In Moscow in April, there is no longer the cold winter scene of the previous two months, and the unknown flowers on both sides of the road have begun to stretch their graceful posture shyly, hoping to bloom their most beautiful moments in the near future.

It's just that on their heads, the tall maple trees show another picture of spring, and the young leaves that have just been smoked are light yellow, orange, light red, and even blood red, which look colorful and beautiful.

Fang Chen not only thinks of Luozhou, April is also the most beautiful time in Luozhou, which is the day when the peony is in full bloom.

But the solemn and hurried Muscovites on the streets do not seem to have the elegance to enjoy the beauty of the spring flowers and the grass and warblers.

But the street, which was a different sight from the previous two years, has disappeared.

In the past two years, it was common to see Muscovites curled up in a ball, even on a cold day, setting up stalls to sell goods.

Most of these Russian stalls sell household items such as refrigerators, color TVs, microwave ovens, clothes, clocks, etc., and the source of these household items is usually the stall owners' own homes.

No way, whether it's a refrigerator, a color TV, or a fur coat, you can't fill your stomach, can you?

These Russians need to sell these things to support themselves and their families.

Besides, what's the use of an empty refrigerator that has no food, if you don't sell it?

Among them, however, the most peculiar group of stallholders were gray-haired Soviet veterans, heroes, who placed their medals in exchange for their lives and blood, along with other things.

These medals, which originally carried countless honors, were not as important to them as a piece of bread at this time.

In these years, there are not many Russians who sell their heads, but in order to have a bite to eat, there are countless Russians who sell themselves.

As for why these Russians don't set up stalls now, there are probably only two reasons, one is that they are wealthy, rich in materials, and have stable jobs, so they naturally don't need to exchange their household goods for food and other daily necessities.

One is that there is nothing left to sell at home.

Fang Chen guessed that the latter was the majority.

With the implementation of shock therapy, the serious inflation in Russia, not as Chubais and Gaidar thought, gradually subsided, as in Poland, but intensified.

Prices have been inflating like crazy for last year and every month of this year, and even though the Central Bank of Russia has pumped billions of dollars in credit to save the trend, nothing has helped.

In the year that Gaidar has deregulated prices, consumption in Russia has swelled by 25% per month.

It's only been four months since the end of 1992, but prices are already 2.6 times higher than then.

And faster than the rise in prices is the exchange rate of the ruble.

The plummeting ruble exchange rate has forced Huaxia Bank to close its deposit business, after all, it is possible that the ruble that has just been deposited has fallen again before the Central Bank of Russia can exchange it for dollars.

Of course, it is the Russian people who will bear the losses in the end, after all, the rise in interest on deposits will never be as fast as the exchange rate.

It is possible that a hundred dollars worth of rubles that were deposited today will be left with only ten dollars, or even one dollar, when they are withdrawn.

Huaxia Bank, as the largest bank in Russia except for the Central Bank, is also helpless in this regard.

Moreover, Russians have no savings, and families can only count on someone who still has a job, a monthly salary.

And as soon as the salary is paid, it must be quickly exchanged for all kinds of daily necessities, and if it waits a few more days and the price rises a little more, then someone in the family will go hungry.

Extreme inflation destabilizes the economy and renders people's savings worthless.

This is a cruel, extraordinary punishment!

A Soviet scientist's salary in Soviet times was 200 roubles a month, and with this 200 roubles he could eat goulash with potatoes and potatoes, wear decent clothes, and drive to and from work every day.

But at this point, his life savings were only available to buy a slice of bread.

Therefore, Russians who have a doorway are more inclined to exchange the ruble for hard currency such as dollars, gold, and marks.

Extreme inflation is the most terrible monetary catastrophe, and people have lost confidence in their country's currency and are trying to get rid of it.

In addition to these three things, they are also willing to exchange Huaxia coins, after all, the streets and alleys, including the vendors and shopkeepers who sell goods in the stores, all recognize Huaxia coins.

They can use these Huaxia coins to buy from Mr. Fang's Sino-Russian trading company at any time.

And with the Sino-Russian trading company shipping a large number of daily necessities they need, half of the daily necessities at home are already from the Sino-Russian trading company, so the Chinese currency has become completely popular in Russia, and it is unlikely to replace the dollar and gold, but it is not impossible to replace the German mark.

In this way, Fang Chen has also contributed to the internationalization of Huaxia currency.

Fang Chen's eyes looked out of the window motionlessly, looking at this scene that he had personally participated in creating, not sad, happy or worried, and he couldn't see the slightest emotion.

He actually found it somewhat ironic.

These Russians overthrew the Soviets like a carnival, thinking that they would usher in freedom, democracy, abundant goods, and a better future, but they did not expect that they would find themselves in such a situation.

But it has to be said that such inflation is extremely friendly to capitalists, oligarchs, and even bold and cunning businessmen like him, and the big wave of inflation has brought them an incredible opportunity to make a fortune.

Everything in front of us is a sign that an era of easy money madness has arrived.

This can be clearly reflected in the fact that the turnover of the Russian trading companies is getting higher and higher, and the Russian Automobile Union is selling more and more luxury cars.

The former is due to the fact that the Russian production system has been fundamentally damaged, and those who have taken ownership of the enterprise do not want to resume production quickly, but to find a way to sell the enterprise to those who are not qualified to buy it, such as foreigners.

And the latter is because there are more and more wealthy people in Russia, and even Mercedes-Benz and BMW can no longer satisfy their appetites, and they now need Porsche, Lamborghini, and even Bentley and Rolls-Royce.

As for Huaxia Bank, which seems to be in the worst situation, it is actually not idle, and Huaxia Bank, which has abandoned its deposit business, is now fully fulfilling the powers and responsibilities entrusted to it by the Central Bank of Russia.

Manage government financial allocations, and accept government deposits and loans.

Now Huaxia Bank is already known as the second central bank of Russia.

The only pity is that now the profitability of Huaxia Bank has weakened, and it is not as crazy as it was when it resold rubles.

Seeing that Fang Chen's expression was a little wrong, Berezovsky said to Fang Chen: "Now the Russians have gone to buy trading vouchers, so recently, the streets have always been empty......"

Speaking of this, Berezovsky paused, looked at Fang Chen with a somewhat strange expression, and said, "You should know the voucher." ”

Fang Chen pursed the corners of his mouth, he naturally knew that Chubais's voucher plan document still signed his name, and he also got 10% of the shares of Gazprom because of this name.

And become the individual who has the most oil and gas resources in the world.

After all, you must know that as the owner of all natural gas resources in Russia, Gazprom owns 20% of the world's natural gas reserves, and his 10% stake is equal to 2% of the world's natural gas reserves.

Chubais's voucher plan distributes all Russian assets, including all of Russia's factories, oil, gas, transportation, and most manufacturing enterprises, to every Russian at a full price of $12 billion.

And the way it is embodied is this voucher, so that 148 million vouchers are produced.

Each voucher has a face value of 10,000 rubles, which can be picked up at a local bank for 25 rubles, and each voucher is equivalent to cents.

Of course, most of this work is now done by the various branches of Huaxia Bank, and Russians have become accustomed to handling all kinds of corporate business in Huaxia Bank.

These vouchers can be traded at the time of auction of the company's property, and can also be exchanged for the company's individual shares, deposited in the bank in the form of mutual funds, or sold and exchanged outright.

Chubais once promised that these vouchers could buy two Volga cars.

Even last year, when the vouchers were issued, Yeltsin stood up and said: "Shares are the embodiment of the real ownership of assets, and the ticket to a free economy for all of us!"

But critics call the voucher a "useless candy wrapper." ”

Now Fang Chen still has two such "candy wrappers" in his pocket.

In fact, in order to allow the public to hook these vouchers with coins, these vouchers are beautifully printed, dark brown with the Russian White House sitting next to the Moscow River, almost identical to currency.

And in the White House of Russia, where the parliament is located, vouchers are fearfully called privatization checks, because Yeltsin hates the word vouchers.

Even at a cabinet meeting, Yeltsin forbade officials to use the voucher once, believing that the word from English was too vulgar.

But a single word is still deeply rooted in the hearts of the people.

As the author of the voucher program, Fang Chen was well aware that vouchers were more of a political strategy than an economic tool, and Chubais used them to make everyone feel that they could get a piece of the pie in the privatization process.

It was this behavior that allowed Chubais to win the support of the people for privatization and make it irreversible.

So as a political ploy, Chubais insisted that vouchers should have a face value in currency, despite the fact that Russian economic pundits suggested that vouchers should be named after "points" rather than money.

He wanted to make the voucher look like a gift to the public, not really a "candy wrapper".

And Chubais seized on the curiosity of the people about the voucher, and ordered every TV station newscaster, every channel, to ask people five or six times a day, "What are you going to do with your voucher?"

For some time, vouchers were arguably the most liquid form of securities in the world, available at every corner newsstand and metro station along the route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

It's just that Fang Chen's eyes narrowed slightly, and he said a little strangely: "Voucher trading, wasn't it so hot in Russia before?"

Although Yeltsin and Chubais painted a big pie for the populace.

But for most of the people who get the voucher, they will not take the voucher to buy shares of any company and become shareholders.

For them, the only function of the voucher is to exchange it for money.

Or rather, the voucher has become a securities in their hands that can be operated, just like stocks.

Moreover, they are the same trading warrants as buying and selling stocks, and the vouchers can be said to be the first securities that a red country with a history of more than 70 years has come into contact with.

Therefore, in the past few months when the voucher has just come out, or in Fang Chen's impression, after the implementation of the voucher plan, the price of the voucher has fluctuated very much.

Sell for $20 when it's high, but only $4 when it's low.

This is due to the fact that the price of the voucher depends on the crazy changes in the political climate in Russia.

But who knows, Berezovsky shook his head when he heard this, "That was before, now you can ask an old woman in Smolensk what the bonus is, and she will seriously explain to you what the bonus is." ”

Speaking of this, Berezovsky smiled self-deprecatingly on his face and said: "You know, if you had asked the old woman this question a year or a year and a half ago, the old woman would only silence the questioner!"

Listening to the example given by Berezovsky, Fang Chen couldn't help but twitch the corners of his mouth, revealing a smile.

Smolensk is one of the oldest cities in Russia, where the Russians fought fiercely with the French under the command of Napoleon I in the 19th century, and the Soviets and Germans fought here in 1941 and 1943.

And in general, Smolensk, in the mouth of the Russians, is an ancient, uncivilized representative.

Immediately afterwards, Berezovsky briefed Fang Chen on the current situation of the voucher program in Russia.

After hearing this, Fang Chen couldn't help but fall into silence, he really didn't expect the voucher to become like this in Russia.

Now vouchers are traded in bushels on the stock exchange, which has just opened in Moscow, and the Russian Exchange of Raw Materials and Commodities has the largest trading floor.

Located in the middle of Moscow, this trading hall resembles a dilapidated bus station, where commodities are traded every morning and vouchers are traded in the afternoon, and the daily volume of vouchers can reach 60,000, or even 100,000, close to a million dollars.

Merchants with shopping bags and handbags full of vouchers often wander the halls.