[nemo]

I haven't got a problem with privatization per se, and recognize that some approach to privatization was called for. I have major problems with the disastrous "shock therapy" approach to privatization that was actually applied where the US economic advice was what created the mafioso oligarchs.

[xixi77]

You are grossly overstating the influence of the "us economic advice", which was zero. The mafioso oligarchs needed and used none of it.

[jahewson]

You might want to read up on this. It was US economic advice which led to the rapid sell-off of public assets which resulted in the creation of the oligarchs in the first place.

[xixi77]

Seriously, I do not need to read up on this, I was there. But one does not really need to have first-hand experience to see the deliberate deception in klein's "shock doctrine" and the like: for example, different countries in the region had markedly different timings, different implementation of reforms, different rhetoric, and different resources; but the outcomes pretty much fall into two groups: places where people demanded and expected accountability on part of government (ie. baltic states, and a few former warsaw pact countries) did relatively fine, and others devolved into oligarchies (ie. the rest of the former soviet union).

[drumdance]

Here's Jeffrey Sachs' account of his role: http://jeffsachs.org/2012/03/what-i-did-in-russia/

You can see he did NOT advocate shock therapy and resigned when he realized he could do nothing about growing corruption.

[nemo]

Sachs resigned when the Harvard Institute for International Development he was running was roiled in the scandal of his direct reports buying Russian stocks and working to get the first mutual fund license in Russia while they were dictating economic policy. They were recommending policies that they were directly profiting from. They lost their funding, were in a massive scandal, then Sachs resigned. His article is a sad heap of dishonest excuses and fails to take responsibility for his own involvement in the corruption he happily blames others for.

The corruption in HIIS was also a factor in the dismissal of Summers, since he set up the project.