A massive piece by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard at The Telegraph, 23 Dec 2014:
“It’s going to be worse than the default crisis in 1998. This time you have a
situation where the West is against them,” said Mr Browder from Hermitage
Gallows humour is back in Moscow. Asked what he would do to stop the rouble
spiralling out of control, the former governor of Russia’s central bank
replied: “I would pick up a pistol and shoot myself.”
This was the week when the country’s long-festering crisis turned virulent. A
last-ditch attempt to defend the exchange rate by raising interest rates to
17pc failed within hours, yet the shock is surely enough to set off a chain
of corporate failures and push banks over the edge.
Traders in the City watched open-mouthed as the dam broke on Black Tuesday.
The event exposed the awful reality that the Kremlin does not have the
infinite foreign reserves that many had supposed. “What is happening is a
nightmare that we could not even have imagined a year ago,” says the central
bank’s deputy chief, Sergei Shvetsov.
The currency has since stabilised at 60 to the dollar. But it has lost half
its value in a year. Russia’s $2.1 trillion (£1.3 trillion) economy has
shrunk to $1.1 trillion, half the GDP of California.
The external debt of Russian banks and companies has by mathematical effect
ballooned to 70pc of total output. “A Russian downgrade to junk is only a
matter or time,” says Tim Ash, from Standard Bank.
“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.
Crowds have descended on Ikea stores, converging in pick-up trucks to buy hard
goods before it is too late. The company suspended sales of kitchens on
Thursday, saying it cannot meet demand.
Those scrambling to buy cars may have missed their chance. Jaguar Land Rover
has halted sales to Russia. So has General Motors, citing “rouble
volatility”. The big three dealerships - Transtekhservice, Major Auto, and
Avilon - have frozen sales.
As the buying frenzy subsides, the eerie stillness of depression may instead
take hold. The central bank says the economy could contract by 4.7pc next
year if oil prices settle at $60 a barrel, but that was before the rate
shock. BNP Paribas says each 100-basis point rise cuts 0.8pc off GDP a year
later. Rates have risen 750 points in a week.
It was also before President Vladimir Putin disclosed his second line of
defence. “We must squeeze rouble liquidity to stabilise the currency. We
mustn’t waste our foreign exchange reserves thoughtlessly,” he says. This
means driving the MosPrime (Libor) rates to 30pc. Those borrowing to “short”
the rouble are crushed, but so are Russian banks.
“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.”
Western sanctions are still escalating. With wicked timing, President Barack
Obama this week chose not to veto a law passed by the US Congress that
tightens the noose further, even though he warned previously that it may irk
European leaders and erode Atlantic unity. The law implies fresh curbs on
the Russian energy sector, and may limit credit to Gazprom. It stiffens
Ukraine with $350m of military aid, a high-risk move. The White House says
Putin can reverse the process at any time by implementing the Minsk
ceasefire deal agreed three months ago. “The aim is to sharpen the choice
that he faces,” it says.
Putin lashed out defiantly on Thursday, accusing the West of trying to “chain
the Russian” bear and tear out its claws. “The issue is not Crimea. We are
protecting our sovereignty and our right to exist,” he says.
It was vintage Putin, a three-hour tirade, with a strong hint that the oil
price crash is due to a plot by the US and Saudi Arabia to cripple Russia.
It contained a warning to his enemies at home that there is no safe line
between opposition and “Fifth Columnists”.
Putin invoked the cause of Mother Russia, calling on his people to brace for
two years of hardship, yet he is clearly on thin ice. “Putin’s sales pitch
has always been that he brought the country back to stability after the
craziness of the Yeltsin years,” says Browder. “He could get away with it
because the oil boom created enough money for everybody, but now the money
has run out. People are getting very angry. If oil all stays at $60 for a
year, he risks a palace coup from his own ‘Siloviki’ (former KGB) circle.”
There was a frisson of this at Putin’s press conference, though he deflected a
blunt question by saying “there can’t be a palace coup in Russia, because
there are no palaces”.
The grumbling is getting louder. “We all cheered when we took back our Crimea.
Now we are reaping the fruits of our conquest,” says the governor of
Krasnodar, Alexander Tkachyov. “We thought that nothing would happen. Now we
face the payback, because there are no miracles. It has become clear that
Russia is facing a real economic war, and there should be no illusions.”
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.
Putin took a huge gamble. Deutsche Bank and other lenders were already
forecasting an oil glut in 2014 as the US flooded the markets with shale
oil. Nor did the Kremlin team seem to fully grasp that Russia is far more
vulnerable to sanctions now that it depends on foreign capital and is tied
into global finance. For the last decade, an elite cell at the US Treasury
has been sharpening the tools of economic war, crafting ways to bring
countries to their knees without firing a shot....MUCH MORE
