Do I have a treat for your today!!
The famous Russian economist Mikhail Khazin has agreed to participate in a Q&A with the readers of this blog. Here how this will work: during all of next week (until Friday the 24th 6PM GMT), you will have the possibility to submit questions to Mr Khazin. Then the Russian Saker Blog Team and myself will select the best ones and submit them to Mr Khazin, who will email us his answers which we will translate and post here. A couple of important points:
1. There are no restrictions on topics - you can ask any question you want on any topic.
2. You can ask questions in English or in Russian
3. You can ask anonymously, but please choose a alias/nickname but
4. Please truthfully indicate the city or, at least, country from which you are writing (for Mr Khazin's own interest)
5. Write concisely and clearly, no more than one paragraph.
Guys, Mikhail Khazin is really one of the best informed people in Russia. Not only does he know Russian economics, he has first hand and deep knowledge of Kremlin politics and the behind the scenes battles between what I call Atlantic Integrationists and Eurasian Sovereignists. Khazin knows Putin personally and well. In other words - this is a golden opportunity, so please use it the best you can!
The Saker
PS: for those who might not be familiar with Mikhail Khazin, here is his biography, translated for you by the Russian Saker Team to whom I express my deepest gratitude.
PPS: please do not email me but post your questions here
Biography of Mikhail Khazin:
After graduating from the university in 1984, M. Khazin worked in the Laboratory of Computational Mathematics at the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Physical Chemistry. In 1989 he was employed at the USSR Central Statistical Directorate’s Institute for Statistics and Economic Research. In 1992, together with his friends and former students, M. Khazin worked as a head of Analytics Department in one of the then-biggest banks of Russia, ELBIM-Bank.
In 1993 M. Khazin entered public office. He worked first for the Labour Centre for Economic Reforms, created by Yegor Gaidar with the purpose of theoretically justifying the reforms, then in the Russian Federation’s Ministry of Economy under the ministers A. Shokhin and later E. Yasin. Meanwhile, divisive issues with the so-called Gaidar-team started emerging, in that there was increasing evidence of embezzlement of government funds, sabotage and unabashed corruption on the part of the Gaidar team.
In March of 1997 M. Khazin became a Deputy Chief of the Economic Directorate at the Presidential Administration. In June of 1998 he was discharged from public service for attempting to fight corruption during the privatization (in other words, for standing up against the Summers-Chubais team) and to avert governmental policies that led to the default of 1998. Khazin was unemployed for 2 years and for the next 10 years he was not permitted to leave Russian territory.
Since the summer of 2000 Khazin has been employed as a consultant. On September 10, 2001, when participating in the Expert journal’s forum and analyzing the economic situation in the United States, he foresaw a high likelihood of large-scale terrorist attacks organized by the U.S. authorities to explain the deterioration of the economic situation in the country. M. Khazin and his associates at the time elaborated the theory of modern economic crisis. At the beginning of 2002 Khazin published a paper dedicated to the basics of structural crisis in the USA which outlined the scale of the current crisis. 2004 saw the publication of the book ‘The Decline of the Dollar Empire and the End of Pax Americana’, written in 2003 in collaboration with A. Kobyakov.
Since 2002 M. Khazin has been the President of the consulting company Neokon, which mainly specializes in strategic crisis planning. He actively investigates economic theory within a framework of enhanced understanding of modern economic mechanisms that are figuratively and collectively referred to as neoconomics. At present M. Khazin takes a principal interest in studying the structural proportions of post-crisis economics and prices. A number of his articles and interviews about economic problems have been featured in various media.