Senior Russian officials, who have been avoiding speaking about the crisis, have suddenly started making non-trivial statements. Speaking at the State Duma on Friday, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin said that the Russian stock indices would continue to fall. The indices did fall, and a prompt investor even managed to buy all shares of Sberbank offered at the stock exchange for a very cheap price. Curiously enough, according to official Sberbank information, four of the bank's top managers have bought additional Sberbank stocks, taking advantage of the falling prices.
Even Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov, who generally does not comment on economic issues, said that he would not be upset if some Russian banks go bankrupt. "In my personal view, some of the banks are not really banks, but ‘laundries'. If they fail, it will only make things better," said Mr. Ivanov. However, Mr. Ivanov "refrained" from revealing the "laundries", and no bankruptcies have been reported so far.
Prime Minister Putin, on the other hand, has been avoiding commenting on the crisis. Remarkably, the recent government meeting on anti-crisis measures was chaired by President Dmitry Medvedev, whereas Mr. Putin was in Grozny touring a local mosque with Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of Chechnya.
The Union of Russian Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) has expressed strong opposition to the government's measures for the first time in a long time. The RSPP believes that granting government funds to state banks and the state corporation Vnesheconombank (VEB) creates unfair competition and advantages for the latter.
Bluntly speaking, the industrialists and entrepreneurs are worried about the possibility of partial nationalisation as a means of overcoming the crisis. The fact that "the union of oligarchs" is finally following its self-preservation instinct and speaking up is quite optimistic. This was not the case during the so-called Yukos affair.
Last week, oil prices fell below the psychologically important barrier of $70 per barrel. For Russia, this is a critical point, since budgets of the country's largest companies as well as the federal budget were compiled based on $70 per barrel as the lowest possible oil price. Of course, the government can still use the Reserve Fund to cover the budget deficit and, as it turns out, the debts of private and state companies.
Still, the government does have a sacred responsibility to fulfill its social commitments to consumers. Hence, President Dmitry Medvedev's question as to why gasoline prices in Russia are not decreasing following the decline of world oil prices is not rhetorical at all. The issue is extremely important for the public. Either the oil industry will respond by cutting prices, or the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, together with the Prosecutor's Office, will come up with an answer of their own.