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A second appearance in Front End this year for former banker-turned-newspaper owner Lebedev.
The self-styled ‘ex-oligarch’, who earned a mention in March for introducing Euromoney to the purported health benefits of buckwheat, has a book out.
Titled Hunt the Banker, it is part-memoir, part rant against the west.
Much of it is devoted to an exposition of Third Colonialism, a theory he has developed with economist Vladislav Inozemtsev, and which he is confident will win them both the Nobel Prize – “unless by then it is being given to those who pay the biggest bribes”.
Euromoney can’t claim to have a thorough grasp of this concept, but it has something to do with an “international financial oligarchy”, of which the “public face” is Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, BlackRock, HSBC and Coutts, among others.
China is the good guy, trying its best to stop “the diversion of the wealth of developing countries, which is being exported by corrupt elites and finding a home in bank accounts in London, Paris and Geneva”.
Black holes
Of course, it would be hard to argue that there is no truth in this. At the same time, we have our doubts as to whether Lebedev’s discovery of “a system of black holes in the global economy into which money disappears” justifies his claim to “the status of a Stephen Hawking, only in economics”.
His account of his early life as a spy in the Soviet embassy in London and subsequent rise to riches as owner of National Reserve Bank, one of Russia’s largest lenders in the 1990s, feels somewhat incomplete – although readers may be inspired by the chapter headed ‘How to make a billion without losing your integrity’.
Everyone earns at least a dollar a day, except perhaps for some Papuans or pygmies on the verge of starvation – Alexander Lebedev
Perhaps less so by the introduction, in which Lebedev expounds his philosophy of the inadequacy of riches and the importance of the good life.
According to him, “a few thousand dollars a month to cover the everyday necessities” should be enough for anyone – particularly if they are eating right.
“The ideal menu consists of buckwheat (40 roubles a kilo), extra virgin flaxseed oil, vegetables and a modest amount of fish. For this bounty, you will pay 60 to 70 roubles, about a dollar a day. Everyone earns at least a dollar a day, except perhaps for some Papuans or pygmies on the verge of starvation.”
Sex appeal
Money also, apparently, can’t buy sex appeal.
“Someone’s well-off mistress will be able to array herself in jewellery and finery costing tens of thousands of roubles and still not look a patch on a girl with the willpower to make a hobby of pole-dancing…”
It can, of course, buy sex.
“Although only unlovable addicts manage to spend big money on it.”
“I know quite a few who do,” adds Lebedev, “but even so their budgets add up to no more than a few hundred thousand dollars a year. Well, maybe that is a lot.”
He admits that this is “a sin I too have been guilty of”, but adds this sage advice: “Don’t be jealous: try to get it for free.”
