this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
304 points (98.1% liked)

News

24151 readers
4690 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Vladimir Putin’s luck may be running out now that the ruble plunged below one cent, the lowest level against the U.S. dollar since the early days of his war in Ukraine.

all 23 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] JustZ 95 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can confirm, everyone laughing at Russia.

Front line soldiers stealing dishwashers because they have never seen one before.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I just checked, it looks like they’re stealing the “smart” out of smart appliances in order to produce electronic components. So scorched earth, in the future, may involve entering your fridge’s self destruct code.

[–] grue 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I want to laugh at how the 10¢ microcontrollers we put in dishwashers in the west are better than state-of-the-art homegrown Russian tech, but then I remember that America would be pretty screwed if we were cut off from Taiwan and had to rely on locally-manufactured chips, too. It wouldn't be as bad since we do have some chip fabs here, but we don't have enough of them to make the national security folks happy.

Think about the automobile shortages in the last few years due to lack of chips, except it's military vehicles instead.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Thats what the CHIPS act was passed to correct.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I knew that deal on my Lockheed Martin freezer was too good to be true!

[–] mipadaitu 72 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Paywalled article.

A few years ago 1 Ruble = 0.015 USD this was pretty consistent for a while. Now 1 Ruble = 0.010 USD this has fluctuated pretty wildly.

The fluctuation is far more important than the actual number. Nobody cares if 1 Ruble = $1 or $1000 as long as you can rely on it to be that next week and next year. But the fact that you have no idea how far down (or up) it will go means that people aren't going to want to rely on holding any currency in Russia.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Vladimir Putin’s luck may be running out now that the ruble plunged below one cent, the lowest level against the U.S. dollar since the early days of his war in Ukraine.

The Russian president, who briefly faced down a coup attempt in June, could long point to the resilience of his currency in the face of sanctions as a propaganda victory that proved just how impotent Western economic reprisals were.

More than 500 days since his army invaded Ukraine, it looks as if Moscow’s highly respected central bank governor can no longer perform miracles for her boss.

The ruble that Elvira Nabiullina manages crashed through the psychological support of 100 to the U.S. dollar and on Monday is now worth less than a penny, the first time since March 23 of last year.

“They’re laughing at us,” scathed Vladimir Solovyov, Russia’s most well-known state TV personality and a chief Putin ally, already last week.

The war hawk demanded Nabiullina explain herself to the population now that currency has lost roughly a quarter of its value against the dollar since the start of this year.

On Sunday, images were shared online of a small symbolic protest mounted in western Siberia: A building’s chyron kept repeating the message that “Putin is a dickhead and a thief,” calling the ruble’s exchange rate “crazy.”

Her institution, meanwhile, has countered by arguing a softer ruble does not present risks to the country’s financial stability. Nonetheless, Russia’s central bank decided to freeze purchases of foreign currency on the domestic market through the remainder of this year to restore faith in the sliding ruble. Russia’s currency strength handed Putin a PR victory

Following a brief collapse in the initial aftermath of last year’s Feb. 24 invasion, which saw Russia’s fiat tender plunge to a record low of 120 to the dollar, the ruble rebounded to trade at one point at highs not seen since 2015, around 50 to the dollar.

This gave the Kremlin an important PR victory by suggesting Russia’s economy was strong enough to withstand anything the West threw at it.

This in turn prompted soul-searching among Ukraine’s Western backers while bolstering critics alarmed more at the cost of soaring food and energy prices than at Russia’s empire-building.

“It’s slightly more valuable than it was on the day that Russia invaded Ukraine. The economic situation in the United States by contrast is deteriorating fast,” then Fox News host Tucker Carlson, a chief critic of U.S. aid to Kyiv, said last April.

The clearest signal that Russia is losing this war? #Russia Ruble weakened beyond 100 per Dollar for 1st time in 17mth, extending a slide that threatens to stoke inflation in an economy that has been kneecapped by Western sanctions. Ruble has fallen 27% vs Dollar YTD & 23% vs… pic.twitter.com/cr763vz21E
— Holger Zschaepitz (@Schuldensuehner) August 14, 2023

Nabiullina was celebrated for cleverly steering her financial system through the worst of the turmoil by placing a range of capital controls that quickly stabilized the currency and prevented mass outflows.

“They were a quick fix for the ruble in 2022, but are counterproductive in the long run,” wrote Janis Kluge, senior associate at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, last week.

The fresh signs of economic weakness come at an important juncture in the war. The Russian army is attempting to defend large swaths of territory seized in the early months of the invasion against a Kyiv counteroffensive boasting modern Western military equipment.

Any material losses on the battlefield could further undermine Putin’s authority, already weakened following the challenge made by Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin in June.

Subscribe to Well Adjusted, our newsletter full of simple strategies to work smarter and live better, from the Fortune Well team. Sign up today.

[–] BackOnMyBS 8 points 1 year ago

Russia’s central bank decided to freeze purchases of foreign currency on the domestic market through the remainder of this year to restore faith in the sliding ruble.

You will believe in the ruble by force! lol

Their interest rate is already at 8.5%, and their talking about raising it to 15%-20%. That paired with a a labor shortage. Not only that, they halted sales of corporate shares and government bonds by foreign investors last year. This is nuts. Why would anyone want to do business with or in Russia? Russia is literally a buddy economy. If you're buddies with the dictator, you're good. If not, you're fucked. An economy like that will never succeed in the long-run because it's based on social relationships and not actual production. It's like wtf.

[–] Tedesche 28 points 1 year ago

I think mostly the world is laughing because of how Russia's army turned out to be a tissue paper tiger.

[–] Shotgun_Alice 11 points 1 year ago

Putin if you're out there and you read this, yes, yes we're are.

[–] eran_morad 10 points 1 year ago

lol, fuck the blyats.

[–] PaulDevonUK 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Are they running out of funds to cook the books?

[–] yuki2501 8 points 1 year ago

This might be the beginning of the end for Putin. They're going to "retire" him, if you know what I mean.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Vladimir Putin, shown exaggerating the size of his penis.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] cedarmesa 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Still long way until it worth less than the Zimbabwean dollar.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I thought the ZWD had been suspended indefinitely?