BORIS NEMTSOV

, helped the stock market pull out of the nose-dive that had cost equities a third of their value in just twenty days of trading. Last week, the market did not rise, but neither did it fall.

Interest rates remain extremely high. At the end of January, the yield on one-year Treasury bills rose to 46% as bond prices plunged. Foreigners hold about $16 billion of the total $50 billion stock of these instruments, and many seemed to be bailing out. Russian commercial banks were similarly abandoning ruble-denominated instruments in favor of dollars, driving prices on ruble debt still further down, and yields further up. Unwilling to take on more debt at these rates, the