"Consequence of the five-year lows in oil prices - historical maximum rate of the dollar and euro against the ruble . The central bank still silent.".
As Moscow runs out of oysters and prostitutes hike their prices, sanctions and oil prices are hitting Russia hard - and the free-falling rouble has now prompted a wave of jokes.
Faced with a meltdown of their national currency, Russians are turning to humour to help them digest the decline of the wretched rouble.
Falling is the operative word. The rouble has lost more than 40 per cent of its value versus the dollar and 60 per cent versus the euro this year, making it the world’s worst performing currency after the Ukrainian hryvnia.
The currency is mainly sinking because of the slump in prices for crude oil – one of Russia’s chief exports. A slowing economy exacerbated by western sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s role in the Ukraine crisis have accelerated the slide.
Signs of decay
• An oyster bar in one Moscow park is now called the No Oyster Bar because it can’t get its seafood due to Russia’s retaliatory food imports ban; it now makes half the money it once did, selling pizza and burgers.
• Apple raised prices for iPhones in Russia by 25 per cent last week in response to the falling rouble
• Prostitutes in the Arctic city of Murmansk said on Tuesday they were hiking prices by 40% and would forthwith peg them to the dollar.
• On Wednesday, the rouble fell to a historic low of 54.91 to the dollar, compared to 32.86 on January 1, and buoyed only briefly after an intervention by the Central Bank. Analysts predict the rouble will eventually stabilise, but that could be some way off.
• Many Russians are rethinking New Year breaks abroad because they can’t affords to buy enough dollars or euros.
Turning to satire
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, will be under pressure to address the economic downturn when he makes his annual end-of-year speech to parliament on Thursday.
Meanwhile, newspaper cartoons, videos and blog posts feature the beleaguered Russian currency tumbling, rolling, plummeting or careening in only one direction: down.
Represented by a one-rouble coin, Russia’s money is often seen locked in a fatal embrace with an equally gravitating barrel of crude oil.
Even state-leaning media can no longer ignore the currency’s slide.
This cartoon in the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper puts a purseful of roubles on a rollercoaster. Ironically, seeing as the Kremlin blames the West for its economic woes, the rollercoaster is known as “American hills” in Russian:
One of the gentler lampoons depicts a fluttering fall of rouble snowflakes:
A harsher jibe - at rising inflation - is this imaginary 10-million rouble note from the “Imperial Bank of the New Russian Federation” featuring Vladimir Putin and some bear-borne Russian warriors:
Oil and the rouble’s shared fate is simply seen in this cartoon:
But mostly it is Russia’s rouble coming under fire, as in this cartoon by Sergey Elkin for the state-owned RIA Novosti news agency.
Mr Elkin is one of the most prolific profilers of the troubled currency. “The Central Bank frees the rouble,” says the caption in this image from his Twitter account.
And in this final Elkin drawing, the dollar and the euro tell the rouble outside the lift, “No, we’re going up!”
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