“The crisis is suddenly filtering into people’s daily lives,” says Bill Browder from Hermitage. “55pc of consumer goods in Russia are imported and these are doubling in price. People are buying anything they can that keeps its value.”
Vedomisti reports that there is a de facto run on banks as depositors pull what they can from ATM machines, fearing the guillotine at any moment. Soviet queues are appearing again.
“It’s going to be worse than the default crisis in 1998. This time you have a situation where the West is against them,” says Browder. “Russian companies are shut out of the global capital markets. The country can’t turn to the IMF because Washington will block it. There is no lender of last resort.”
Bloomberg reports that Putin asked his key advisers at a secret meeting in February whether Russia had sufficient foreign reserves to withstand a showdown with the West if it annexed Crimea. They assured him that Russia could weather the storm.
The article by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is worth a few minutes.
The question is when will Putin depart and how?
Kremlin insiders gathered in secret last February to answer a crucial question for Vladimir Putin: Could Russia afford the economic blowback from taking over Crimea?
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-17/putin-s-secret-gamble-bet-on-ukraine-backfires-in-ruble-crisis.html
Thanks AdmSmith. Looks like a good topic of its own.