Monetary Viagra

Somehow, at the same time, at two different ends of Belgrade, two responsible federal officials were driving one another to utter falsehoods.  Dusan Vlatkovic, Governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia, admitted what everyone has been suspecting; that the central bank is printing money without backing.  Jovan Zevic, Vice-President of the Federal Government, claimed at the same time that no printing of money is taking place.

The first, that is the Governor, said at the session of the Executive Council of the Association of Banks, that this is being done due to costs incurred in Kosovo and due to the fact that an expected influx of foreign currency of a billion and a half dollars did not occur.  At the Assembly of the Chamber of Commerce of Belgrade, Zebic said that, “regardless of any justification or any pressure”, money will not be printed .

That we are being governed by liars is nothing new, so the discovery of this fact should not warrant any attention.  In any event, lying here is considered the height of political acumen, and also , it appears, of diplomatic skill, so that if we did not participate in a war after all, then the trophy for the head liar has already been given, and I suppose that nothing else can surprise you.  One friend of mine claims that his wife only goes shopping during the state television’s evening news, because that is the only time when there is cooking oil and sugar in the stores, and even meat can be bought cheaply.

Zebic must have been on vacation, and must not have been informed in time that the rhetoric has been changed, that Kosovo is now sufficient justification for money to be printed, just as the pressure of there not being any money was sufficient reason for the same thing to happen in the not so recent past.  In any case, what two reasons could be more convincing.  In both cases, what are at issue are national dramas: Kosovo and the dinar.  In any case, poverty goes hand in hand with misery, so that it is little surprise that in all wars in which we did not participate, we conducted ourselves like the poorest rascals, without any care for the balance in the state piggy bank... and that is how we managed somehow to end them all.

Perhaps Zebic was lying to the distinguished businessmen of Belgrade, because last time, they also lied to him, promising that they would pay back debts taken from money which came from the sale of the Serbian telephone system.  However, Vlatkovic received an order to shed light on what is in store: a long, hard fall and winter, which we will endure with less hardship knowing that it is all due to Kosovo, and we will accept any arrangement on Kosovo with even less resistance, if we are informed in time that the winter could have been even worse had Milosevic not suddenly closed shut that window of the Kosovo Field, which he, in any case, energetically opened one decade ago, making a draft of planetary proportions.

In any case there is no reason not to believe that after this Kosovo drama the pattern won’t continue: the majority will be even poorer, while the rich will be even richer.  Here is even an example.  While Vlatkovic was compromising Zebic, their supposed chief, Momir Bulatovic, at the same time, in yet a third place in Belgrade, visited the Motor and Tractor Works, and with a teary voice, such as God gave him, he began to complain to the gathered poverty-stricken workers about:
a) Montenegrins
b) potentates

That the half-acknowledged Federal Premier complaints about the “a” group is something that we have gotten used to, but I never expected that Bulatovic would admit his own impotence quite so easily.  Namely, under point “b” he made the claim that “trucks with smuggled goods are rushing along our highways under the protection of potentates,” and also this: “only in unpaid excise taxes for alcohol and tobacco from the beginning of this year, the state is poorer by some four billion dinars.”  The question is this: if that is already known, and if it is even possible to figure out the accounting for how much it is the potentates have damaged the state, how is it not possible for the Federal Government, headed by the man with the mustache, to do something to those potentates.  Even Al Capone was caught on the basis of his tax books, and what is Bulatovic waiting for if he has already counted the trucks and the financial damage!

Who are those potentates who are refusing to shoulder the cost of the modern-day Battle of Kosovo with the poor of Serbia?  They are getting richer while we are getting poorer.  As even the Federal Government can’t do anything to them, it must be that they are more powerful than it.  They are probably the same people who are waging war on Kosovo with the biggest enthusiasm, just as they fought every previous battle.  If Serbians have pretensions of being politically advanced, then experience should have taught them to be wary of those who beat their patriotic breasts with too much fervor.  Such people, as a rule, have embezzled enough ready cash for four generations ahead of them, pushing the rest of us behind.  We should have learned by now that the printing of money is a short-term, poor man’s pastime, a monetary viagra for a nation that has fallen on hard times.

Here are two more admissions, just to illustrate the state of affairs.  Zarko Trbojevic, Vece-Governor of the National Bank of Yugoslavia, therefore right below the mentioned Vlatkovic, announced at a meeting of the Chamber of Commerce of Yugoslavia that the foreign currency reserves of the country amount to 800 million German marks.  This sum is only by a billion dinars greater than what the potentates in Bulatovic’s complaint have embezzled from excise taxes.  Borka Vucic, the General Manager of the Bank of Belgrade stated at the same meeting in which Vlatkovic shed light on why money is being printed: “We have saved the money in foreign banks.”
I do not doubt that they have saved their money, but where is ours?

Note: Especially beware of those who say that no price for Kosovo is too high.  As a rule, such characters would sell out even their own mothers if they could only avoid paying excise taxes in return.