The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy by Anders Aslund

Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy by Anders Aslund Atlanticcouncil.org/expert/anders-aslund/ A penetrating look into the extreme plutocracy Vladimir Putin has created and its implications for Russia’s future This insightful study explores how the economic system Vladimir Putin has developed in Russia works to consolidate control over the country. By appointing his close associates as heads of state enterprises and by giving control of the FSB and the judiciary to his friends from the KGB, he has enriched his business friends from Saint Petersburg with preferential government deals. Thus, Putin has created a super wealthy and loyal plutocracy that owes its existence to authoritarianism. Much of this wealth has been hidden in offshore havens in the United States and the United Kingdom, where companies with anonymous owners and black money transfers are allowed to thrive. Though beneficial to a select few, this system has left Russia’s economy in untenable stagnation, which Putin has tried to mask through military might. Dr. Anders Åslund is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University. He is a leading specialist on economic policy in Russia, Ukraine and Eastern Europe. Dr. Åslund has served as an economic adviser to several governments, notably the governments of Russia (1991-94) and Ukraine (1994-97). He has published widely and is the author of 15 books and edited 16 books. His most recent book is Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (Yale UP 2019) Other recent books are with Simeon Djankov, Europe’s Growth Challenge (OUP, 2017), Ukraine: What Went Wrong and How to Fix It (2015), and How Capitalism Was Built (CUP, 2013). His books have been translated into 12 languages. He was a professor at the Stockholm School of Economics and the founding director of the Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics. He has worked at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, and the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Center. He served as a Swedish diplomat in Kuwait, Poland, Geneva, and Moscow. He earned his PhD from Oxford University.