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Russian central bank sharply hikes rates (from 16%) to 18%, promises further tightening (www.reuters.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

This is a clear symptom of what I wrote about already last year. The Russian economy is getting weaker.
The Russian economy was/is overheating, despite it at the same time only has moderate growth.
This is due to the government funneling money out to cover cost of the war with Ukraine. More money than the economy can handle, which then causes inflation.
The increased interest rate is to dampen inflation and an overheating economy the country cannot sustain.

As BomOmOm writes, loaning for a house or investing in expanding a business is very expensive, which will slow the activity down in all areas of the economy.
In other words, the current Russian economy is not strong enough to sustain the cost of the war at the current level, and at the same time sustain the population at the current level.

Russia is not just losing in Ukraine, they are losing at home too.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Don’t know if you’re writing this from Russia but if you are please keep away from windows. Fascist uncle Poots wont like what he’s reading.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I'm in EU.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Fascist uncle Poots has been known to send his orcs into the EU to hassle his detractors. Wipe down any doorknobs before touching them.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

Thank you for your concern, but Russian intelligence is probably not very concerned about this. They will just block it in Russia so Russians can't see it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

What is this concern trolling lol.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes. They even have levers they can pull to make this look better. For example they can reduce the price of tanks and other military equipment, so that they will balance out consumer price increases. But even that's not working any more.

When you already have a declining demographic, you lose 2 million worker to emigration, another half million in a war and then take millions more and put them on front lines and in military factories, of course consumer goods will suffer. Then you lose imports which could cover these goods to sanctions, lose oil refineries to war, and blow up a good portion of your GDP on the front line, of course things will get worse.

You can paper over this in the numbers for some time, even make your GDP look reasonably good with military expenditure, but all that stuff is just getting blown up, not providing investment for future growth. The longer you do it, the worse your future situation will be.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

👍 Exactly.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Lol. Fuck russia.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

Jesus, 18%.

If you had a $200k mortgage, you would be paying $3,000 in just interest every month. And that's assuming you get the central bank rate, you don't. Probably looking more at like 20% for a loan an individual can actually get.

Good luck opening or expanding a business with rates like that too.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I looked up online calculators and it gives me 21.1% from sberbank. However it's just interest rate. And with additional fees it shows up to 24.4%. And you should bear in mind that actual terms tend to be worse. There is also a "military mortgage" which "starts from 18.9%", but it is not any better tbh.

Edit: apparently there are cheaper mortgages starting from 5% and 6% if you are buying "new property" that are labeled as "IT" and "family" ones. I don't know terms for those, but they are definitely not for everyone and they might have conditions which restrict those to a really small group of people. And you can't buy second hand property with those.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 months ago

Imagine trying to buy shit on credit in order to fire bomb Paris train stations with those kinds of rates.