Run on the Russian banks after interest rate is hiked to TWENTY per cent in desperate bid to stop rouble crashing.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10559201/FOREX-Rouble-skids-time-low-dollar-surges-West-bolsters-Russia-sanctions.html
Vast queues have been seen outside cash machines in Russia, despite the country’s central bank hiking interest rates in a bid to stop a run on the rouble.
Pictures show people in Saint Petersburg queuing around the corner to use nearby ATMs. It comes as fears rise of an economic collapse in Russia due to biting Western sanctions imposed following president Vladimir Putin’s now floundering invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian banks are offering 20 percent interest in an attempt to keep people from emptying their accounts. But the people know that their local inflation will be more than that 20 percent. Their central bank will make a statement to the world soon. Watch as stocks panic and fall all over the world.
www.cnbc.com/2022/02/28/russia-central-bank-hikes-interest-rates-to-20percent-from-9point5percent-to-bolster-ruble.html
The rate hike, the central bank said, “is designed to offset increased risk of ruble depreciation and inflation.”
This follows the central bank’s order to halt foreigners’ bids to sell Russian securities in an effort to contain the market fallout. The ruble fell as far as 119.50 per dollar, down a whopping 30% from Friday’s close. It later pared some of its losses, trading at 93.04 per dollar by 3:30 p.m. in Moscow, still down roughly 20% against the dollar in the last year.
Russia’s stock and derivatives markets will stay shut on Monday, the central bank said.
The bank also said it would be freeing 733 billion rubles ($8.78 billion) in local bank reserves to boost liquidity. Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina will hold a briefing at 1 p.m. London time Monday.
From Sky News in England:
news.sky.com/story/war-in-ukraine-russian-bank-run-has-already-started-as-rouble-plunges-to-all-time-low-12553800
Jeffrey Halley, Asia-based senior market analyst at OANDA, told Reuters: “A bank run has already started in Russia over the weekend… and inflation will immediately spike massively, and the Russian banking system is likely to be in trouble.”
Analysts at Rabobank said the sanctions on currency reserves took away what little support the rouble had, predicting a “complete collapse” in the currency today.
Ray Attrill, head of FX strategy at National Australia Bank, also said the rouble’s collapse “appears imminent”, but others were more cautious, with Peter Kinsella, London-based global head of FX strategy at UBP only going as far as saying he expected the currency to “weaken quite severely”.
h/t Doctor Congo