http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/17/business/russia-ruble-interest-rates.html 2014-12-16 12:52:56 Ruble Continues Its Decline in Russia, Despite Interest Rate Increase Of particular concern in the financial markets were fears that the Kremlin had in effect decided to print money to address a growing debt problem. === MOSCOW — The ruble’s value continued to slide on Tuesday despite the Russian central bank’s extraordinary effort to defend it, inducing further panic in the nation’s financial industry and presenting President Scenes that Russians hoped had receded into the past reappeared on the streets: currency exchange signs blinked ever-changing digits, and Russians rushed to appliance stores to buy washing machines or televisions to unload rubles. “We are seeing an economic crisis,” Natalya V. Akindinova, a professor at the Higher School of Economics, said in a telephone interview. “We are seeing a sharp devaluation of the ruble at a time when the Central Bank doesn’t have the reserves to influence the market, as it did in the past crises.” Despite the central bank’s decision to raise its short-term interest rate in the middle of the night to 17 percent from 10.5 percent, the currency continued to slip in value on Tuesday after initially showing signs of stabilizing. The interest rate move came after the ruble had fallen 10 percent on Monday. The Russian currency was trading at 64.99 to the dollar at 11:40 a.m. in Moscow on Tuesday, down half a ruble, in spite of the bank’s policy shift. Of particular concern in the financial markets were fears that the Kremlin had in effect decided to print money to address a growing debt problem. Worry that the central bank had effectively issued new rubles to prop up the national oil company With pressure mounting, the bank appeared to have lapsed into a “policy of printing money,” Ms. Akindinova said, to aid the state oil company pinched by low oil prices and financial sanctions over the Ukraine crisis. Traders suggested that they had been spooked by concerns that the cronyism and opaque insider dealings that have plagued business here had now spread to monetary policy.