Friday, October 22, 2010

Lessons for the U.S. from Russia?

The Russian government is moving forward with plans to privatize state-owned assets in an effort to raise an estimated US$59 billion between 2011-15 to offset the fiscal deficit, reports Roubini Global Economics. By reducing state control in several industries, the government also sees the privatization plan as a way to modernize the economy and improve foreign investors' perceptions of Russia. According to reports, the government will privatize stakes in around 900 companies and sell minority stakes in several large companies.

The United States government owns huge parcels of land and many buildings, maybe it's time to sell these to help pay down the debt.

1 comment:

  1. So... The feds bail out the big banks and other power elite, putting cash in their pockets in exchange for worthless securities, which are now a huge debt burden on the American Taxpayer.

    Rather than repudiating that debt and clawing back the money that was given illegally to the power elite, we're now going to sell fed owned property (which is BS anyway) to the power elite, so that they can levy tolls upon the American Taxpayer. I'm broke because of the huge taxes I will have to pay, but whatever money I have left I'll have to give to them to use the properties that we will to sell to them (at fire sale prices, no doubt.)

    Good plan, Bob. Good plan. Let's do this... let's 1) prosecute the corruption, 2) repudiate the debt, which will have the fortunate side effect of making it impossible for the feds to borrow anything more in the taxpayers name, and then 3) see if we need to sell off any publicly owned lands.

    Maybe by the time we get done with 2, we won't have to worry about doing 3.

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