{"id":16761,"date":"2016-01-21T12:29:13","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T17:29:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16761"},"modified":"2016-01-21T12:29:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T17:29:33","slug":"ruble-plunges-26-in-90-days-6-in-two-days-hits-new-low-government-says-to-heck-with-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=16761","title":{"rendered":"Ruble Plunges 26% in 90 days, 6% in Two Days, Hits New Low, Government Says to Heck with it"},"content":{"rendered":"<header>\n<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2016\/01\/21\/ruble-plunges-25-in-90-days-government-says-to-heck-with-it\/\" target=\"_blank\">Ruble Plunges 26% in 90 days, 6% in Two Days, Hits New Low, Government Says to Heck with it<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"ssba ssba-wrap\"><strong>Where\u2019s the shock and awe?<\/strong><\/div>\n<p>The ruble plunged 3.8% on Wednesday and another 2.8 on Thursday to a new all-time low of 83.85 to the dollar, at 5:30 PM Moscow time, blowing through the previous catastrophic panic low of December 2014.\u00a0At the time, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank deployed desperate, and ultimately very costly shock-and-awe measures to stop the ruble from spiraling out of control. And it triggered all kinds of drama.<\/p>\n<p>On December 16, 2014, the Central Bank announced that it increased its benchmark rate by a brutal 6.5 percentage points to a dizzying 17%, after having already jacked up rates in the prior week to 10.5%. And the Ministry of Finance announced it would begin selling Russia\u2019s crown jewels, its dwindling foreign currency reserves, and with the proceeds mop up rubles.<\/p>\n<p>It seemed to put a floor under the ruble for a few blinks of an eye, but then the ruble crashed 20% in no time, hitting 80 rubles to the dollar for a few moments, and it was going to be the end of the world, but then the ruble reversed course and spiked higher.<\/p>\n<p>Today, there\u2019s no such drama. The ruble is now lower than it had ever been. It has plunged 26% against the dollar in just three months. It\u2019s also down 25% against the euro, 27% against the yen, and 23% against the yuan. This is an all-out ruble crash, not a \u201cstrong dollar\u201d problem.<\/p>\n<p>And it\u2019s down 63% against the dollar since early 2013. Back then,\u00a0it took 29 rubles to buy a dollar. It took 62 rubles three months ago. It takes nearly 84 rubles now:<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-20968 size-full\" src=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Russia-ruble-usd-Oct-2015-Jan-21-2016.png\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 468px) 100vw, 468px\" srcset=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Russia-ruble-usd-Oct-2015-Jan-21-2016-260x259.png 260x, http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/01\/Russia-ruble-usd-Oct-2015-Jan-21-2016.png 468x\" alt=\"Russia-ruble-usd-Oct-2015-Jan-21-2016\" width=\"468\" height=\"467\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But there were no big announcements and no shock-and-awe moments. Instead, the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank sat on their hands and let it happen.<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ruble Plunges 26% in 90 days, 6% in Two Days, Hits New Low, Government Says to Heck with it Where\u2019s the shock and awe? The ruble plunged 3.8% on Wednesday and another 2.8 on Thursday to a new all-time low of 83.85 to the dollar, at 5:30 PM Moscow time, blowing through the previous catastrophic [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[122,11869,693,694,4254,4255],"class_list":["post-16761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","tag-central-bank","tag-foreign-currency-reserves","tag-ruble","tag-russia","tag-wolf-richter","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16761"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16763,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16761\/revisions\/16763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}