Watch out, world. Russia's back, better than ever, and — says the Deutsche Bank CEO — you never saw it coming.
"One of the things I am always struck by is how the history of prediction in the West about what's going to happen in Russia has been so poor," Charles Ryan, chief county officer and CEO of Deutsche Bank, one of the largest investment banks in the world, told a crowd at the Heritage Foundation today.
But he wasn't there to whine. "No once could have predicted in 1998 in the very dark days of the utter collapse of the Russian economy that we would be sitting here today with such an optimistic nature about the current state of the Russian macroeconomic story," he said.
Russia will be the fifth-largest economy in the world in 2020, with a $2 trillion economy in 2010, thanks to its booming economy, says Mr. Ryan.
Not everything's perfect yet, though. He talked of Russian officials keeping half their country's GDP in cash, claiming distrust of the Russian bureaucracy not to invest it "wisely," adding that these "officials" would rather invest it by engaging Western business and getting Russia involved in private partnerships.
He criticized Russia's President Vladimir Putin's tax reform program passed last year that required Russians pay a 13% flat tax, saying it makes it difficult for anybody to live "independently, economically."
Andrew C. Kuchins, a political scientist and director and senior fellow for the Russia and Eurasia Program, agreed that there has been an economic revolution taking place in Russia for over the past eight years.
"This transformation of Russia from an economic basket case to emerging market powerhouse is very much underappreciated," Mr. Kuchins said, calling the country "polarized much like the Tale of Two Cities."
The way some were hinting to possible American-Russian collaborations on investing, it seemed that traces of the Cold War had all but melted.
"There are going to be important steps for the [American and Russian] governments to take to ensure that the private initiative is allowed to make its contribution where it can," said Ambassador James F. Collins, senior associate and director of the Russia and Eurasia Program.
"I hope that our engagement with the Russians will continue to make the point that developing the commercial relationship with the business communities in Russia and vice-versa is an important strategic interest for the United States. It will make the relationship more stable."
— Andrew Richards, intern, The Washington Times
Comments (1)
If you build a case for power entropy and the dysfunctional multilateralism of the 1990's, what emerges are three power zones. China and Southease Asis, Russia and Europe and the U.S. and North America. Africa right now is up for grabs and Iran and Venezuela are making their bids for the Middle East and South/Central America, respectively. As economies grow so does the need to enforce the protection of those economies. In most cases its a projection of power, why else would China be seeking military parity with the U.S. or Russia rebuilding it power. The issue here is global consensus coming in contact with regional compliance. At some point consensus collapses to self interests and conflict occurs. The way things are going, both China and Russia have manuevered to the center of the global chessboard while the U.S. is oscillating its own sectarian political incompetency (11% Congress/23% President at the last poll). As long as that continues, Putin and Jintao are going to continue with same strategy, and guess what, money talks while politicians balk.
Posted by Larry Stone | October 19, 2007 3:20 AM