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C00002 00002	%goose[s89,jmc]		How they wounded the goose that laid the golden egg
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%goose[s89,jmc]		How they wounded the goose that laid the golden egg

	Once upon a time, actually it was in 1988, someone in a
co-operative got a pretty good idea.  (It wasn't perfect as they
later found out).  If involved bartering Soviet lumbering scrap
(twigs and branches) with a Japanese company for personal computers.
In Japan they make wall board out of such scrap, and computers
are pretty cheap in Japan.

	Personal computers are very hard to get in the Soviet
Union and the free market price is 10 to 100 times the price
in the West.

	The co-op made millions of rubles buying the scrap and
selling the computers.  Their mistake was to get a particularly
good price from Leningrad University.  As sometimes happens,
some people in Leningrad University became dissatisfied with
their deal when the discovered what a profit the co-op had
made.

	While the deal was legal according to a law passed in
late 1988, the Council of Ministers made a rule declaring
that co-operatives could trade only their own products and
receive in return only foreign goods for their own use.  For
good measure they froze the bank accounts of the co-operatives
engaged in foreign trade.