Professor Lester C. Thurow also doubts privatization can succeed in Israel.
"Experience has shown us that privatization succeeds only when its is defined as a government policy of supreme importance. However, in Israel, defense heads the agenda, and under these circumstances, the chances for privatization are not good", says Professor Lester C. Thurow.
Thurow was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s professor of economics at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. His comments are part of an interview, in a new book about Netanyahu, by journalist Ronit Vardy and published by Keter, which will hit the stands at the end of this week.
Thurow relates that when he heard Netanyahu was his student, he had trouble remembering him. "I didn’t remember a student by that name", he says. But when Netanyahu’s final thesis was described to him, it jogged his memory. "They called him Nitai then. I didn’t know he was Israeli. He concentrated on his studies, like everyone else, to get a good job at a quality multinational corporation. I never though the boy would be prime minister. In fact, I don’t remember much about him at all".