@Thoresby is it then fair to assume that Russian could buy offloaded stock with gold? Or exchange it with gold-backed bonds? After the smaller devastation of 1904-1906, gold-backed bonds sold very well. The great difference to the Latin American countries, is that Russia can float gold-backed bonds after the war ends. Even without immediately returning to the gold standard (unlikely for all participants), the gold-backed bonds would be an investor's safe heaven amidst the great uncertainty after the war.
In any case, french finances will be somewhat better with the war ending earlier and not having their russian investments evaporating. I think if the french government has to force investors to "sell", they would leave their russia stock as last. They need the investments to tie Russia close to french decision making, not just for the peace conference, but also to support them post-war in forcing the Germans paying their dues. Investments in Brazil are not important for french reconstruction and security, but the russian ones are quite important.
There is one ample source of investments: USA. The National City Bank of New York (nowdays Citigroup) opened its first bank in Russia in the 1916-1917 winter. The Americans were planning to expand in the post-war russian economy. They had identified many railroads with high leverage ( 9x debt to equity ratio) and were planning for post-war acquisitions. They believed that with introducing better management, they could turn these railroads into goldmines.
Another butterfly of having capable Stolypin around could be perhaps the better regulation of the internal economy. The OTL problems in the consumer's market were mostly due to the
absence of governmental intervention. Stolypin wouldn't have been able to provide many more trains for the civilian economy during wartime, but I doubt he would simply avoid doing something in regulating prices and supply chains and at least try to use the remaining trains more efficiently.
Regarding the tsarist gold, even the gold that was eventually kept by the Bolsheviks was spent by 1922. Sean McMeekin states so in this book "History's Greatest Heist". This is a huge gold reserve evaporating.
Some other fascinating facts: the growth rate of the russian economy was increased by 19% from 1914 to 1916. The stock exchange went up during that time, something that was observed only in the USA.
Even after staggering losses and military disasters , financiers such as the House of Morgan were certain of their investments in russian debt and kept buying russian Treasury Bills.
Lastly, the tsarist government didn't have so much foreign debt during the war (at least compated to the rest of the Entente- minus US of course). To quote "Bankers and Bolsheviks:
Foreign loans paid for only about 21 percent of war expenditure during this period, and the share of foreign loans in total war loans was 33.8 percent, with domestic loans accounting for nearly two-thirds of all loans. More importantly, foreign finance became less, not more, pronounced through the course of the war. Setting aside the figures for 1914—a lag between the opening of hostilities and the flotation of loans is to be expected—the contribution of foreign loans to total war expenditure dropped sharply in 1917, to just 16 percent.
In general, I am confident that -based in OTL- the Imperial Government won't face
significant money problems. What I think is plausible, is that overleveraged corporations will suffer. American capital could make their dream come true and buy cheap a lot of assets. That would lead to a new major boom. Of course, after the
boom comes the
bust.
