Russian Farmer Pays His $610 Bank Loan with Manure

The precipitous fall of the Ruble has hit everyone pretty hard in Russia. After declining more than 50 percent to the US dollar, most people are having trouble making ends meet. But just like every economic calamity in history, when the chips are down you can’t expect your bank to have any sympathy. For them, an economic collapse is just another opportunity to confiscate real assets from people who can no longer afford to pay their fiat (funny money) debts.

However, there’s one thing the banks never seem to account for. If you have the power to take away everything your customer owns, then they’ll have nothing left to lose. This often results in some very candid responses from the people who owe the bank. In the case of one Russian farmer, he’s had enough of his bank’s punitive fees, and has decided to pay them exactly what they deserved:

Alexander Bakshayev, 42, dumped a cartload of animal dung on the front steps of the bank in western Siberia, local media said Friday.

The manure was worth 40,000 rubles ($610) — the exact amount he owed the bank, Bakshayev told Sibkray.ru.

He decorated the heap with miniature gallows and posters saying “Down with credit slavery” and “Bankers are the enemies of the people,” according to news site Pro-sibir.org.

“The whole of Russia somehow owes something now to these lickspittle good-for-nothing bankers with nothing to do,” Bakshayev was quoted as saying.

His total debt is apparently over 1 million rubles, or $15,400. Though it’s unclear whether the 40,000 rubles was his original debt, or just the down payment for the total debt, either way he’s pretty far down in the hole. A million rubles is about 34 times the size of the average monthly salary in Russia. To put that in perspective, the average monthly salary in the US is $3,700 dollars, which would amount to a total $125,800.

During the hour it took him to dump the manure and conduct interviews with the media, no security personnel showed up to stop him. And while the bank has accused him of “hooliganism,” so far the police have decided not to charge him with anything. It makes me wonder, are the cops and security guards in that region equally fed up with the banks?

Another interesting tidbit comes from the Russian paper that first broke the story. I ran some of the text through Google translate, and it sounds like the farmer was astonished that no security came out to stop him. Though the translation is difficult to interpret, he follows that statement by suggesting that he could hitch the building to his tractor, and drag them all to hell.

I guess it’s comforting to know that no matter what country you live in, or what you do for a living, everyone despises the bankster class.