{"id":2092,"date":"2011-09-26T19:23:20","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T18:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/?p=2092"},"modified":"2011-09-26T20:34:34","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T19:34:34","slug":"clash-of-the-egos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/?p=2092","title":{"rendered":"a lame duck’s wrath"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Russia’s long serving Minister of Finance Aleksei Kudrin was forced to resign by long-term lame duck president Dmitri Medvedev. In an astonishing public display Kudrin felt the wrath of Medvedev. After his de-facto demotion at the Edinaya Rossiya convention on September 24th, Medvedev was extremely unnerved by Kudrin’s public criticism of Medvedev’s alleged economic and financial policy views. Medvedev was most likely shocked that his authority had immediately crumbled with the political class after Putin’s announced return to the Kremlin. Medvedev had to act quickly and decisively. Had he not, he would have accepted the role as a figurehead executive for many months to come.<\/p>\n

It was a surprise though, that Kudrin had mounted this strong criticism publicly and – what is even more dazzling – abroad. In addition, Kudrin’s attack was actually directed at the wrong man: Putin has ordered an irresponsible rise in state spending. In 2012 – at prime election time – state spending will be raised by 17 per cent. Further spending sprees have already been announced for 2013 and 2014. Only if oil prices wire to rise beyond 130 USD\/barrel on average next year, will Russia avoid a budget deficit. With the world economy on the brink of another recession cycle, such price levels are all but likely. Russia will most likely see a widening budget deficit over the next years. If it were not for oil tax and tarriffs revenue, the budget deficit already now is at 12.5 per cent of GDP. Furthermore. it will see a trade and current account deficit no later than 2014. Russia’s pension system needs serious reform; it can no longer be sustained in its current form.<\/p>\n

It is highly likely that Kudrin, an extremely talented and ambitious person, who deserves credit for Russia’s sound financial policies in the Putin era and steering Russia through the financial crisis of 2008\/09, has uttered the harsh criticism of Medvedev out of wounded vanity. It is an open secret in Moscow that Kudrin expected to be appointed prime minister of Russia after the presidential elections in March 2012. But there is no room for a third person in a tandem ride.<\/p>\n

Photo: http:\/\/www.faz.net<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia’s long serving Minister of Finance Aleksei Kudrin was forced to resign by long-term lame duck president Dmitri Medvedev. In an astonishing public display Kudrin felt the wrath of Medvedev. After his de-facto demotion at the Edinaya Rossiya convention on September 24th, Medvedev was extremely unnerved by Kudrin’s public criticism of Medvedev’s alleged economic and … Continue reading a lame duck’s wrath<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2092","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2092"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2102,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2092\/revisions\/2102"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gerhard-mangott.at\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}