December 17, 2014

Battered Ruble Stabilizes — For Now


I promise not to post this chart every day, but since I’ve put it up for the past two days when the ruble was crashing, I figure I should let everyone know when the crash has halted. For a few hours, anyway, thanks to some dubious measures from Russian banking authorities:

The currency was trading 8% stronger against the dollar at 62.1 on the Moscow exchange, while Russia’s RTS Index was up 17%, after the central bank eased regulations on the banking system in a bid to provide some relief on capital adequacy for banks and convince Russians to keep their money in rubles.

Measures including allowing banks not to take provisions against souring loans and weakening assets they hold, and allowing lenders to use last quarter’s exchange rate when settling some foreign-exchange transactions.

I’m not sure that loosening banking regulations is a great response to a currency crisis, but I guess you never know. In any case, it seems to have stabilized things for the time being. In the longer term, storm clouds are still brewing. Stay tuned.

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