Page 22 - RusRPTFeb19

changes that sever Deripaska’s control and significantly diminish his ownership,” Mnuchin said as cited by the New York Times. “Treasury will be vigilant in ensuring that EN+ and Rusal meet these commitments. If these companies fail to comply with the terms, they will face very real and swift consequences, including the re-imposition of sanctions.”
However, the fact the USTD has backed off doesn't mean that is the end of the story as the new Congress has been taken over by the Democrats and is set to launch a number of investigations into Trump. As a key and high profile figure Deripaska is likely to get dragged back into the story.
Congress is already reviewing the administration’s decision — announced in December by the Treasury Department — to lift sanctions against three companies.
“One of the goals of sanctions is to change behaviour, and the proposed de- listings of companies that Deripaska will no longer control show that sanctions can result in positive change,” Mnuchin said.
Mnuchin also pushed back against suggestions from critics that the administration had been soft on Russia. He noted that the administration had imposed sanctions on 272 “Russian related” individuals and entities. However, Mnuchin signalled on January 10 that he won’t back down from plans to lift US sanctions even as he said the Trump administration would consider delaying the move to accommodate concerns raised by lawmakers.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed Mnuchin’s defence as “one of the worst” performances she has seen from the Trump administration, Bloomberg reported. Pelosi, who left before the session ended, said the Treasury secretary “barely testified” in the classified briefing and was “wasting the time of members of Congress.”
The showdown highlights the uncertain future for Russian sanctions this year.
The US government has threatened to impose “crushing” sanctions in Russia last autumn but the vote got overtaken by campaigning for the mid-term elections and was postponed to the first quarter of this year.
Whatever, the reality of Russia’s election interference and Deripaska’s role, if any, in it, the “Russiagate” investigations have a domestic vector now and the Democrats are unlikely to let the issue drop in their battle to contain Trump. That makes new sanctions on Russia likely in 2019.
2.6 bne Despair Index
bne IntelliNews has updated its despair index that brings together inflation, unemployment and poverty.
bne IntelliNews invented the despite index in a piece entitled “The poverty of nations” in 2011 as a way to better compare the pain of transition.
The problem is the classic “Misery Index” is simply the sum of inflation and unemployment. Economists use it as a short hand to judge how painful a crisis or slowdown is for the lower half of the population. But this index doesn't fully capture the pain of the transition countries following the collapse of the socialist experiment in 1991.
In the first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union poverty soared to as high as 60% of the population in some places. Since then it has recovered dramatically, but remains very unevenly distributed. One of the ironies of transition is that those countries that didn't make a shock change to capitalism and kept their unreformed Soviet institutions functioning, such as Belarus, have done much better at containing poverty than those that made a complete
22 RUSSIA Country Report February 2019 www.intellinews.com