Quote:
Originally Posted by CyberSEO
(Post 20326545)
Fucked? You wish :1orglaugh Read something about 1998 crisis. That time dollar jumped from 6 rubles to 36 (yes in 6 times almost immediately). Sure that wasn't a cool thing for many, but the heavens did not fall. The same will be again. China (as well as other countries) still buys Russian gas and oil for dollars, so "fucked" is not a suitable word in such a situation.
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I was living in Vladivostok at the time. I remember everything quite well. I remember Yeltsin announcing in the evening that he was NOT going to devalue the Ruble and in the morning he did. Rubles went from something like 5.5 to 1 USD to 9 to 1 USD by noon the next day losing 1/2 their value against the dollar before lunch time. I had money in the banks that i couldn't get out because banks froze all accounts.
The government also summarily pulled the licenses from over 1000 Russian banks, fucking people over, claiming they were money laundering banks with no concern for innocent depositors and how it was going to affect them.
At a certain point, the government was forcing people to transfer $ accounts to Sberbank to be able to withdraw the money in Rubles only and they were exchanging money at very very horrible exchange rates and making a killing on the difference. I am trying to recall the specifics but at some point, the only way to get money out of weak banks was to transfer it to Sberbank for retarded fees and horrible exchange rates, where we'd lose 30-40% of the value just to access cash.
All the large outdoor markets in Vladivostok, relying 100% on chinese/korean imports were shut down over night. The biggest car market in Russia probably is in Vladivostok - selling used Japanese cars and it went from having 40,000 cars for sale to nothing but empty acres and acres of space because no one was going to spend $ not knowing what the next day would bring.
Imports stopped completely.
Everyone that had already imported for sale foods, electronics, cars/parts/accessories, clothes etc etc etc were 100% fucked because they couldn't sell anything at the rate rubles were falling in order to be able to have the $ that they needed to in order to pay back creditors.
There was also a massive murder spree across Russia of bankers and people in the financial industry, primarily because everyone wanted their money out of banks/investments and there was no way for them to access that money, for a variety of reasons (Central bank pulling licenses, no access to funds invested in government related instruments etc).
Of course the economy survived. Why? Because right after that, oil began slowly increasing in price. Otherwise, you'd still be in a bread line today had it not.
So to suggest that no one suffered is idiotic. Everyone suffered in all of Eastern Russia for sure,... as did i when all my funds were frozen in banks that couldn't afford a run on deposits.
So get ready. Oil is going to be cheap for a long time and Russia is being shut out of foreign markets, the Ruble is falling apart and you can talk about the greatness of Russia all you want, but its only going to get worse and worse and worse for a nation of leaders who just can't wait to work against, not with the rest of the developed world.
