"Goronezh should suffer, as usual"

Putin forbade the departure of the currency abroad. We tried to understand what this means - and what will happen next

The war that Vladimir Putin unleashed continues . And sanctions begin to directly influence the Russian economy. On the afternoon of February 28, the dollar and euros reached historical maximums at the auction of the Moscow Exchange: the dollar cost 109 rubles, the euro - 122 rubles (trading shares were canceled until March 1). And by evening, Putin signed a decree on response sanctions, from March 1, limiting the output of the currency abroad. Medusa talked about how much this will affect the life of Russians with the director of the Banking Institute of the Higher School of Economics, Vasily Solodkov.

This [Putin’s decree on response measures] means that all transfers abroad are actually stopped. As a private person, you cannot transfer money to your account, you cannot pay for the contract, you cannot transfer money using foreign payment systems. Any translation is impossible, it is a stop of calculations. But how it will work further [from March 1], I do not quite understand. How to pay Netflix? How to pay for a communal apartment if you have a house abroad? How to pay for a child’s studies if he is studying abroad?

There is no ban on export-import operations. But how to pay is incomprehensible. For some time it can work as currency swaps : that is, you need a currency, and someone [abroad] needs rubles. Some spend rubles here, others spend the currency there. This is how trading [other countries] with Iran is conducted.

Even in the decree there is a tough restriction that applies to enterprises: they must sell 80% of foreign exchange earnings in order to create an offer of currency in the market.

All this is done to lead the market to some more equilibrium state, because we now have a full-fledged currency crisis-artificially organized. And Voronezh should suffer, as usual.

How much it lasts is incomprehensible. If rudely, we have 600 billion dollars of reserves. Suppose half was frozen, half remained. The Central Bank today spent 85 billion rubles on the intervention, take a rough one - this is 1.5 billion dollars. If these pace, then for a year to maintain the course is enough for us. But the Central Bank refused the interventions, so tomorrow we can see the ruble at any price. We enter a state of complete turbulence and space for cryptocurrencies.

As for what was happening today. In the morning, the Central Bank raised the key rate more than double - from 9.5 to 20%. A bet is the percentage of which banks from the Central Bank are loaned. Banks add their income to this rate, and the real rate is higher. The loan rate will be 22–23%, but this does not play a role, because we do not understand the size of inflation.

I think this is not the last increase in the rate, because getting up from the knees, as you guess, did not lead to anything - except that we quarreled with the whole world. The share of imports is very high - for example, we have a critical dependence on the import of drugs. The same car manufacturers already say one by one that they stopped shipments to Russia. Production will arise. That is, we are waiting for the growth of the rate, high inflation and deficiency of goods, and vital.

Now we are not talking about saving the economy, but about saving the ruble. If the possibilities for intervention [to maintain its course] are limited, then the natural option is to increase the rate. Naturally, it is not discussed that economic growth is needed.

This has already happened. The Olympiad [in Sochi], together with the Crimea, led to the fact that in fact, the Web was in fact. If you remember, he was saved due to the funded part of the pension.

And what will happen next - depends on what Russia will do in Ukraine.