Empty ATM, empty shops - the big ruble crash
Moscow (August 1998). The Moscow last year of my studies of economics began with excitement. Not that would have changed at some modest level of the lectures. Even with the side job, it would not work right, the German group at the private language school where I taught in the evening, had been disbanded for lack of participation. But the start to the year of study was in the middle of the fatal ruble crisis.
When the Russian government, the national debt is no longer could serve, broke within a few weeks along the entire economy. The national bankruptcy had been a long time coming, billions in loans to stabilize the Russian ruble was destroyed effect on the foreign exchange market. My father, who worked in a munitions factory in Moscow, had received more than half a year, no more content. It was given millions of people.
children surprise Premier announced the state bankruptcy
The young Prime Minister Sergei Kiriyenko called "Kinder Surprise", announced on 17 August 1998 state bankruptcy, then broke out the chaos in Moscow: Because the money lost value so quickly, but it Foreign exchange had no more to buy, saw most of Moscow's only one way out: They stormed the shops, boutiques and tried to have their savings quickly in a refrigerator, a washing machine or at least to exchange a TV. Not only the supermarket next to our tower was empty soon bought up on the pastry shelves and potatoes. Empty shops - something I had not seen since 1991 in Russia.
recalled the mood in Moscow on the eve of the apocalypse. Along the Tverskaya Street closed the shops in rows "technical reasons" - surpassed the seller does not it, fast enough to replace all the price tags. Some simply decided, waiting for the end of Wansinnstage. The ruble lost so rapidly in value, that some friends will have to earn in an unusual way, a handsome little sum: As soon as a bureau de change had reduced the ruble exchange rate one more time, they bought the tickets and ran to a few streets away to return swap to another exchange office that had not yet raised the prices. A risky business, everything depended on speed.
lost many people these days even the last savings. Relative left we were able to follow the action. For once, I woke up every morning with a feeling of great gratitude to my German bank at which lifted my money safe was.
Bureaux de-marathon
Also I used my German account, we will not deal. Our cash reserves were steadily running out: a large part of the day I spent in the classroom instead of in the Innensatdt - in search of an ATM from which you could still take some notes. A rather pointless exercise that was at times. As useless as the desperate attempts of Moscow, their accounts have to evacuate in time before its value had fallen through the floor. Or, even worse before the Bank had departed this life. With luck, I finally found a bank whose debit machines but as always already turned off were, however, their staff took some checks from me as I had fought through the siege by the cheated investors.
The Moscow last academic year by year, the events and the best. The tuition fees were indeed expressed in U.S. dollars, but had to be paid in rubles, to the "official rate" for accounting purposes, as determined by the Central Bank every day for the next day. The following afternoon, however, this rate had been overtaken in the long rule of the reality. Those who had dollars or marks in his pocket, they could go too much better conditions in rubles. I saved several hundred marks.
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