Ion Enache

Ion Enache

May 23 / 1:13pm

Swimming in a rubbery situation

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Having in mind the remark Raiffeisen Bank's CEO Steven van Groningen made on his blog, Edward Lucas of The Economist talks about the unusual power the rubber stamps develop under (post-)communism:

Under communism, rubber stamps were a kind of currency. If your documents didn't have the right ones, they were worthless. And getting one made was very difficult: it was part of the regime's apparatus of repression to control tightly who was allowed to exercise any kind of institutional power. [...] Steven van Groningen has a nice piece about the way in which the rubber stamp mentality shaped business life in that country even after the collapse of communism

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