Monday, May 23, 2011

Breaking News - Belarus Devalues Currency Overnight

 From Kommersant.ru :

"The National Bank of Belarus (NBB) is sharply devaluing the official rate of Belarusian ruble. The exchange rate as of May 24 was set at 4,930 rubles per dollar. a decrease of 56% from the 23 May.  The National Bank of Belarus has officially confirmed a sharp depreciation of the currency."

Funny enough, I use a Belarus banknote in the "About" section of this blog because it pictures a squirrel!



I hope none of my readers are in possession of any Belarus Ruble banknotes or bonds!

"When it comes to currency warfare, one can be polite and gentlemanly about it, like Brazil for instance, which every day, and sometimes on several occasions during the day, will proceed to buy dollars in an attempt to keep one's own currency lower. Or one can do what the Belarus central bank just did, and officially devalue one's currency, in this case the Belarus ruble, by 56% overnight, against every currency out there."
http://www.zerohedge.com/article/belarus-just-devalued-its-currency-56
  
Wall Street Journal is running a correction that is was actually 36%, not 56%. 
http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110523-707809.html

Belarus was under pressure from Russia to sell state assets in order to get a credit line and bailout from Moscow, but instead they just devalued their debt!  WOW!  Anyone in Belarus with silver instead of fiat is doing fine, but all the fiat savers have been robbed!

Again from Kommersant.ru:

Meanwhile, representatives of Belarusian banks have criticized the mechanism of devaluation. "The problem is not in the specific value of the exchange rate and in the mechanism. The question is: under whose speculative decisions did the National Bank make this choice?" - Said the agency "Interfax-West" management representative of a bank with Russian capital. In this case, the representative of a state bank believes that "this decision should be viewed as an interim measure." According to him, "the trend is obvious: the official exchange rate will move in the direction of the OTC exchange rate, rather than vice versa."

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