Free Cash or How “Life on the Loan” has Failed in Russia

#5-6. Five Scenarios for a Century
Free Cash or How “Life on the Loan” has Failed in Russia

The present-day crediting is a social technology of fail-free individual involving in the system of imposed consumption. In the basis of technology there is a manipulation based on separation of purchase and payment, which dulls the sense of responsibility and risk perception. Crediting intensifies consumption, contributes to maximize corporate profits, but also simulates the desired social structure. The price of such economic and social upward distortions, sooner or later, is paid in a form of consumer credit crisis and massive social defaults, which happened in Russia in 2015. It’s an illusion to associate these processes only with sanctions and the geopolitical situation in which Russia finds itself today. Persistent symptoms, that the population has gained too much credit and that in the short term it will cause big problems not only for banks but also for the state, appeared in 2013. In 2013 nobody could imagine the sanctions, events in the Ukraine and the Crimea, future attempts of Russia’s geopolitical isolation. But experts were persistently saying that, if crediting continues at the same rate, in 2015 massive defaults on unsecured retail loans may occur.