janw@inmet.UUCP (09/10/86)
The accounting is made deliberately inscrutable, but the Poles can explain their trade with the USSR in simple terms: "The Russians take our coal, and in exchange we give them our sugar". How does it concern us? Well, where do you think all those Western loans to Poland have gone ? The ones that were given to wean it away from Moscow?
berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) (09/16/86)
> The accounting is made deliberately inscrutable, but the > Poles can explain their trade with the USSR in simple terms: > > "The Russians take our coal, and in exchange we give them our sugar". > > How does it concern us? Well, where do you think all those > Western loans to Poland have gone ? The ones that were given > to wean it away from Moscow? I understand that Soviets supply Poland with oil, cotton, iron ore, some machinery, consumer goods etc. Also, 90% of Polish coal export goes to the West, and I doubt whether Soviets buy any Polish sugar (they have a glut of Cuban sugar already). The trade is Eastern block is a mysterious process, and it takes the best minds to understand that everybody loses (this is because of the nature of this trade, which creates yet another layer of bureaucracy in the economies of the block). As far as the loans to Poland are concerned, they were cheerfully wasted, similarly like loans to Mexico or Argentina. Why they were made? The answer lies not in economy, but in ecology: the migrations of lemmings which periodically drown in millions in Norvegian fiords. Lemmings do not commit suicide, they merely look for better feeding grounds (like banks look for profitable loans). Once a trend is set, the mass of lemmings travels in one direction. The latter may happen to be a bad one, but to realize that one would need to have a brain larger than a lemming (or a banker).