By 2007 the percentage of the population below the subsistence minimum had fallen to 14 percent. And this was no longer the feverish, dollarized speculation of old. Prices were stable and were no longer set in dollars. Taxes were paid in rubles. The Russian parliament passed a law imposing fines on public officials who lapsed into the bad old habits of using dollars as a unit of account.28 On one occasion even Putin found himself embarrassingly caught out.
