Silent movements of trillions

In the economy, “long” and closely related to cultural changes, major processes against the backdrop of larger-scale and tragic events, sometimes attract less attention than they deserve: against the backdrop of military reports, few people, except for the service sector, have a desire to think about the savings rate of households in the Russian Federation . However, although it is difficult to describe the real connections in the present, and even more so in the future, of these “lower” matters with “higher” ones, at least now, one should not brush aside the fact: the mindset of the population also reflects very significant changes in the structure of spending, which driven by the ongoing savings boom. This is confirmed by the statistics of savings in the household sector published by the Bank of Russia on the eve of the New Year.

Quarterly savings data, a derivative of data on the international investment position of the Russian Federation, are published late compared to the balance of payments data, however, the behavior of household savings for the third quarter of 2022 is important, among other things, in order to realize how, in the context of the pre-war RF operations in Ukraine of the household savings boom are reacting to what is happening. In the summer of 2022, the Central Bank repeatedly and rather alarmingly commented on the growth of the savings rate, which (depending on the interpretation) can be caused both by the formation of a “financial cushion” by the population for future difficult times, and by an evolutionary change in the consumption model, which would also occur in other circumstances— and a combination of these processes. The figures of the Bank of Russia do not give a direct answer to the question “what is it?” – but at least allow you to assess the scale of what is happening. Thus, for the third quarter of 2022, the net increase in household financial investments (new investments minus new liabilities) amounted to 2.6 trillion rubles. After a slight slowdown in the second quarter, this figure is growing again, and at the end of last year, household financial assets in the Russian Federation, apparently , reach the level of annual GDP or exceed it – with accumulated liabilities of less than 25% of GDP. The deposit boom in the second quarter declined sharply in the third – but accumulated over the summer of 2022 far exceeds the amounts withdrawn from deposits in March. Deposits in the third quarter mostly flowed to non-resident banks (an increase of 1.5 trillion rubles), almost 1 trillion remained in the form of cash rubles during the quarter. The stock boom continues: for the quarter, the population also invested almost 1 trillion rubles in them.

It is still too early to try to calculate the motivations for certain mass decisions of households, which already concern millions of people, but it is apparently no longer possible to ignore them in attempts to answer the more general question “what is happening in Russia?” with theses about the “growth of poverty” and similar conventional wisdom, something else happens.