24.05.09

Current economic and financial crisis will cleanse Russian society and will help create "an economy of happiness," Sergei Stepashin, the chairman of the Audit Chamber says in an interview published by the Moscow-based Nezavissimaya Gazeta daily Wednesday.

"I'm sure we'll create an economy of the future, an economy of happiness for our people after we go through the cleansing with the aid of this crisis," Stepashin says.

He sees "a loss of connection" between business and morality as a major root-cause of the crisis.

"We'll get out of the crisis when we tie up economic activity to morals and business, to morality," Stepashin says.

He adds to this that the economy of happiness does not substitute for the criteria of measuring affluence in terms of revenues.

"It augments them with more general criteria for assessing affluence, like health, family status, professional and civil status of a person," Stepashin says.

"If looked at on a broader plane, it also implies harmonization of interests of society, business and agencies of power," he says.

Given Russia's conditions, "business needs to combine Protestant labor ethics with the Christian sense of mercy that was typical of Russian merchants of the 19th and early 20th centuries," Stepashin indicates.

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Source: Itar-Tass