Posted on 05/10/2008 11:40:28 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
It’s hard to overemphasize Gazprom’s role in the Russian economy. It’s a sprawling company that raked in $91 billion last year; it employs 432,000 people, pays taxes equal to 20 percent of the Russian budget and has subsidiaries in industries as disparate as farming and aviation. ...
When Mr. Putin was still president, he used Gazprom’s wealth and economic might to fight political enemies inside Russia, to reassert influence over former Soviet republics, to gain leverage over Western European countries by increasing their dependence on Russian gas, and to wrest Russian energy assets back from foreign companies. ...Mr. Putin denied that Russia uses its economic might to achieve foreign policy goals. But others disagree. “Energy should not be used for a policy tool, but it is,” said Vladimir Milov, president of the Institute of Energy Policy, an independent research organization in Moscow, and a former deputy minister of energy. Gazprom, he said, has at times been a “tool of punishment for neighboring countries.” ...
Now Russian leaders consider Gazprom the template for a new industrial policy. In a globalized world, their thinking goes, strategic Russian companies should be controlled by the government, yet open to the capital and skill of Western investors — just as Gazprom is. It’s a throwback to the Soviet economic model, with an emphasis on gigantism and economies of scale and faith in the pricing power of monopolies.
Under Mr. Putin, oil companies were brought back under the Kremlin’s control, and dozens of state-controlled but publicly listed corporations sprung up in industries like energy, metals, aviation and auto manufacturing. It won’t end there. A former first deputy prime minister, Sergei B. Ivanov, who is also chairman of the state-owned Unified Aircraft Corporation, has proposed forming state corporations for radio electronics, optics and space ventures.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Communism = O
Fascism = 1
whatever one may say, pootie isn’t stupid. russia is on the rise again, while our socialist politicians willingly set our country adrift. i fear for the future of our nation.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Yes, and the future chairman of Gazprom is Viktor Zubkov, whom Putin replaced as Prime Minister. Zubkov is a former communist party leader who ran a collective farm during Soviet times.
nicely put, and the Russians don’t seem to care: Their God, the illusion of being an empire under a Tsar, and a job and they’ll shut up or join Nashi.
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