Summers dictates

[Bradford DeLong]

>On Tue, 4 Jun 2002, Bradford DeLong wrote:
>
>Brad, you wrote up a very strong 19-point bill of defense.  The only point
>I don't understand is the first one, which may just be due to a typo, but
>seems like it might be important.  The market bolshevik guys say:
>
>>  1. Summers's 1997 call on the Russian government to revamp the tax
>>  system, combat crime, and combat corruption "reflect[ed] a lack of
>>  understanding of the direct links between corruption, crime, and mass
>>  tax evasion, on the one hand, and the path of economic transformation
>>  chosen in 1991 by the Yeltsin regime with Western approval on the
>>  other."
>
>You answer:
>
>>  (1) seems to be a complaint that Larry Summers believes that
>>  corruption was the setting and not the product of Russia's reforms in
>>  the 1990s. Since the one thing that my colleague the "gradualist"
>>  down the hall Gerard Roland and my ex-roommate the "big banger"
>>  Andrei Shleifer agree on is that in Russia corruption was the setting
>  > not the product of reform, I cannot accept this.

Ah. Mindo. I meant that I can't accept the complaint--corruption, 
kept under control by the KGB and company before 1989, has exploded 
everywhere in the FSU, reform or no reform...

Brad DeLong