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Russia’s central bank has halted the circulation of a new 1,000 ruble note after Orthodox priests complained that the image of a church dome lacked a cross – even though it does not have one in real life. The bank had presented new designs of the 1,000 and 5,000 ruble notes earlier this week. One of them featured two religious sites in the majority-Muslim Tatarstan republic: a minaret with an Islamic crescent moon and an Orthodox church with a dome that did not have a cross on it. The Guardian view on the Russian Orthodox Church: betrayed by Putin’s patriarch...

Russia’s central bank on Tuesday hiked interest rates by 350 basis points to 12% at an emergency meeting, as Moscow looks to halt a rapid depreciation of the country’s ruble currency. The ruble slumped to near 102 to the dollar on Monday, as President Vladimir Putin’s economic advisor, Maxim Oreshkin, penned an op-ed in Russian state-owned Tass news agency that blamed the plunging currency and the acceleration of inflation on the “loose monetary policy” of the central bank.

President Vladimir Putin's economic adviser rebuked the central bank on Monday as the rouble slid past 101 per U.S. dollar, blaming its 30% year-to-date slump on loose monetary policy and revealing growing discord among Russia's monetary authorities. The rouble, which has lost around a quarter of its value against the dollar since Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022, hit 101.04 per U.S. dollar, its weakest point in almost 17 months. As the rouble tumbled, Putin's economic adviser Maxim Oreshkin said in an op-ed for the TASS news agency that the Kremlin wanted a strong rouble and expected a...

Vladimir Putin suffered a humiliating blow on the world stage this week after the Russian ruble crashed yet again, with one Ruble now worth exactly one US cent. One hundred Rubles is now worth just one dollar, as the Russian currency appears on the verge of collapsing. The currency crash is the latest humiliating blow for Vladimir Putin, who has poured billions into his war with Ukraine. The stunning decline of the currency sparked a televised meltdown this week among Kremlin allies. remlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov, who is often seen as a mouthpiece for President Putin, demanded an explanation from...

Kremlin propagandist Vladimir Solovyov has demanded that the Russian Central Bank explain why the ruble is crashing. Solovyov, one of the most well-known figures in Kremlin-backed media, made the remarks on his show that airs on Russia-1—an excerpt of which was shared on X, formerly Twitter, by Francis Scarr from BBC Monitoring. His heated comments came after the ruble slumped toward 100 per dollar on Wednesday, its weakest level in 16 months. The Bank of Russia later announced that it would halt purchases of foreign currency on the domestic market for the rest of the year. "The bloody Central Bank,...

The ruble has dropped against the U.S. dollar in trading in Moscow to it lowest level since the first month of the war in Ukraine. The decline Friday to 95 rubles against the dollar continued the Russian currency’s consistent fall since the beginning of the year, when it traded at around 65. That’s a drop of about 30%. Friday’s value was its lowest since March 28, 2022, state news agency Tass reported.

The Russian currency has fallen yet again against the dollar and euro. Is it just a cycle, or is something bigger going on? Since the beginning of the year, Russia's currency, the ruble, has lost 16% of its value against the dollar and 13% against the euro. This week, it was trading at around 83 rubles to the former and 91 against the latter. This makes it the third-worst performing global currency so far this year, behind the Egyptian pound and the Argentine peso. Following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the currency immediately fell to 113 rubles against...

The ruble, the national currency of Russia, has been depreciating the whole week. At midday on Friday, the dollar was trading at 83 rubles, the euro — 91 rubles. These are the lowest values that the ruble has hit since last spring when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was just beginning. At the time, the currency markets were in full-blown panic, the dollar soared to 130 rubles, while the exchange rate fluctuations reached 10% a day. There are now far fewer causes for worry. Following the OPEC+ decision to cut oil production, the Brent crude price rose to $85, a comfortable...

The Russian ruble tumbled on Friday to the lowest levels against the dollar and euro since April 2022 in the face of a foreign currency crunch in Moscow and the sale of Western businesses in Russia. -snip- The rouble is the third-worst performer among global currencies so far this year, behind only the Egyptian pound and the Argentine peso, Reuters calculations show.

The Russian ruble tumbled to its weakest against the dollar in almost a year on Tuesday, edging closer to the 80 mark, hampered by a seasonal drop in foreign currency supply from exporters, in spite of this week’s jump in oil prices. -snip- Although higher oil prices usually boost the ruble, reduced FX supply is hurting the Russian currency. Month-end tax payments that usually see exporters convert foreign exchange revenues into rubles were due last week. The ruble has been on a steadily weakening trend all year, under external pressure since a Western price cap on Russia’s oil sales came...

The Russian ruble struck its weakest mark since late April on Tuesday, hurt by lower foreign currency revenue inflows from hydrocarbon exports and a continued recovery in imports as companies build new supply chains. -snip- The Russian government has been selling 8.9 billion rubles ($120.8 million) of foreign currency per day to plug a budget deficit that has soared because of lower oil and gas revenues. Expectations for weaker energy revenue were also weighing on the Russian currency after the central bank cut its Urals oil price forecast on Friday. The bank dropped its projected average price for the rest...

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By a dusty stretch of the deafening road from Chennai to Bengaluru lie three colossal, anonymous buildings. Inside, away from the din of traffic, is a high-tech facility operated by Foxconn, a Taiwanese manufacturer. A short drive away Pegatron, another Taiwanese tech firm, has erected a vast new factory of its own. Salcomp, a Finnish gadget-maker, has set one up not far away. Farther west is a 500-acre campus run by Tata, an Indian conglomerate. What these closely guarded facilities have in common is their client: a demanding and secretive American firm known locally as “the fruit company”. The mushrooming...

Outbound shipments in October shrank 0.3% from a year earlier, a sharp turnaround from a 5.7% gain in September, official data showed on Monday, and well below analysts’ expectations for a 4.3% increase. It was the worst performance since May 2020. The data suggests demand remains frail overall, heaping more pressure on the country’s manufacturing sector and threatening any meaningful economic revival in the face of persistent COVID-19 curbs, protracted property weakness and global recession risks. Chinese exporters weren’t even able to capitalize on a further weakening in the yuan currency and the key year-end shopping season, underlining the broadening...

Russia previously insisted on completing payments in rubles. Russia appeared to narrowly avoid default on Friday as it paid off a number of overdue international debts in dollars, reversing its recent policy requiring transactions occur in rubles. The finance ministry said it paid $564.8 million on a 2022 Eurobond and $84.4 million on a 2042 bond in dollars, as specified on the bonds, Reuters reported.

China in July purchased 80.1 tons of gold valued at $4.6 billion China and Russia may be working toward a new gold-backed currency in a move that would aim to dethrone the dollar as the primary reserve currency of the world, but any such currency would unlikely achieve that goal. "The USD remains the safest, most convenient and most widely used currency in Asia and in the world today," Min-Hua Chiang, a research fellow and economist at the Heritage Foundation’s Asian Studies Center, told FOX Business. "No other currency (backed by gold or otherwise) is comparable, and that is unlikely...

Vietnam's Lê Thành, the self-proclaimed 'King of VGA,' is having some fun on Facebook(opens in new tab) (via I_Leak_VN(opens in new tab)). In photos and videos shared on the social media site, it looks like the store has started to use street trader tactics to grab passersby and sell them GPUs by the kilo. Lê Thành shared pictures of dozens of used GPUs stacked up on the curbside in a clear parody of a Vietnamese street food stall. There is also a video with the vendor patiently waving away flies with a net, awaiting passersby. Then, a scooter stops, and...

Rep. Alex Mooney proposes the United States adopt a new gold standard after U.S. government officials first disclose all gold holdings and secret gold transactions, allowing the gold price to adjust to its fair market value. WASHINGTON, DC / ACCESSWIRE / October 9, 2022 / America's currency would regain stable footing for the first time in half a century if a bill just introduced by U.S. Representative Alex Mooney (R-WV) becomes law. Referred to as the "Gold Standard Restoration Act" by sound money activists, H.R. 9157 calls for the repegging of the Federal Reserve note to gold in order to...

TEHRAN, October 5. /TASS/. Cooperation between Iran, Russia and China will help create a new power that will oppose the unipolar world order, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said in an interview with China’s CGTN broadcaster on Wednesday. "People around the world have bad memories of the era which has come to an end. It was a time of hegemony, unipolar world order and violations of the legitimate rights of many nations," the Iranian president pointed out. According to him, "a new era will be marked by the establishment of a multipolar world order." Cooperation between Iran, Russia, China, the Shanghai...

The Federal Reserve is widely expected to raise its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage point at its meeting that concludes Wednesday. Other items markets will be watching include quarterly economic and rate projections and Chairman Jerome Powell’s post-meeting news conference. Judging by recent market action and commentary, the expectation is for a hawkish hard line. There’s not a lot of mystery surrounding Wednesday’s Federal Reserve meeting, with markets widely expecting the central bank to approve its third consecutive three-quarter point interest rate hike. That doesn’t mean there isn’t considerable intrigue, though. While the Fed almost certainly will deliver what...