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:
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!
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.
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