Chapter 10: Yeltsin's Dilemma

Of all the ministries in the Soviet Union, the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation was the only one with its own banking system. Pen | fun | pavilion www. biquge。 But now the Ministry of Buildings of the USSR is about to put an end to this history, because their National Housing Bank will be renamed the Housing Utility Bank to become the fifth state-owned bank in the Soviet Union, and his first president will be the former President of the National Housing Bank, Sobchak.

This banking reform was the first step in the reform of the financial system by the Gorbachev administration. Although the Bank of Residential Utilities has been raised to the national level, it is still a regional bank in terms of capital only for Moscow, Leningrad and Gorky. And it was also a bold experiment by Gorbachev in the banking system.

As Gorbachev's confidant and an official with considerable financial research, Seryosha still knows a thing or two about these things. In fact, it is not only the residential utility bank that is on Gorbachev's schedule, but also a state-owned bank called the Workers' and Peasants' Bank, which is also on the agenda for reforming the financial system. That is, in the future. The banking system of the Soviet Union will be expanded from the existing four Central Bank, the Foreign Trade Bank, the Construction Bank, and the Savings Bank to six, and the Workers' and Peasants' Bank and the Residential Public Utilities Bank will be added. Gorbachev's move was aimed at promoting the country's housing and urban construction, as well as improving the situation in which industrial and agricultural production was declining year by year. This means that in the future, housing and urban construction, as well as industrial and agricultural enterprises, will receive more financial support from the state. As the second-in-command among the country's leaders, Ligachev, who served as the secretary of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CPSU, undertook the work of reforming the financial system this time.

Ligachev had previously served as head of the organization department in the party, and he was very prestigious in the party. However, Seryosha now indirectly controls the money bag of the Soviet Union, and Ligachev is not very familiar with the business of foreign trade, so Ligachev did not interfere too much in Seryosha's affairs, but Yeltsin's side, because the workers' new city needs a huge capital budget from the central government, which makes Ligachev a little dissatisfied.

Ligachev's idea is very simple, why when the workers' new city was in Seryosha's hands, the workers' new city was built in three phases without relying on the state to allocate a penny, and you, Yeltsin, just took over, asked the state for so much money. So Yeltsin's money has not been satisfied.

Seryosha actually knows in his heart that due to the lack of domestic supply in recent years, the common people have become more dependent on the black market. However, because of the state nature of the Soviet Union, the workers were paid no matter what. This effectively exacerbates the harm of inflation, because supply is dwindling and people are getting more and more money because they can't spend it. The danger of inflation is that people are not interested in the interest rate on the bonds issued by the residential utility banks. Ordinary people would rather exchange their money for some durable and non-obsolete goods to hoard, or exchange them for foreign exchange, only in this way can they keep their wealth. This has invisibly exacerbated the demand in the supply area and worsened the shortage of the supply area. People with connections can get their hands on in-demand goods, while people with no connections can only go to the black market to buy high-ticket goods. The common people also deeply hate this phenomenon. This suddenly reminded Seryosha of a word he had heard when he was very young, called speculation.

Under the influence of this shortage economy in the Soviet Union, the harmful side of speculation was magnified, and gradually showed a more serious impact on the Soviet economy. Even the barter trade in Seryosha's hands for blood transfusions to the Soviet Union had a greater impact. In the case of electrolytic aluminum, one of Glencore's three main businesses, workers who were unable to buy satisfactory necessities in state-run stores because of inflation began to show their skills in order to have enough money to buy goods on the black market. Some people will steal the aluminum ingots from their workplaces and sell them to outside smugglers, while others simply go out to work part-time during working hours to support their families. What's more, some people with access to the road rely on the big trees of the electrolytic aluminum plant and also engage in speculative business. As a result, the production of ingots in the factories began to decline (because the workers did not work well) and the cost of production began to rise (because a large number of ingots would be lost). In Seryosha's case, the harm is the contraction of trade due to the shortage of goods, and the decline in profits due to rising costs.

After understanding this truth, Seryosha can now be regarded as seeing through it. Unless the police go back to the streets to catch the workers who missed their shifts, as they did when Secretary Andropov first came to power, the Soviet economy will not be able to change the downward trend. But what Gorbachev did was the opposite, he wanted to give freedom to the people, and he would never let the police do it.

The bad news is not only this, due to the global economic downturn, the prices of aluminum ingots, oil and natural gas are falling in the international market, but fortunately, food prices are also falling. Although Glencore's profit model had no effect, the Soviet Union's export earnings were not encouraging.

The Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation is not doing well, but Seryosha has made automobiles a new export bright spot. So for the time being, Seryosha's business data is not too ugly. However, Yeltsin could not start construction without money, and Seryosha had promised Yeltsin at the beginning, so Yeltsin had the cheekiness to come to Seryosha to solve the financial problem for him.

"Brother, the money in our foreign trade bank is the profit of export enterprises, and it has to be settled once a quarter. I embezzled the money to you, and it took several years for your workers to return the funds alone, how can you let me help you! Seryosha said helplessly.

"Brother, you're going to have to figure it out for me! That, GRD Ligachev didn't get into the oil and salt, and I tried to figure out how to solve the problem by myself. Now there is no interest in the bonds of the Housing Utilities Bank, brother, you are an expert in this area, if you don't make a move, my brother, my first project in Moscow will be yellow! Yeltsin said anxiously.

"Brother Boris, don't worry! It's not that there is no way, but it's just that it's impossible to raise the money from the country! If we borrow money from foreign financial institutions, there may be some hope! Seryosha said cautiously that for a period of time, he had been struggling with how to make the money on the books of the Foreign Trade Bank flow from country to country, but now it seems that Yeltsin, who was going crazy and tortured by Ligachev, seemed to be the best candidate.