When it comes to the Romanian state or its authorities/institutions, one often hears the word "dissolution." An elegant word that seems adequate in subtle theoretical debates.
What is happening these days, when all kinds of people and organisations, more or less private, demand billions of dollars from the state budget, should give the said "authorities" a waking call to reality.
The budget is already financing so many things it shouldn't, that one wonders whether there is any money left, whether scriptural or borrowed, in the treasury. And when a state is left penniless, it's not in "dissolution," but shattered to pieces. That is, it doesn't qualify even to be called a "phantom," perhaps just a "mini-phantom." One in dissolution.
Let's review the demands that assault the state budget. One, the most disastrous of all, comes from the Monday decision of the Bucharest Court in the CEC-FNI cause, which annulled CEC's request to have its contract with the FNI waived - the contract that backed FNI investors' money. In English, what does this verdict mean? That CEC may be liable to pay some 7 trillion lei, as the FNI assets turned out to be worth, although just 3 trillion lei were publicly reported. And why? Because a reckless CEC president - that's Camenco Petrovici - signed an aberrant contract stating something to the effect that he guarantees the investments of private citizens in a private fund. The president seems to be having health problems these days, just right to make his custody unbearable, although he felt fit enough to run a state institution, CEC, and not walk out for health problems. Also under the category "proud representatives of state institutions in dissolution" and also in the FNI case, there is the example of the former CNVM commissioner, Cezara Bebis, who had to be arrested to discover how gravely ill she was.
What does the state budget, which is comprised - and this deserves obsessive repetition - of money collected from taxpayers, have to do with investments made by private citizens? We have to say, in the face of Romanian justice: none. It wouldn't be fair otherwise. If a businessman works from dusk till dawn, risks money every day, doesn't sleep at night, and still loses, and then he goes about complaining and asking the Finance Ministry to make up for his loss with budget money, where would that leave us? In fact, I wonder how the honourable judges failed to have the bare curiosity to imagine what 7 trillion lei actually means. At least compared to Justice's annual budget, which is just short of 2.5 trillion. And if they did, how come they didn't get an "error message" as a computer would do, unable to accommodate the number of zeros in the sum?
Another recent demand came from Banca Agricola - that the Romanian state should pour another $100 million into the bank - it's this or no privatisation. All of this after 1997, when the state gave the same bank $500 million, and after a few months ago the bank wrote off some 3 trillion lei in bad loans to the Assets Resolution Agency. And in the end, someone is offering several tens of millions of dollars to buy the bank. Do you take instalments, too? And the authorities of this pitiable state, worthy of a better cause, would check off another box in their international accords.
Another one: Romanian exporters say the NBR caused them $1 billion in losses. How come? Because the leu depreciated more against the dollar than against the euro, and the exporters in question have most export contracts in euros. In other words, the state should hedge the distinguished exporters against currency risk. This is the kind of story that gets people saying "our brains hurt."
In fact, the "authorities" did this to themselves - when they accepted to pay more than $2 billion from the budget to "restructure the banking system," a fancy expression for patching the holes in Bancorex and Banca Agricola. When they agreed to cover the social security deficit with budget money, and when they are getting ready to do it once more, again with budget money. It is surprising, given the circumstances, not that there is no money to feed the Army, but that the money is only now running out.
Following the same logic, perhaps the state should pay when it rains and when it doesn't - after all, the Agriculture minister just asked for 5-6 trillion lei from the budget for reasons of drought - and winter ain't like summer, nor is Romania like the USA.
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