Professional Russia Watcher here. Russia is on the brink of collapse because line went up and then down.
I wish I was one of those "experts" who gets paid six figure salaries to be wrong about things. Here I am being wrong about things for free like a shmuck
You're a hobby wrongist, they're professional. They have wrongism degrees
Go back to one or five years and it's even higher!
But note that that's how many rubles you can buy with a dollar. If that graph is high, it means the value of the dollar is high relative to the ruble. Reverse them and you'll see that the value of the ruble has been falling relative to the dollar.
https://www.rt.com/russia/608299-ruble-dive-dollar-record/
Why do people focus on 1:1 ratios like that? Doesn't this depend on the currency in circulation?
It feels like comparing Celsius to Fahrenheit and Kelvin, different numbers can still equal the same thing no?
The 1:1 thing is psychology, but it's not really in question here. The important thing is relative movement. If today I can take $1 and buy ₽1 worth of Big Macs, great. But tomorrow, if I can take that same $1 and buy ₽2 or ₽4 worth of Big Macs, I get more Big Macs with that same dollar. That means the dollar has more buying power than the ruble.
How is that at all relevant given that Russia doesn't trade in dollars though? Also, as a follow up question, do you think having a weak currency hurts or helps when you're a major commodity exporter?
I'm simply pointing out the idiocy here https://lemmy.ml/post/23076839
The reality is that Russians are not actually affected by this because pretty much nobody in Russia holds western currencies, and the domestic economy is largely self sufficient. The only context this matters in is trade, and Russia is a major exporter, which means that domestic revenue for the government goes up when rouble is weak. Hence why rouble gets intentionally depressed pretty much every years, and people always get really excited about it.
Most, as you put it, "experts" point to inflation as a consequence, but I know shit about economics and don't know the mechanism behind it.
https://www.newsweek.com/what-does-rubles-sharp-fall-mean-russias-economy-1992933
They just state inflation would be an outcome without actually explaining how that would happen. It's pretty clear these people are just parroting things without understanding them.
