Hey there!

As I mentioned in my last post, I am going to write a little bit about Russia. I spend this year’s New Year’s Eve in Moscow which was pretty awesome considering the fact that I am not a real fan of that celebration. But it is most definitely something else when celebrated in Moscow. There were so many people at the Red Square and so many parties on the street, it was insane.

Anyway, what I actually wanted to talk about is the decline of the ruble. As you might have guessed, it was pretty awesome for me because I could do some really cheap shopping. According to Austrian newspapers though, Russians started hoarding goods and emptying out stores. Since I actually didn’t see anything like that, I asked my friend about it. He told me that as far as he knows, the only ones hoarding goods are the Finns who come over the border and empty their stores. Additionally, a lot of Europeans in general came those days to Russia because of the bad ruble value.

Since I don’t completely understand how that happened that the ruble lost so much of its value in such a short period of time, I did a little bit of research. First of all, there are the sanctions against Russia. Additionally, global oil prices dropped and the economy slowed down. This basically happened because China’s economy slowed down, as well as Europe’s, and the US and Canada don’t need to import oil from Russia anymore. All this makes prices very volatile. For some countries, the economy actually grows again because of the cheap oil prices, but this again is bad for oil exporters like Russia. The low value of the ruble can in fact also be good though, since foreign people buy their oil in dollars. However, the inflation still grows because imported goods get more expensive.

So basically, everything revolves around supply and demand. And oil seems to define certain actions of certain politics :/