Word: free-market
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...began this trip in Ethiopia. I have been to Addis Ababa many times, but am always surprised at the lush greenness and precision farming around the capital city. After overthrowing the communist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, acting President Meles Zenawi is attempting to implement a free-market system, protecting human rights, forming an independent judiciary and sharing political power in this poorest of all nations. With some degree of luck and moderate assistance, Ethiopia can become the most dramatic example of progress in recent history...
That is premature. So far, the drive toward a free-market democracy has been only slowed, not reversed, as economic policy stutters in contradictory directions. One day it moves toward more private capitalism: witness Yeltsin's plan to distribute to all Russian citizens, beginning Oct. 1, vouchers that they can exchange for shares in state-owned businesses. But the next -- or even the same -- day policy veers backward. The former communists succeeded in wangling increased subsidies to keep alive outmoded enterprises that free- marketeers insist should be allowed to go bankrupt. The contradictions could worsen Russia's economic slump...
Civic Union's avowed aim is to become a "constructive opposition," offering an "alternative program" to the free-market policies pursued by Acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar. In practice, though, its focus is on propping up the aging, inefficient steel mills, tractor works and other state- owned industrial dinosaurs. Gaidar and others insist that they must be allowed to go out of business, despite the immediate pain, if Russia is ever to have an efficient, modern economy. But Civic Union contends that the resulting mass unemployment would simply be too great, and that argument seems to be converting some reformers...
...Eastern Europe the situation is a little better. The initial wave of inflation that accompanied free-market reforms is subsiding: this year's Polish rate, for example, is expected to be 40%, down from 70% in 1991. Although official figures still show sagging production and rising unemployment, some experts suspect the statistics have not caught up with a booming private market. "Shopping in Poland these days is far easier than shopping in Austria," says John Reed, a Vienna-based expert on the Polish economy. "It's the wild, wild East, with shops open at all hours and a range...
...conservatives are thwarting free-market democracy...