Talk:1998 Russian financial crisis

Untitled
DO NOT MERGE. They are two different subjects !!

don't think it should be merged
these are two different subjects. 84.94.100.87 07:36, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Explain a bit more, they appear to be two incomplete subjects that talk about the exact same event. One of the articles even says that the other name is synonymous with the events (you even edited that part, so if I don't hear back I'll assume that they are the same thing and merge in a few days). Radagast83 08:09, 16 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I agree with the anonymous user that the articles should not be merged. GKOs were a form of domestic souvereign debt. Granted, "GKO crisis" and "Russian financial crisis 1998" migh be synonyms for some, but there is more to GKOs than just the crisis and hence they deserve a separate article. --Maxx.T 21:42, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * Do Not merge it! two different subject! Superzohar 09:52, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

8%
I see on CIA factbook that their national debt is only 8% of their GDP while the U.S. is approaching 70%. Why worry about stiffing everybody if your economy can being doing great a few years later? And they'll never have to pay it back? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 67.110.221.182 (talk) 06:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC).

What is total amount of defaulted GKO
I came here trying to find the absolute economic size of the event (specifically of the GKO default) but there doesn't seem to be any info on that. What was the net amount of the obligations on which Russia had to default? It's important to have such info so that this event could be compared to what happened/may happen in other countries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.23.196.121 (talk) 16:04, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

Inaccurate
The Russian government did not devalue the ruble. Rather, the government basically announced (Joint Statement of August 17, 1998) it would restructure its debt (without specifying how/when) and froze transactions by financial institutions (i.e. banks) to stop the exporting of hard currency. At the time the Russian government had a "floating peg" policy viz. the ruble and the dollar, meaning that the government would step in and defend the ruble if it threatened to devalue outside of the band. After the government shut down the financial markets, the ruble crashed--but this was not a "devaluation" in the sense of a deliberate policy toward the ruble, but rather the natural result of the crisis in confidence caused by the government's actions toward banks and its own debt. At the time the primary exchange for ruble trading was MICEX (Moscow Interbank Currency EXchange). Following the Joint Statement the MICEX essentially stopped functioning. As the ruble quickly threatened to fall out of the band, the government shut down the exchange rather than defend the currency. The government tried to reopen the exchange a couple of times; each time it had to be shut down. In private transactions the ruble reached 21 to the dollar from a pre-crisis level of around 7-8 to the dollar (i.e. 300% drop in value).

However, the fact that the government did not intentionally debase the currency is of great historical significance. Russia essentially became the first sovereign nation (at least in modern times) to default on its sovereign debt, denominated in domestic currency, as opposed to simply printing more money.

I am going to draft a revision that will fix this inaccuracy and also expand a little on the history. Hopefully I can find an English translation of the Joint Statement knocking around on the web somewhere...Gibbon2007 (talk) 05:26, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

--Maxx.T (talk) 10:41, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Gibon, I support your point of historical significance of the precedent and would be keen to see your text. Meanwhile, here goes the official text of the STATEMENT of the Government of the Russian Federation and the Central Bank of the Russian Federation August 17, 1998 http://www2.minfin.ru/off_inf/69.htm Hope this helps.

Okay, I have inserted a couple of paragraphs into the Crisis & Effects section and also the prior section. I have to work on this a little at a time. I'll add some cites in next. Thanks for the link to the JS. I'm a bit of a novice at writing for Wikipedia--I mostly just read.Gibbon2007 (talk) 04:07, 3 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the contribution, and welcome.--Gregalton (talk) 11:41, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

May be I was wrong but it seems to me the Russians have gained more than they have lost during this crisis, actually it was the crisis that stimulated the rebound of Russian economy after 2000. am I correct of not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.116.104.217 (talk) 13:45, 9 February 2011 (UTC)

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Capitalisation
Is there any reason why this article title is in sentence case (and no year), while the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis is capitalised, and has a year? Would it be best to rename this article for consistency? 86.167.86.206 (talk) 15:36, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Defaulting
Maybe a good idea to mention the GKOs being defaulted on? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.35.31.33 (talk) 00:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Dead link
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.jstor.org/view/00072303/ap040001/04a00030/0
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-05-25 06:35:34, 404 Not Found
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-06-25 11:43:57, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 11:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 2
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.jstor.org/view/00028282/ap000009/00a00110/0
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-05-25 06:35:34, 404 Not Found
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-06-25 11:44:07, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 11:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 3
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.bbk.ac.uk/polsoc/staff/academic/bill-tompson/cbr-and-the-1998-rouble-crisis
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-05-25 06:35:34, 404 Not Found
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-06-25 11:44:19, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 11:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 4
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/1998/09/crisis.russia/middle.class/
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-05-25 06:35:34, 404 Not Found
 * In 1998 Russian financial crisis on 2011-06-25 11:44:27, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 11:44, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

Goldman Sachs involvement
I find it odd that Goldman's involvement does not even get a mention. Here is a good starting point: http://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/18/business/easy-money-special-report-for-russia-its-us-bankers-match-wasn-t-made-heaven.html?pagewanted=all

Ninel (talk) 16:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

A film shown on a French TV channel claims that the Russian financial crisis was orchestrated by Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street banks to ruin Russia and thus gain control of Russias natural ressources. The film The Pi Code is from 2013. Ontologix (talk) 22:26, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

Possible copyright problem
This article has been revised as part of a large-scale clean-up project of multiple article copyright infringement. (See the investigation subpage) Earlier text must not be restored, unless it can be verified to be free of infringement. For legal reasons, Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images borrowed from other web sites or printed material; such additions must be deleted. Contributors may use sources as a source of information, but not as a source of sentences or phrases. Accordingly, the material may be rewritten, but only if it does not infringe on the copyright of the original or plagiarize from that source. Please see our guideline on non-free text for how to properly implement limited quotations of copyrighted text. Wikipedia takes copyright violations very seriously. Mkativerata (talk) 21:58, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Requested move 1 May 2015
1998 Russian financial crisis → Russian financial crisis (1998) – The title format of Russian financial crisis (2014–present) was changed. This article's title should be consistent, one way or another. If there is no consensus to reformat the title, perhaps the other article should revert back to original title. George Ho (talk) 08:32, 1 May 2015 (UTC)
 * That article uses the parenthetical only because it requires the "-present", which cannot be placed before the title. This is a completed event, and therefore has no such requirement. When the current crisis is considered "finished", the "-present" can be removed, with the appropriate years in the front of that article's title. RGloucester  — ☎ 03:15, 2 May 2015 (UTC)
 * I'm withdrawing the request at this time. However, feel free to comment. --George Ho (talk) 02:14, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Stolen loans
It was later revealed that about $5 billion of the international loans provided by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were stolen upon the funds' arrival in Russia on the eve of the meltdown.[3][4]

It seems it's just a myth. See https://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2006/01/pdf/odling.pdf (Page 171)

Some months later, a story emerged that the money had been stolen and ended up in the bank accounts of people close to the president and government leaders. There was no truth to this story; the documents purporting to prove it were forged, and a detailed audit of the CBR’s reserves found that they had been used to support the ruble, as they were intended to be, if needed. --Trycatch (talk) 10:31, 7 May 2016 (UTC)

Severe shortcomings
For an article (rightly) classed as being of high importance it is full of weaselly wording, assessments unsupported by third-party, reliable sources, and opinions offered as facts. Items of significant importance for such an event, such as the structure of the defaulted debt, the currency in which the debt was denominated, etc, are missing. The focus of the article is skewed on political events while the financial and economic side of the default itself is relatively neglected. The entry has been appropriately tagged and awaits work. (Yes, I will try to find the time to do what I can.) -The Gnome (talk) 17:51, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

I agree. I think this article is still unclear and hard to follow. This sentence:

Since Russia had to provide assistance to other countries it had parted from after the dissolution of the USSR, it did so by importing heavily from those countries.

is unclear; why exactly did Russia "have" to provide such assistance? rdl381 (talk) 09:06, 7 June 2024 (UTC)