Will President Joe Biden admit a fault in his actions by saying that his sanctions against Russia didn’t work, or will he blame his latest blunder on Russian President Vladimir Putin like he does everything else?
Russia’s currency, the ruble, “is the strongest currency in the world this year,” according to a new report published by CBS News.
“Experts” are saying that the ruble has seen a dramatic recovery since this past January, with the “main reason” being the elevated price of commodities, like oil and natural gas.
“Commodity prices are currently sky-high,” Tatiana Orlova, lead emerging markets economist at Oxford Economics, told CBS MoneyWatch recently, “and even though there is a drop in the volume of Russian exports due to embargoes and sanctioning, the increase in commodity prices more than compensates for these drops.”
Part of the cause of the ruble’s rise is Russia’s insistence that if you buy energy from them, you have to pay them in rubles.
Orlova added, “We have this coincidence that, as imports have collapsed, exports are soaring.”
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In a very short period of time, Russia has bucked the trend of U.S. sanctions negatively affecting a country’s economy. While Russia’s economy did feel the brunt of said sanctions initially, it only took months for them to turn it around.
CBS News reported:
Three months after the ruble's value fell to less than a U.S. penny amid the toughest economic sanctions imposed on a country in modern history, Russia's currency has mounted a stunning turnaround. The ruble has jumped 45% against the dollar since January, with one dollar worth 53.45 rubles as of Tuesday.[…]
Normally, a country facing international sanctions and a major military conflict would see investors fleeing and a steady outflow of capital, causing its currency to drop. But Russia's unusually aggressive measures to keep money from leaving the country, in combination with a dramatic rise in fossil-fuel prices, are working to create demand for the ruble and pushing up its value.
There are a variety of other contributors to the rise of the ruble, including the country’s government making it “harder to convert it to other currencies.” But, one thing’s for sure. Whatever Biden did or is continuing to do, isn’t stopping Russia — or Putin — from doing pretty much anything.
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