USSR State Bank only has enough money for a day or two
This news story first came out 30 years ago to the day, and we are publishing it today as part of Interfax's project, "Timeline of the Last Days of USSR. This Day 30 Years Ago." The project's goal is to reconstruct as fully as possible the timeline of the last few months of 1991 and to give everyone interested in understanding the historical processes of that period the opportunity to study and analyze the events that led to and accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new Russian state. The complete timeline can be found in Russian.
MOSCOW. Nov 29 (Interfax) – The USSR State Bank has just 3 billion rubles, which is enough to fund current expenditures for a day or two, State Bank Chairman Viktor Gerashchenko said on Thursday.
If the USSR Supreme Council fails to approve a decision to extend a loan of 90.5 billion rubles to the Union's Finance Ministry for Q4 1991, the USSR State Bank "will have no choice but to stop funding all expenditures from the Union's budget, including the army and the parliament, starting on Monday," Gerashchenko said.
At the same time, the Council of the Republics or upper chamber of the Union's parliament voted to extend the necessary loan to the USSR State Bank. Russian legislators proposed to delay the discussion of the Union's emergency budget for Q1 by one week.