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To: Alex who wrote (19026)	9/16/1998 8:44:00 AM
From: goldsnow	Respond to of 116764

Russian streets lose sparkle as rouble takes dive 07:06 a.m. Sep 16, 1998 Eastern By Peter Henderson MOSCOW, Sept 16 (Reuters) - Russia's streets and shops had a dull Soviet look on Wednesday as the stream of dollars and foreign goods which had sparked lively trade dried up. Long lines to trade roubles were gone and there were no dollars to be had on Arbat Street, one of Moscow's principal shopping areas. A thin tide of new black marketeers moved past exchange points, placed every 30 metres or so and generally displaying signs ''No hard currency'' and ''You risk being cheated trading currency on the street.'' A short, friendly young man hovering outside one exchange booth said he had worked on the black market for two weeks, earning fast money in order to pay back a loan. ''I'm sick of this work. I just want to pay off the debt and quit,'' he said, offering to pay 12, 13, 14 roubles to the dollar in a single breath, before pausing to offer 15. ''No one wants to sell,'' he lamented. The rouble has swung from six to the dollar to 25, back into single digits, and now up again in the space of a few weeks, with queues the only unchanged factor as Russians sought the strongest currency of the moment. But lines appeared to be drying up with the supply. ''They say it will be 100 to the dollar by the end of the year, 20 by the end of the month,'' said Tanya, a brown-haired woman of around 30 who made a living trading clothing at a Moscow market. ''Twenty, 30, it doesn't matter. I just need dollars,'' she said. A couple of booths off the main street offered 16 roubles to the dollar, in cntrast to a rate of seven to the dollar touched on the main Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) on Tuesday. Foreign goods have also dried up as Russian importers find they cannot get cash or credit to pay, leaving supermarket shelves empty or close to it. White and red boxes of Russian salt faced white and blue boxes of Russian sugar across an aisle of Dorogomilovo supermarket, a major central store which a month ago had a large selection of imported and domestic goods. Russian cheese and milk were all on hand, but the dozens of brands of foreign beers that had filled shelves had been replaced by plastic two-litre bottles of Russian brew. Roubles were scarce last week but easy to find on Wednesday, a day after many currency contracts between Russian and Western banks matured. The domestic banks had had to settle forward contracts to sell dollars that were agreed months ago. Currency traders say the banks, with contracts of over a billion dollars falling due, had artificially supported the rouble to bring down their losses. Rouble trade on the exchange has dried up, with only $50-$100 million changing hands daily. The exchange rate plummeted as well, with dollars offered for sale around 13.5-14 to the dollar. The bouncing rouble had given temporary delight to Dima, another black marketeer near Kiev train station who bought roubles when they hit 25 to the dollar and sold them for dollars when the rouble rebounded to 10. ''Damn it, that was great.'' But he had closed his stand selling imported housewares at a nearby market when the $4,500 monthly fee jumped in rouble terms. ''My rouble sales volumes stayed the same.'' Back on the Arbat, a line formed up outside a cash machine of SBS-Agro, the best-known savings bank in financial difficulty. Valery, a crew-cut middle aged man flipping a green ATM card in his hands, said he went to the machine every day to withdraw the daily limit of 500 roubles, converted from his dollar-denominated account at a rate of just under 11 to one. He was one of the few who for two years kept money in the bank, enjoying interest rates of around 12-15 percent. ''I'll never put my money in a bank again,'' he said. ((Moscow Newsroom, +7095 941-8520 moscow.newsroom+reuters.com)) Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved