In some stores, it’s the only afumat you can find. I’ve stopped buying it after giving in once or twice because it’s really that worthless. When you open the wrapper, you can smell some smokiness, but there is zero taste. Just bland pressed cheese. Blech!

Ron & Maria - I’m on a 99% good-luck trackrecord for branza de barduf. I just love it to death. The one that comes in the wood wrapping tends to be a little more pungent than the stomach wrapped ones, but I like them both. I agree it’s salty, but I don’t find it “too salty” personally… it’s just part of the yumtasticalness.

Your tale of Curtea de Arges makes me very jealous indeed. It sounds like you found one helluva hunk of Grade A cheese there. Beautiful.

mutz - 1. Glad to see my comparison was not wasted on you.

2/3 - I think you make a very valid point with respect to “it ain’t easy” gathering the money to invest internationally during the first 15 years of post-89. I can readily see that. Nonetheless, I find myself in an all too comfortable position of armchair quarterback (as we way) able to critique the greedy foibles of those Romanians who found themselves lucky pilferers of state assets.

What I am trying to say is, most of the people didn’t even try. They nabbed their share of the nation’s coffers and sold out as quick as possible. Had they been interested –in any way– in actions other than enriching themselves via exit, then I think they would have been able to procure the financial backing to expand outward into the region. Not everyone pays out of savings, but many make banking credit arrangements in order to execute strategy.

Tudor - Thanks for the reality check. You gave me cause to revisit some of my thinking on the topic and ‘come your way’ a bit. But not entirely. I think it does matter who owns things… or, to be more exact, I think it matters if Romanians own virtually nothing.

War was an interesting example you brought up. Surely, there are probably some cases of foreign owner undermining a government, but I think there are *far more* cases showing that foreign ownership of a company during war time means very very little indeed. In fact, there are many examples which even show foreign owners to be more accommodating than locals. I’ll have to politely disagree with you on that one point. War situations are not one of the few situations likely to reveal weaknesses of foreign ownership. Quite the contrary, as far as I see history.

Be that as it may, we can probably safely move on to the bigger question without necessarily debating endlessly the impact of pre-wartime foreign investment during conflict outbreak.

I agree with you 100% with respect to Romania’s oil reserves. Once again we see the PSD mafia absconding with the resources of the country for their own personal benefit. You have to give credit to the Austrians, though. To me it’s eerily similar to the far distant past, where the Austrian bourgeois control Romania as a vassal servant with some simple bribes to key politicians who betray again and again.

Of course, I’m not opposed to business deals or reserves contracts or foreign purchases. And I’m certainly not opposed to Austrian economic exchange. But this one deal was pretty rotten, on the surface.

Now, on to your big point, which was that you suggest the owners of the company do not matter as long as the entity is taxed. It’s an interesting point but one with which I vehemently disagree with… given the imbalance of ownership in this country.

See, in a microscopic view, the ownership of any one company doesn’t matter. They employ people, create goods or provide services, participate at some cursory level in taxation schemes, and generally play a role in the economy.

However, I’m not sure how you can deny there is a difference in terms of where the profits go. Foreign owners often export wealth out of the host nation via licensing deals, fixing subcontractors, outsourcing services, or otherwise funneling profits back out under the guise of costs thus pitted against taxable incomes. Happens all the time around the globe.

I think this truism becomes important when you look at what I characterize as an imbalance of Romanian ownership. When you drag it out to scale, then the situation becomes damaging if not dangerous. This ship is listing badly and I wouldn’t like to see Romania dragged down into a scenario where most of its’ people subsist for generations just to enrich a foreign economic empire.

My examples would be much of South America, nearly all of Africa, chunks of Asia, pieces of the Near/Middle East, and -yes- portions of the former Soviet sphere. I’m even happy to avoid discussing how foreign owners in those countries often go to great lengths to suppress the native peoples.

Hopefully, it may not come to all that. It’s certainly not a foregone conclusion, but in order to avoid it, some people have got to step up to the plate. Both on the political front and the boots on the ground in the private sector, the upcoming generations have the opportunity to correct the large PSD-facilitated imbalance that threatens the longterm health of the Romanian peoples.

To help right the boat, I’d like to see more Romanian brands owned by Romanians to be promulgated outward into the nearby regional markets in order to assert and/or bolster greater economic independence of Romania.

mutz - I agree with you 100% that Romania does need about 5-10 years of serious infrastructure retooling. The national government can work with the EU to help build a series of autostradas which will have an important impact, but in my way of thinking it is best to leave local highways and roads to the respective judeti and cities (in a “keep local things local” perspective).

But I’ll go you one further and suggest that equally important would be for the Romanian government to build (not license to a foreign owned monopoly) an IT infrastructure that brings broadband to all Romanians (or, at least, 95+%) for a monthly cost of $0 to $5. This will have a tremendous impact on Romania’s long-term prospects by providing infrastructure necessary which enables Romanians to leverage their unique assets (low-cost, high-education) at a unique time in the history of world development. Other nations, such as Estonia, have proven it can be done cost-effectively and the economic benefits are readily apparent to anyone with half a wit who analyzes the reports.

Tudor - I enjoy reading your point of view, but again I wonder about some of what I’m seeing. I’m curious if achieving military independence from Russia means surrendering so new dependence much to the Americans. It sounds good now, but I worry it could possibly be problematic in the future. I suppose the main question would be, has work begun on a strategy to make Romania actually independent once the goal of pushing Russia back has been accomplished?

As for me, I’m do not have any strong desires to see Romania dominate it’s neighbors, per se, with “relative superiority” as seemed to be the case for 10-15 years during Romania’s brief heyday a century ago. Rather, the distinction of what I — as a non-Romanian outsider — find to be important, is that Romanians exercise their power to stop the current mafia hemorrhaging that undermines the nations ability to prevent itself from being categorically inferior. You see, I’d be okay if RO was roughly equal with it’s peers, so long as it’s not lesser than. But I can understand how you might feel differently… ;]

On the other hand, light industry does not help with foreign policy, military independence, and the ability to control other nation’s supply of essential products and comodities (which is what power and influence are really about). If you can’t pull the plug on majour issues on the economies of the countries you want to be able to controll/count on, you’re going nowhere. Profit margins don’t really count there. It doesn’t matter how small the profit margin is all year long, if it allows you to starve a country of energy in 5 minutes and coerce it into doing “the right thing”.

In my opinion, there are 2 objectives in the long run. One is ecnonomical and military independence from our archthreat, Russia. Second is the reasertion of the pre WW2 position of relative superiority and influence over Bulgaria, Serbia and nowadays Moldova. Unfortunately, you still need Banking, communications, energy and heavy industry to do that, even if they’re not the latest and best in terms of economical profits.

Of course, some things should have never been sold out, like Petrom. Or at least they should have sold the company */without/* it’s oil reserves, which happen to be Romania’s strategic oil reserves and should have remain unexploited except in case of dire emergency. But otherwise, foreign ownership is no problem as long as it gets taxed. To give you only a few examples: Opel, the german car maker, is in fact owned by GM, since the aftermath of WW2. Chrysler is/was owned by the German Mercedes. The majour share-holders of the biggest steelworks conglomerates in Europe include Indians, Americans and whatnot.

Direct ownersip only really matters when you want to coerce them into an “all for the front, all for the final victory” policy.

What does matter a lot though, is the commercial balance. We shouldn’t be importing so much over our exports. However, this balance is so far eased by direct foreign investment (which counts as money in) and the huge flux of unregistered, untaxed money sent home by Romanians working abroad.

In the end it’s not that bad, but caution is necessary. On the other hand, Romania has a tradition of not going for canned cucumbers as an economical basis. Aside from agriculture which has always been the backbone of our survival ability, majour production sectors in various periods was as follows:

1930s to 1945: railroad stock (cars and engines), oil and related products, light armament and munitions, military aircraft;
1947 to 1960: crisis confusion and reconstruction :P
1960 to 1989: automobiles, oil and related chemical products, steel, alluminum, ships and, guess what? light armament, artillery, tanks, helicopters, munitions, etc…

See a pattern here? Regardless of the level of government stupidity and corruption, Romania has traditonally went for developping strategic sectors that ensured its polytical position and military capabilities. We still do that, albeit quite inconsistently and ineffectively. If the plan was to offer fast developpement and prosperity for the masses, we could have invested heavily in light industry (food, services and textiles) like the Bulgarians, Italians and others. But that wouldn’t cover other, higher polytical requirements.

(May the last of the humble readers ask for more posts and comments on Mergers and Acquisitions in Romania ?)