Strategy for the “system country. A Strategy for the System Country What is the essence of the Washington Consensus

These recommendations were developed in 1990, immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and their appearance is associated with the American economist John Williamson. Consensus precepts require, among other things, trade liberalization, foreign direct investment flows, deregulation and privatization. Each new point was hailed as the final solution to the problem of the economic backwardness of individual countries. However, this did not happen. What are the reasons?

One day, before a lecture in the city of Arusha in Tanzania, a Tanzanian general, a member of parliament, approached me. “I read your report and I have only one question,” he said seriously. "Do they deliberately keep us from developing?" I was just about to share my vision of globalization and free trade with members of the East African parliament (the combined parliament of Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) representing countries where globalization has led to primitivization rather than modernization. A strong, cheerful general won my respect even in the morning session. The meeting took place in a large tent on a former coffee plantation, which, due to falling coffee prices, became uncompetitive, even with the tiny amount of money it paid its workers. Most of the few businesses that have developed in the region since independence have perished as a result of the restructuring of the World Bank and the IMF. We were surrounded by unemployment and poverty.

The set of recommendations that led to the results that the Tanzanian general spoke of was the so-called Washington Consensus... These recommendations were developed in 1990, immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and their appearance is associated with the American economist John Williamson. Consensus precepts require, among other things, trade liberalization, foreign direct investment flows, deregulation and privatization. The reforms of the Washington Consensus have in practice become synonymous with neoliberalism and market fundamentalism.

The Washington Consensus developed along the following path, with each new discovery hailed as the final solution to the problem of the economic backwardness of individual countries:

"Get the prices in order."

"Fix property rights."

"Put institutions in order."

"Tidy up the management."

"Get competitiveness in order."

"Put innovation in order."

"Get your entrepreneurship in order."

"Get your education in order."

"Tidy up the climate."

"Put the illness in order."

1. "Put the prices in order"

The first clause of the Washington Consensus, approved in 1990, can be formulated as "Get the prices in order." In May of the same year, Santiago Roca became the chief economic adviser to Alberto Fujimori, the presidential candidate of Peru. Much more than his opponent, Mario Vargas Llosa, Fujimori emphasized the need to protect the poor from raging inflation.

In July 1990, shortly before his inauguration, Peruvian presidential candidate Alberto Fujimori traveled to Washington. He came back a different person: social problems did not bother him. We jokingly asked each other how the Americans tortured Fujimori. Here's what: Fujimori was promised that if he abandoned government intervention in the economy, reduced the public sector and adjusted prices, the market would take care of the rest. However, in the case of Peru, there were two major obstacles in the way of the market: inflation and guerrillas (guerillas). Fujimori ordered to get rid of both obstacles. As a result, inflation fell from the level of 7469% in 1990 to 6.5% in 1997, and the partisans in the country almost disappeared. Fujimori's victory cost him dearly, but now wealth was to come to the impoverished people of Peru, which would reward him for all the hardships.

However, this did not happen. The disappearance of industry has reduced real wages to a minimum, as David Ricardo once predicted. The poor peasants did not receive more money for their food. In essence, keeping wages and prices low was an important political challenge to keep inflation in check. This was followed by a slight increase in GDP, which did not lead to an increase in real wages: the money went to profits and to the financial sector. Economic orthodoxy began in Peru in the 1970s and cost the country dearly: the average Peruvian's income was cut in half. It wasn't enough to tidy up the prices; the corrected prices only pushed the country to an even worse level of poverty.

2. "Clean up ownership"

Capitalism requires secure property rights. Since in poor countries the institution of property is noticeably less developed, the main reason for the underdevelopment was the lack of property rights. In other words, capitalism was not the cause of the poverty of the peripheral countries; the poor countries were simply not capitalist enough.

Trying to isolate individual features of the market economy instead of looking at the big picture, that is, an exercise in solving problems one at a time, confuses us without shedding light on the problem of poverty. In the Republic of Venice, property rights existed 1000 years ago. The first cadastral register appeared in Venice in the period 1148-1156. The production of the Venetians, in contrast to the production of hunter-gatherers, brought with it the need to regulate property rights. These property rights did not create capitalism or economic development; it was an institution created by a certain production system for the convenience of functioning.

Hernando de Soto, a Peruvian economist became famous for calling on the state to formally protect property rights. However, studies have shown that if poor Hispanics are given ownership of their homes, many will sell those homes to buy food or medicine with the money. In this new situation, they often fall prey to scammers. Property right in the absence of economic development can make the situation worse than it was before capitalism, when, thanks to the absence of property rights, anyone can build a house on common land. Property rights, which are required in a developed economy, in a poor country can lead to homelessness. Moreover, it creates more obstacles for the poor to start their own homes than the pre-capitalist society to which urban migrants belong.

3. "Put institutions in order"

With the emphasis on property rights, the second point of the Washington Consensus was expanded to include other institutions. Institutional economics, which shaped the development of economics in America from the late 18th century to the end of World War II, posed an opposition to the English neoclassical tradition.

The term " institutions”Is extremely broad: it includes human conventions - from moral norms and traditions to celebrate Christmas or Ramadan to the creation of parliaments or constitutions. Ha-Joon Chan and Peter Evans have defined: “Institutions are systematic patterns of accepted expectations, self-evident premises, accepted norms and interaction habits that have a significant impact on the motivation and behavior of groups of interconnected social actors. In modern societies, they tend to be embodied in the form of governed organizations that have formal rules and the right to enforce sanctions (for example, government or firms). " Like property rights, institutions by themselves cannot be considered sources of economic development.

Thanks to trade with distant countries, where it was necessary to send camel caravans or merchant ships, an institute appeared insurance... Hunter-gatherer tribes would hardly use insurance. To understand development, it is necessary to appreciate the growth in knowledge and productivity that new technologies and new ways of production create. Institutional changes brought about by changes in the forms of production are important but secondary. Institutions, like capital, have no value in and of themselves. Like capital, institutions are scaffolds that support a country's productive structure during a period of growth.

Institutions and the mode of production of a society are born simultaneously. Institutions cannot be studied separately from the technological system that created the need for them and gave birth to them. Today, the importance of one side of the equation - institutions taken in isolation as tools for creating development - is being overestimated, distorting our understanding of economic and institutional development.

4. "Tidy up the management"

During the triumphant early 1990s, the decline in the role of the state was essential to the Washington Consensus. The words state and government have become almost abusive. However, the more time passed, the more the state and government returned to their previous role. World Bank identifies control as the application of political power and the use of institutional resources to solve problems and problems of society. The state and the government used to do about the same thing.

At the global level, governance often leads countries to bankruptcy. For countries prone to bankruptcy the following features are characteristic, among others:

a small number of industries with increasing returns or their complete absence;

insufficient division of labor;

the absence of a middle class of citizens, and with it political stability;

the absence of an economically independent artisan class;

export of commodities;

comparative advantage in the supply of cheap labor to the world market;

low demand for skilled labor, combined with a low level of education;

brain drain.

In such countries, a special kind of regionalism often arises, which in Latin America is called the word caudillismo... The economic structures that unite a successful nation state are underdeveloped or absent in such countries.

In early democracies, the artisan and industrial classes gained more political power than the noble landowners. Particularly interesting is the case of Florence, where the class of wealthy landowners was traditionally strong. In Florence corporazioni (guilds) and the townspeople fought for power among themselves, but together they very early (in the XII-XIII centuries) ousted families of wealthy landowners from politics, who then bothered Florence for centuries, forming alliances with other cities.

Today, the powerful link between advanced industrialization and democracy is still recognized. However, no one today recognizes that, first, the political system depends on the economic system (urban crafts and industrial sectors), and not vice versa; secondly, that industry in any country did not appear without being consciously built, protected and strived for it. The creation and protection of industrial activity is the creation and protection of democracy.

5. "Get competitiveness in order"

The term " competitiveness”Came into vogue in the early 1990s, but was initially considered extremely dubious. "The concept of a country's competitiveness," wrote Robert Reich in 1990, "is one of the rare terms in public discourse that go from being vague to immediately meaningless, without any intermediate period."

At the firm level, the term “competitiveness” is fairly straightforward. It is the ability of a firm to grow, compete and be profitable in the marketplace.

Bruce Scott, a professor at Harvard Business School, formulated this definition: “A country's competitiveness can be defined as the degree to which, in an open market, a country is able to produce products and services that could compete with foreign ones, while maintaining and increasing its domestic real income ".

Thus, competitiveness refers to a process that contributes to the enrichment of people and countries by increasing their real wages and incomes. However, in Uganda, for example, the term was used to defend the opposite strategy of lowering wages. Textile factories brought to Uganda by the African Economic Growth and Trade Opportunity Act (an agreement between the US and Africa to locate prefabricated parts assembly plants in Africa) have become uncompetitive internationally. Then President Museveni cut workers' wages to keep Uganda competitive.

6. "Get Innovation in Order"

In his speeches in 2000-2001, Alan Greenspan incorporated Joseph Schumpeter into mainstream economics: Schumpeter's theories alone could explain the combination of rapid economic growth and low inflation that the United States was then experiencing. The concept of creative destruction that was associated with Schumpeter's name turned out to be quite apt to describe the process by which information and communication technologies destroyed old technological solutions and destroyed old companies to make room for new ones.

These events suggested to economists another possible reason for the poverty of third world countries: they did not experience the same innovative processes as in Silicon Valley. As in the best tradition of standard economics, economists have overlooked important aspects of what is happening. During periods of rapid technological progress, several mechanisms work simultaneouslyleading to widening, not narrowing, the economic gap.

Schumpeter's student Hans Singer made significant contributions to development economics, demonstrating that innovations emerging in the third-world commodity sector tend to spread to first-world countries in the form of lower prices, while innovation (mainly innovative products) that appear in the countries of the "first" world, spread in the form of higher salaries received by citizens of the countries of the "first" world. Even when poor countries innovate, they cannot reap the benefits.

7. "Tidy up entrepreneurship"

Entrepreneurship and human initiative generally exist as an economic factor only outside the boundaries of traditional economics. Recently, however, passivity has been identified as one of the causes of poverty. This explanation seems to us untenable. While people in rich countries go to work every day, people in poor countries are forced to engage in entrepreneurial activities to survive. The difference is that rich and poor countries have different opportunities for successful entrepreneurship. Lack of demand, supply and capital, as well as the type of competition typical of commodity markets, all make it difficult to succeed in entrepreneurship in poor countries. It is only logical that an ever-growing crowd of poor people is driving enterprising entrepreneurs from their own country to rich countries, where increasing returns, synergy and imperfect competition have developed historically.

8. "Tidy up your education"

The main driving forces of capitalism are human mind and will, i.e. new knowledge and entrepreneurship. Therefore, poor countries need first of all to improve the education system. This, of course, is true, but examples of successful economic development show that it is necessary ensure both the flow of educated people and a sufficient number of jobson which they could apply their knowledge. This double effort to satisfy both supply and demand for educated people has always been a hallmark of successful development, be it US policy in the 19th century, Korea after World War II, or Ireland in the 1980s. To implement such a strategy, it is necessary to deviate from the rules. laissez-faire.

Countries that deal with only one side of the problem - supply - educate future emigrants. The flow of educated people from poor countries to rich countries is comparable to the flow of capital in the same direction and is the effect of a reverse wave in the world economy.

9. "Tidy up the climate"

In response to the complete failure of its policy in poor countries, economics decided to return to the old ideas of economic development, long and deservedly sent to the periphery of science. “Climate,” “geography,” and “health” are once again central to development economics. These factors are indeed important, but their main implication is in how they affect human settlements and the interests of local residents. The main development variable is economic system of the country, and he strongly depends on the interests of the country's rulers.

The climate affects economic development not so much directly as in a roundabout way - determining the mode of production, the scheme of settlements, as well as the interests of settlers, Singapore - one of the richest countries in the world - is located just above the equator. The wealth of Singapore does not determine its location in some anomalous "pocket" of the temperate climate at the equator. It is rather a consequence of the fact that many people (Asians and whites) were brought to Singapore in order to create an industry and follow an enlightened industrial policy. Tropical Malaysia owes its success to the successful policies of Singapore, which split from Malaysia in 1965.

Since the 1500s, economists have known that a country's geographic and climatic features affect the location of industrial enterprises. At the same time, it was recognized that negative features should be compensated for by economic policies that would support the industrial sector. The more serious the geographical and climatic deficiencies, the more the industry needed protective barriers. The remoteness from other countries and the high cost of transportation served as a natural defense for the industry. The real problem arose with the beginning of globalization, which prematurely canceled patronage in countries where industry had not yet reached the level of competition in the world market. Now, climate and geography have regained their main importance in development economics, thanks to the efforts of economists to find an excuse for the misery of the premature abandonment of industrial policy instruments on poor countries.

10. "Put the illness in order"

Terrible tropical diseases today explain the setbacks that poor countries have suffered in trying to develop their economies. In particular, malaria is declared the root of all evil. However, even in this case, standard economics is fighting the effect of poverty, not its cause.

The malaria epidemic lasted for centuries in Europe, the fight against this disease is mentioned in documents from the times of the Roman Empire. Malaria outbreaks have occurred in areas that no one today thinks to associate with the disease. The valleys of the Swiss Alps, located at an altitude of 1,400 m above sea level, were struck by malaria in the Middle Ages, and in the north it reached the Arctic, a region of the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Europe got rid of malaria through industrialization. More advanced and intensive agriculture has drained marshes, while irrigation canals have drained shallow stagnant bodies of water where malaria thrives. In addition, active vaccinations were carried out in Europe.

Africa inherited the colonial economic system. It acts as a commodity exporter with an underdeveloped industrial sector. Instead of the development that allowed Europe to pay its debts, Africa is content with debt relief. Instead of a development that eradicates malaria, Africa is being offered free mosquito nets. No one is addressing the structural problems at the heart of Africa's plight; all attention is focused on the symptoms of these problems.

The factors that create national wealth and national poverty were recognized even during the Renaissance. This understanding was then deepened and the policies developed by scholars of the past were refined. The United States showed the world an excellent example of the success of the “high wage strategy,” as it was called at the time. Countries that didn’t have time to change their economies by shifting to incremental returns before the Washington Consensus banned enlightened economic policies are now dependent on the whims of nature and the natural balance of poverty. As David Ricardo wrote, the natural wage is indeed at the subsistence level. By focusing on anything other than the key issue of the need to change the economic order in poor countries, these economists create a system that embodies "harm with good intentions," which, according to Nietzsche, is far more harmful than harm with evil intentions.

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Also see: Forms and methods of government influence on prices (06/01/2009) Innovative projects with government participation: 11 principles of success(20/11/2009)

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Briefly, the provisions of the "Washington Consensus" can be expressed as follows:

Budget Discipline... The states should, if not eliminate, then reduce the budget deficit to a minimum that would be acceptable for private capital.

Special focus of state budget expenditures... Subsidies to consumers and subsidies to producers should be kept to a minimum. The government should only spend money on primary health care, primary education and infrastructure development.

Tax policy... The tax base should be as broad as possible, but the tax rates should be moderate. That is, both individuals and legal entities should be included in the tax base.

Interest rates... Interest rates on a loan should be formed in the domestic financial markets, and the state should not interfere in this process. The interest offered to depositors should stimulate their deposits in banks and curb capital flight. In order for banking to be profitable, and this depends on depositors as well, the refinancing rate must be higher than the inflation rate.

Exchange rate... Countries should introduce an exchange rate for their currencies that promotes their exports by making the export prices of their products more competitive.

Trade liberalism... Import quotas should be abolished and replaced by customs tariffs. Customs tariffs on imports should be minimal and should not be imposed on those goods, the import of which is necessary for the production of goods in the country for subsequent export from it.

Foreign direct investment... A policy should be adopted to encourage and attract capital and technological knowledge from abroad. Competition conditions for foreign and local firms should be the same.

Privatization of enterprises... The privatization of state-owned enterprises should be encouraged in every possible way.

Deregulation... Excessive government regulation only generates corruption and discrimination against market participants who are unable to break through to the upper strata of the bureaucracy. We should strive to do away with government regulation of the economy and the public sector in the future.

Private property rights... These rights must be guaranteed with the constant strengthening of their protection. Both the legislative base and the law enforcement practice should be subordinated to this.

The inadequacy of the economic policy pursued by many countries on the basis of the implementation of these principles was shown by the practice of application in the economy of the third world countries and the reality of the global financial crisis in developed countries. This state of affairs is due to the discrepancy between the well-meaning announcements of the "Washington Consensus", cited above, with the real laws of the functioning of the economy. Therefore, we will reveal the omissions and indicate the actual consequences of the implementation of the announced principles.

BUDGETARY DISCIPLINE

Keeping budget deficits to a minimum leads to the fact that states cannot direct funds to large long-term projects. As a result, they become dependent on organizations, in particular international ones, that have the ability to implement such projects. Thus, states become not free in choosing the paths of their development in the long term. And thus, the activities of individual states fit into the strategies of global integration carried out at the supranational level.

SPECIAL DIRECTION OF THE STATE BUDGET EXPENDITURE

In the national economy, there are industries with low profitability, which, in principle, are not able to function normally in an uncontrolled financial market climate. The cost of some goods is quite high, which requires subsidizing consumption for the normal development of the industry producing these goods. Therefore, minimizing subsidies to consumers and subsidies to producers will close states that follow these principles to producers from other states that have an initial competitive advantage and, which is especially important, will reduce the stability of the functioning of the production and consumer system of states that follow this principle.

TAX POLICY

The introduction of all individuals into the tax base in the first place increases the required staff of the tax service at times. Which is easier: to serve 50 thousand legal entities that are engaged in internal accounting of employees, or 140 million individuals separately? Propaganda myths are created about the equality of all before the law: both entrepreneurs and employees, and that statehood is “financially-publicly-hired”, since everyone pays taxes on its maintenance. Whereas in reality the statehood turns out to be clan-oligarchic and is only covered by such myths.

INTEREST RATES

In order for banking to be profitable, and this also depends on depositors, including, according to bankers, who perceive banking as one of the forms of production or entrepreneurship, and not as part of a unified system of macro regulation, the refinancing rate must be higher than the inflation rate ... Loan interest takes in value form from society a predetermined share of production, which is historically actually always higher than the beneficial effect of taking a credit loan. Taxes return to society in one form or another, while interest on loans pumps the solvency of society into the banking sector, which in turn is almost everywhere closed to international financial institutions.

EXCHANGE RATE

Consideration of the issue of exchange rates is meaningless without considering the exchange of goods on a global scale between regional production and consumer systems. In reality, for states following the Washington Consensus, the exchange rate, in principle, is not a controllable parameter. However, it should be noted that due to the adoption of the provisions of Your / Cohn, the exchange rate of the state becomes subject to external control.

Today, the international monetary system that provides international trade is as follows: Several countries have the right to issue currencies that are reserve. After the cancellation of the Bretton Woods agreement, these currencies are not backed by anything, including gold. The rest of the countries, in order to issue their currency, must first ensure the presence in their reserves of gold or reserve currencies (US dollar, Euro, etc.). The International Monetary Fund is responsible for monitoring compliance and assisting in balancing payments. Such a system gives rise to opportunities for the control of the money supply in countries on the part of the countries issuers of reserve currencies and the possibility of speculation on the part of these countries of issuers and international financial institutions.

TRADE LIBERALISM

The abolition of import quotas and their replacement with minimum customs tariffs lead to the stimulation of the import of components of more complex products, which are then exported to meet the interests of external consumers at the expense of the production potential of the importing country. This leads to the rupture of technological chains and can make the strategic industries of countries following this principle highly dependent on market conditions.

FOREIGN DIRECT INVESTMENTS

The introduction of equal conditions for foreign and local firms creates initially the best competitive conditions for already existing large transnational corporations that are able to dump the prices of local producers. After local producers have been squeezed out of the market, prices are raised to levels that are acceptable to corporations.

Deregulation. PRIVATIZATION OF ENTERPRISES

State regulation provides long-term projects in the interests of social development, which are not targeted by business structures focused on their private interests. The disappearance of state regulation of the economy and the public sector automatically makes the country's economy dependent on external macroeconomic regulation through international financial institutions and large corporations, which always have a strategy and development plans based on the redistribution of available resources by directive-targeted methods.

The assertion that a private entrepreneur is by definition more efficient than a state enterprise is raised to the rank of an axiom and is taken for granted, although there is no direct evidence for this.

PRIVATE PROPERTY RIGHTS

Guaranteeing only private property rights is not enough for normal social development, since some resources, such as land, water, air, subsoil, are not someone's private property, but are given to us from the very beginning. This means that it requires an adequate legal description of public property and the principles of differentiation of both types of property on the basis of the right to manage this or that property.

The consequences of the actions of the international economic system based on the rules of the "Washington Consensus" is the destruction of the economies of many countries, due to which the various dominant transnational companies and oligarchic clans in the world are enriched. In these countries, social tension is growing and a potential personnel base for revolutions and wars is being formed, which, in turn, can affect neighboring, quite prosperous countries and, in the worst case, destabilize the situation on the entire planet. In addition, the unrestrained consumption race in the metropolitan countries leads to a huge number of environmental problems and disasters, which were no longer few throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

So, as you can see, globalization, as an objective process of concentration of productive forces, on the basis of adherence to the principles of the "Washington Consensus" is reaching a greater and greater impasse. Therefore, it was decided to develop principles for an alternative consensus that would satisfy the new conditions of globalization that have developed in the world.

What else is worth saying about the impact of the Washington Consensus on the countries committed to it?

SCIENTIFIC AND IMPLEMENTATION CYCLES

"Research and implementation cycle" is a socio-economic process, which begins with the formulation of research tasks in the field of fundamental science and which ends with the fact that its achievements are embodied in the production of mass-consumed products. The reality is that the processes of this category are self-governing for the most part without structure, and at the same time such circumstances can arise (and purposefully form) such circumstances when the beginning of the scientific-innovation cycle is localized in one society, and the end - in another.

The laws of market pricing are such that the commercial benefit from the implementation of such a scientific and innovative cycle will be received by the society in which its completion is localized, and usually this is the metropolis. And the closer to the beginning of the cycle, the higher the costs and the lower the profitability indicators, up to negative. The same applies to interests and non-commercial nature associated with the implementation of scientific and innovation cycles.

CONCENTRATION OF MANAGEMENT

JK Gelbraith, adviser to two US presidents in his book "Economic Theories and the Goals of Society" sees in the US economic system two subsystems interacting with each other, which he calls "market system" and "planning system".

« Market system". In it, firms really operate in a competitive environment, and it is mostly represented by small businesses (mainly family businesses), which, due to their industry affiliation and the specifics of the market, have no prospects of ever becoming large.

« Planning system". It is represented by large corporations that have subordinated prices in the market for their products and production costs, operate on the basis of intra-firm long-term planning and intra-industry and intersectoral collusion (mostly indirect, tacit and therefore not legally punishable) on prices, production volumes, etc. practically without any competition for markets and buyers. The purpose of their activities is an acceptable level of income for long-term intervals of time, and not meeting the needs of society and not solving its problems.

The "market subsystem" serves the cult of the myth about the freedom of private enterprise, and the presence of a "planning subsystem" is kept silent. J.K. Galbraith calls the "planning subsystem" "socialism for General Motors and Lockheed", because they (even with the complete failure of their scientific and technical policy) are almost completely guaranteed against bankruptcy both by their position in the market and by their relationship with the state apparatus , which distinguishes them from firms classified by J.K. Galbraith as a "market subsystem" that are really fighting for their survival in a competitive struggle, and in which the social security of both hired personnel and entrepreneur-owners is at an incomparably lower level, rather than a "planning system".

The life of society under the conditions of the proclamation of the "free market", when in reality it is not free, leads to the fact that management is concentrated in a narrow circle of a few international clans and corporations.

Washington Consensus

Washington Consensus - the type of macroeconomic policy that a number of economists recommend for use in countries experiencing financial and economic crises.

The Washington Consensus includes a set of 10 recommendations:

• Maintaining fiscal discipline (minimum budget deficit).
• Priority of health care, education and infrastructure among government spending.
• Reducing marginal tax rates.
• Liberalization of financial markets to maintain real interest rates on loans at a low, but still positive level.
• Free exchange rate of the national currency.
• Liberalization of foreign trade (mainly due to the reduction of import duty rates).
• Reducing restrictions on foreign direct investment.
• Privatization.
• Deregulation of the economy.
• Protection of property rights.

The term "Washington Consensus" was coined by the American economist John Williamson in 1989.

There is an alternative presentation of the parameters of the Washington Consensus, coming from the circles of its opponents:

A number of publications claim that Russia followed the recommendations of the Washington Consensus in the 1990s, but in reality this is not the case, since these recommendations were not followed in terms of fiscal discipline, tax cuts, deregulation and protection of property rights. The economic policies of the countries of Eastern Europe and the Baltics were much closer to the Washington Consensus than the actions of the Russian authorities.

In a broader connotation, the term "Washington Consensus" is used to describe a number of measures (not necessarily from the above list) aimed at strengthening the role of market forces and reducing the role of the public sector.

Notes

Literature

• Agiton K. Alternative globalism. New world protest movements. - M .: Gileya, 2004. - (Hour "H". Modern world anti-bourgeois thought). ISBN 5-87987-031-6. (Washington Consensus, pp. 45-49).

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See what the "Washington Consensus" is in other dictionaries:

Washington Consensus - (Washington consensus) - adopted in 1989 by the IMF, containing 10 recommendations (mainly for the countries of South America) on ways to develop a market economy. These recommendations are as follows: 1. Maintaining fiscal discipline (minimum deficit ... Economics and Mathematics Dictionary

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- (English Washington Consensus) a type of macroeconomic policy that at the end of the 20th century was recommended by the IMF and World Bank leadership for use in countries experiencing financial and economic crises. Contents 1 History 2 ... ... Wikipedia

Washington Consensus - The project of the world economic order, implemented from the end of the 20th century. through the IMF and other international financial institutions in relation to non-Western states. The project is based on the replacement of the neoliberal monetarist model with the "outdated" Keynesian ... ... Geoeconomic Dictionary

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Washington Consensus as a "thought-forming mechanism of a new stage of globalization"

Researchers of globalization interpret and date the main events in the global convergence in different ways, noting the exploits of Marco Polo, Magellan's travels, uniting the character of the first industrial revolution. Even Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws optimistically concludes: “Two nations interacting with each other become interdependent; if one is interested in selling, then the other is interested in buying; their union turns out to be based on mutual necessity. "

But revolutionary fast the pace of world rapprochement was carried out only twice.

1. In the first case, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, immigrants crossed the oceans without visas. The world entered a phase of active mutual convergence based on the expansion of trade and investment on a global scale thanks to the steamer, telephone, conveyor belt, telegraph and railways - before the First World War, the size of the world shrank from “large” to “medium”. Britain, with all its maritime, industrial and financial power, was the guarantor of this first wave of globalization, exercising control over the main arteries of transportation of goods - the seas and oceans, ensuring the stability of international financial settlements with the help of the pound sterling and the Bank of England. The 1866 Transatlantic Cable reduced the transmission time between London and New York by a week - a thousand time. And the phone brought the time of transferring information to several minutes.

The ideologists of the first decades of globalization were R. Cobden and J. Bright, who convincingly for many economists and industrialists substantiated the position that free trade will irreversibly spur global economic growth and, on the basis of unprecedented prosperity based on interdependence, peoples will forget about strife. The idea of \u200b\u200bthe beneficial impact of globalization on a conflict-prone world environment was most convincingly embodied in the book by N. Angela "The Great Illusions" (1909). In it - five years before the start of the First World War - the author argued impossibility global conflicts due to the existing economic interdependence of the world: before 1914, Britain and Germany (the main foreign policy antagonists) were each other's second most important trading partners - and this despite the fact that the foreign trade of Britain and Germany accounted for 52% and 38% of their gross national product respectively. America, Britain, Germany and France, Angel argued, are losing their penchant for waging war: "How can modern life, with its omnipotent predominance of industrial activity, with the diminishing importance of militarism, turn to militarism, destroying the fruits of peace?"

But in August 1914, the prediction of the irreversibility of the global rapprochement of nations proved untenable. The First World War stopped the process of economic, information and communication rapprochement of nations in the most terrible way. The benefits of globalization have given way to harsh geopolitical calculations, historical accounts, wounded pride, and fear of addiction. Let's say the Russian government deemed it necessary to specifically
(and officially) point out the perniciousness of Russia's exclusive dependence on trade with the monopolist in its foreign trade - Germany (which accounted for 50% of Russian trade).

In 1914-1945. followed by a terrible bitterness and actual autarky.[Autarky (from the Greek. autarkeia - self-satisfaction) - the policy of economic isolation pursued by the country, the region, aimed at creating an isolated, closed, independent economy, capable of providing itself with everything necessary independently].

The 70-year period between the outbreak of the First World War and the end of the Cold War was an intermediate period between the first and second globalizations. It took a lot of time to reanimate the process of global rapprochement. Only in the last decades of the twentieth century, after two world wars, the Great Depression and numerous social experiments that contributed to the opposition of social systems, the liberal economic order created in the nineteenth century began to return to world practice. In the competition with the planned economy, the Western - market system of economic organization won, turning the world into a single market economy.

The rebirth (or renaissance) of globalization began in the late 1970s with an incredible revolution in global reach delivery vehicles, computer science, telecommunications, and digitalization. The "death" of space was the most important single element that changed the world between two phases, two periods of globalization. This changed the idea of \u200b\u200bwhere people should work and live; changed the concept of national borders, the tradition of international trade. This circumstance had the same character overturning all our ideas, like the invention of electricity.

Washington Consensus.In the early 1980s, the heads of the three most powerful economic agencies located in the American capital - the US Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - agreed that customs and other barriers to world trade were the main obstacle to economic growth. The global goal has become to break down these barriers . This is how the so-called. The Washington Consensus, whose activities have opened the gates of world globalization. Actually The Washington Consensus name ten recommendations for reforming world trade, formulated in 1989 by the American economist J. Williamson.

1. Tax discipline.Large and persistent budget deficits generate inflation and capital flight. States must keep this deficit to a minimum.

2. Special focus of public spending.Subsidies to businesses should be kept to a minimum. The government should spend money only on education, health care and infrastructure development.

3. Tax reform.The scope of taxable subjects in society should be broad, but tax rates should be moderate.

4. Interest rates.Interest rates should be determined by the domestic financial markets. The interest offered to depositors should stimulate their deposits in banks and curb capital flight.

5. Exchange rate.Developing countries should introduce an exchange rate that will help exports by making export prices more competitive.

6. Trade liberalism.Tariffs should be minimal and should not be imposed on those goods that promote (as part of a more complex product) export.

7. Foreign direct investment.Policies should be adopted to encourage and attract capital and technological knowledge.

8. Privatization.The privatization of state-owned enterprises should be encouraged in every possible way. Private enterprises must be more efficient, if only because managers are directly interested in higher productivity.

9. Deregulation.Excessive government regulation only generates corruption and discrimination against subcontractors who are unable to break through to the upper layers of the bureaucracy. Industrial regulation must be done away with.

10. Private property rights.These rights must be guaranteed and enhanced. Weak legal framework and ineffective legal system diminish the importance of incentives to accumulate and accumulate wealth.

The ideas of the "Washington Consensus" became the backbone of liberal fundamentalism in the 1990s. The governments of developed, developing and countries that have begun to reform their economies and economic policies transitionaleconomies got a kind of prescription. This, in fact, was the very "golden corset", which will be discussed below. The term "Washington Consensus" took on special meaning and began a life of its own - especially in light of the collapse of the Soviet system. There was a search for ideas purely alternative to socialist centralism, and "the spoon turned out to be for dinner." As the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy Magazine M. Naim writes, "an important function of every ideology is to function as a 'thought-forming' mechanism that simplifies and organizes what is often a confusing chaotic reality."

The search for such a scheme was facilitated by the very confident tone (consensus), the predetermined nature of his postulates, his directive confidence, his birthplace - Washington, the capital of the victorious empire. The need for a newfound, market-oriented administration to mitigate the painful effects of economic reforms demanded by consensus, as well as the lack of credible alternatives (never presented by the discredited opposition) have also helped raise the reputation of the Washington Consensus, its Elan. If all this were not enough, then indomitable persistence would be used. International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, whose loans were conditional precisely in the spirit of the Washington Consensus. [The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is an international monetary and financial organization, created in 1944 to promote the development of international trade and monetary cooperation. The IMF capital is formed from the contributions of member countries in accordance with the quota established for each country].

The new character of globalization processes became obvious. The world at the end of the twentieth century has drastically shrunk. Over the past thirty years, jet aircraft have brought all continents closer together. What is called the political triumph of Western capitalism has taken place. In 1975, only eight percent of the world's population lived in countries with a liberal free market regime, and foreign direct investment in the world was equal to $ 23 billion (data from the World Bank). By the end of the century, the population living in free-market, liberal regimes had reached 28 percent, and foreign investment reached $ 644 billion. As the twentieth century ended, the rule that the world division of labor, export rules the world, was more clearly manifested than before. World exports half a century ago amounted to $ 53 billion, and at the end of the twentieth century - about $ 7 trillion.

In these countries, informatics began to rule life. There are about two and a half hundred million computers in the world (of which about 90 percent are personal). Their number in the world is growing by about 20 thousand units annually. The amount of information per square centimeter of discs has increased by an average of 60% per year since 1991. A feature of globalization has become computerization, miniaturization, digitalization, fiber optics, satellite communications, and the Internet.

The pillars of the world informatics have become the new masters of life. Microsoft alone is producing more wealth today than the giants General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler combined. And the personal fortune of Microsoft President B. Gates challenged the wildest imagination.

The fact that the productive forces of the modern world belong to large manufacturing companies, those multinational corporations (MNCs), whose field of activity is our entire planet, has manifested itself even more harshly than before. In the modern world, there are about two thousand MNEs that extend their activities to six or more countries.

The former zenith and the current nadir of ideology. What is really striking is that the first globalization during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries generated a huge wave of indignation from the "dark satanic mills" of so-called progress, which turned into a Darwinian survival of the fittest. Communist manifesto back in
1848 gave such a convincing characterization of the first phase of globalization for many: “The constant revolutionization of production, the incessant change in all social conditions, constant uncertainty and excitement distinguish the bourgeois era from all previous eras. All the established, frozen relationships with their stream of old and tradition-sanctified prejudices and preconceived opinions were swept away, all newly formed ones became outdated even before the beginning of their establishment. Everything that seemed so strong loses its shape and melts, everything sacred is profaned, and a person is ultimately forced in the cold light of reason to assess the real conditions of life and his attitude to this world. " Social forces immediately entered the arena of public life, organized into political parties and movements, which, beginning in 1899, won peaceful parliamentary victories in France, Scandinavia, Italy, Germany, Britain and other countries, as well as from 1917 to 1961. - armed victories in such different countries as Russia, China, Cuba. These forces destroyed the old order, wiped out almost all previous hierarchies from the face of the Earth, redrew the map of the world, changed the balance of world power.

Nothing of the kind happened in the course of the second - modern - globalization. In 1961, Fidel Castro, wearing a military uniform, announced his communist beliefs. And in January 1999, in civilian clothes, he opened a conference on globalization, to which the theoretical "fathers" of globalization and its practitioners - the economist
M. Friedman and financier J. Soros. Resistance forces showed their dissatisfaction with the demonstrations at the sessions of the IMF, World Bank, World Trade Organization, at the World Environment Conference in Seattle, Prague, in The Hague, but the second globalization did not receive an organized mass violent rebuff. Why? The answer boils down to the fact that the opposition - the suffering side - did not put forward an acceptable, attractive, mass-unifying alternative.

What do we see now? Let's give the floor to the New York Times: “Only one thing can be said about alternatives - they don't work. Even those people who live under the negative consequences of globalization have come to this conclusion. With the defeat of communism in Europe, the Soviet Union and China - with the collapse of all the walls that protected these systems - these peoples, suffering a cruel fate as a result of the Darwinian brutality of free-market capitalism, did not develop a coherent ideological alternative. When the question arises which system is most effective today in raising living standards, the historical debate ceases. The answer is: free market capitalism. Other systems can distribute and divide more efficiently, but none can produce more ... Or the free market economy, or North Korea. "

GLAZIEV AND THE WASHINGTON CONSENSUS

INFO LIST OF THE RUSSIAN POLITICAL ASSOCIATION "RABOCHY"

Those who, together with the Kremlin-led Rogozin, do not like oligarchs over a glass of beer, decided to speak out about the fact that little money is printed in Russia.

Rejecting dogma
The war against Russia is gaining momentum. In order not to lose, macroeconomic policy should be immediately subordinated to the goals of modernization and development based on a new technological order.
The article published on August 7 by the Minister of Economy of Russia Alexei Ulyukaev pleases with the author's bold position regarding the "sacred cow" of the Russian monetary authorities - a budget rule prohibiting the free use of oil and gas budget revenues. While no sane economist supported the introduction of this rule, it came to be taken for granted after years of unrequited criticism. Some conspiracy-minded experts have even come to the conclusion that in the form of a fiscal rule, Russia is paying an indemnity to the US victors of the Cold War.
I
The fiscal rule means that excess profits from oil exports should be reserved in US bonds, i.e. directed not to the needs of the Russian state, but to lending to the United States. Even after the imposition of sanctions against Russia and the actual deployment of the war against Russia by the States in Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Finance invested next billions of dollars of budget money in lending to state, including military, expenses of the enemy. This is reminiscent of the discipline of Soviet suppliers, who in June 1941, after the German attack on the USSR, continued to ship the resources needed by the German military-industrial complex (not after the attack, but minutes before it - the last car with nickel crossed the border on the night of 21 June 22, B.I.).
We need to thank Alexey Ulyukaev for publicly questioning the policy of exporting oil and gas revenues abroad with an insignificant yield of about 1%. After all, they could be placed inside the country with many times higher profitability and benefit. Or refuse to borrow to finance the artificially created budget deficit at 6-7% per annum.
The Russian budget annually loses about a hundred billion rubles on the difference in interest rates between borrowed and provided loans. And if the budget funds frozen in American bonds were invested in the construction of infrastructure facilities, subsidies for innovative projects, housing construction, the economic effect would be many times greater.
II
Wartime circumstances force us to return to the obvious truths, which for two decades have been rejected by the Russian monetary authorities in favor of the dogmas imposed by Washington. Moreover, the notorious budgetary rule is not the main one among the latter. This "dead cat" was planted by the Americans after the Russian monetary authorities swallowed the more fundamental dogmas of the Washington Consensus, invented for the convenience of American capital colonization of underdeveloped countries.
The key ones are dogmas about the liberalization of cross-border capital movement, quantitative restrictions on the money supply and total privatization. Following the first dogma guarantees freedom of action for foreign investors, the bulk of which are financial speculators associated with the US Federal Reserve. Implementation of the second - provides the latter with strategic advantages, depriving the country's economy of internal sources of credit. Compliance with the third - makes it possible to extract superprofits from the appropriation of the assets of the colonized country (we are talking not only about superprofits, but about the total weakening of protectionism for free penetration into the markets of the Russian Federation, about the purchase of defense plants, about the purchase of competing enterprises for a song, B.
Invited in the early 90s to participate in the Russian privatization, American speculators by 1998 on the financial pyramids they promoted with the help of the Russian government received more than 1000% of the profits. Having come out of these pyramids in advance, they collapsed the financial market and then returned to buy up ten times cheaper assets. Having “welded” about 100% more, they again left the Russian market in 2008, bringing it down threefold.
The pursuit of the dogmatic policy of the Washington Consensus cost Russia, according to various estimates, from 1 to 2 trillion. dollars of exported capital, the loss of more than 10 trillion. rubles of budget revenues and turned into a degradation of the economy, the investment sector of which (mechanical engineering and construction) decreased several times with the extinction of most high-tech industries, deprived of sources of funding.
At least half of the capital exported from Russia settled in the American financial system, and the market freed from domestic producers was captured by Western campaigns. The titles of the best finance ministers and central bankers, which the Americans have favorably endowed their agents of influence in the Russian leadership, have cost Russia very dearly.
III
Entering the discussion started by Ulyukaev, I will start with the main thing in a market economy - money. Since the mid-1990s, the Russian monetary authorities, under pressure from the United States and the IMF, have limited the emission of money to an increase in foreign exchange reserves formed in dollars. Thus, they abandoned share income (incorrect, see in the commentary, B.I.) in favor of the United States and deprived the country of an internal source of credit, making it prohibitively expensive and subjecting the economy to external demand for raw materials. And, although within the framework of the anti-crisis program in 2008 the monetary authorities abandoned this model, the volume of the monetary base in Russia is still one and a half times lower than the value of foreign exchange reserves, long-term loans remain unavailable for internally oriented industries, and the level of monetization of the economy (the monetization coefficient is the ratio of the average annual value of the money supply: cash, checks, demand deposits, cash deposits of enterprises and the population in banks, to the gross domestic product, reflects the saturation of the economy with liquid assets, the degree of the economy with money, B.I.) is half the minimum required for simple reproduction.
Domestic banks and corporations are trying to compensate for the lack of domestic sources of credit with foreign loans, which makes Russia extremely vulnerable to financial sanctions.
The cessation of foreign loans from Western banks could paralyze the reproduction of the Russian economy overnight. And this despite the fact that Russia is a major donor of the world financial system, annually providing it with more than $ 100 billion in capital. With a stable and significant positive trade balance, not we, but the Western partners subsidized by us, should have been afraid of sanctions limiting Russia's access to the world financial market. After all, if a country sells more than it buys, it does not need foreign loans. Moreover, their attraction entails crowding out internal sources of credit at the expense of national interests.
IV
The first thing that needs to be done to bring the economy onto a trajectory of sustainable growth and ensure its security is to restore the emission of money in the public interest, providing enterprises with the volume of long-term credit necessary for their development and growth of production. As in other sovereign countries, the emission of money should be carried out by the Central Bank not against the purchase of foreign currency, but against the obligations of the state and private business by refinancing commercial banks in accordance with the needs of economic development.
In accordance with the recommendations of the classic of the theory of money Tobin, the goal of the Bank of Russia should be to create the most favorable conditions for investment growth. This means that the refinancing of commercial banks should be carried out at an interest rate available to industrial enterprises and for a period corresponding to the duration of the research and production cycle in the investment complex. For example, for three to five years at 4% per annum for commercial banks and for 10-15 years at 2% per annum for development institutions lending to government-significant investment projects.
To prevent money from being spent on speculation against the ruble and abroad, as happened in 2008-2009 with hundreds of billions of rubles issued to save banks, banks should receive refinancing only against loans already issued to industrial enterprises or against the security of already acquired obligations of the state and development institutions ... At the same time, the norms of currency and banking control should block the use of credit resources for the purpose of currency speculation.
To curb them and stop illegal capital flight, the tax on financial speculation proposed by the same Tobin should be introduced. At least on their foreign exchange part in the amount of VAT charged on all foreign exchange transactions and included in VAT payments when importing goods and services.
V
The proposed measures will give the economy the credit resources necessary for its modernization and development. After all, a loan created by the state in its meaning is an advance payment for economic growth. The available production facilities allow the Russian economy to grow at an annual GDP growth rate of 8%, investments - by 15%.
This requires a corresponding expansion of credit and a remonetization of the economy. Under the threat of financial sanctions, it would be appropriate to start it by immediately replacing external loans of state corporations with loans from Russian state banks at the same interest rates and on the same conditions. Then gradually expand and lengthen the refinancing of commercial banks on universal uniform terms. Only the Bank of Russia should not raise the key interest rate, strengthening anti-Russian sanctions by the US and the EU, but, on the contrary, should reduce it to the level of profitability of enterprises in the investment sector.
I can imagine how the apologists for the dollarization of the Russian economy will start shouting that the implementation of these proposals will turn into disaster. By intimidating the country's leadership with hyperinflation, the proponents of the Washington Consensus with a policy of quantitative restrictions on the money supply have already brought the Russian economy to the miserable state of a raw-materials colony of American-European capital, exploited by an offshore oligarchy. They are unaware that the main anti-inflationary medicine is NTP, which provides cost reduction, increased efficiency, increased volumes and improved product quality, which results in a constant decrease in the price per unit of consumer properties of goods in advanced countries.
An example is China, whose economy is growing at 8% per year, the money supply increases by 30–45%, while prices are falling. After all, there is no innovation and investment without credit. And inflation is possible even with zero or even negative credit. This, in fact, has been demonstrated by the Russian economy for two decades, in which the monetary authorities condone the export of capital and artificially restrict the growth of the money supply, while the monopolies constantly inflate prices, compensating for the contraction of production.
No one doubts that excessive emission leads to inflation. Just like over-irrigation leads to waterlogging. But the art of monetary policy, like the skill of the gardener, is to select the optimal level of emission, taking care that cash flows do not leave the production sphere and do not create turbulence in the financial market.
To avoid inflationary risks, it is necessary to tighten banking and financial controls in order to prevent the formation of financial bubbles. The money issued for the refinancing of commercial banks should be used exclusively for lending to production activities, which requires the application of the principles of project financing along with control instruments. At the same time, it is important to deploy mechanisms for strategic planning and stimulation of scientific and technological progress, which would help business to choose the right promising areas of development.
VI
In the context of a structural crisis of the world economy, caused by a change in the dominant technological structures (a structural crisis is a running ahead of one sphere of the economy or, conversely, lagging behind, but the current structural crisis is not at all associated with a change in the dominant technological structures, it, on the contrary, is stagnating, but with a new round the growth of the speculative sector, B.I.) it is extremely important to correctly choose the priority areas of development. It is during such periods that a window of opportunity opens for lagging countries for a technological leap into the ranks of world leaders. The concentration of investments in the development of key technologies of the new technological order allows them to ride a new long wave of economic growth earlier than others, to obtain technological advantages, to raise the efficiency and competitiveness of the national economy, and to radically improve their position in the world division of labor.
The world experience of making technological breakthroughs indicates the necessary parameters of such a policy: an increase in the accumulation rate from the current 22% to 35%, for this - a doubling of the economy's credit intensity and a corresponding increase in its monetization; concentration of resources on promising areas of growth of the new technological order.
Vii
The world has entered an era of serious changes that will last for several more years and will culminate in a new long-wave economic recovery based on a new technological order with a new composition of leaders.
Russia still has a chance to be among them in the transition to a policy of priority development based on the all-round stimulation of the growth of the new technological order. Despite the catastrophic consequences of the macroeconomic policy pursued for two decades for most branches of the knowledge-intensive industry, the country still has the scientific and technological potential necessary for making a technological breakthrough. If it is not destroyed by privatization and bureaucratization of the Academy of Sciences, but revived with cheap long-term loans.
With the transition to a policy of advanced development, the question of the budgetary rule acquires the correct formulation. The opportunistic budget revenues generated by the rise in oil prices should be invested in lending not to someone else's, but to their own economy. Due to them, a development budget should be formed, the funds of which should be used to finance R&D and innovative projects for the development of production of a new technological order, as well as investments in the creation of the necessary infrastructure for this.
Instead of building up foreign exchange reserves in US Treasuries, surplus foreign exchange earnings should be spent on imports of advanced technology. The goal of macroeconomic policy should be to increase credit for the modernization and development of the economy based on a new technological order, and not to limit the money supply in the hope of reducing inflation. The latter will decline as costs decrease, quality improves and the volume of production of goods and services increases.
***
The logic of the world crisis naturally leads to an exacerbation of international competition. In an effort to maintain its leadership in the rivalry with the rising China, the United States is fomenting a world war in order to maintain its financial hegemony and scientific and technological superiority. Applying economic sanctions in parallel with the buildup of anti-Russian aggression in Ukraine, the United States is seeking to defeat Russia and subordinate it, like the EU, to its interests. By continuing the policy of the Washington Consensus and holding back credit expansion, the monetary authorities are exacerbating the negative effects of external sanctions, plunging the economy into depression and depriving it of chances for development.
The war of the United States and its NATO allies against Russia is gaining momentum. There is less and less time for maneuver. In order not to lose this war, macroeconomic policy should be immediately subordinated to the goals of modernization and development based on a new technological order.

Sergey Glazyev

From the editorial board
The Washington Consensus is a type of macroeconomic policy that at the end of the 20th century was recommended by the IMF and World Bank leadership for use in countries experiencing financial and economic crises.
The Washington Consensus was formulated by the English economist John Williamson in 1989 as a set of economic policy rules for Latin America. The document was intended to indicate the departure of these countries from the command (Peronist) model of economic development of the 1960s-1970s and their acceptance of the principles of economic policy common to most developed countries. It was about the principles that, according to Williamson, reflected the common position of the US administration, the main international financial organizations - the IMF and the World Bank, as well as leading American think tanks. Their headquarters were in Washington DC - hence the term "Washington Consensus". It was about ensuring free access for US companies to previously inaccessible markets.
“The era of Thatcherism and Reaganism came, when the sphere of government intervention in the economy began to shrink, and privatization began,” noted Professor Hu Angang. That is: no consensus within the G7 countries and full consensus within the previously closed countries.
The Washington Consensus includes a set of 10 recommendations:
1. Maintaining fiscal discipline (minimum budget deficit);
2. Prioritization of health care, education and infrastructure among public expenditures;
3. Reducing marginal tax rates;
4. Liberalization of financial markets to maintain the real interest rates on loans at a low, but still positive level;
5. Free exchange rate of the national currency;
6. Liberalization of foreign trade (mainly due to the reduction of import duty rates);
7. Reducing restrictions on foreign direct investment;
8. Privatization;
9. Deregulation of the economy;
10. Protection of property rights.

In a broader sense, the term "Washington Consensus" is used to describe a number of measures (not necessarily from the above list) aimed at strengthening the role of market forces and reducing the role of the public sector, ie. weakening of protectionism and market accessibility for non-residents.
In 1987, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union proclaimed a course towards the development of a market economy. The USSR joined the Washington Consensus in 1989 when the first deficit budget was adopted. The deficit was the result of the loss of budgetary revenues from the sale of alcohol, the abolition of the state monopoly on foreign trade, the free conversion of non-cash rubles into cash, the unjustified imperative increase in the foreign exchange rate, the permission for cooperatives and small enterprises to trade in anything, including strategic raw materials, "stimulating", i.e. e. bribing administrators of large enterprises, artificially created shortages (through the physical elimination of essential goods, cheese, sausages, etc.), etc.
The “Summary of Government Materials on the Transition to a Planned Market Economy” signed by the President's Economic Adviser A. Petrakov in April 1990 reads: “... to form a comprehensive all-Union market in the country, that is, an economy operating in a free-form
- on the basis of supply and demand prices for the overwhelming majority of means of production and consumer goods,
- opportunities for all enterprises, regardless of their form of ownership, free disposal of their products both on the domestic and on the world markets ... " ruble, etc.
Incidentally, in the "Statement" it was proposed to introduce a progressive taxation of citizens' incomes. It was also noted that in 1989 more than 1000 large enterprises suspended work, losses amounted to 7 million man-days, and already in January 1990 alone, due to strikes, losses amounted to 4.5 million man-days, controllability decreased, etc. Note that the Independent Miners' Union (NPG), which began mass strikes in 1989, was financed not only by the AFL KPP, this instrument of the US Department of State, but also by the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions.

In April 2011, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF, issued a statement that the Washington Consensus "with its simplistic economic concepts and recipes collapsed during the global economic crisis and was left behind."

If during the reign of Gorbachev-Yeltsin all the points of the Washington Consensus were implemented, except for paragraphs. 2 and 3, then the Putin government on the project of Andrei Illarionov created the so-called the stabilization fund, later - the reserve fund and the social welfare fund, which is kept in US banks and amounts to about 0.5 trillion. Doll.
Glazyev once again points out the need to use the funds of this fund within Russia. Let me remind you that Putin himself twice declared the need to spend stubs. fund within Russia. In April 2007, he promised to send a stub. fund for the development of the housing and communal services system and new technologies. After the presidential elections, in his Address to the Federal Assembly in December 2012, Putin promised in the same way: “Our national savings should work in the country and for the country, but so far the funds of the National Wealth Fund are practically not invested in development. We agreed - I remember this well and agree with this - that after the Reserve Fund exceeds 7 percent of GDP, we can direct half of the income above this level to the Russian economy, mainly to infrastructure projects. " Despite the hype surrounding the second promise, especially by Mr. Zhirinovsky, Putin again failed to fulfill it. Glazyev, on the other hand, managed not to even raise the issue of returning funds from the United States.

Glazyev does not quite correctly tie the refinancing rate to the Washington Consensus.
The refinancing rate, for example, in Argentina in 1995 was 6.2%, in 2000, before the default, until the moment when Argentina did not try to escape from the US custody with its "consensus" - 8.5 %.
In Russia in 1992 the rate increased from 20% to 80%, in 1993 it increased from 80% to 210%, in 1995 the rate was 200%, in 1996 it decreased from 120% to 60%, in 1998 -m the rate jumped to 150% in 2000 fell from 55% to 28%.
In 2012, the rate in the Russian Federation was calm 8.25%, but this is official data. In reality, it is possible to take out a loan in the Russian Federation only at 18% minimum in a bank like "Moscow" up to 22.5% in Sberbank.
In contrast, the ECB rate ranges from 0 to 2.5%, negative rates are proposed as an experiment to boost demand.
Why is there such a difference, where is the logic? And the logic is that the owner of the bank, the manager of the bank behaves like a taxi driver at the airport. A taxi driver is sitting, waiting for a rich client. I would lower the price - I would take many more passengers, there would be more turnover, the taxi driver would be richer. But this has to work! And here you sit, wait ...
In addition, there is a suspicion that the refinancing rate is so high because many Russian banks have no capitalization at all, and bribing an audit in Russia is easier than a steamed turnip, these banks in the same Europe take a loan at, say, 4%, and sell it in Russia, for example, at 12%. Without leaving the office ...

As for the emission. As E. A. Preobrazhensky noted back in 1924, inflation is a type of additional state tax - this is what Glazyev was talking about. This emission leads to inflation, i.e. to filling the economy with money that is not backed by a commodity. The reasons for the issue are not at all the purchase of foreign currency, but the coverage of the budget deficit caused, say, by military spending. The state is unable to either eliminate inflation or regulate it; it is only capable of limiting it. For example, countries were forced to limit inflation to join the EU. Capitalism cannot do without inflation, its limitation imposes a restriction on the very development of the economy. Which, under capitalism, is carried out by limiting the consumption of the lower classes, which, in turn, itself limits the development of the economy and forces the ruling class to limit inflation. Big inflation means breakthroughs, low inflation means socialist calm. Consequently, the emission in the Russian Federation is not at all conditioned or limited by the purchase of foreign currency.

Of course, Glazyev is correct in pointing out the need for financial and banking controls to reduce inflation. However, he himself points to price inflation by monopolies. If inflation is 7-8%, then the rise in prices is one and a half, or even three times more. The growth follows the indexation of wages, the indexation is usually less than the rise in prices. That in itself generates inflation. And also leads to a decrease in demand, which leads to a decrease in production.
Thus, the business cannot end with control; one cannot do without price caps. No Tobin tax, this anti- and alter-globalist discovery, will help
But the price cap is not just happening. As the chairman of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers, said at the beginning of the last century, the main crime of a capitalist is the concealment of profits. The Russian entrepreneur hides profits in deafening overhead costs, of which he assigns the lion's share to management costs. If anyone remembers, earlier in the structure of invoices they also included representative ones. Courchevel, etc.

I.e. Instead of taxing management costs, the government taxes the minimum wage. Instead of lowering the tax on low wages, thereby avoiding enveloped wages and providing the FIU, instead of increasing the mineral extraction tax (now the rate is from 0% to 8%) and introducing a progressive tax on high incomes.
The aggregate tax rate in the Russian Federation is almost 12% higher than in the European Union. These are the conclusions reached by experts of the audit and consulting company PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), adding three effective rates - income tax (7.1%), payroll tax (13%) and "other taxes".
According to the company's experts, cited in the report "Paying Taxes 2013", the aggregate average effective tax rate on business in Russia is more than 54.1%, which is significantly higher than the tax burden in the European Union (42.6%) and in general in the world economy (44.7%).
For comparison, the average tax rate in large economically developed countries with a high standard of living of the population, members of the OECD group, does not exceed 42.7%. In Latin America and the Caribbean - less than 47.2%, in Eastern Europe and Central Asia - less than 40.5%. In Kazakhstan, the average tax rate is only 29%. At the same time, in other BRIC countries the aggregate rate is even higher, for example, in China - almost 64%. The point is not in the total tax, but in the structure of taxation!
Taxes are high, but in our totalitarian state the state is so weak that it turned out to be unable to collect a progressive tax on the rich. It is not able to control the collection of taxes in any way. The whole country pays taxes, passing money through fly-by-night firms at 5-6%. And why should officials fight this if they themselves are involved in such a business.

Glazyev also correctly speaks of the need to purchase new technologies, for example, the government of Japan did the same, which caused its unprecedented rise. Nobody argues: there is nothing more important than consumer goods. But. Each time you need to understand who will do all THIS.

As you know, capital flight is due, for example, to the fact that capital is looking for cheap labor, cheap raw materials, etc. Stab. the fund fled to the United States for a different reason indicated in all reference books - because of the inability of the elite to dispose of it. As for the administrative apparatus, everything is clear here, only the names of Serdyukov, Livanov, Gref, Kudrin, Zurabov, Chubais, Kirienko, Nurgaliev, etc. are worth, not to mention the discouraging intellectual, to match Psaki, the State Duma of the Russian Federation. But we are talking primarily about the oligarchic elite. For example, Vekselberg was simply unable to create the Skolkovo center, failed the project, just as Chubais failed to organize the development of nanotechnology. Secondly, the ENTIRE army of entrepreneurs is incompetent. For example, the construction of roads, which costs twice as much as labor costs half as much as in Europe. And not only because entrepreneurs hide profits in invoices.
As you know, if the rate of profit of the enterprise turns out to be below the average, then at the next step of reproduction it will become even less than the average. The case may end in bankruptcy. Therefore, in the West, entrepreneurs are trying to compete, reduce costs, introduce new technologies, etc. in order to achieve an average rate of profit.
Not so in Russia. A domestic entrepreneur easily achieves an average rate of return by freezing or non-payment of wages.
And how else is it, if a Russian entrepreneur - either graduated from the trade union committee or the Komsomol committee of some faculty in any university, or a policeman or a KGB-schnik, or a criminal authority.
That is: one cannot do without massive clean-ups. Glazyev's project resembles Stolypin's reform, who wanted to preserve the autocracy by solving the agrarian question, but at the same time not infringe on the noble-landlord class, the support of the tsarist regime, interested in preserving their latifundia. So, in his speech dedicated to Novorossia, this refined smart guy did not think of anything else but, together with a mass of commonplaces, repeat the newspaper cliché that the United States is provoking Russia to get involved in the war, i.e. to protect the children of Novorossiya from death, i.e. provoke Putin to fulfill his promises to the residents of Novorossiya.
The situation is aggravated by the fact that the reform of education, which led to its commercialization and the inscriptions on the posts “essays, coursework, diplomas, dissertations, tel. … ”, Spawned an army of certified cretins. This army has invaded not only the management elite, but also factories. Soon the old managers will leave, and the industry will collapse.
That is: if scientific and technological progress takes place, then new technologies will not be able to descend on the collapsed technological production base.
On the other hand, the old Soviet creative class, which is the only really creative class in modern Russia, will soon disappear.

I.e. It is impossible to move the Russian economy off the ground by simply abandoning the Washington Consensus. As we have seen, a comprehensive solution is needed.