Putin’s Warning
“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state's role absolute. 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.
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.
Unfortunately, we are increasingly hearing the argument that the buildup of military spending could solve today's social and economic problems. The logic is simple enough. Additional military allocations create new jobs.
At a glance, this sounds like a good way of fighting the crisis and unemployment. This policy might even be quite effective in the short term. But 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."
-Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, January 28th, 2009
The 5th plank of Communism per the Communist Manifesto is, “Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.”[1]
Putin lived through the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. No wonder he likes gold.[2]