Kuponová privatizace: ekonomický nesmysl
Coupon privatization was a key part of the transformation process. The final cut from the past and the totalitarian state power should be insured by giving the property fairly to all citizens. This should have led to the introduction of market conditions, and therefore a new way of life and thinking in society.
Redemption was impossible, there was a theft
The flagship of the transformation took place under the direction of economic experts, but in essence it was not an economic project, but a political project. Dividing the property free to citizens is undoubtedly bringing political points. At first glance, it is a sensible thing: if people do not have enough money to buy out businesses that – as the Communist doctrine has proclaimed – „belong to the people,“ they must be divided fairly among all. However, underlying this process is a deep economic illogical, and there is no reason to think that the authors of coupon privatization have led some lengthy thinking about Western economic theory.
If the property is distributed to people for free, there is no guarantee that this will automatically generate a layer of responsible owners who will replace the incompetent state management of businesses. There is not the same relation to what I get for free and to what I earned hard. A normal person buys what he needs for his earned money: food, clothes, rent, and so on. But it is hard to invest in the capital market. When a person suddenly gets free of charge, he will once again think about how to monetize it, not how to claim his property rights and control the economy of the business. Ordinary person will try to sell shares or maximum income from dividends – again without a deeper understanding of the operation of the company.
The unplanned population got millions of shares of hundreds of state-owned companies and tried to sell them, but – and that was the main contradiction – who gave them the money for the stock when no one had it? How to move the capital market when no one has capital? Or otherwise: how to ensure that the stock goes to the responsible owner who will take care of the business? Households loosely had only seven percent of the capital they needed to buy all privatized businesses. The logic of the matter is that there has to be another way to concentrate assets. If the redemption was economic nonsense, there was a theft.
The emergence of the financial oligarchy
The most interesting asset concentration instrument was privatization funds. Their services were used by about two-thirds of the population, about one-third of which, according to credible statistics about their deposits, was simply robbed. Everything went very easily. For example, a group of promising economists with degrees from foreign universities has set up a fund to offer people the opportunity to put in investment vouchers with the knowledge that they invest and invest in them. Unfortunately, by the coincidence of unfortunate „coincidences“, a key paragraph was drained at the Federal Ministry of Finance by Václav Klaus, Dušan Tříska and Vlad Rudlovček of the Act on these funds at the last minute, which consistently separated the ownership and management of the funds. So the fund managed to manage the stock, but in the end it owned them, and the people who entrusted him with coupons to buy shares lost any influence on their assets.
That was, according to Klaus, a boulder on a path that was as correct as possible and the only one possible. According to Trikes, what happened was what happened. We do not live in a world in which justice can be established, in which only the smart and moral ones will win, while the rogue are filtered out. With this gap in the law, we managed to create our current financial elite, if you want the oligarchy. For example, Pavel Tykač and Petr Kellner got rich as they did – they appropriated something that did not belong to them.
These people, including Zdeněk Bakala and Jan Dienstl, who are also called „financial galerka“, came to the invitation of Třísk and Klaus in 1997 to the Chateau in Koloděje to take part in deciding how long the capital market is left without supervision – if it is a month or another year or two so that it can complete the concentration of property that was called the „third wave of privatization“. Supervision of this area was secured by the government of Josef Tošovský after Klausova left for scandals with ODS funding. Therefore, we have reason to believe that if Klaus’s government did not fall, capital market surveillance would be delayed for many years.
Chip also claims that surveillance is regulation and that it is pointless to check if there are any abusive operations. It should be remembered that privatization can not be viewed morally but purely economically. It’s a good idea to take that people just wrong, like Michael Kocab or Viktor Kozeny.
It’s called tunneling
The lack of savings, which stood at the root of the problem of cumulation of distributed assets, stood even more strongly for problems with investments in the acquired businesses. The theory is that the private owner will be more responsible than the state, find out what is wrong, and carry out a restructuring that the state would not be able to do. But the money did not belong to the private owner, so he borrowed from the state – hence the famous term „banking socialism“. Banks lent businesses to investments and operations, many of which owned their own funds through their own funds. The majority of Czech industry was therefore dependent on the state. In every failed or torn „private“ enterprise, the ultimate damaged state was.
Jan Strasky, a close associate of Klaus and the federal minister, recently remarked that it had to be reckoned with something to rob, because it was impossible to find out who was honest. Somewhat more obscure theory is by Dušan Tříska, who argues that the purpose was not to save businesses, but to scrap at least the little that was in them for further investment, which is said by many of the gossip to be abusively called tunneling.
The author is a filmmaker and sociologist.
