Strategic countermeasures to overcome crisis in Russia
You could of course request payment in EUR or USD, maybe keep a PayPal account and just leave the funds in PayPal unless you need to withdraw the money in local currency? Either currency would be fine because the problem you are trying to overcome is the instability in the ruble. EUR and USD both accomplish that. If you can get local clients to pay in EUR or USD (again, PayPal seems like an easy way to accomplish that) you avoid the ruble, but at the risk that your services become more expensive to local clients because they have to convert a weaker currency to a stronger one. You should also solicit some international clients! You are obviously perfectly fluent in English and that's a significant advantage. And they'll be happy to pay in dollars and euros. If you have significant assets, such as a large deposit, then diversification of risks such as currency risk is good practice - there are many good options, but keeping 100% of it in roubles is definitely not a good idea, nor is keeping 100% of it in a single foreign currency.  Of course, it would be much more beneficial to have done it yesterday, and moments of extreme volatility generally are a bad time to make large uninformed trades, but if the deposit is sufficiently large (say, equal to annual expenses) then it would make sense to split it among different currencies and also different types of assets as well (deposit/stocks/precious metals/bonds). The rate of rouble may go up and down, but you also have to keep in mind that future events such as fluctuating oil price may risk a much deeper crisis than now, and you can look to experiences of the 1998 crisis as an example of what may happen if the situation continues to deteriorate. "You could do nothing for a while longer. Foreign exchange simply means your services are cheaper and imports and more expensive, local transactions are otherwise unaffected. Your main worry is whether the government's attempts to revert these issues will create inflation within Russia.  Local clients will likely not care to pay you in Euros, Dollars, or Pounds (as it will cost them significantly more, they'd have to acquire the currency to pay you with) but does it matter if they pay in Roubles? The financial crisis in more an international thing, not a local one. Now it is possible there will be inflation setting in but I doubt the powers that be will allow that to happen... If you are concerned about it, buying non-liquid assets are the thing to do - a house will still be worth ""1 house"" no matter what a 1-million rouble note will buy you in a year's time. Similarly, you can invest in 'blue-chip' stocks that should be a good hedge against any further inflation (the rich don't tend to turn poor in difficult times!) In the meantime, get some international clients - as the Rouble is so low, relatively speaking, your services are very competitive. The rest of the time, is to wait it out a little - nobody knows what will happen, but in my knowledge of history interest rates like this drop back to something much closer to normal quite quickly." The ruble was, is and will be very unstable because of unstable political situation in Russia and the economy strongly dependent of the export of raw resources. What you can do? I assume, you want to minimize risk. The best way to achieve that is to make your savings in some stable currency. Euro and Swiss Franc are currently very stable currencies, so storing your surpluses in them is a very good option if you want to keep your money safe. To prevent political risk, you should keep your money in countries with stable political regime, which are unlikely to 'nationalize' the savings of the citizens in predictable future. As for your existing savings in rubles, it's a hard deal. I assume, as the web developer, you have a plenty of money, which have lost a lot of value. If you convert them to euro or francs, you will preserver the current value (after the loss). You'll safe them agaist ruble falling down, but in case the ruble will return to previous value, you'll loose.  Keeping savings in instable currencies is, however, speculation, like investing in gold etc. So if you can mentally accept the loss and want to sleep good, convert them. You have also option to invest in properties, for example buy an extra appartment. It's a good way to deal with financial surplus in Europe in US, however you should be aware, in Russland it's connected with the political risk. The real estates can be confiscated in any moment by the state and you can't run away with it (the savings can also be confiscated, but there's a fair chance you'll manage to rescue them if you act quickly). Bitcoins are very liquid.  They can be sold or spent very easily.  And you don't depend on the banks being solvent to keep your Bitcoin funds, since you can keep them yourself in an offline wallet. I'm not sure what's the legality of Bitcoin in Russia, though.
True, but these technologies are not siblings that need to be treated as equals out of a sense of fairness. Each industry will have their own technical and business challenges to overcome, and they will live in or or die by their ability to overcome these challenges. A friend from Shell (Indian by blood/South African by nationality) told me a couple of months ago that China, India, and Russia had a long term plan cooking to run crude through to China from Russia; thence to India via pipeline. This is a real showstopper deal. When I looked it up online, there is evidence it is coming.   Who knew about the big gas deal with China? Who knew about this one with Iran?  Carnegie.ru (Dmitri Simes) says this whole thing is about control of and regime change of Russia by the US through State Department policy. Notsomuch Ukraine as Russia!  Given the US' record with regime changes, if Carnegie is right, this is a huge FAIL. DOOMED!! I vehemently disagree with this. Greek crisis is completely different form Spanish, Irish or Portuguese crisis. Greece has a balance of payments + fiscal crisis, due to a government which has not been balancing its budgets for decades (ever?). Greece cannot spend its way out of this crisis because this isn't a demand led crisis. If there are a lot of houses for sale, can you be sure that in a year or two you can sell yours? How long does the average house in that area stay on the market before it is sold? What percentage of houses never get sold?  If it can't be sold due to the crowded market you will be forced to rent the house. The question for you then is how much rental income can you get? Compare the rental income to your monthly cost of owning, and managing the house.  One benefit to buying a house in a market that is easy to rent a house would be if you are forced to move quickly, then you aren't stuck being 3 months into a 12 month lease.  Keep in mind that markets can change rather dramatically in just a few years. Housing costs were flat for much of the 90's, then rocketed up in the first half of the last decade, and after a big drop, they are one a slow climb back up. But the actual path they are on depends on the part of the US you are in.  The rule of thumb in the past was based on the fact that over a few years the price would rise enough overcome the closing costs on the two transactions. Unfortunately the slow growth in the 90's meant that many had to bring checks to closing because the equity gained wasn't enough to overcome the closing costs due to low down payment loans.   The fast growth period meant that people got into exotic loans to maximize the potential income when prices were going up 10-20% a year.  When prices dropped some found that they bought houses they couldn't afford, but couldn't sell to break even on the transaction. They were stuck and had to default on the mortgage.  In fact I have never seen a time frame when the rule of thumb ever applied. Inflation is already impacting hard to reach places: Sakhalin, Yakutsk, and Kaliningrad (Russia's small enclave in the middle of Europe). While major metropolitan areas can easily deflect inflation, better distribution networks, major distributors, faster access to bureaucratic machinary, isolated regions are already fealing the impact of the sanctions. Germany does a hell of a lot more trade with the US than they do with Russia so if Putin thinks impacting Germany's trade can impact their foreign policy, the U.S. has Russia beat by a mile.  Russians always seem to think that by bullying and threatening and sanctioning other countries they can get them to do what they want. But more often than not it just pushes those countries in the opposite direction. Why else is NATO right on Russia's doorstep these days?  Right now, Russia is banning imports from Georgia (principally Georgian wine) because they don't like Georgia's western leaning government. And all it is accomplishing is making Georgia even more anxious to join the E.U. "Everything post 2009 (actually late 2007 through 2008 since that's when the financial crisis occurred) has also been a ""unique once-in-a-lifetime circumstance"". QE on this scale is unprecedented. The only time it's been done before is by the Bank of Japan in the early 2000s and that has been proven to be ineffective. Now you've got the US, the UK, and the EU all doing it." I have been through default in Ukraine august 1998. That was a real nightmare. The financial system stopped working properly for 1 month, about 30% of businesses went bankrupt because of chain effect, significant inflation and devaluation of currency. So, it is better to be prepared, because this type of processes result in unpredictable situation.