I was emailed the following question:
Are you as opposed to the IMF offering debt forgiveness to Ukraine as you are for Greece?
As nobody around here except me knows, Ukraine is teetering on the brink of economic collapse. Ukraine’s economy has been shrinking faster than any other economy in the world this year, and things are dire. Ukraine’s debt is much smaller than that of the much smaller Greece (how on Earth did the Greeks manage to waste 360 billion when even Ukrainians were only able to spend 40?) and there is a war going on.
Given all this, I’m not as much against debt forgiveness for Ukraine. I’m a lot, lot, LOT more against debt forgiveness because I care about Ukraine ‘ s future so much more than I ever could about Greece.
Ukraine needs to implement all of the reforms suggested by the IMF and it has to get rid of the noxious Soviet mentality that makes people sit on their asses and wait for the government to give them things and somehow magically to defeat corruption.
And there’s a long way to go yet. The Ukrainian parliament is trying to push through a bill where people who had taken out lines of credit in USD will be allowed to repay their loans in local currency at the pre-inflation rates. This is, of course, an enormous handout to those who made a bad (and almost always an unnecessary) bet. And the really great thing is that finally – finally! – there are people in Ukraine who are saying that the bill is wrong and should be rejected. There are even patriots who are saying they will emigrate if the bill goes through because they don’t want to live in the country of endless handouts. And that’s beautiful.
Debt forgiveness would mean business as usual: corruption, enormous swatches of young, able-bodied people refusing to work and waiting for yet another handout, cynicism, disillusionment, poverty. Ukraine can do better, that’s for sure. And it will as soon as Ukrainians abandon the Soviet mentality altogether.
Greeks, in the meantime, can go suck off Putin for all I care.
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