President Vladimir Putin’s economic adviser rebuked the central bank on Monday as the rouble slid past 101 per U.S. dollar, blaming its 30% year-to-date slump on loose monetary policy and revealing growing discord among Russia’s monetary authorities.
If you take Putin seriously he is saying he backs an interest rate hike. As a point of comparison, in Israel they just had an interest rate hike this year, and when people started struggling with loans and mortgages the auth-right government immediately blamed the central bank’s monetary policy.
Auth-right governments can never really fail at anything: economic troubles are the fault of the central bank, military troubles – the fault of the military, and so on. The sort of people who back these governments are very thirsty for this kool-aid, Putin is just meeting the high demand with supply.