Author: Johnson, Juliet Ellen
Title: A Fistful of Rubles : The Rise and Fall of the Russian Banking System
Description: Ithaca [NY], Cornell University Press, 2000. orig. boards. 24x15cm, xviii,244 pp.. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ Contents : The politics of money -- The political origins of Russia’s banks -- The Central Bank of Russia -- Shock therapy meets Soviet bankers -- For a few rubles more : banking in Russia’s regions -- Russia’s financial-industrial "oligarchy" -- The crash of 1998 -- The end of the beginning.; "After the breakup of the USSR, it briefly appeared as though Russia's emerging commercial banks might act as engines of growth for a new capitalist economy. However, despite more than a decade of "reforms", Russia's financial system collapsed in 1998. Why had ambitious efforts to decentralize and liberalize the banking industry failed? In A Fistful of Rubles, Juliet Johnson offers the first comprehensive look at how Russia's banks, once expected to revitalize the nation's economy, instead became one of the largest obstacles to its recovery.Drawing on interviews with Russian bankers, policymakers, and entrepreneurs, Johnson traces the evolution of the banking system from 1987 through the aftermath of the 1998crash. She describes how dysfunctional institutional procedures left over from the Soviet period hindered the subsequent development of sound financial practices. Johnson argues that these legacies, along with misguided, Western-inspired liberalization policies, led to the creation of parasitic banks for which success depended on political connections rather than on investment strategies..." - Publisher's description.]

Keywords: Russian Economic History, Russia Federation, Finance, Financial Policy, Banks Banking, Economics Economy, Politics Political, ,