the oil market is delayed - but so far there are no signs of its soon completion - Russia, most likely, will have to go through the Andropov “twisting of the nuts”, and through the collapse of a giant and ineffective public sector, and through political cataclysms. This always happens when reforms begin to be carried out only when the situation forces this.

Maxim Blunt - Economic Observer, Head of the Macroeconomic Analysis Department of Fingrad

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