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Russia’s central bank on Friday raised its key interest rate by two percentage points to a record-high 21% in an effort to stem growing inflation as massive government spending on the military amid the fighting in Ukraine strains the economy’s capacity to produce goods and services and drives up workers’ wages.
When someone borrows money they typically pay interest on it to the person they borrow it from. The lender can set what that interest rate is. A higher interest rate means that people are less likely to borrow money because it will cost them more. The “central bank” would be a government entity that lends money, often to other private banks. By raising their rates other banks also have to raise rates or lose money on their own loans. The idea of higher interest rates is to reduce the amount of loans. How that stops inflation is somewhat of a mystery, and the study of economics is not exact.
Super layman’s explanation ahead, there is a high chance of me getting something wrong here:
Very broadly, inflation can be caused by there being more money to spend than there are goods to buy with it.
If there’s €10 in the system that is available to be spent and an amount of goods that was worth €5 yesterday, the goods are probably going to be worth €10 now.
When a bank gives a loan to someone, it effectively creates new money. This doesn’t need to involve actually making new money in the sense of a mint or even a central bank. If I possess €100 of actual physical cash and I give €50 loans to five people, that’s totally fine so long as I can rely on no more than two of them actually requiring hard cash at a time before they pay me back. So now I have essentially “created” €150 more than there was before. And so long as everyone trusts that I can actually show up with €50 on demand, they can act as if they have the €50.
The central bank’s interest rate is what the central bank will pay me if I keep my €100 deposited with them. If that’s 5%, I’ll have €105 next year. As such, I will only offer loans if I expect to make more than €5 off of them once they are all repaid.
So if the interest rate is 21%, you are gonna need a hell of a business plan to be able to beat what I’d get by just leaving my money with the central bank. I am now unlikely to lend any money unless someone can persuade me that they’ll beat 21%. As such, I’m no longer loaning money out to all of those five people. Only two of them have plans that are that good. Now, there is way less money available to spend than there was in the other scenario, because two people have €50 each instead of five. If the amount of goods to buy stays constant, then by the principal from the very start of this mess there is less inflation. Buyers don’t have more money to spend, and prices remain lower.
Doesn’t higher interests mean more money is spent paying those interests, meaning less money is available to spend on other things which in turn reduces the monetary supply in circulation which curbs inflation?
Yes, that’s the theory, but it also has the side effect of making banks richer, because all the money that would be flowing out inflating the economy is now flowing into the banks inflating their stores.
That’s not really true. Banks getting higher interest on loans also pay out more interest on deposits, otherwise they’re unable to attract and retain customers. FI profitability is based on net interest margin (revenue from lending - losses from deposits), and they need deposits to have the money to lend out so they can’t arbitrarily lower their deposit account rates to increase NIM.
Banks get richer no matter what happens, because people need loans. If anything, higher rates make it more challenging for banks to make money as people are less able to make repayments and less likely to take out loans for luxury purchases or holidays.