This simple comparison bar chart tries to address this question by looking at 3 things: how much oil prices fell, how much ruble lost against dollar, and how much reserves Russia had at the beginning of each crisis.
The crisis of 2014 is still unfolding which makes this chart even more telling. Ruble fall is already far ahead of total loss in 2008-2009 (red bars). At the same time, this year oil prices fell just a fraction of total loss in 2008-2009 (blue bars). To top it off, Russia had 100,000 million USD more in reserves before crisis in 2008 than it had in August of 2014 (green bars). I suspect there are other different things at play in 2014. What are they?
Data (updated on Monday, December 15th):
2014: from June 20th when oil peaked to Monday, December 15th. Reserves Central Bank held in 2014 were the largest on July 1st.
2008-2009: rather conservative dates from July 3d (when oil peaked) to February 18th, 2009 (when ruble began stabilizing along with oil prices). Reserves were largest on August 1st.
Oil prices: for WTI.
Sources:
1. WTI Daily Prices
2. RUB to USD Historical Exchange Rates Daily
3. USD and Gold Reserves by Russian Central Bank
No comments:
Post a Comment