The salaries and pensions of federal employees, including the military, are in arrears by three to four months. Venture and new entrepreneurial investment capital has been confiscated, millions of the brightest new business owners or workers have lost their businesses or their jobs, and the people have lost their trust in the government and their hope for the future. Accounting systems are not adequate to support the operation. There exists widespread opinions among members of the state Duma about the govemment's decision to default. During our meetings, these opinions as well as what should be done next were freely discussed and debated.
Economic development seems, at the moment, to be in chaos in many regions.
This is principally because there is not an adequate infrastructure or culture to conduct a free-market, democratic economy. There are political, economic, and social reasons for this. Politically, the new federal constitution has not facilitated a white-market infrastructure of business law that can be used by all the regions. Even the constitutions of the regions are not yet in concurrence with the federal constitution. Some of the regions are doing economically better than the others, but are refusing to pay their full share of taxes.