TiM GW Bulletin 98/3-8 March 24, 1998

A Book/Chapter Review - "How America Built the New Russian Oligarchy" by Anne Williamson Russia's Privatization: A Financial Crime of the Century?                                                                                               Harvard's "New Math:" 20% = 100%, Leaving State Still in Control After "Privatization"

PHOENIX - Who says you can't have your cake and eat it, too? All it takes is the New Math invented by the Harvard leftist "voodoo economists," led by Jeffrey Sachs of the Harvard Institute of International Development (HIID). And the greasing of the palms which helps make the unpalatable digestible.

During the 1992-1994 Yegor Gaidar-orchestrated "reforms," inspired by these heavy duty Harvard liberals - read "commies" - "these guys were able to carry on the biggest privatization in the world without creating a single private enterprise," a free market Russian economist Larisa Piyasheva seethed in a just-completed book by Anne Williamson, "How America Built the New Russian Oligarchy."

(Lest you forget, Gaidar was that "western darling" who was supposed to lead the "backward Russians'" on their road to capitalism and prosperity, under the tutelage of the HIID. Instead, this former 'aparatchik' had led his nation to corruption and ruin before being fired in 1994).

How is that possible? Williamson, who has covered Russia since 1987 for a myriad of U.S. publications, ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the SPY magazine, explains in her hard-hitting book due to be published soon by Farrar, Straus and Giroux:

"What GKI [Russian investments' committee] did was to value all state property at 150 billion rubles at 1991 prices and to divide that figure by a population of 150 million, leaving a share worth 10,000 rubles to each individual, the voucher’s face value. Two thirds of the 150 billion whole was immediately excluded from privatization entirely [a private perch reserved for the Yeltsin aparachiks' personal gains. TiM Ed.]. The remaining third was then divided again. Again, one half of that third was excluded. The remaining half of the third was the property privatized in 1992-94, but it too was divided.

Small property - mostly municipal holdings - was auctioned for cash. Only what remained of the last division was subject to voucher privatization as it had been defined. However, of any single property privatized by voucher, 46% went to workers, 5% to management, 29% was sold at cash auctions and the remaining 20% - at a minimum - was left in the state’s hands, meaning that at the end of the privatization process the state’s largest shareholding dwarfed others’ claims and therefore was the controlling shareholder of any "privatized" Russian asset.

The program had indeed put in place an expensive, time-consuming, distracting and destructive paper chase at the conclusion of which the government stood still mighty as the largest shareholder in any single allegedly privatized enterprise."

If the preceding comes as a surprise to you, as it may to many readers who have exclusively relied on the establishment media as sources of information on Russia, then you ought to line up in front of the nation's bookstores when Ms. Williamson's book becomes available. Just as some brain-dead Americans did last on Mar. 23 so they could catch a glimpse of Hollywood's (also mostly brain-dead) stars arriving for the Academy Awards presentations.

For, the "Financial Crime of the Century" - the plunder of Russia's assets following the end of the Cold War by the New World Order (NWO) sharks and hyenas - will make a far more interesting a story than the high-tech sinking of the "Titanic." Even in monetary terms Russia's disaster was a bigger story. According to Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of Russia's Liberal Democratic Party, it was a $400 billion heist. And here's the lowly "Titanic" crew trying to sink itself for the umpteenth time for a mere $1 billion or so!

Yet unlike TiM, which is well past believing that the destruction of Russia was an act of incompetence rather than malice, Ms. Williamson is prepared to give the NWO sharks and hyenas the benefit of the doubt. Which is why even the liberal doves may appreciate her book.

"By late 1992, Jeffrey Sachs was a man whose Moscow team had compiled a record that ought to have been examined more carefully before anyone in the US government signed on the dotted line, unless economic sabotage of the former USSR really was the US’s intention."

Note the preceding words - "unless economic sabotage of the former USSR really was the US's intention." Of course, such a sabotage WAS the U.S. intention (read the U.S. globalists' intention - see TiM GW Bulletins "Russia is Still the Bogey", "Kremlin and Wall St/NWO-Two Rival Gangs?", "What Dr.Glazyev Didn't Notice in Brzezinski's Ideas," and "Bleeding Russia Dry" - all TiM GW Bulletins from December 1997, plus "Yeltsin's 'Red October II'" - TiM GW Bulletin 98/3-10, 3/31/98)).

Suppose someone stabs you in the back with a knife. Does it make any difference to the victim - you - if the assailant were a Harvard klutz who tripped and committed a crime inadvertently, versus a CIA- or a Mossad-hired assassin? Common sense would suggest it does not (make any difference). 

"Here, With Democracy! "

A sign scribbled in chalk on a snow-covered Moscow garbage can (April 1997)

The same logic applies to Russia. It should make no difference to the Russians whether or not the Harvard leftist, voodoo economists, such as the "Sachs et. al." crowd, tripped and fell on their swords. Or if they were merely the stupid executioners of a malicious act of deception and fraud of the Russian people perpetrated by their masters - the NWO Wall Street elite. The bottom line was the same. A knife in the back.  No wonder the Russian peoples' view of  the western-style reforms, is epitomized by the above photo below.

But even from a pragmatically western viewpoint, things got uglier, Williamson writes:

"In what is perhaps the most bizarre aspect of the Western assistance effort, USAID’s main contractor and principal manager - the Harvard Institute of International Development [HIID] - which received a non-competitive 1992 Cooperative Agreement that went mismanaged and improperly monitored for years, first privatized American taxpayers’ money and then socialized it amongst a small group of Russian political actors - the designated "reformers" - whom the Harvard crowd had selected for purchase.

In fact, the privatization of U.S. taxpayers’ assistance money was the only complete privatization Anatole Chubais and his Harvard helpers ever managed despite the $325 million dollars of other peoples’ money [read U.S. taxpayers' money. TiM Ed] they spent on the process.

Thereafter, Harvard’s Moscow crew began privatizing aid money on their own account. Once (THE) US government inspectors took a look, they promptly canceled Harvard’s contract with USAID in late May 1997. That development was a real shockeroo for the best and the brightest,unaccustomed as they are to scrutiny or oversight.

The bad news was that Harvard’s main buy - Anatole Chubais - is a man who sold himself not once, but twice; first to the Harvard academics on the glory trail and then to the Russian banking oligarchy on the money trail. At the moment he was made Deputy Prime Minister in March 1996, Chubais became a man whose task was comparable to the resolution of a child’s fable: To succeed, Chubais would have to slay the dragon he himself created."

Guess Chubais hasn't heard of an old American adage - that "the only honest politician is the one who STAYS BOUGHT!" Trouble like Chubais' happens when people try to eat their cake and have it, too. May he, Yeltsin, Nemtsov, etc., not to mention Clinton, Albright or Rubin, all gag on their cakes before the Russian or American people do.

Also, check out... "Is NWO Spinning Out of Control?", "Yeltsin-IMF Deal: Feeding Drugs to Drug Addict", "Russia's Privatization: A Financial Crime of the Century;" "Russia is Still the Bogey", "Kremlin and Wall St/NWO-Two Rival Gangs?", "What Dr. Glazyev Didn't Notice in Brzezinski's Ideas," and "Bleeding Russia Dry" - all TiM GW Bulletins from December 1997, plus "Yeltsin's 'Red October II'" - TiM GW Bulletin 98/3-10, 3/31/98).

Or Djurdjevic's WASHINGTON TIMES columns: "Russia, IMF, and Global House of Cards",  "Rekindling NATO to Fuel Cold War..."