The strengthening of the ruble sharply increased imports and all the logistics associated with them.
In 1991 the Russian government stole savings out from under mattresses by canceling 50-ruble and 100-ruble notes.
We might then see a massive dollarization in Moscow and a huge run on the ruble, ' he said.
The strengthening of the ruble, and the develoment of credit, also inflated real estate prices and created enormous rents.
Indeed, on Aug. 17 the Russian government was forced to float the ruble.
Why exactly has the ruble stayed so persistently weak over the past few years, particularly as energy prices have increased significantly?
The ruble strengthened against the dollar considerably from 2005-2008, but since then it has actually lost a significant bit of ground.
Ruble, a former partner of SidleyAustin LLP who is now doing 78 months for tax evasion at the Lewisburg federal pen.
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Writing my post earlier today got me thinking about the relationship between the strength of the ruble and the price of oil.
The RTS index was down 3.2% in Moscow, and the ruble fell against the dollar for the sixth day in a row.
We are assigned to what is supposed to be the secondary morgue for when the responders begin pulling bodies from the ruble.
Topics would include financial instruments in East-West trade offered by the banking sector (such as bonds), bank-to-bank cooperation, and even ruble convertibility.
In his Russia story ten months ago, Hanke forecast Russia's ruble blowup.
Since the sine qua non of Dutch disease is an overvalued currency, we can see if this is actually the case with the Russian ruble.
Rubin and Camdessus now want the ruble steady against the dollar.
Now while the Russian government still heavily intervenes in currency markets and is far from a paragon of laisez faire, th e ruble is fully convertible.
Since then, since a time when the ruble was often eschewed in favor of the dollar for domestic economic transactions, things have improved quite a lot.
Even Russia, although it has a nominally independent central bank and currency, in practice keeps the ruble in a close relationship with the dollar and euro.
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The yuan started trading against the ruble in the Chinese bank market in Shanghai last November, and in December, began trading on the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange.
Constant devaluations of the ruble, power surges, shortages of sugar and a bad water supply conspired to make this quite an ordeal--"like ten years in purgatory, " he recalls.
When Vladimir Putin replaced Boris Yeltsin as Russia's autocrat, amid economic chaos on the last day of 1999, one of his first economic steps was to stabilize the ruble.
The first initial practical efforts have already been taken, foreign companies can hopefully be able to make loans and attract capital in the Russian ruble market starting this year.
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This exchange rate liberalization has continued and while the ruble is not a freely floating currency, it is much closer to being one that it was in the past.
Only by resorting to the black market, where the ruble usually traded at values 5-6 times less than its official rate, could people freely get access to hard currency.
Ruble, who is appealing, had been accused of writing letters blessing knowingly bogus tax shelters--complicated transactions without economic substance that created massive phony losses used to offset massive taxable income.
In the past two years, with the ruble stabilizing, a dealer could invest his cash in three-month Russian T bills, which, until recently, had annualized dollar yields of 100% or more.
Despite the significant increase in energy prices over the past three and a half years, the ruble is actually significantly weaker than it was before the onset of the financial crisis.
The ruble's collapse will tighten an already devastating vise.
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