Make's logic

In the March 4th, 2014 issue of "Bursa", struggled to cobble together a lame syllogism, from which he drew the conclusion I don't know how to make money. His claim is derived from a highly abstract hypothesis, and is derived from his intention to roast a statement I made in Braşov, while participating in the "Academica - BNR" project. A remarkable project, born and supported through an initiative of the Central Bank, in itself an effective contribution to the national effort to provide financial and banking education to the population. In a conversation with journalists, in response to one of their questions, I said (in a broader context) that Romania's population can't reach the living standard it desires, if all it does is wait for the government to create jobs. Or maybe just for the big or medium entrepreneurs, or the foreign investors, to do so. We need a new way. Jobs created using "initiatives" of the people from the lower classes. In that context I have said that Romanians don't know (yet!) how to make money using jobs they created themselves.

We, in Romania, need more jobs like we need air. A far greater number than what we have now. For several reasons. First and foremost, for the population to earn more (healthy!) money, so it can either pay for a better living standard, or simply to exit poverty. I went on to say that one solution to that problem - one that has been successfully tried in many countries - is the creation of a few million small or very small businesses, which would create jobs, a lot of jobs, that would generate more money. And I enunciated my conclusion: Romanians don't know how to make money ... they don't know that they could make money from businesses they could start and develop themselves. Master Make, confident in the power of his cherry-picking, has disregarded the concrete and indisputable information, allowing himself to be mesmerized by conceptualization. He therefore stepped into the realm of logic and he created a syllogism, which had as its first premise - "Romanians don't know how to make money"; and the second premise - "Adrian Vasilescu is Romanian"; using those, he drew the conclusion - "Adrian Vasilescu doesn't know how to make money".

But master, was all this sophistication needed to reach the truth that was clearly visible?

My family, my friends, my colleagues, all those who know me well don't need to pay any attention to any rule of logic. They have their holy relationship with the available reality. Without a doubt, I don't know how to make money. If I did, I would have built my own business, I would have invested in creating jobs, I would have paid wages, I would have become part of one of the three classes of Romanian GDP generators. Or, at any rate, I would have sought to become part of the services sector, thus competing with master Make.

Making money through my own business, perhaps even managing it myself, is not a challenge I can handle. At my age, with my expertise, with my training, I am what I can normally be expected to be: an advisor. I've had executive positions as well, even in the National Bank I've worked as an executive, but when I reached retirement age I was made a member of the advisors group. But at my age, another attitude would have been just as honorable, legal, and moral: sitting in front of the fireplace, resting and letting the state pay for my retirement. Using the taxpayers' money, of course. Without me producing anything. As to what concerns the alternative I have gone for, choosing work over rest, what apparently master Make doesn't know is that at the NBR, neither salaries nor any other expenses, including those with investments or monetary policy, aren't paid using the taxpayers' money. Not even one leu comes from the budget. On the contrary, the National Bank of Romania is a major taxpayer to the country's budget.

So, master, it's not people my age that the country expects to make money using their own businesses - because the statement I made in Braşov which you were so quick to roast, or more specifically, that you were so quick to incriminate, was referring to individual businesses,. And furthermore, it's not people my age that need to be taught how to make money using their own businesses. It's the active population, which comprises about ten million people, aged below 65, that has no other chance - legal or moral - to get a better standard of living. And I am not only referring to the unemployed, or to those who are looking for work without collecting unemployment, but also to those with low salaries or pensions. When asked in my talks with journalists in Braşov, whether I knew any such project that succeeded, I mentioned the one that was the most significant and conclusive. I have recounted how I have seen with my own eyes, in 80s China, which had just escaped the harnesses of the cultural revolution, how such a project was being used as the foundation of the new future which the country was creating for itself. The problem was being put in simple terms, that anybody could understand: the country was poor, the wages were very low, the money was insufficient, so the people need to make money using their own businesses. The slogan was simple as well: "One man, one business". And that's how things began. Spring had come, the cities' sidewalks had been divided into portions drawn using chalk or paint, areas were being divided, people were setting up their workplaces and teachers, clerks, public services workers were starting off in their new activities. Most of them were beginning to build goods for which there was foreign demand. By autumn, most of the people who were working on the sidewalks, in areas delineated with chalk, were making money. They then built booths, which they later heated, then the booths turned into factories, and the whole planet, starting with America and Europe, was flooded with cheap Chinese products, with China becoming the second largest economic power in the world over the course of three decades.

These details were probably considered insignificant by the "Bursa" newspaper. So much so, that they weren't even mentioned. I do hope, though that in the report from Braşov addressed to "Bursa", the information wasn't "stripped" to the point where it would validate the premises that were intended to support the "Make syllogism". And that things happened the other way around: having received incomplete, perhaps even truncated information, master Make has cobbled together a lame syllogism.