All right, Alexander, it's been a while since we've looked at the Russian economy.

So how are things going with the Russian economy?

Let's talk about the Russian economy.

It has been about four or five months since we've discussed the Russian economy.

What's going on?

Right.

Well, I think we have to go back to what happened last year in order to understand where we

are now because what happened last year, the early part of last year, was that the central

bank cut interest rates too quickly, as they've admitted, too quickly, underestimating the level of pent-up demand in the economy.

The result was that in the summer of last year, demand exploded.

And whilst that did result in higher growth rates in the second half of last year,

causing GDP in total to grow by 4.3%,

which is much higher than the government had anticipated.

But the result was higher inflation.

Inflation reached, but just went over 10%, which was too high. So Nebulae did what she always does and what

she is always ready to do. And this, I think, requires some explanation. She put up interest rates

very high. Many people don't understand that.

They assume that if a central bank puts up interest rates to 21%, for example, that must mean that

the inflation rate is much higher than the 10% that the central bank and the government are saying.

It is in fact always nebule in his practice. She always takes action immediately to bring inflation under

control and her way of doing it is to hit inflation very hard by putting up interest

rates very high. The purpose of the very high interest rates was to slow the economy

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