Dec 30, 2008

Dude, Where’s My Ruble?





Over the weekend, Russia's central bank instituted yet another devaluation of the ruble, allowing the currency to loose 1.5% of its value against a Euro-Dollar basket. Oddly, the devaluation didn't merit the attention of our friends at RussiaToday, who focused instead on news items like "Gazprom posts 83% Net Profit jump for 1H 2008” (before the collapse in energy prices) and "Russian leaders review economic progress for 2008 and look to future.”

Killjoys.

We were hoping for at least a modest attempt to spin the devaluation. Worse yet, we can't seem to find any comment from Russian officials on the status of the ruble as a major international reserve currency. How could we forget the July visit from Chavez, and the part where...

He echoed Russian calls to make the ruble a major reserve currency in opposition to a weakened dollar. “The ruble must become a world currency,” he said. “The dollar must not become a world currency.”

Still nothing?

Too bad, since the Wall Street Journal offers such a woderful obituary for "The Wizards of Oil."

2 comments:

Devin said...

You have an excellent blog here-I am so happy to have found it-I found it through Siberian Light-Russia fascinates me like no other country. I really enjoy your posts and can't wait to have more time to look at more of them!

Pirates(and)Diplomats said...

Thanks Devin!

I can say that Russia fascinates all of us at ER, but in a way that's difficult to describe.

We hope to do the facination justice.