Fixing Russia's Banks
Subtitle: A Proposal For Growth
Edition: 1st edition
Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
Published: 1998
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 114
ISBN-13: 9780817995720
Subjects: Banking; Macroeconomics; Business & Economics; Business / Economics / Finance; Business/Economics; Russia; Banks & Banking; Europe - Russia & the Former Soviet Union; Money & Monetary Policy; 1991-; Banks And Banking; Economic conditions; Monetary Policy; Russia (Federation)
First sentence: Since its establishment as a separate state in 1991, Russia's economic performance has been vastly below its productive potential.
Description: Fixing Russia's Banks documents how Russia's financial system is built on what Michael S. Bernstam and Alvin Rabushka call ersatz banks. These inferior imitation banks have served largely as tools of the government to redistribute public funds to favored firms. The highly vaunted achievements of privatization, removal of price controls, and foreign trade liberalization have failed to produce growth because of a lack of private financing.

National income has declined nearly 40 percent since 1992, with no recovery in sight. Failing to fix Russia's banks risks further economic stagnation or decline and financial catastrophe. Bernstam and Rabushka's bold, intriguing, provocative proposal - resting on an elaborate strategy of debt-for-equity swaps - would fix the banks, reduce government debt, strengthen the independence of the Central Bank, and lay a solid foundation for sustained economic growth.