1/5 Russia has money to stimulate the economy, but Putin wants to keep it in reserve in case it faces new sanctions https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-11-06/covid-pandemic-putin-reluctant-with-stimulus-despite-russia-s-reserves?sref=9FMcma5m via @BW

2/5 Here's a chart showing the total assets in Russia's rainy day fund. They have increased 40% this year.

3/5 “The fund was set up to accumulate proceeds from high oil prices so that it could be used in difficult times,” Alexei Kudrin, who was finance minister until 2011 and now heads a government audit agency, said in an interview. “A pandemic is exactly that kind of situation.”

4/5 By contrast, ordinary Russians had to dig deep into savings to survive a six-week lockdown that ended in mid-May. By then, almost half of households had either no savings or just enough to cover expenses for four weeks, according to the Centre for Strategic Research.

5/5“Russia is now one of the only major economies pursuing austerity, and it’s pursuing it for the wrong reasons,” says Sergei Guriev, former chief economist at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.