The Rouble Rebounds – reasons to be cheerful

by tutisicecream

You might be forgiven for thinking that Russia is all washed up because of the rouble crisis, but you’d be wrong.

Back in December last year, Russia was given the terror treatment about the collapse of the rouble by the Guardian and much of the western mainstream media (MSM). It was used to portray revenge on Putin for Ukraine, as the markets apparently hit back etc., etc. We were all too familiar with this tired narrative, bull-horned from the west’s “free press”. N.B. I like the phrase so much these days, I’ve added it to my list of oxymorons.

But with good news and optimism quickly returning in Russia and the rouble gaining rapidly in value, I can’t find a good news story anywhere in the Graun. Not so strange really, I hear you say, given that its ace reporters are usually only keen to report on what they think they see happening in Russia in order to reinforce the bad Russia, bad, bad Putin story. But I think a bit more positively that some real observations about the good which seems to elude journalists at the Graun should be presented as balance.

Intrigued to know if I might be wrong I did a quick search of their back pages and found nothing but the usual negative headlines.

Headlines such as these:

Even God had it in for Putin and the feckless Orthodox Russians with:

So much effect did these kinds of headlines have at the time, I recall, it prompted my sister to call me from England in a panic, worried that I was starving in Russia. I was able to lay her mind to rest by telling her that everything was fine. That it was just an act of financial terrorism launched by the likes of George Soros and that unlike the UK in 1992, Russia would be able weather it out soon. And so it appears it is doing.

Despite the crisis foisted on Russia, though, we also had the shock horror of Larry Elliot to contend with back in December last year with the economic prophet of doom proclaiming, “IMF raises fears of a global crisis as Russian bank forced into bail out”, my emphasis added. As you might expect from the Graun, the article itself says something a little different and doesn’t focus on what the IMF really meant.

So Russia was being blamed by the IMF and Larry, even before the event, for causing the next global financial crisis!

It’s an event which many savvy financial observers are anticipating will happen sooner rather than later; unfortunately Larry couldn’t tip rubbish, let alone give the tip off for the next financial crisis. So Larry was busy finding ways to blame Russia, while most expect the next crash to emanate from the U.S. – again. This being the result of 3 phases of fiat funds provided via the quantitative easing of the dollar. Electronically created money that, rather than finding its way into the bank accounts of ordinary people, became yet another banksters’ bonanza providing the stimulus for a further bubble of U.S. based frenzied stock market speculation.

The good news though is that the rouble has started to recover at a rate of knots, trading Friday this week at 51 roubles to the dollar. It has quite remarkably recovered 40% of its value in the last few weeks, to the chagrin of the doom merchants. But this surprising change of events has been ignored by the MSM as it again doesn’t fit their narrative. They wished for bad things to happen to Russia and it isn’t happening. The country which is really collapsing financially, however, is Ukraine, but again reading the Graun, you wouldn’t realise that either, would you?

Read more:
http://rt.com/business/247813-ruble-new-2015-high/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/ruble-at-strongest-level-since-december-1428490659

And why the BRICS are less worried about the next financial crash:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-04-09/why-brics-are-less-worried-about-next

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