"To fit into the Golden Straitjacket a country must either adopt, or be seen as moving toward, the following golden rules: making the private sector the primary engine of its economic growth, maintaining a low rate of inflation and price stability, shrinking the size of its state bureaucracy, maintaining as close to balanced budget as possible, if not a surplus, eliminating and lowering tariffs on imported goods, removing restrictions on foreign investment, getting rid of quotas and domestic monopolies, increasing exports, privatizing state-owned industries and utilities, deregulating capital markets, making its currency convertible, opening its industries, stock and bond markets to direct foreign ownership and investment, deregulating its economy to promote as much domestic competition as possible, eliminating government corruption, subsidies and kickbacks as much as possible, opening its banking and telecommunications systems to private ownership and competition and allowing its citizen to choose from array of competing pension options and foreign-run pension and mutual funds.
United States
English: Richard Nixon meets Leonid Brezhnev June ...
English: US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Gen...When you stitch to all of these pieces together you have the Golden Straitjacket."(Thomas Friedman)
In this paper, based on the above definition of the Golden Straitjacket, given by Thomas Friedman, I try to identify how the Republic of Kazakhstan implements it into its economic policies.
Kazakhstan is the ninth largest country in the world and has rich reserves of coal, oil, natural gas, gold, copper, and chromium. Its location makes it key to the geopolitics of Central Asia. Kazakhstan continues to enjoy a special mutual relationship with the United States because of its nuclear disarmament, U.S. investment, and environmental initiatives. It is the largest recipient of U.S. assistance in Central Asia. Kazakhstan's leadership remains authoritarian, but has demonstrated commitment to an open economy, financial and health reforms, and environmental policies. While civil society and local activism are beginning to influence the...