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But let’s not talk about Latin America. Instead, let’s talk about Russia. Putin’s thrashing, his evident decision to reject advice from economists who tell him anything he doesn’t want to hear, feel very familiar to me and I’m sure many others who’ve followed Latin America over the decades. Basically, it sounds a lot like good old-fashioned macroeconomic populism.
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So Putin seems to have brought something new, or at least formerly rare, into the world of economic policy: macroeconomic cronyism, an effort to suspend the laws on economics on behalf, not of the broad populace, but a tiny group of well connected malefactors of great wealth. Innovation!
Obviously the conyism is an old story, but it's mix is a new take on an old fallacy. Perhaps the worst luck for the Russian citzien was that Putin was so lucky with the high commodity prices. Those were of course a massive boost for the Russian economy and helped the country and it's citizens to get high growth and economic stability but it allowed the leader to get credit for poor personal performance and to take the Russian economy far along a dangerous path into the wrong direction...