Sarah Paine

So certainly it would have been a reduced thing.

It is also the gas reserves they got up.

It's like North Central Soviet Union.

I can't remember the places, but this is the gas that used to get pumped to Europe because that's the better place.

And they make those big investments, and it takes a while for them to pay off.

And that was a big deal because they needed help from Western oil companies or whatever, whoever does the gas pipelines, compressors, whatever it is you need.

And there was a big to-do about that, about whether we should sell the stuff or whether we shouldn't sell the stuff.

Europeans wanted to sell.

We were trying not to.

This was going under Reagan as well.

But anyway, they had built a lot of it.

And it was essential to their pocket change.

But then when they got all the pocket change, they never saved any of it.

They just—whatever the oil wealth was, they spent up to the max.

Doesn't it sound familiar?

Right?

Governments, you have money, you spend it.

Forget about rainy days.

Well, what I didn't cover is when the Soviet Union collapses, Soviet living standards, just Russian living standards implode.

And it's a mess for 20 years.