PRESS RELEASE
Medvedev Is Unique: He Tells
the Truth about the World Depression
Dec. 30, 2011 (EIRNS)—Russian President Dmitri Medvedev showed he was in a class by himself among world leaders, by stating recently that the world has entered a great depression. These statements are a marked change from recent months' official insistence that the world is in a post-crisis period, or debates about whether or not a "second wave" of the economic crisis is on the way.
In his address to the Federal Assembly, given Dec. 22, Medvedev said that "many politicians, heads of international organizations, leading economists, and businesspeople ... are talking about the onset of a global depression." On Dec. 26, at a meeting of the State Council on the decentralization of certain economic authority and responsibility to Russia's regions, Medvedev took up the theme again, saying:
"According to international experts, the global economy has entered into a Great Depression. This is not just a comparison, but an economic fact. Therefore, all of our decisions must be correlated with the situation in the global economy. True, we negotiated the crisis of 2008-2009 pretty well, but there are no less significant tests in store for us ahead. We must say this to our citizens openly and honestly, in a simple but good Russian language. They should be aware there are difficulties ahead."
During the lengthy State Council session, three different officials invoked the name of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt:
- Gov. Oleg Korolyov of the Lipetsk Region,
- Medvedev himself, and
- Prime Minister Putin.
Korolyov cited Roosevelt's efforts to make sure that factories functioned in the interest of their employees and the population, as against only some "oligarch" absentee owners.
Medvedev mentioned FDR's leadership during the Depression, and Putin took up this idea more pointedly:
"I would like to say that during the Great Depression, as the collapse of production in the USA in the 1930s was called, Roosevelt regularly, weekly, spoke by radio on a variety of topics, and not only about labor relations [as Korolyov had mentioned]. His main goal was different. He was conducting national psychotherapy, in order to inspire the citizens with confidence in the future. There was nothing like modern television at that time, never mind the Internet. We have various ways of working with public organizations and society, but we don't use them effectively, and we should make a greater effort."
