Yuriy Pronko: Sergei Glazyev about the provocations of the Central Bank, Putin’s scolding of ministers and the prospects for the Far East (09/19/2018). Sergei Glazyev: The policy of the Bank of Russia is the main obstacle to economic development Maslyukov will celebrate his birthday with a program

The past few days have been very eventful. The Presidium of the State Council took place in Vladivostok, where some federal ministers disgraced themselves in front of the president. They came to the meeting unprepared and were unable to answer the head of state’s questions on the development of the region.

In addition, the fourth Eastern Economic Forum was held in the capital of Primorye, where agreements worth almost 3 trillion rubles were concluded. In Moscow, at a meeting of the Board of Directors, the Russian Central Bank actually decided to further strangle domestic production, raising the key rate to 7.5%.

We discussed these and other important topics with Advisor to the President, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Glazyev. We met with him in Vladivostok immediately after the end of EEF 2018.

Yuri Pronko. Sergey Yuryevich, I want to ask you a key question: do we understand the role and significance of the Russian Far East in the geopolitical and economic situation that is now developing in the world?

Sergey Glazyev. Of course we do. This can be seen in the speech of Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, who once again emphasized the priority importance of the Far East for Russia, the Russian economy, and this is the leitmotif of the regional, I would say, economic policy of the last, probably, 15 years at least.

It must be said that the Soviet Union did not neglect the Far East. This has always been a priority region both in terms of salary bonuses and in terms of investment. In the 90s, of course, the Far East suffered greatly due to the fact that cooperation ties were broken, and transport costs hit the Far East very hard, which became completely uncompetitive in terms of the production of goods with high added value, since the concentration of scientifically -the production potential of the country in the European part, especially in the center, in the Urals, and to some extent in the Volga region, left the Far East hostage to this long arm of transport transportation.

Therefore, in the 90s there was a very strong structural degradation, a colossal outflow of population, and it was no coincidence that our president said that we are now forced to solve demographic problems, he started with this, and economic and infrastructural ones that have been accumulating for decades. It is clear that this requires large investments, and if we are talking about promising areas of development, we must immediately orient the Far Eastern economy towards promising areas of growth, and here there are more than enough of them.

Because in our neighborhood we have the main center of economic development of the world, and a unique combination of our neighbors, who form the core of a new technological and new economic structure, show the whole world the most progressive ways of running a modern economy, and lead in the rate of economic growth both in general indicators and and on scientific and technological progress.

Yu.P. Do you mean China and Japan?

S.G. Certainly. It is no coincidence that Abe announced that Japan will have driverless cars by 2020. And this is just one of the directions. And he devoted most of his speech to issues of health and medicine, showing how cooperation in this area helps Russian citizens, among other things.

That is, the heads of state have a common vision regarding cooperation - that we must work together to combine competitive advantages, to connect potentials, and to form a common agenda.

Yu.P. So these countries are such an indicator of overall global development?

S.G. They are leaders in global economic, scientific and technological development. They form the core of a new world economic structure that will ensure economic reproduction for the next 50 years, or even more. And, of course, it is very important for us to participate in this core, not to find ourselves on its periphery, as we unexpectedly found ourselves on the periphery of the American-European system, which we have been subsidizing for a quarter of a century, and have lost, or rather, given our order to our Western partners 2 trillion dollars of exported capital, not to mention billions of tons of raw materials, millions of people, minds who went there to work.

Today we understand well what it means to be on the periphery. And there is nothing more unpleasant than being on the periphery of two centers of economic development at once - one old one, which is leaving, with its insoluble problems, with financial bubbles, and a new one, which is dynamically developing and attracting world capital.

Yu.P. You once told me that we could be torn apart if we do not resolve our internal issues.

S.G. You see, we are being torn apart, one might say, by our Western partners, who are trying, as a counterbalance to our strategic partnership with China and Eurasian integration, to tear apart the post-Soviet space, to push the states formed on the territory of the Union against each other. And Ukraine is an indicative example of what awaits us on the periphery of this American-European, outgoing, I will emphasize again, the old center of global development, which is trying to live at the expense of others, is in a deep crisis, completely hopeless position.

This is a completely different approach. This is the difference between the new economic structure and the fact that, as can be seen from the model of our Eurasian Economic Union, where no one is trying to gut anyone, force them to integrate, as the Americans did with Ukraine, forcing it into the association. with the European Union, the importance of national sovereignty and international law is emphasized; these are not empty words, this is real.

Yu.P. Fundamental difference.

S.G. From these simple fundamental things new collaborations are built. And we are not talking about liberalization, where the strongest win at the expense of the rest. And about harmonization.

Yu.P. Mutually beneficial?

S.G. Mutual benefit, harmonization, reliance on national interests, on national sovereignty. Each country can choose its own configuration of cooperation in the large Eurasian partnership that our president is talking about, and it will be diverse.

Here, the key area of ​​cooperation is joint investment. And not at all rolling everyone into some universal forms of freedom of movement of capital and everything else. Although freedom remains, it is freedom as a conscious necessity, as the classic said. That is, we allow the freedom of movement of goods, capital, and our citizens not just so that global capital can collect the cream, but so that our scientific and production potentials, when combined with each other, provide a combination of competitive advantages. That is, this is not a zero-sum game, as is done in the Western model, but a synergistic effect that is achieved by combining different competitive advantages that are unique in each country.

I was amazed that the heads of five states came to the EEF 2018, this is very important. That is, they thus confirmed the key importance of the Eastern Economic Forum in the formation of a common development policy for Northeast Asia. And within the framework of this general development policy, they are united in the fact that we need a strategic plan, we need a long-term vision, harmonization of interests, as I said, and most importantly - mutual benefit, voluntariness, strict adherence to international law, taking on meaningful obligations , and, of course, mutual trust as the basis for integration.

Yu.P. This can already be felt here, not just mutual interest, but a strategy aimed at integration. Are we actually talking about a new core of the global economy?

S.G. Yes, sure. This core is being formed today before our eyes. Let me emphasize once again, it is distinguished by a wide variety of its components. And your colleague, who chaired the plenary session, mentioned that it was difficult for him to understand how to work with five leaders of completely different states, understanding that they have a different alphabet, perhaps a different idea of ​​protocol, and many other things. But this does not prevent us from thinking, in essence, in the same categories and feeling a common responsibility both for Northeast Asia and for the world as a whole.

As for the new global center of economic growth, it has already been formed. If we take today the combined power of China, Japan, Korea, Russia and Mongolia, the heads of which participated in the forum, then this is much more than the United States and all of North America in general. I think today it is already larger than the European Union plus the United States along with Canada and Mexico.

We can say that this core has formed, and it is important for us not to remain on the periphery of this core; it is very important for us to go together. And here the key to solving this problem is joint development planning. Not only large investment projects in infrastructure development, but also many medium-level, maybe even small-level projects, where people, finding a common language with each other, can form this diverse fabric of cooperation in the most advanced areas of economic development.

I think our head of state absolutely correctly chose the place to demonstrate these capabilities. Russky Island, the Federal Far Eastern University recently built here, which shows the possibility of combining a unique cultural and natural landscape with advanced scientific and technological achievements, with the best models of education, and its call to make Russky Island a model of international cooperation, this is a very precise move that gives us the basis count on the fact that we will still be at the core of the new world.

Yu.P. Sergei Yuryevich, I have no doubt about the agreement between the heads of state, I see that there are relations between Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi, Mr. Putin and Mr. Abe with colleagues from Mongolia and South Korea. But every year, preceding the forum, the president holds a State Council meeting. For two years in a row, the president has literally been tearing apart ministers. I get the impression that in Moscow, as the center, they are not at all aware of the role of the Far East. Year after year the president says: are you going to work at all, do you understand the whole point? I don’t know, perhaps Plenipotentiary Representative Trutnev is reporting the real picture of how the same Ministry of Finance is actually sabotaging the execution of the president’s instructions.

Don’t you think that the problem is not here, but the problem, strange as it may sound, is just thousands of kilometers away, in Moscow?

S.G. Firstly, the fact that the president criticizes ministers is very good. This just proves that the requirements for work here are higher than, perhaps, in Moscow, where we do not see such differences in any case. And this is proof that the head of state demands real work here. With full dedication and understanding of the complexity of the problems that have accumulated for the Far East.

As for the problems, you are absolutely right; they are actually the result of federal macroeconomic policy. Firstly, we cannot talk about any serious development without investment. Investment requires long-term loans, first of all, if we are talking about the private sector, and budgetary allocations if we are talking about infrastructure.

I can say that 15 years ago, when the federal program for the development of the Far East was being formed, the volume of allocations for it, based on approvals from the Ministry of Finance, was reduced by 10 times compared to the applications that were received and summarized from regions and large business entities. A tenfold reduction of the program means its complete emasculation; perhaps some demonstration projects remain, but everything that is expensive goes “to the distant bright future.” That's one problem.

Second problem. On the one hand, the Far Eastern economy is in a seemingly comfortable position next to global centers of advanced development. And the fact that we ourselves began to talk about accelerated development is largely our understanding that the entire region is growing at an accelerated pace.

But still, the Far Eastern enterprises and the production complex itself were formed geographically here, based on cooperation in the Soviet Union, where all these enterprises had a ministry in Moscow and had cooperation partners throughout the vast country. And most of these partners were located in central Russia, in the Urals, perhaps in the Volga region, that is, the European part.

This extended cooperation, of course, creates additional costs, so the form of compensation for these additional costs is in terms of benefits in the priority development territory, in terms of the latest presidential decision that electricity tariffs in the Far East should not be higher than the Russian average , transport transportation should traditionally be subsidized for the regions of the Far East due to the extended communications, as I said. All this requires such a serious art of great responsibility to ensure that all these various tools work so that the competitiveness of farming in the Far East is at least equal to the conditions that exist in China, Korea or Japan.

And today, look at the conditions. We have no loans at all. The interest rate for a loan is much higher than the profitability of enterprises in the Far East. The President said that he additionally instructs the government to allocate 4 billion rubles for the Far East Development Fund. But this, in fact, is only part of the compensation for the potential losses that we incur due to the fact that we do not have loans, due to the fact that the monetary authorities generally do not understand the role of loans in the modern economy and are waging a rather strange fight against inflation by undermining the competitiveness of our entire economy, where the Far East is the most vulnerable place.

Because here, unlike Moscow, there is no gigantic number of large banks, here the work goes through subsidiaries, and in general there are much fewer banks. The financial market has not yet been formed. So the task is not an easy one - to compensate for the negative consequences of federal macroeconomic policy through individual instruments - benefits, targeted allocations, special solutions for cross-subsidizing electricity and transport costs. This is one part of the work that is being done. The other part is carried out by private, including foreign investors, for whom preferential conditions are created.

And these preferential instruments really produce results. Maybe not in all priority development areas. But many of them actually already have quite good investment projects, collected through investments from our neighboring countries. The President named a figure - 30 investment projects, 200 billion rubles, this is only Chinese investment for the Far East. And Xi Jinping announced that a regional development fund was being created with a volume of 100 billion yuan. This is also a very powerful tool, which, since it is a regional development tool, will be focused on, among other things, the opportunities that arise here in the Far East.

And the arrival of foreign investors as the main source of financing capital investments, of course, changes the position of the Far East in the division of labor. On the one hand, it brings it closer to the world center of economic growth; we still need to maintain the connection between the Far East and the European part.

Yu.P. National security.

S.G. Certainly! It is necessary to stimulate such investment projects that are important not only for the regional market, but also for the development of the entire Russian economy, so that the positive effect from these foreign investments, which we expect in the Far East, is for the entire country, so that they work for integration , and not to separate the Far East from the European part.

Yu.P. But President Putin raises the issue of population outflow year after year. That federal departments and ministries are not addressing this issue. This is the third year I have been at the forum, and the third year I have heard the president, who separately, not within the forum, says to the ministers: why can’t you change the situation? Why can't you work out the question? Some ministers do not even hesitate to inform the head of state to his face that they are not ready for a meeting.

S.G. Demographic problems are known to be the most difficult. And in order for people to return to the Far East or come here, not only a positive image of the Far East is required, the same money is required to develop infrastructure, loans in order to develop their business. Some things are working out well, as I already said, in priority development areas; in many, the outflow of population has stopped and an influx is underway.

At the same time, everyone knows that not only Russian citizens work here, but also people from Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, that is, the entire post-Soviet space, and the Eurasian Economic Union. Our friends from neighboring countries come here. And quite a few Chinese and Koreans want to develop their business in the Russian Far East, bringing their technologies, their skills.

For example, the aquaculture center that is being formed in the Primorsky Territory will largely work to export products to China. Naturally, the most advanced technologies are needed here, because this is mass production, and it probably won’t be possible to do without Chinese specialists. Therefore, we need to create a comfortable living environment here for our citizens, first of all, and for visitors, who we need to boost the economy.

We are located in a wonderful place, on Russky Island. But 20 years ago, I remember, according to press reports, soldiers on Russky Island were starving because supplies were not provided, there were no bridges. There was generally an abandoned area here that was needed only by the military. And today here is the most advanced university, at least in terms of capital funds, which is already a center for attracting intelligence from all countries of North-East Asia. We see a population quite happy with life in the form of students, teachers and forum guests.

And Vladivostok, which today forms a single whole with Russky Island, does not give the impression of a deserted city. Walk along the streets of Vladivostok in the evening and you will see that people here know how to both work and relax. So, attractive centers of attraction for people, intelligence, and capital are being formed in the Far East.

You shouldn’t expect that our entire gigantic Far Eastern territory will heal like Hong Kong. We simply do not have such a need. Let's say that Russky Island alone is almost the same area as Hong Kong. But, nevertheless, these growth points are already emerging, and I am sure that the Far East will undergo a positive transformation.

Yu.P. I would like to touch on the federal agenda. Your statement thundered: Sergei Glazyev accused the Central Bank of the collapse of the Russian ruble. Did the journalists go too far? I want to hear first hand.

S.G. It amazes me that they are surprised. After all, if they read the Constitution, it says that the Central Bank is responsible for the stability of the national currency, for its stability. The same is written in the law on the Central Bank. Who else but the Central Bank is responsible for the exchange rate of the national currency. This is his direct and primary responsibility.

Yu.P. Constitutional duty.

S.G. Constitutional duty. Therefore, I am surprised why my next statement on this matter caused such a reaction, such surprise. After all, this free floating of the ruble exchange rate, which the Central Bank has been maintaining for the fourth year, has led to the fact that the exchange rate is formed due to manipulations in the market by speculators.

The Central Bank has given direction to the financial market, which is very highly concentrated. Large speculators work there, attracting money from the United States primarily. We saw from the financial bubble that inflated around the Otkritie group precisely on currency speculation that these manipulations can have a colossal scope, and that in 2014 our ruble fell to 80, then rolled back to 60 and again falls to 80 .

What does this mean? The fact that if the Central Bank had not left the market, but had fixed the ruble exchange rate then at a minimum, at 80, it could have kept it for four whole years. And for four years we would have a normal understanding of investors, what competitive advantages we have, people could plan capital investments, their business, there would be no pandemonium with prices. After all, every time the exchange rate falls, there is an inflationary wave that leads to an increase in import prices and a paradoxical thing happens: the Central Bank first allows speculators to lower the exchange rate to 80, trade immediately reacts by increasing import prices by 30-40%, then the ruble exchange rate rises to 60 , speculators also make money from this, but trading does not reduce prices, this does not happen. There is such a ratchet effect in mechanics, known to all engineers.

Then, when the ruble again rolls from 60 to 80, trade again reacts by increasing import prices. Therefore, even an ordinary housewife understands that if the ruble exchange rate had been kept at the same level these four years, there would not have been these shocks to import prices, and it would have been possible to plan your consumer budget. But the most important thing is that for an economy without a stable exchange rate, no investments are possible, especially in export-oriented industries and those that depend on imports.

Today, our foreign trade dependence and the openness of the Russian economy are so great that it is exchange rate fluctuations that determine inflationary waves. If we used to say that the main factor of inflation is rising costs, today costs are not rising and wages are falling. This means that taxation also does not increase particularly. Natural monopolies forced us to behave a little decently. 80% of inflation is formed by fluctuations in the ruble exchange rate.

How can the Central Bank tell us that it targets inflation, and at the same time the most important factor that determines inflation is left to speculators, realizing, he is not a complete idiot, that speculators in the market, if the Central Bank does not participate in exchange rate setting, take power in your hands. And we saw how it's done.

Yu.P. Or are they in cahoots?

S.G. Any broker today can tell you how the financial market, and the foreign exchange market in particular, is manipulated. After all, despite the fact that after this man-made crisis that the Central Bank gave us 4 years ago, investments have decreased by almost a third. The volume of imports also fell by almost a third in 2014. That is, the demand for foreign currency has objectively decreased, and the volume of currency speculation has increased fivefold.

What does this mean? The fact that exchange rate fluctuations are not determined by the fundamental conditions that people like to talk about, not by demand from the export side of the outside world or from the import side, from our economy, but is determined, first of all, by the manipulations of speculators.

Yu.P. I am actually very glad that you reminded the public, which suddenly remembered, that the Central Bank is responsible for the stability of the national currency.

S.G. When we talk about the disadvantages of a particular policy, we need to understand that it is being carried out because it is beneficial to someone. Such an absurd policy cannot be pursued if it did not have powerful forces that support it. According to my estimates, this free floating of the ruble exchange rate, that is, the manipulation of the exchange rate and speculators, led to the redistribution of income in favor of speculators by approximately 40-50 billion dollars. These people made huge profits.

Yu.P. Colossal money.

S.G. You and I paid by manipulating the ruble exchange rate. We paid with the depreciation of our ruble income and a reduction in investments. All this money flowed into the pockets of currency speculators. And then they did not stay much longer, as the collapse of the Otkritie group showed, in the country; most of the money was taken abroad.

Therefore, the question of who in our monetary authorities is working in collusion with these forces is non-trivial. If such a policy is carried out, then it is paid for. We know who pays. It is paid for by financial speculators. And we know who the regulator is. Regulator - Central Bank. The regulator and speculators are in a state of what I would say is a symbiosis: the speculators know that the regulator will not do anything, and the regulator declares that it does not want and does not want to fulfill its responsibilities to stabilize the ruble exchange rate.

Yu.P. Why not make money on it!

S.G. Let me note that the Central Bank has no problems at all with stabilizing the ruble exchange rate. Because the volume of Russia's foreign exchange reserves exceeds the volume of the monetary base. That is, if the Central Bank, for example, had stabilized the ruble at the level of 2014 after the collapse, then today foreign exchange reserves would have increased by one and a half times compared to the current ones, because the exchange rate would have remained at an underestimated level for a long time.

This means that we would have more exports, less imports, more investments would come to us, because there would be a more competitive advantage of the Russian economy in terms of prices. This means that foreign exchange reserves would increase. And attempts to include interventions without any system mean a reserve policy, as our president said, this is not a policy.

But if we are talking about the long-term interests of macroeconomic stability, we must understand that there are very simple fundamental rules here. The exchange rate level is determined by two fundamental factors, which depend on the competitiveness of the economy and ensure the balance of foreign trade, and speculative factors. If we were guided by fundamental factors, say, by fixing the ruble exchange rate at the level of its fall in 2014, we would play along with export growth, increasing the price competitiveness of our economy and production growth.

If we added to this the expansion of credit emission to finance investments and the expansion of working capital, then the result of such a policy would be economic growth of at least 7% per year. This was shown by the program of Gerashchenko and Primakov in 1998 after the ruble devalued, but they practically managed to fix it and gave the economy money so that enterprises could take advantage of this price competitiveness.

Everything is very simple. If, instead of such simple recommendations, which have been worked out both in our country and abroad, the Central Bank pursues a policy of abandoning its responsibility to ensure exchange rate stability, creating complete chaos and uncertainty in the financial system, then I think this is very beneficial for someone .

Yu.P. One more question. There is a discussion about the need to reduce social contributions for people of pre-retirement age in connection with the changes that will be adopted to raise the retirement age. Business associations in unison prove to the government, and the Ministry of Finance says: no, this will not happen. This is a fundamental question. Will we not get mass unemployment over time both among the young and among people of pre-retirement age?

S.G. As far as I understand, this idea is related to making it easier for employers to finance the wage fund for people of pre-retirement age. I mean, they've already earned their pension anyway, so they shouldn't be subject to the same Social Security tax as young and middle-aged workers. But this differentiation of so-called social contributions, actually social insurance contributions, is generally from the evil one.

I don’t know of another example in the world where a regressive social insurance scale works, when rich people actually pay less into the pension system than those who earn little. Employers pay, but, nevertheless, it turns out that the load on the wage fund of the highly paid elite is significantly lower than that of the general army of workers.

Who is this made for? For top managers who want to save at the expense of the pension system, we see a monstrous distortion of the level of wages, which in no way fits with labor qualifications, responsibility, or basic norms of social justice.

Yu.P. On the other hand, we still see envelopes in businesses.

S.G. Yes, the idea that this regressive social insurance scale would lead to a reduction in shadow wages did not materialize. I'll explain why. This is all the result of primitive dogmatic approaches, based on one point of view - the point of view of big business, including government.

They decided for themselves to remove the tax burden on extremely high salaries. And thus they created an economic mechanism for increasing the salaries of top managers. Look at the salaries our heads of banks and corporations receive. Both private and public. This is unthinkable! Their salaries are hundreds of times higher than those of skilled workers. Are our top managers unique, gods or what? Are they all doing great? No, we see a huge number of failures and wrong decisions.

Yu.P. What is the way out of the situation?

S.G. The way out of the situation is to return everything to normal, based on common sense. Firstly, we do not need any regressive scale, it must be universal. Talk about salaries in envelopes is the result of the degradation of our labor relations. The fact that at one time the Labor Code was adopted, which reduced the position of labor workers to a virtual slave state in production, in the enterprise.

If you don't agree, leave. If you don’t want to receive your salary in envelopes, you won’t receive it at all. This is the Labor Code that was imposed on us, again in the interests of big business, which wanted, instead of the social contract generally accepted in social states between business and labor, to actually reduce labor to the level of slavery, without rights, which can be pushed around and from which any surplus value that can be squeezed out can be squeezed out. Today in our country there are three times more than in European countries, even more than in China, not to mention Korea and Japan.

That is, our degree of squeezing profit from hired workers is the highest in the world. For one ruble of product, for one unit of salary, our worker produces three times more product than in the West. Therefore, the restoration of normal partnership relations between labor and capital is a necessary part of all this work. When they try to pull out individual fragments from an already distorted system of socio-economic regulation, they end up with a Trishka caftan, which becomes completely impossible to wear.

Yu.P. Sergey Yurievich, another topic that worries everyone. Unexpectedly for me, at the Eastern Economic Forum, the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry Sergei Katyrin announced that the additional adjustment - this is not my definition, and the current Cabinet of Ministers - of the tax system will not be completed until the end of this year. Because at least 8 non-tax payments can acquire the status of taxes and enter the Tax Code. What's happening? Do we have a final point in the fiscal burden or will we continue to empty the wallets of the population and business?

S.G. Let's start with the fact that adjusting the system that we have makes no sense at all, because the system is flawed in its basic designs. The tax system that we have formed, let’s be honest, was imposed by the Monetary Fund initially, contrary to the recommendations of many experts, including American ones, who said that you are in vain taking this European system, which with VAT, which will suppress the growth of added value and stimulate the raw material specialization of the economy. We are convinced of this.

This was the IMF recommendation. Given the high inflation just. We managed to introduce our own tool for extracting natural resource rent. In general, the tax system must correspond to the structure of sources of income in the economy. Our main source of income is natural resource rent, especially after the deindustrialization of the 90s and the raw material specialization of our country. It is natural resource rent that provides the lion's share, about two-thirds, of the total national income. Taking into account the scale of natural resource exports that we have.

The most oppressive factor is labor, which we just talked about. Let's not forget that VAT is a tax on labor. Plus social insurance contributions are taxes on labor. What happened to us during all these 25 years? Labor taxes have been increasing all the time. And taxes on excess profits as generated by the population, say, a regressive income tax is the same, when the rich pay a lower tax burden than the poor, a reduction in export duties, and then the abolition of export duties, which were later returned by Primakov, but then again actually canceled, except oil. This is a gift to those who export natural resources and low-processed goods.

Finally, the refusal of environmental payments is a blow to the health of the population, that is, again, all the so-called tax maneuvers of recent years and all tax changes over the course of 25 years led to one thing - the rich paid less and less. Unearned sources of income remained increasingly in the pockets of the people who controlled them, and the main burden of taxes fell on ordinary working people.

And this distortion has largely led to the colossal inefficiency of the entire income system of our economy. Superprofits, which were increasingly evaded by taxes due to the abolition of export duties, due to the abolition of environmental payments, due to a flat income tax scale, and due to a regressive scale of social insurance payments, were increasingly taken abroad to offshore areas. Because these people, in general, don’t need that much money, and I note that the income tax on enterprises in the real sector also turned out to be much higher than the income tax on speculators, who actually escaped taxation.

That is, all this activity, which is created by labor and real capital, is taxed much higher in our country today than in other countries.

Yu.P. And the state is making it worse. He's still going to raise it.

S.G. Despite the fact that the role of these sources of income is much lower than it should be in a normal economy. And the excess profit that is generated from rental sources, from speculation, flows offshore. The Russian tax system is a paradise for the offshore oligarchy. A paradise for speculators. But life is very difficult for working people and life is very difficult for entrepreneurs who work in the real sector of the economy, with their rather moderate incomes.

Therefore, we need to radically change the tax system. That is, it is necessary to return to the taxation of natural resource rent and export duties, and the tax on additional income and other instruments for the extraction of natural resource rent must be restored to the tax system. It is necessary to return taxation in the speculative sector to a normal average level, where today taxes are generally symbolic. Why does the real sector pay income taxes of more than 20 percent, while speculators pay no more than 6 percent?

We need to introduce the Tobin tax, which was recommended 50 years ago to harmonize the distribution of income so that speculators pay a special tax on swinging the market, impose an indirect tax on speculative transactions, and return environmental payments taking into account the priority of the quality of life. And then we will receive completely different incomes. And most importantly, they will work for economic development, because those tax benefits that offshore oligarchs de facto have, be they raw materials workers or speculators, they do not work, their income is for the interests of the country, they take it offshore, and Every year we lose 100 billion a year in exported capital, half of which does not return.

Yu.P. A colossal amount.

Yu.P. Concluding the conversation, Sergei Yuryevich, I want to believe that the city of Vladivostok, the region, and Russia as a whole will be able to realize unprecedented potential. In your opinion, will we see a completely different reality on Russky Island in 5-10 years? A truly powerful step forward?

SG. We will definitely see a different reality. Because if we take the steps that the president is talking about, demanding from the government not just more attention to the Far East, but a systematic policy of economic development, then we will live no worse than in Japan, in Korea, and will be on par with China according to the pace of economic development.

If we do nothing, we will fall deeper and deeper into the periphery of this new center of economic growth. This means that people will move from here to China to work, and the most low-income activities related to the exploitation of natural resources, of which we have an unlimited supply, will remain here. That is, we will continue to degrade, and the barrier between this new center of economic growth and us will increase all the time. The gap, more precisely, will increase.

After all, this gap is already visible across the Russian-Chinese border in the Far East with the naked eye. What happened on that side of the border 30 years ago and what we see now - we have been marking time for 30 years, our infrastructure is wearing out. And there cities grew like mushrooms. And today the salary there is higher than ours. And people are starting to move there, we couldn’t think about this even 10 years ago. Therefore, 100% the situation will change, and I would like it to change for the better.

Yu.P. Everything depends on us.

Sergei Glazyev is the most likely candidate for the post of head of the Bank of Russia, vacated in the summer, Reuters, citing a high-ranking source. According to the agency, Glazyev’s candidacy suits both President Putin and Prime Minister Medvedev. Until now, first deputy chairman of the Central Bank Alexei Ulyukaev, former Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, and head of VTB24 Bank Mikhail Zadornov have filled this post. The short list also included the names of Deputy Chairman of the Board of Interros Andrey Bugrov and the head of Sberbank German Gref.

Sergei Glazyev literally a month ago gave the public a report in which he argued that the program promises made by the president were impossible to fulfill due to the dependence of the Russian economy on foreign money. “The $1.5 trillion issued over the past 2 years [by the US Federal Reserve] is used to lend to debt pyramids and purchase real assets around the world,” the report said. This process, according to the authors of the document, is accompanied by the organization of coups d'etat and the use of military force against weak but resource-rich countries.

Glazyev's name appeared among candidates for the post of head of the Central Bank some time ago, says a government official. And his appointment does not look so incredible. Firstly, Putin is a lover of unexpected decisions. Secondly, all the other candidates do not suit the top two officials.

Alexei Kudrin, obviously, is not happy with the prime minister: by taking the post of head of the Central Bank, he will have the opportunity to “make a laughing stock of the government every day,” a former high-ranking official tells Forbes. Mikhail Zadornov, who is being promoted to this post by the head of VTB Andrey Kostin, does not have the simplest character, and German Gref even has the habit of “slamming doors,” the interlocutor continues.

Alexei Ulyukaev, whose appointment could be the most painless from the point of view of continuity of monetary policy, is not liked by Putin, the ex-official says. In addition, Ulyukaev is not very successful in managing inflation expectations - experts have their own idea of ​​what inflation will be, and do not base their forecasts on statements and hints from the Bank of Russia, on whose behalf Alexey Ulyukaev speaks more often than others. Meanwhile, this is a key skill in inflation targeting.

However, Glazyev also does not yet look like a person capable of influencing the opinion of experts. At least his scandalous report received completely unflattering reviews from experts. In particular, the head of Rusnano, Anatoly Chubais, wrote in his blog: “A person who seriously claims that money emission in the USA and Europe is carried out with the aim of seizing Russian assets on the cheap, if he is healthy, can be anything but an economist.”

The financiers interviewed by Forbes were shocked by the news of Glazyev’s possible appointment. Chief economist of AFK Sistema Evgeny Nadorshin told Forbes that he expected someone closer to the financial sector. “It always seemed to me that his [Glazyev’s] specialization was of a slightly different nature,” he said. Another financier, upon hearing the news about Glazyev’s possible appointment as head of the Central Bank, sighed (“it’s good that I don’t have a bank”) and predicted a drop in the RTS index to 1000 points within a year.

Sergei Ignatiev's term of office expires in June 2013. This is his third consecutive term in this chair, and this is the last term allowed by law.

04/09/2018 \ Interview

Advisor to the President on Economic Issues, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Glazyev called the Russian monetary authorities “monetary fetishists.” The Central Bank, according to Glazyev, took almost all the money from the Russian economy.

The demand for economic reforms is obvious. Scientists, economists, and entrepreneurs discuss various options for the development of events and offer their strategies. We learned from the Presidential Adviser on Economic Issues, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergei Glazyev, which of the things proposed by the expert community will be included in the “road map”.

Sergey Glazyev: Everyone feels the approaching time to choose which path the development of our economy will take next. The future depends entirely on the decisions that will be made now. We, as specialists in economic science, do not see any prospects for continuing the current macroeconomic policy; they simply do not exist. Even the fact that it was possible to bring down inflation by freezing demand and by reducing household incomes - all experts understand that this cannot be called a success, since this does not result in either an increase in investment or an increase in demand.

We can be in a stagnant depressive state until the next shock, which will inevitably follow, because the price for such a crude and primitive compression of final demand and limiting the amount of money, sucking money out of the economy, let me remind you that the Central Bank took away almost all the money that was issued by the previous leadership of the Central Bank, 8 trillion rubles were withdrawn from the economy. And in the next three years, the Central Bank announced that it will continue to withdraw money from the economy through two instruments: deposits, where commercial banks can keep their money at a fairly high interest rate, close to the key rate, and bonds, which are also quite highly profitable.

That is, the Central Bank thus creates an artificial barrier that prevents the flow of money from the financial sector to the real sector. Why take risks if you can simply put your free money in the Central Bank, and at the expense of the printing press it will give you interest.

The price for such a primitive policy is a sharp drop in investment activity, which we have been observing for four years in a row. In this situation, an increase in technological lag is inevitable; we are already technologically behind advanced countries. Even from neighboring countries. Technological backwardness entails a decline in competitiveness, a decline in competitiveness leads to devaluation of the ruble, and devaluation of the ruble causes a new wave of inflation. We have stepped on this currency rake many times already, destroyed most of our scientific and technical potential, a huge number of people left with ideas that are being implemented in other countries, for a banal reason - because there is no money.

As the Prime Minister said, hold on. But business does not want to hold on, minds do not want to hold on without money, they are leaving the country. Today we see graduates of Moscow University in key faculties - in information technology, in bioengineering - almost completely leaving abroad due to the fact that our financial and economic system does not provide young specialists, engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs with access to credit resources. And without credit there can be no economic growth, because credit is a mechanism for advancing growth in a modern economy, and interest on credit is a tax on innovation.

In a situation where our Central Bank artificially created a credit famine and stopped practically the transmission mechanism of the banking system, including state banks today do not invest particularly in the economy, the share of investments in the real sector does not exceed 5% of the assets of our commercial banks

Yu.P.: But at the same time they still talk about profit.

S.G.: This is the second problem. Within the framework of the current policy, we do not see prospects for economic growth. And the goals that the president set to ensure an increase in the volume of economic activity by 1.5 times within six years cannot be realized within the framework of macroeconomic activities and the monetary policy that is being pursued today. Which, in fact, the government admits, the apologists of this economic course admit, proving that we will develop by 1-2% per year. But there are opportunities for the breakthrough that the president is talking about. They are obvious.

Yu.P.: Can you identify them?

S.G.: Of course, we propose to implement a mixed development strategy consisting of several components. The first component is the rapid growth of a new technological structure and the modernization of the economy on its basis. The basic directions of this new technological order, which shapes the modern technological revolution, are now well understood. They grow at a rate of 20 to 80% per year, on average this structure grows at a rate of 35% per year, becoming a powerful engine of economic growth. These are nanotechnologies, bioengineering technologies, information and communication technologies, additive technologies.

Thanks to the introduction of these technologies, there is a sharp increase in production efficiency, costs are reduced, and the possibilities for producing new high-quality products are expanded. And if we invest in this new set of technologies that will modernize the entire economy, then we will automatically ensure economic growth. Moreover, in this core there are double-digit rates, from 20 to 80% in various areas of annual increase in production and a decrease in inflation, because the introduction of these new technologies entails a reduction in costs. For example, switching to LEDs means saving on electricity by 10 times, nanomaterials allow you to save metals.

Yu.P.: Our viewers, when they hear the word “nano,” remember one joint-stock company, which this year seems to be going to pay dividends to its only owner, the state, for the first time in 10 years.

S.G.: We will not talk about how decisions are made in the current management system. The main problem is that no one is responsible for the results of the work. We see comparative examples. Rusnano invested money in a plant for the production of polycrystalline silicon and in the modernization of this plant. The plant is lying down today, almost a billion dollars have been spent, American partners have supplied unusable equipment, metal, according to the Accounts Chamber, but the same plant in the city of Zaporozhye in Ukraine is flourishing at the expense of private money with 5 times less volume, making gigantic profits. Therefore, the fact that there is no accountability mechanism in our management system does not mean that development policies cannot be pursued.

Yes, if we want development policy to be effective and efficient, it is necessary that people who are entrusted with public money and powers are responsible for the results of their work. If the results are failed, this does not mean that the direction is failed. Nanotechnology today is revolutionizing engineering, structural materials, and electrical engineering. And the scope of application of nanotechnology is expanding on average in advanced countries by 35% per year. And just as we produced LEDs in laboratory conditions, today we continue to import them, doing only packaging.

This, of course, is ineffective management; to overcome this inefficiency, it is necessary to introduce mechanisms of strict personal responsibility for work results. And this requires strategic planning, which will also cover a targeted program for modernizing the economy on the basis of a new technological structure. This is the first strategy.

The second strategy, we call it dynamic catch-up. It is less concentrated, it concerns those industries where we are close to the advanced technical level, where we simply need money, long-term loans in order to finance the activation of our scientific and technical potential, bringing the relevant sectors of the economy to the advanced level of competition. For example, the aviation industry. Over the past 20 years, we have abandoned this industry, civil aircraft construction. Having a full line of aircraft, of all sizes and classes, today we fly foreign ones. Why are they better?

I can say that 20 years ago they were no better. Our Tu-204, Il-96, on which government officials fly, are not inferior to foreign ones in terms of safety, efficiency, noise, and all indicators. We were unable to reach the correct production scale. Why? Because the same policy of the monetary authorities did not allow the creation of long-term loan mechanisms for the purchase of an aircraft. All over the world, airplanes are bought by banks. For the bank this is an investment. The bank buys the aircraft and leases it to the airline. It is very rare that we see a situation where an airline directly purchases an aircraft because the airline operates on the cost of operating the aircraft. And the investors are big capital, banks.

In a rather strange way, it turns out that our banks, Russian and state banks, instead of buying domestic aircraft and organizing the leasing of these aircraft for Russian airlines, buy imported ones and give them to the same companies that go bankrupt, say Transaero, Despite government support, we still suffer losses. Plus, the Eurasian Commission, at the suggestion of a Russian member of the council of this commission, decides to provide benefits for the import of foreign aircraft, which are exempt from both VAT and import duties. And the volume of subsidies that we provide at the expense of the state for the import of aircraft has already reached $5 billion.

Therefore, with such a policy, when we do not give loans to our aircraft manufacturers, and Russian state banks do not buy them, and all the power of the state in the form of the banking sector, plus benefits for the import of imported equipment, is to the detriment of the domestic aircraft industry. That is, this is an example of a policy that is not just failed, but sabotage, I think. If we had oriented the financial flows managed by the state to support our aircraft, I assure you, we would have been flying Russian planes a long time ago.

What is aircraft manufacturing? This is an industry with a record multiplier effect. 1 ruble that we spend in aircraft production is expanded tenfold across all technological chains. This is a cooperation of thousands of enterprises. These are structural materials, engines, avionics, and so on.

Dynamic catch-up is the second strategy. There may not be many industries such as aircraft manufacturing, but they all have a huge multiplier effect, where we are close to the advanced world level. Finally, the third area that our government is trying to do is catch-up development. Let's say, industrial assembly of foreign cars. It is believed that we ourselves are no longer able to produce high-quality, world-class cars, so we invite foreign corporations to whom we give certain preferences, and they assemble aircraft for us with some kind of localization that are sold in Russia.

Finally, the fourth direction, which is endlessly talked about, is import substitution and increasing added value based on our raw materials. It’s no secret that rather than selling oil, it’s better to engage in petrochemicals; per 1 ton of oil, we will receive 10 times more revenue from petrochemicals than by selling crude oil. The same goes for gas, wood, and so on. For all raw materials, most of which we export, it is more profitable to produce products with high added value, the sales of which are not limited by OPEC quotas, and which, in principle, are not limited.

Yu.P.: Why isn't this being done?

S.G.: Because very powerful forces have formed in our economy, in Russia and abroad, which are lobbying for the preservation of the current macroeconomic policy. This policy is primitive, it is archaic, it does not correspond to world experience. Because the world has been working on fiat money for 100 years, no one in the world is reducing the money supply to suppress inflation, this is considered absurd. On the contrary, in all the leading countries of the world, the task of the authorities is to expand the money supply in order to stimulate economic activity, increase investment, increase employment, and so on.

Look at the policies of the US Federal Reserve or the People's Bank of China, the methods are different, but the goals are the same. Money is a tool. But here, our would-be monetarists have made a fetish out of money. What our monetary authorities do with money is the fetishization of money, which becomes an end in itself. Our entire economic policy has the goal in itself to increase the price of money. What is inflation reduction? This is an increase in the price of money. And the policy is very primitive in this regard. They treat money as a commodity, as a kind of analogue of gold, and they believe that the less we throw this commodity onto the market, the more expensive it will be. That is, the less money there is, the greater its purchasing power and the lower inflation. It seems so primitively simple. But the devil is in the details. And simplicity here is worse than theft. It is obvious.

Let me emphasize once again that money is a tool, not gold bars in a modern economy. Secondly, the main factor in reducing inflation is not a reduction in the amount of money, but an increase in production efficiency, cost reduction, the creation of new technological capabilities, and scientific and technological progress in the modern world is at the same time the main factor in economic growth and the main factor in reducing inflation. Therefore, if we invest money correctly in order to achieve the implementation of new technologies, we need to make investments, we need to finance innovations, conduct R&D, and only after some time, you will get a return if you go through the valley of death, where more than 90 percent of all scientists die -technical ideas.

So, all this passage through the product life cycle brings profit only at the phase of large-scale commercial production. Before that, you need to spend money. First, launch a product into prototypes, improve it depending on market requirements, create pilot production, and during this time you have to spend quite a lot of money, which together constitute the initiating impulse necessary to bring any new product to the market. All this is done through credit. Nowhere in the modern world are new technologies created at the expense of businessmen’s own money; they always take out loans, share risks with banks, banks share risks with the state, therefore, in any successfully developing country in the world there is targeted management of cash flows. And credit emission is the most important tool for advancing economic growth.

Yu.P.: Will these arguments be heard?

S.G.: I have already mentioned that this policy is opposed by those who are interested in maintaining the current status quo. Who is interested in this money fetishism, who makes super profits on expensive money? Take a look around. Experts say that profits are declining. But it is not decreasing everywhere; among speculators it is increasing. The first beneficiary, as it is now fashionable to say, of this policy is speculators on the Moscow Exchange. They do nothing except manipulate the ruble exchange rate and the movement of securities. The Central Bank does not deal with them; it left the ruble to float freely. And if something floats freely in the market, the movement of this money is controlled by those who shape the flow. And the flow in the money market is formed by large speculators who have access to insider information and influence the very policy of the Moscow Exchange. And plus, the Central Bank, in order to keep these speculators in the market so that they do not leave and collapse the ruble, provides them with ultra-high yields on Russian instruments, including bonds of the Bank of Russia itself.

It turns out that in order to appease speculators who can rock the market and bring down the ruble again, we guarantee a return of 20-40%, the so-called “carry trade”. That is, we artificially keep speculators in the market by guaranteeing an extremely high income. What is the source of this income? The same national income of the country that should have gone to investment. Instead, it goes into the pockets of speculators. Another piquancy is that among these speculators 70% are foreigners. Mainly the same Americans who impose sanctions against us and continue to wage a hybrid war of destruction. Here is the first group of beneficiaries, it is visible to the naked eye.

The second group is not hiding either. Look at the reports of Russian state banks. Sberbank made crazy profits. Almost a trillion rubles. Due to what? This is pumping money out of the real sector of the economy. When a bank lends money to a company at an interest rate that exceeds its profitability, it means that it is sucking working capital out of the company. Through interest on loans, wages, which do not grow, also go away. To stay afloat, you have to save on everything.

Therefore, on the one hand, banks suck money from the real sector of the economy, destimulate economic activity and depress economic growth, making it impossible, because not a single sane businessman would take money from a bank for a percentage that exceeds the expected rate of profit. Therefore, first investments collapse, then working capital is reduced, and enterprises run aground.

And then bankruptcy and redistribution of property begins. Basically healthy businesses are victims of this monetary policy of ultra-high interest rates. Therefore, bankers are always interested in expensive money. Because the bank margin allows them, essentially, out of thin air, or more precisely, at the expense of working capital in the production sector, to receive excess profits. And the absurdity of the situation lies in the fact that our state-owned banks today are the absolute leaders in the world in terms of banking margins.

Bank margins in Japan, Europe and America are negative today. Japanese banks subsidize industry, also in Europe. And Central Banks are supporting these commercial banks that would otherwise simply collapse. I assure you that if the leadership of the Bank of Russia were moved to Japan, the Japanese economy would immediately stop. She would simply collapse. It's the same in Europe.

In other countries of the world, money is used as a tool for financing investments through long-term loans. And the purpose of monetary policy, if we remember the classics, is to create conditions and ensure investment growth. Today, no matter which country you take - China, Korea, Japan, Europe - everyone is concerned about one thing - the growth of investments in fundamentally new technologies that carry out technological evolution and provide that very breakthrough to a new technological structure for a new wave of economic growth. We see this Kondratiev wave, which is now gaining strength. The President also talks about this. The scientific community and business understand how to achieve these goals.

I said four strategies, each of these strategies had double-digit growth rates. The growth of the new technological structure is 30% per year on average. Dynamic catch-up, say, the transition to domestic aircraft, is a significant increase in production output in this industry, which will pull others along with it. Increasing the degree of processing of raw materials also significantly increases the volume of products. That is, today we have no restrictions in the economy either on raw materials, or on scientific and production potential, or on capacity, half of which is due to the fact that there is no money for working capital, no loans, or on intellectual potential that is leaving abroad.

Yu.P.: The most important thing is missing - sound policy.

S.G.: Because these forces, which are interested in the high cost of money, in the absence of any responsibility, they block all the goals that the president sets. For example, they united in their ranks to block the law on strategic planning. Indeed, in order to implement development policies, it is necessary to introduce a mechanism of responsibility. Each management subject must clearly understand what he must do and be responsible for achieving results.

For example, the state banks we talked about. Their goal is to make a profit? No. Their task is to provide loans for economic development. This is why the state keeps them. What's going on? The transmission mechanism, which determines the meaning of banks in the economy, which ensure the transformation of savings into investments, is simply completely disabled and blocked by the policy of the Central Bank. Banks have turned into offices for sucking money from the real sector, pumping it into the speculative sector and transferring it abroad. Therefore, we are losing $100 billion every year, and it is believed that this is the price to pay for macroeconomic stability, which will end in another attack on the rake that we talked about.

Together, they ensured that the law, which was adopted at the initiative of the president four years ago, on strategic planning was postponed until this year. But this year, no one is saying that it needs to be launched, we need to learn to live by it, we need to accept these strategic plans and be responsible for their implementation. The special investment contracts that the president spoke about are a very promising tool for macroeconomic development and strategic planning. Because planning in modern conditions is not the directive plans that were previously formed in the State Planning Committee, it is the result of negotiations between the state and business with the participation of science, so that science helps determine these strategic priority areas of economic development, where colossal returns with double-digit growth can be obtained.

The scientific community, together with business and under the leadership of the state, forms indicative plans, which are formalized in special investment contracts, which the president called for moving to 4 years ago. In these special investment contracts, business undertakes to introduce new technologies, create jobs, expand production, increase efficiency, and the state undertakes to provide appropriate macroeconomic and local regional conditions for this, including lending to these projects. And everyone bears their share of responsibility. The business will be required to return all benefits if plans are disrupted. And the state is obliged to compensate for losses if it does not do what it has undertaken. This fabric of special investment contracts should precisely determine the mechanism of indicative planning.

Yu.P.: Is this also blocked?

S.G.: This is practically non-existent now. Moreover, the instrument for supporting these special investment contracts will be the so-called special refinancing instrument. These are preferential loans that the Central Bank had to create and, through a special channel for refinancing commercial banks under government guarantees, bring to the real sector. According to the document of the main directions of monetary policy, this channel has been declared unnecessary, it will be eliminated, and in its place there will be deposits and bonds of the Central Bank, which will, as I already said, suck money out of the economy, and not inject it.

Yu.P.: Can you explain to our viewers in clear language how this problem with falling income can be mitigated?

S.G.: I believe that the instrument for assembling a new economic policy should be the very law on strategic planning, which was adopted on the initiative of the president, and for which we need today, with the help of the Academy of Sciences, to complete the development of a scientific and technological forecast. Again, with the help of the Academy of Sciences, to form a spatial scheme for the location of productive forces for the long-term period, to determine priority directions. And further, involving business associations and large corporations in joint work, relying on state corporations, to develop a mechanism for implementing these priorities in target programs, special investment contracts, and public procurement systems.

That is, the entire toolkit of economic policy should be focused on increasing investment in promising areas of scientific and technological progress. It is necessary to bring monetary policy into line with modern times, based on the fact that money is a lending instrument, and not a fetish in the form of gold coins, over which Kashchei languishes. It is necessary to take away this function of monetary policy from Kashchei and subordinate monetary policy to the tasks of financing economic development, first of all, the technological breakthrough that the president spoke about.

There is one fundamental difficulty, this is the mechanism of responsibility. The people who will replace the current languishing Kashchei in this management system must be competent, must understand the laws of modern economic development, must have experience in management work and must be ready to take personal responsibility for the fact that the targeted money that will be aimed at financing innovation and investment in modernization, will not be stolen, will not disappear, but will be spent in accordance with the goals and objectives that are recorded in strategic plans and supported by special investment contracts and indicative plans.

In reality, everything is not so complicated. As for the scientific and technical forecast, consider that the Academy of Sciences has it. We've been working on it all these years. The only question is its actualization. There are legal forms for this. This is a special refinancing instrument, this is the Law on Strategic Planning, special investment contracts, that is, the forms have also been worked out. The question comes down to the easiest task - organizing cash flow. Because growing a new enterprise, creating or developing a new technology is a complex matter, and not every technology we can develop today, and not everyone can do it.

As Vladimir Ilyich said, we have reached a situation where any cook can manage the Central Bank. These are people who do not understand the laws of economic development, who have no scientific achievements behind them, no authority in the scientific community, but only primitive dogmatic ideas behind which they hide from responsibility. Accountability is the main element that we lack in the management system, and the implementation of which will require political will.

In order to fulfill the presidential goal of a breakthrough to the advanced level of economic development, we need people who will take personal responsibility for the implementation of this breakthrough. Not just for macroeconomic indicators, what inflation will be, but for achieving specific economic development goals. This requires a combination of competence, professionalism and responsibility. If such a new management team can be assembled, then I assure you that we will reach economic growth rates of at least 8% per year within a year. The government of Primakov and Gerashchenko showed how this can be done. They actually brought the economy out of a tailspin in three months, and it grew at a rate of 1% per month. This means 15% per year.

Yu.P.: That is, there has already been a precedent in the history of the country.

S.G.: We participated in this work. The Academy of Sciences did not directly lend a shoulder to the government of Primakov and Gerashchenko, but it was in demand, and we formed plans together, we discussed mechanisms, insured if something went wrong. This is what responsibility is for.

Y.P.:. The struggle will be tough in these days, weeks until a new vector of development for the country is determined, because those you talked about have something to lose.

S.G.: War in our conditions is no longer, unfortunately, a clarification of meaning. What is happening in the public consciousness today is a kind of hoax. They make a play where there are some characters with one point of view and other characters with a different point of view. On the one hand, they are trying to create conditions for economic growth, and we are on the other. That is, two points of view. Maybe three. And each of them has the right to exist.

It seems that there is no such concept as “economic science”, there is no knowledge at all about how to develop the economy, there is no world experience, but there are some philosophers in one camp, philosophers in another camp, they argue about how to achieve the best result for the common good, and the question comes down to a choice between ideas. Not really. It's a matter of choosing interests. In whose interests is economic policy pursued?

If it must be carried out, as President Putin declares, in the interests of economic development, in order to make an economic breakthrough, we need knowledge. We need the Academy of Sciences, business, technology, and development management. And if we are satisfied with everything, and the party of the status quo wins, which says: all your arguments about development and breakthrough are some kind of wish divorced from reality, we will do what we know how to do here on the spot. What can they do? They know how to pump money out of the real sector and stuff it into their pockets through speculation.

If this public continues to be under control, then there will be no control, because they do not need any control. They do not want to take responsibility, even with the tasks set by the head of state, they do not agree, they are sabotaged. That is, instead of real work, instead of figuring out ways to manage economic development, creating ways to manage economic development, there is demagoguery.

Yu.P.: So this is being done meaningfully?

S.G.: Yes! Demagoguery, which tries to present the whole matter in such a way that there are different points of view. Two lawyers - three points of view. In economics, everything is actually easy to calculate. Especially if we are already dealing with established development trajectories, with international experience, and remember our own experience. Economics loves counting, and we can show with numbers that the tasks set by President Putin are absolutely realistic. We can achieve even higher growth rates if we rely on an understanding of the patterns of economic development and mechanisms for stimulating and supporting economic growth through the creation of an effective and responsible management system.

The Russian Central Bank continues to lose gold and foreign exchange reserves as a result of operations on the international financial market. After the unsuccessful conversion of euros into dollars in 2017, which resulted in losses of $4.5 billion, the Central Bank decided to invest in the Chinese yuan at a record level. And again he suffered billions of losses due to exchange rate differences.

By the beginning of April this year, the share of the Chinese currency in Russian gold and foreign exchange reserves reached a historical record of 5%, or $23 billion.

The Central Bank began buying yuan in the middle of last year: in the second and third quarters it invested $3.9 billion in them, and in the fourth quarter it bought about another $8 billion. The Central Bank carried out the bulk of the conversion transactions - $11 billion - in January - March, when the yuan exchange rate was near record levels for 2 years - between 6.2 and 6.3 yuan per dollar.

Nabiullina’s team bet on China, but the market moved in the opposite direction: against the backdrop of a trade war with the United States, which caused an outflow of capital from the Middle Kingdom, the yuan began to rapidly fall in price.

During the second quarter, it lost 5.2% of its value, and by the end of the third it fell another 3.6%.

Experts’ calculations show that as a result, in total for April – September, the Central Bank’s investments in yuan depreciated by 9.4%, which brought losses of $2.162 billion.

More than a strange situation. The year is not over yet, and they have already lost almost $2.2 billion. The previous year was a loss of $4.5 billion. And this is only on currency speculation. And if you look at the final document for 2017, the entire management of the Bank of Russia should be nominated for the Nobel Prize in Economics.

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Sergey Glazyev told Tsargrad why the Central Bank showed negative profits, read, losses.

Sergey Glazyev. Because they stopped lending to the economy and receiving interest on refinancing commercial banks. Their losses occurred due to the fact that, instead of giving money to the economy, they have been withdrawing it for the second year. They withdraw funds through deposit operations, attracting money for deposit at a rate close to the key rate, and issue Bank of Russia bonds. In total, they have already seized more than 3 trillion rubles. This, I believe, is nonsense in the field of monetary policy, when the Central Bank, instead of giving loans, as is done all over the world, withdraws. Because it seems to him that there is, as they put it, a structural surplus of liquidity in the market.

For the common man, I can explain what this means. They think the banks have too much money and need to be tied up. Why, however, is unclear. Maybe they are afraid that this money will go to the foreign exchange market and take part in speculation against the ruble. In any case, from the point of view of common sense, it is clear that if the Central Bank offers to put money on deposit at more than 6% per annum, why should commercial banks even look for investment projects?

Yuri Pronko. Risk-free project. I put it at 6% and got a return.

S.G. The question is, due to what. Due to the issue of money, the very thing that they constantly object to. That is, they can issue money in order to borrow money and take it out of the economy. But for some reason they can’t give. If they did not do these operations, perhaps many commercial banks would begin to take risks and invest this seemingly excess money in the development of the real sector of the economy. How banks should do this, based on the so-called transmission mechanism of the banking system.

Suppose oil workers have a lot of money, maybe they don’t know where to invest it - they keep it in banks on deposit. Banks must transform this money into investments in other sectors of the economy.

Yu.P. But this transformation does not happen.

S.G. Of course not. Why doesn't it happen? Because the Central Bank is raising the interest rate. Because if he attracts money on deposits at 6%, this means that you will never find a loan at less than 6%. Why would anyone take a risk if they can just give it to the Central Bank for 6%?

Yu.P. What about currency manipulation? Colossal losses. How can you enter at the highs and then not predict?

S.G. Over these four years, the Central Bank has withdrawn more than 10 trillion from the economy. This is money that was supposed to work in the economy. They confiscated them. And today they have become a net borrower. In fact, the Central Bank has become one of the main brakes on economic development. Because it blocks the flow of money into those sectors where the interest rate is lower than the key one.

Therefore, if you have an objective disproportion in the economy, incomes in the oil and chemical-metallurgical complex are off the charts, as we know. Because these revenues are not subject to export duties, there are no payments for pollution. That is, they are extremely profitable due to natural rent. And mechanical engineering has a 5% profitability. Theoretically, the banking system should transform this excess money in export-oriented sectors into investments where there is not enough money today.

But due to the fact that the Central Bank has set the minimum interest rate at a level that exceeds the profitability of the manufacturing industry, this money will never get there. Therefore, we are dealing with such a stagnant situation, from the point of view of deepening imbalances in the economy. Because market mechanisms for transforming income in profitable areas into low-profit ones, which need to expand, develop and then make a profit, do not work. The state doesn't do this either. That's why we have such fluxes. Raw material dependence, in the sense of raw material hypertrophy of the economy, and we depend on income from raw materials.

Because the manufacturing industry cannot process its own raw materials, since they do not even have the opportunity to attract loans for working capital to load existing capacities. This is actually such a depressive management model, in which the rich get richer, they do not know what to do with the money. And the most innovative industries, which need loans to introduce innovations and stimulate scientific and technological progress, cannot do this because credit is not available to them.

With this policy, we have today lost the main instrument for financing innovation and investment – ​​long-term loans. Those areas in which there is money, they do not need loans, they have excess money. And those with which we associate scientific and technological progress, primarily mechanical engineering, knowledge-intensive industry, they do not have access to credit.

I note that Sean Peter, a specialist in scientific and technological progress, whom, unfortunately, these gentlemen do not read and, perhaps, do not even know who he is, wrote back in the 40s of the last century that the interest on a loan is This is a tax on innovation. That says it all. As for the problems in managing foreign exchange reserves, well, this is simply a sign of unprofessionalism. I wouldn’t make some kind of tragedy out of this, such things happen.

Yu.P. But the amounts are serious!

S.G. It is a pity that, unfortunately, those experienced financiers who worked at Vnesheconombank of the USSR are no longer in service today. Vnesheconombank of the USSR was the main player in the world currency market. And for some reason they worked with profit all the time. Although they did not have the mathematical capabilities to predict and assess risks that could be used today. So here we can only shrug our shoulders...

Yu.P. But nevertheless, the amount is already quite substantial. 6.7 billion rubles, if we consider the years 17-18 on a consolidated basis. More than. These are losses of the Central Bank.

S.G. There are some systemic things that may not generate income or even generate losses at some point. For example, we now have to get rid of the dollar. Because it is risky to hold both assets and reserves in dollars.

Yu.P. I have a feeling that dedollarization leads to yuanization, to the fact that the euro becomes our main currency. All this news is that cash euros are being imported into Russia by mechanical sections.

S.G. We have systemic risk associated with dollars. That is, tomorrow all dollars could simply be reset to zero by the Americans. Technically this is easy to do. And we will not be able to protect the savings of either our citizens, who are stored in dollars, or government agencies, which have accumulated large amounts of money in dollars by the same oil corporations. Therefore, we must get rid of dollars as quickly as possible. Because the risk of huge losses is much higher than the interest rate. Even if the profitability of dollar instruments is higher than that of yuan instruments, let’s assume.

But we must understand that the dollar is a toxic currency today, at least for us. And keeping money in dollars, even if it brings a relatively higher income, may turn out to be many times more expensive.

Yu.P. Sergey Yurievich, won’t it turn out that the euro will become a toxic currency?

S.G. The next step, of course, is that European countries are very dependent on the United States, we see that. And they simply repeat American sanctions. Therefore, switching from the dollar to the euro is only a transit option for a literally short period of time. Until the wave of sanctions reaches Europe. It's literally, maybe two or three weeks to six months. Because collective decisions are slower in Europe.

Yu.P. Maybe the ruble should be made a stable investment currency? A serious currency, not what we see.

S.G. This is, of course, the main task of the Central Bank according to the Constitution, to make the ruble a stable currency.

Yu.P. This is all already written down.

S.G. As for yuan instruments, yes, the yuan is today the only reliable currency for us among the world’s reserve currencies. The IMF, as you know, included the yuan in the basket of world currencies. Moreover, this is a unique case, because the yuan is not freely convertible for capital transactions. And Article 8 of the IMF, which our monetarists pray to as an icon, says that if a currency is not completely convertible, then it is not a currency at all.

Yu.P. Nevertheless, the IMF includes it in the basket.

S.G. China's power was indirectly confirmed by the fact that the yuan became the world's reserve currency without being freely convertible in capital transactions. The IMF, in fact, was forced to step on the throat of its own song. I don't know how this happened, but it's a fact. Of all the world's reserve currencies, the dollar is absolutely toxic. It is simply madness today to keep reserves in dollars, no matter how much income they bring. The euro is toxic indirectly. Because sanctions...

Yu.P. At any moment the situation can get worse.

S.G. The pound is almost as toxic as the dollar. Moreover, in London, as you know, not only can money be taken away, but also real estate today, just like that, by the decision of some bureaucrat.

Yu.P. Are you making fun of the Russian offshore oligarchy?

S.G. Yes, where should a poor oligarch go? Japan remains. But Japan is also under the US umbrella, and if the Americans push, we don’t know what will happen.

Yu.P. That is, you, in general, agree with Nabiullina’s team when it began to shift to Chinese yuan?

S.G. In fact, apart from the Chinese yuan, we have no other safe haven among the world’s reserve currencies today.

Yu.P. Gold?

S.G. Gold, of course. One of the main structural promises today is to increase gold and foreign exchange reserves. European countries hold up to 55% of their reserves in gold. In our country this share is more than 2 times lower. Therefore, of course, the main direction of increasing foreign exchange reserves or changing the structure of foreign exchange reserves, from my point of view, should be to increase the share of gold.

But keep in mind that from an accounting perspective, gold fluctuates in price. And generally speaking, an increase does not always have to produce a profit. From the point of view of such calculations, this may also result in losses. Let's say the price of gold can fall, and it did fall for some time. And investing in gold was much less profitable than investing in dollars in the short term. But in the long term, of course, we need to increase the share of gold.

All other currencies today are toxic except the yuan, and the yuan is not freely convertible. The question is not just how to invest in the yuan, but the question of what assets in yuan you invest in. You can invest in bonds, panda bonds, which are located inside China. There is, however, a risk that if you invest in panda bonds, you will not immediately be able to withdraw money if necessary. Permission from the Chinese monetary authorities will be needed. But, nevertheless, you can diversify this portfolio: keep some in cash, and invest some in Chinese bonds, which, by the way, will give 6-7%, much higher than American ones.

Therefore, it is no longer possible to make losses here; it will certainly be a profitable investment, and there are no risks. Because these are Chinese sovereign securities. The only risk is that these reserves may not be as easy to immediately convert into liquid form as the dollar. In other words, today there are no both reliable and 100% profitable sources for investing reserves.

In general, excess reserves, you know, are like a hump on the body. Our volume of reserves is approximately equal to the volume of the monetary base. For what? From the point of view of blocking speculative attacks against the ruble, our reserves are through the roof. But the Central Bank does not use them. He gave the ruble exchange rate to currency speculators, although he has the opportunity to shape the exchange rate himself, and not a single speculator will trample against the Central Bank, which has more reserves than money in the economy. Why the Central Bank with such a volume of reserves is removed from the market, I simply cannot understand.

For example, at one time, when I was responsible for the formation of the foreign exchange market, our country had no foreign exchange reserves at all. And we, nevertheless, somehow tried to stabilize the exchange rate through the mandatory sale of foreign exchange earnings. This is one moment. Second point. There is a three-month import rule. You must have reserves no less than the volume of three months of imports. You never know. So that they can finance critical imports for three years using reserves if the mechanisms of international trade suddenly break down. Well, six months.

That is, we have two to three times more reserves than we should, based on the understanding of economic science. This means that we have few rubles in our economy. With such a volume of reserves, the number of rubles in the economy could be three times greater.

Yu.P. After these words, the headlines will appear again: “Glazyev proposes an issue!”, “Glazyev proposes to unwind inflation,” etc. Sergei Yurievich, we have been through this, and more than once.

S.G. This logic of our opponents is as simple as the rake they step on every time. Unfortunately, they are hitting not themselves, but our economy and the country as a whole.

Why do ordinary people like scary movies so much? It turns out that this is an opportunity to pretend to relive your fears, become more confident and even let off steam. And this is true - you just need to choose an exciting horror film that will make you really care about the heroes.

Silent Hill

The story takes place in the city of Silent Hill. Ordinary people wouldn't even want to drive past it. But Rose Dasilva, little Sharon's mother, is simply forced to go there. There is no other choice. She believes that this is the only way to help her daughter and keep her out of the psychiatric hospital. The name of the town did not come out of nowhere - Sharon constantly repeated it in her sleep. And it seems like a cure is very close, but on the way to Silent Hill, mother and daughter get into a strange accident. Rose wakes up to find that Sharon is missing. Now the woman needs to find her daughter in a cursed city full of fears and horrors. The trailer for the film is available for viewing.

Mirrors

Former detective Ben Carson is going through hard times. After accidentally killing a colleague, he is suspended from the New York Police Department. Then the departure of his wife and children, an addiction to alcohol, and now Ben is the night watchman of the burnt out department store, left alone with his problems. Over time, occupational therapy pays off, but one nightly round changes everything. The mirrors begin to threaten Ben and his family. Strange and frightening images appear in their reflection. To save the lives of his loved ones, the detective needs to understand what the mirrors want, but the problem is that Ben has never encountered mysticism.

Asylum

Kara Harding is raising her daughter alone after the death of her husband. The woman followed in her father’s footsteps and became a famous psychiatrist. She studies people with multiple personality disorder. Among them there are those who claim that there are many more of these individuals. According to Kara, this is just a cover for serial killers, which is why all her patients are sent to death. But one day the father shows his daughter the case of the tramp patient Adam, who defies any rational explanation. Kara continues to insist on her theory and even tries to cure Adam, but over time, completely unexpected facts are revealed to her...

Mike Enslin doesn't believe in an afterlife. As a horror writer, he is writing another book about the supernatural. It is dedicated to poltergeists living in hotels. Mike decides to settle in one of them. The choice falls on the infamous room 1408 of the Dolphin Hotel. According to the hotel owners and city residents, evil lives in the room and kills guests. But neither this fact nor the senior manager's warning frightens Mike. But in vain... In the issue the writer will have to go through a real nightmare, from which there is only one way to get out...

The material was prepared using the ivi online cinema.