Sarah Paine

It's fascinating.

So it's 88, 89 when the Soviet Union's imploding.

And then there's a lot of correspondence between Eastern Europe, particularly Polish leaders coming to the Bush administration saying, hey,

Our banking system, we know it's a mess.

Our financial system's a mess.

We know we need expertise to help us figure out what our legal system is going to look like.

And Bush is all over that.

And I'm sure he farmed them out to the private sector, who would also be all over that, like giving them free consulting.

And so as a result, you do have them really taking advantage of this 20 years.

at the same time when Bush would have loved to have given some of the same advice.

And there were people like Jeffrey Sachs and others who went to the Soviet Union, but it was not remotely the same thing.

This is people throughout Polish society requesting this advice, not like one guy with an office in Moscow.

And basically, the Russians thought they knew it all.

And they thought they understood.

This is all the unknown unknowns, the things you don't understand, your blind spots.

Truly, economics is a blind spot for the Soviets.

Because think about it.

When the czars ran the show, it's like a riff off the Mongol Empire of...

You take cuts from people's businesses of trade that comes through.

And then it's also about selling basic commodities.