An obvious truth was expressed by an important economist in an interview about efficiency of public authorities in dealing with public money. This feeling is rising when we are in crisis, and the money becomes more expensive merchandise than ever.

During last few years, as many other countries, Romania takes loans after loans for surviving and this spiral looks like endless. It is true that the wages and pensions must be paid, the obligations assumed by government are mandatory, but how much lack of efficiency can exist? The common sense says that you take a loan only when there is no other way to solve the problem.

Here is a responsibility issue and politicians are not at all committed in long term projects. They prefer to spend as much as possible today, leaving for following governments to solve the debts. And the cycle will continue, due to the fact that the politicians will never pay the bills. President Traian Basescu has a lot of analyses regarding the “roots of evil” in Romanian economy and indicates various categories of people as responsible for actual economic turmoil. When he criticizes the Government performance and actions, he seems to forget that he repeatedly nominated Emil Boc as Prime Minister, starting from 2008.

In 2009, when a loan from IMF was engaged, all officials declared that we don’t really need it, but is on the safe side to have some money in National Bank reserves. The loans were consumed in budgetary salaries and in pensions payment. In 2010 the Government cut the salaries by 25% and pensions by 15% promising that in 2011 the will be reestablished at previous values. Nothing happened. As a plus, additional social security contributions were imposed and VAT increased by 5% in summer of 2010.

Now we have a new agreement with IMF declared again as a “precaution” by the President. He also indicated the new target of suspects: the managers of big state owned companies who are responsible for economic underperformance of Romania, who are politically nominated. Traian Basescu declared Friday: “Their losses, their arrears are paid by every Romanian. Why do they pay? Some well installed and blessed political managers have no stress related to losses, nor arrears, nor related stocks. They are the big landlords, the barons of the Romanian economy.” But these guys were nominated by the political Government invested by himself. Or, in the case that the Ministries don’t know or don’t care who these managers are or how they perform, it is worst.

Looking in a positive way, Romania will have money in 2011 also. How the administration will spend the money it is a different discussion. They had money in 2009 and 2010, 20 billion from IMF and EU Commission, on the top of internal state revenues and internal loans from commercial banks.

The expenses for salaries and pensions were cut, the public hospitals are closing, no more money allocated for education, etc. So, where all these money go? In restructuring the state is the official stereotype. How this is restructured, which goals we should attain and what requests must be fulfilled we don’t know exactly. It seems top secret even for them. Sorry for not mentioning until now the Opposition, because they spend public money also. After one year of discussions, the major opposition parties (Social-Democrats and National Liberals) are since February reunited in a union (Social-Liberal Union). This effort seems exhausted all their forces and now they expect the internal elections in Democrat-Liberal Party, the main governmental party.

Coming back to the public money, it is clear that any of the governments who administrated our money don’t really care about the usage and to have clear targets. E.g., we can see that every time a new Ministry of Transport is nominated, he or she starts by saying that they will stop inefficient road works and will build new freeways. Despite the increasing amounts allocated for this, no project is finished.

An utopist dialog in this context, adapted from Jerry Maguire:

 The People: Here it is. Show me the money.