“Now do you believe me, Mr. Beale?”
Posted on 02/17/2009 5:35:13 PM PST by pissant
Russian Prime Minister Vladamir Putin has said the US should take a lesson from the pages of Russian history and not exercise “excessive intervention in economic activity and blind faith in the state’s omnipotence”.
“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”
Sounding more like Barry Goldwater than the former head of the KGB, Putin said, “Nor should we turn a blind eye to the fact that the spirit of free enterprise, including the principle of personal responsibility of businesspeople, investors, and shareholders for their decisions, is being eroded in the last few months. There is no reason to believe that we can achieve better results by shifting responsibility onto the state.”
Putin also cautioned the US against using military Keynesianism to lift its economy out of recession, saying, “in the longer run, militarization won’t solve the problem but will rather quell it temporarily. What it will do is squeeze huge financial and other resources from the economy instead of finding better and wiser uses for them.” Putin’s comments come in sharp contrast to Russia’s own military buildup and expansion.
Putin also echoed the words of conservative maverick Ron Paul when he said, “we must assess the real situation and write off all hopeless debts and ‘bad’ assets. True, this will be an extremely painful and unpleasant process. Far from everyone can accept such measures, fearing for their capitalization, bonuses, or reputation. However, we would ‘conserve’ and prolong the crisis, unless we clean up our balance sheets.”
“The time for enlightenment has come. We must calmly, and without gloating, assess the root causes of this situation and try to peek into the future.”
Boy, you said it. Vlad, when you talk to the one, please give him the lowdown about how bad socialism / communism really are. You have real world experience all P. BO knows is what his friends and teachers have told him. Please fill him in.
The sad thing is Putin/Russia secretly wants the US to fail but he is actually having pity on the US and is giving advice to avoid the road they took.
Speechless. Even the commies shake their heads and in disgust at Obama and his minions.
I’d opt for a one-to-one swap, myself. They both have pretty good abs. Only thing is that we can’t have an autocrat who wasn’t born in the United States for a President...oh, wait a minute...
I have been living in Moldova (an ex-Soviet Republic) for the past 5years, and travel frequently to Moscow. I agree with a lot of the posters that say “the world is upside down”. I have seen more Capitalism here, in Ukraine and Russia that you can ever imagine.
Really reminds me of 1950’s America. There is essentially no “welfare” system, you make it on your own or get help from family or friends. If you depend on government handouts..you will starve.
The government stays out of your family life, whether its good or bad is up for debate but nobody is gonna come take your kids away cause you whack them on the butt for acting up in the supermarket. When I tell people here how children in the U.S. are taken away from parents by the state and put in foster care they are just in shock.
The Russian economy has been affected by the financial crisis, however when in Moscow recently, I asked myself “what financial crisis?” Stores packed with people buying stuff, restaurants full, traffic worse than anyplace I have ever seen in the states. The economy appears to be booming in Moscow at least, and certainly is here in Moldova.
Never thought I would ever live in this part of the world,and I certainly never thought I would ever live to hear a Russian prime minister warn the U.S. against the evils of socialism. Guess the Aliens land on the White House lawn next week.
How about this, split off independent city states, SF, LA, Chicago, NYC, Boston, Miami, and Atlanta. Trade but no open borders. No settlement into the rest of America from the city states.
Actually, we may very well have it much worse than the USSR once had it. They didn't have to deal with "multiculturalism".
I wish we would take a page out of Putin’s book and implement that flat tax similar to what they have.
Holy $#!t, did monkeys just fly out a butt somewhere?
The West has long misread Putin, based on what they wanted him to be, or feared he might be. In truth, as the old German saying is “Russia remains Russia”, Putin is a creature of Russia.
The left secretly hoped and hopes that he will return Russia to something socialist or communist, and the right fears the same. But both are wrong.
Putin made it clear, early on, that Russia remains Russia. He does not despise the Tsars, nor the communists who ruled Russia, nor capitalism. In fact, he feels free to pick and choose what he likes from Russian history, in molding the new Russia.
So, from the perspective of a Russian president, what does he want to do? Well, he shares with the American president (at least in the past), a desire for his nation to be economically prosperous and militarily powerful.
At the same time, he wants to give the Russian people what they want. And this is night and day different from what the American people want. To start with, the Russian people are somewhat xenophobic, fearing outsiders, and Slavophilic, meaning they like their Slavic roots they share with other Slavic peoples.
The Russian people are also rediscovering their profoundly religious beliefs of the Russian Orthodox church. Not too long ago, Putin even convinced atheist Cuba to allow the construction of a Russian Orthodox cathedral in Havana. This is a side of Putin rarely seen in the West, as the secular leader of a very Christian people, with very traditional moral values.
The Russian people tend to vacillate between thinking of themselves as European, and thinking of themselves as Asian. As someone once observed, a Russian in Siberia only thinks of Paris—in Paris, only of Siberia.
The xenophobia runs deep, as well. This is why there is no great trans-European highway running to Moscow. And even the railroad lines are not compatible, cargo and passengers having to transfer at the border. All Russian leaders remember the invasions from the West, from the Teutonic Knights and the Swedes, to Napoleon Bonaparte and the Nazis.
Putin is likewise more than aware that his nation only has twice as many Christians as it does Muslims. He sees an alliance with Iran going back to old Tsarist days.
I can recommend the truly amazing movie called “Russian Ark”, which depicted highlights of Russian history, within perhaps their greatest museum, the Hermitage. And every bit of that weighs heavily on Putin.
Russia remains Russia.
Hey, that’s not fair. Those places can’t afford their own welfare programs. Oh, wait a minute ...
I thought I was ready for almost anything after the Berlin Wall came down. But not an ex-KGB boss warning the US against socialism. GD idiot Leftists.
LOL. Isn’t that just the point?
“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.” - Winston Churchill (1939)
Nothing has changed.
Me too & I feel like I am in a nightmare. When I was younger I used to think I wouldn't live to see things get really bad. Now I think I am going to see it all.
Putin could care less about economic theory, he is about power, and if capitalism is the way to power, so be it.
“Now do you believe me, Mr. Beale?”
If you throw in a free and, er well, just independent Detroit, then you’ve got a deal.
One of the greatest movie scenes ever, this speech is even more relevant today than it was back in 1975:
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won’t have it!! Is that clear?! You think you’ve merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance!
You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels.
It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU WILL ATONE!
Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?
You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.
What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state — Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do.
We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality — one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.
And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Beale: But why me?
Jensen: Because you’re on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
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