"Green" can be able to cherish

About the beginning of the 90s in Russia, an unspoken law has been in force: if in the country that is unstable - and there were plenty of reasons to think so at that time, - go to the exchange point to purchase currency. She is somehow calmer and more reliable with her. I remember that almost for the first time this tradition gave an misfire in the spring of 1998, when Viktor Chernomyrdin went to resign from the premier post. “Wow,” observers were surprised in those days, “the government is being dissolved in the country, and the people react calmly.” Calm - it was meant that it did not drop rubles. True, in just a few months the population recalled the forgotten rule. It happened after August 17. And now, a little more than three years later, the old instinct again made itself felt. Only with a minus sign: if the problems are now in Russia, but behind the ocean, wait for the collapse not ours, but their currencies. That is, drop the dollars, buy rubles.

The first lines in city exchange points appeared two hours after the news of the explosion, that is, about seven in the evening in Moscow. “They heard what with the course?! How? The dollar is falling,” the fellow citizens exchanged “hot” news, and the lines continued to grow.

This continued, thank God, not for long. The course really "fell", but only the purchase course. The sales rate remained the same, which is why the fellow citizens who decided to conduct the reverse operation, that is, to purchase dollars “cheaply”, was waiting for disappointment. Simply put, the excitement was heated by the exchange points themselves. Moreover, interest was clearly speculative.

In the afternoon, the Bank of Russia took up the resting of order, saying that no one canceled the restriction on the SPRED between the sales and purchase courses (introduced, by the way, by the way after the same August 17). The Central Bank promised to carry out a massive check of exchange offices in Moscow and the Moscow region and understand the violators. Apparently, on Neblin, they seriously concerned about the negative financial consequences of yesterday's events in New York and Washington for Russia.

The head of government, the head of government, Mikhail Kasyanov, who assured fellow citizens in defense of the stable dollar, was not a serious reason to fall in the dollar exchange rate in our country. According to the prime minister, all the dollar calculations of Russian banks through US banks were carried out yesterday. The calculations of Russian banks in dollars were also carried out without failures. In this regard, he urged the population to "not succumb to panic": the ruble exchange rate is stable, the dollar exchange rate stabilizes in the very near future, that is, tomorrow and the next day.

A fresh confirmation of the prime minister’s words was the results of the next bidding at the MICEX: on Wednesday, the weighted average of the dollar, according to which the Bank of Russia sets an official exchange rate, at a single trading session grew by 0.24 kopecks and amounted to 29.4455 rubles per dollar.

In fairness, it should be noted that, according to some observers, the reaction of markets to events in the United States can arise with some temporary lag, but at the same time be very stretched in time. That is, not a collapse, but a protracted fall. One of the economists recalled in this regard, in particular, the war in the Persian Gulf: the reaction to this event was the fall of all the main indices (indexes, by the way, were already on Wednesday). However, this applies rather to world markets, where the dollar surrendered its positions in relation to all the most important world currencies without exception. As for Russia, here the Central Bank should have enough forces and means to contain sharp currency fluctuations.

Sha, no one is falling anywhere - Grani.ru, 09/12/2001