Russia’s central bank on Tuesday hiked interest rates by 350 basis points to 12% at an emergency meeting, as Moscow looks to halt a rapid depreciation of the country’s ruble currency.
The ruble slumped to near 102 to the dollar on Monday, as President Vladimir Putin’s economic advisor, Maxim Oreshkin, penned an op-ed in Russian state-owned Tass news agency that blamed the plunging currency and the acceleration of inflation on the “loose monetary policy” of the central bank.
Last time the US had rates at a comparable level was during Volcker’s term at the Fed in the early 80s. It did successfully bring down some crazy inflation.
That said there’s been 15 years of easy money following the 08 disaster and it definitely wouldn’t be pleasant to have such rates now. Businesses and as such the broader economy are built around assumptions that things will stay more or less in familiar territory
Low rates brought on very slim capital structures financed by corporate paper.
We would deleverage, but it would hurt returns and generally be unpleasant, plus we’d go back to corporations sitting on mountains of cash “just in case”.
As funny as it would be to watch the tech industry try to build cash flow positive businesses, it might just crash the global economy at this point to do so.