I hope russia holds out. It might be the worlds last hope !

i think there's a bizarre prophecy by a famous psychic from the US in the 50s (?) named Edgar Cayce. something about Russia being the world's last hope.

Strange to me how much Russians blame everyone except Russian leadership.

LOL. I think you never had been here.

@kurth @Alienhead

This topic is not about it, please stay away from it.

@brianl

My idea is to keep it from some liberal theories about Russian economy that have very little to do with reality.

Extreme measures, including a huge rise in interest rates and pressure on private companies to stop holding dollars, have done no more than stabilize the ruble far below its previous level.

For example, it is simple lie. No one pressured "private companies to stop holding dollars", quite reverse.

Change of interest rate from 10.5% a year to 17.5% a year can't do ANYTHING if you have devaluation and volatility allowing to get 1000% a year. Actually, guys who do this never read even their own liberal books that explain basics on how interest rate adjustment works.

In contrary, our central bank provided around 17 trillions to private banks (with junk bonds used for warranty :-) ) of rubles almost all of them went into speculation.

@brianl

You can send PM and I can give you short version.

Very short version - energy redistribution. Our government and world oligarchs with company of nature itself decided to reduce energy consumption in our country. As they did previously in Ukraine. Period. All else is consequences or thinks made to mask main issue.

Looks like a typical leveraging and manipulation stunt of some the usual suspects - Goldman, Sorros etc. - to me. With that, you can bring every currency down to its knees.

@RottenCarcass @kurth

Let's keep to the topic.

This is nothing. R. has survived such things many times in the past. Or nobody remembers when suddenly people in R. woke up with their currency devaluation, and life savings up in smoke back in the 90's? They survived. So this is nothing. They'll survive, no problem. The bigger issue is how to disconnect the R. economy from dependence on oil revenue and natural resource mineral extraction... you need to have more sources of income, so that some stupid change of price in one thing - oil - doesn't wreck the whole economy. R. must become independent of oil revenue - develop other sources of income. If China could do it, R. can do it. There are a lot of very smart and educated people in R. - much better educated than people in China in the past, so they should do even better - take a look how many world class scientists, mathematicians and so on come from Russia. So they are in an excellent position to develop industry and economy and not be so dependent on making money from oil. The only thing I think Putin is doing that is stupid is wasting so much money building the military... what for? Nobody is going to attack R. as long as they have nuclear weapons (which they will always have), so why waste money on the military instead of building the economy. But anyway, this ruble thing is nothing.

US tar sands plus Saudis opening up the taps means global oil prices in freefal. Since 2/3s of R's exports is oil, the result is inevitable. Of course invasions and sanctions don't help either...

My personal take: Saudis smart. They are opening up production to intentionally drop prices to fight USA's domestic efforts. Fracking isn't profitable unless oil prices are high. Saudis keep prices low to kill US production and ensure their future continued oil revenues. R just an unintended side effect.

But the larger result will be another global super-recession, also not the intention...

If I was investing right now, I would buy ruble assets. I agree with this analysis - http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.in/2014/12/ruble-moves-25-intraday-bidask-spread.html

@jleo

The sudden fall of oil prices is a great blank slate to fill in with insecurity and existential narrative. It is always more comfortable for a people to look without than within.

A big thing that has emerged for me - how much money the big oil companies have been making! They have been charging king's sums, and they are probably still making a killing. A kind of global mass redistribution to the pockets of a few (as usual)

As I said, monetary idiots.

Maybe "Hope and Change" wasn't successful in Syria, Ukraine, so somebody is throwing a tantrum... ( Economic war) :

What really happened in Beijing

...Oil prices are now below $80 a barrel. It costs me nearly $20 less to put gasoline in my car than it did a year ago, and good enough. But why has the price of crude tumbled in so short an interval? ..... To do this, Kerry told the Saudis 1. to raise production and 2. to cut its crude price.

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/13/what_really_happened_in_beijing_putin_obama_xi_and_the_back_story_the_media_wont_tell_you/