Economist offers prescription for what ails Russia FINAL Edition

• Published in: The Sun (Baltimore, Md. : 1837)
• Main Author: Michael Hill CO: Q&A/A Monday interview
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore, Md Tribune Publishing Company, LLC 13.04.1992
• Subjects: Hanke, Steve; Reagan, Ronald Wilson; Yeltsin, Boris; Russia
• ISSN: 1930-8965

A. They have currency boards now in Hong Kong and Singapore. In fact, Russia had one in 1918 and 1919 in the north. The British couldn't get anyone to unload ships at Murmansk because the Russians didn't want to get paid in rubles. Everyone was issuing rubles at the time, there were something like 2,000 different types of rubles in circulation, and no one trusted any of them. Not knowing what to do, the British officers cabled for instructions. A. The only reason you see so much of that is because The Sun is writing about it every time you turn around. Russia is a poor country, and these types of things have always gone on; it's just that they are visible now. The fact is that there is plenty of food in Russia, but right now it makes more economic sense to keep it in storage than to sell it for rubles. The food is going up in value; the rubles are going down. If you had a stable currency, the food would move onto the market. In the World Bank's "World Development Report" for 1991, it says that the "emerging consensus is in favor of a `market-friendly' strategy for development." I'm glad that the faceless technocrats who run these multi-national organizations are coming around to this view.