It's always so strange to me that we don't see the same bombastic support from the tankies over news like this, surely this is another genius move which underscores the futility of Western sanctions, right? Another 5d chess move to bring Ukraine to it's knees, or dismantle the petrodollar, surely? 🙃
You think the kids that sat at the back of the classroom, saying learning math is a waste of time because they'll never need to use it, can form an opinion on this? They see the words "interest rate" and decide this news is completely irrelevant because they can't understand it.
Yes, they're aware. They're also aware that ML types will support Russia regardless, because no evil is too great so long as it even mildly inconveniences the West.
In case people are unaware, limmy.world defederated from the two major Tanky instances (Lemmygrad for Russian supporters and Hexbear for Chinese supporters). I'm not really sure why the above comment is downvoted. It's basically correct, though using the wrong terms.
The Bank of Russia, the country's central bank, has now raised rates by 7.5 percentage points since July
Holy crap, 7.5% in (basically) 1 quarter. Imagine trying to buy a house and having your loan repayment amount jumping faster than you can get paperwork filed.
So your comment made me go "lol, imagine buying a house in Russia." Meaning my preconceptions were that most in Russia didn't have the means to own a home.
But then I'm like, I don't actually know that, let's check it out.
According to this site home ownership in Russia is over 90%. So what you outlined is a real problem for people there, and changes some of my mental picture of Russian life.
It's complicated by the fact a lot of flats were privatized after the fall of USSR. It's like a boomer situation in the US. Many still live in what their parents claimed.
Hold on, 90%? I guess that would include the whole family in the home as the home owners, because otherwise that is an insane amount of single occupant dwellings.
If home ownership is 90% that doesn’t sound like a big problem for the country. If only 10% are renting or looking I can’t imagine that would have much of an impact on prices with demand being so low. Business investment is a problem for sure
The Bank of Russia (back when things were so bad they had to halt their stock market) has also forbid people for using more than small amounts of foreign currency. I believe people are limited to the equivalent of 10,000 rubles, or $100 per week.
I wasn't talking about variable rate loans. I mean by the time you started the process of getting the loan there'd be one interest rate and one expected repayment amount; and by the time you got to signing and locking in the rate it would probably have gone up by about a point and half at that rate.
Part of me is hopeful that this means something will eventually break, but it's also hard to get past some of the initial predictions I was reading when the war first started, that Russia couldn't keep up the war longer than a few months, that Russia was going to collapse at almost any moment. Now it seems like Russia is converting to a permanent wartime economy and that this thing is expected to drag on for years to come. It makes me wonder, even when Putin eventually dies, does Russia just continue on with the war out of sheer momentum, because the next person knows what a shitshow things will turn into if they try to end the war?
Not sure this is going to help much when the ruble is tanking internationally, state reserves are frozen, sanctions are still taking effect, and property is being seized from oligarchs, all while a misguided war is being waged at full tilt. Pretty sure it's just putting more pressure on the wrong parts of the economy that are already about to break. But, I'm no economist and Russia's gonna Russia, so whatever.
Working in logistics I asked my boss a few weeks ago to which of our internal geo clusters does Russia belong to, and he replied exactly "to the fuck 'em cluster". Happily agreed with that statement.
Russia's central bank has put up its key interest rate to 15% to try to curb inflation and bolster a weak rouble.
The higher-than-expected rate hike of two percentage points raises borrowing costs for the fourth time in a row.
This includes an unscheduled emergency hike in August as the rouble tumbled past 100 to the dollar and the Kremlin called for tighter monetary policy.
Pressure has also been mounting on the Russian economy due to imports rising faster than exports and military spending growing for the Ukraine war.
But rate hikes can only go so far in steadying an economy, and analysts have said Russia could struggle to attract investment due to Western sanctions.
EU leaders introduced a price cap plan to limit the amount Russia earns from its oil exports and the country has also been excluded from Swift, an international payment system used by thousands of financial institutions.
The original article contains 474 words, the summary contains 151 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!