Ruble is Low Due to Russian Companies' Debts

The ruble held near what analysts regard as the weak end of its trading range against the dollar-euro basket on speculation that the global credit crisis is forcing Russian companies to pay off debt.

As Martin Blum, head of emerging-markets economics and currency strategy at UniCredit in Vienna commented to The Moscow Times, "The ruble is stuck at the weak end of the band because of corporate demand for dollars to pay their debt. Maturing debt and loans are not being rolled because of the global situation, and so companies need to get a hold of dollars".

At the same time, most people understand that the era of a single leading economy and a single dominant currency is over. This thought was expressed by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at Russian-German St. Petersburg Dialog forum.
As RBC reported, he said that the current financial crisis has proven it, the Russian leader said, adding that collective decisions and the creation of a new, fairer financial infrastructure were necessary to overcome the crisis. A single economy, no matter how powerful it is, cannot assume the functions of a super-regulator, Medvedev stressed. If one of the world's economies is allowed to dominate, he noted, its problems may easily spread to other countries at any given moment, and this has become painfully clear recently.