Last week the Russian ruble hit a seven-year high against the U.S. dollar and while analysts have downplayed the rise, one economist said people should not “ignore the exchange rate.” American economists have been perplexed about the ruble’s market performance and Russian officials have been quoted as saying that a strong ruble “makes Russian exports more expensive.” Furthermore, U.S. president Joe Biden continues to blame high gas prices on Vladimir Putin.
Vladimir Putin Says the West’s Sanctions Obviously ‘Did Not Succeed’
Against the U.S. dollar, the Russian ruble has been performing at the strongest level since May 2015 and it has been said by a number of people that Western sanctions have failed. At the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Russian president Vladimir Putin said attempts to destroy the Russian economy did not come to fruition. “The idea was clear: crush the Russian economy violently,” Putin declared. “They did not succeed. Obviously, that didn’t happen.” Traditionally, when a country is sanctioned broadly by a majority of countries, capital leaves the region and the currency’s overall value against other fiat currencies would decline.
However, Russia is the second-largest exporter of oil and commands the top position as the world’s biggest gas exporter as well. America and the European Union (EU) are trying awfully hard to sanction Russia but the EU is forced to purchase gas and oil from the country in not-so-obvious ways. Fortune India claims that India is ostensibly buying oil from the Russian Federation and selling it back to the EU for a profit. The New York Post details that analysts believe the ruble’s strong performance is due to the Kremlin’s capital controls and the fact that oil and gas prices have skyrocketed worldwide. In addition to India, China and South Korea have been purchasing oil from Russia.
A study published by Bloomberg Economics estimates that Putin could amass roughly $321 billion in profits from energy exports alone. Tatiana Orlova, a lead emerging markets economist at Oxford Economics told CBS, however, that Russia’s import markets are crumbling at the seams. “Apart from soaring export revenues, we have a collapse in Russian imports owing to Western sanctions,” Orlova noted during an interview with CBS Money Watch. Max Hess, a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told CNBC that Russia is still earning record profits. Hess said:
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