inequality

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banking

Opinion | Bank reforms touted by Georgia’s Prime Minister–to-be could spell the end of predatory lending

by Tato Khundadze

•7 min read

Just two months after announcing sweeping reforms of Georgia’s banks, 36-year-old Finance Minister Mamuka Bakhtadze looks set to become the new Prime Minister. While the country’s banks have become among the most profitable in the world, they have done so at the expense of ordinary Georgians. If Bakhtadze and his replacement at the finance ministry follow through on these reforms, they could be the first step in addressing some of Georgia’s most pressing economic woes. The remarkable ri

Democracy

Georgian politics — all circuses, without the bread [Opinion]

by Bakar Berekashvili

•4 min read

Georgia’s political elites are engaged in heated debates over a number of issues they claim are of existential importance to the country. These circuses, in which different interest groups fight for their own elitist agendas, has very little relation to the views and needs of ordinary Georgians. Ostensibly, in contemporary Georgia, as in ancient Athens, all citizens are experts in political life. But, a majority of Georgians use their ‘expertise’ only in informal circumstances, in taxis