Ivan Krastev Quotes

Government after government has prioritized the preservation of corporatist loyalties over the promotion of economic growth and emphasized clientelist distribution over entrepreneurial innovation and creation of level economic playing field.

This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

We must combat the over-riding interest of organizations such as The World Bank, The International Monetary fund … They work in collaboration of the most reactionary elements of Argentina.

The problem is … that many African states lack the capacity to establish the crucial conditions for capital accumulation and, additionally, act in economically irrational ways. This non-developmental or even anti-developmental thrust is manifest in the mismanagement, inefficiency, and pervasive corruption of the public sector as well as political instability and the inability to prevent widespread evasion of laws and regulations.

In post-communist countries, some temporary winners of the reform are found to be an important force in resisting further reforms.

Russia ... suffers the dubious distinction of being the most corrupt developed country in the world, and its resource-extracting, rent-seeking economic system has reached a dead end.

The problem is that when government controls the economy, those who can influence government keep winning, and everybody else just stays the same.

When a nation is over-reliant on one or two commodities like oil or precious minerals, corrupt government ministers and their dodgy associates hoard profits and taxes instead of properly allocating them to schools and hospitals.

What you and I understand as a government doesn't exist in many African countries. In fact, what we call our governments are vampire states. Vampires because they suck the economic vitality out of their people. Government is the problem in Africa.

Britain is no longer one of the world's price setters. It is painful. It is a challenge to us in government to explain all that, and it is a pity that the political class is not preparing the public for it to understand how massive the problem is.

Capitalism is in crisis.

What we do today has nothing to do with capitalism or socialism. It is a crony type of system that transfers money to the coffers of bureaucrats.

The name of 'reform' simply covers what is latently a process of the theft of the national heritage.

Nigeria has had the misfortune - no, the fortune - of seeing the worst face of capitalism anywhere in Africa. The masses have seen it, they are disgusted, and they want an alternative.

Crony capitalism is essentially a condition in which... public officials are giving favours to people in the private sector in payment of political favours.

Bush, and Blair, and the prime minister of Japan, and Berlusconi, these people are criminals, and they are responsible for mass murder in the world, for the war, and for the occupation, through their support for Israel, and through their support for a globalized capitalist economic system, which is the biggest killer the world has ever known.

Too often, governments are quick to use excessive force and even pervert the course of justice to keep oil and gas flowing, forests logged, wild rivers dammed and minerals extracted. As the Global Witness study reveals, citizens are often killed, too - especially if they're poor and indigenous.

They talk about the failure of socialism but where is the success of capitalism in Africa, Asia and Latin America?

More than 40 years of African Independence have offered to the world a sad spectacle of a continent looted and humiliated with the complicity of its own sons and daughters.

All the actions of your government have been in favour of the markets, and against the people.

For a quarter-century, and changing only very recently, the main IMF prescription has been budgetary belt-tightening for patients much too poor to own belts. IMF led austerity has frequently resulted in riots, coups, and the collapse of public services.

The idea of privatization is nutty .... What do you think has been the predominant system here for the past century. How do they think we got into this mess to begin with. There is nothing more inefficient and corrupt in Honduras than private enterprise.

There is a burgeoning wealthy class in Nigeria, but it is small, and its members thrive largely thanks to political connections and connivances.

Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea.

Neoliberalism is hard to define. It could refer to intensified resource extraction, financialization, austerity, or something more ephemeral - a way of life - in which collective ideals of citizenship give way to marketized individualism and consumerism.