Ben Ares — Russia is running out of money – revisited

Last December Professor Anders Aslund, then of the Peterson Institute, now of the Atlantic Council, wrote two op-eds entitled: “Russia’s Economic situation is worse than it may appear”, and “The Russian Economy is headed for disaster.”

I wrote a blog in answer at the time entitled, "Russia is running out of money – not…" In it I argued that while about half of Russia's reserves are non-conventional – including its gold reserves and especially the hundreds of billions of dollars held in its two reserves funds – this money was still available to prop up the economy if need be and count as reserves. And in any case the rundown of reserves would be less dramatic than Aslund was predicting. In particular, I took issue with the argument that the 2014 currency crisis was in some way worse than the 2008 global meltdown and Aslund's extremely controversial prediction that Russia's economy would contract by some 10% or more in 2015 was wrong.

Six months on and it is time to assess where we are....

Balance of payments, foreign reserves and corporate debt denominated in foreign currency.

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MOSCOW BLOG: Russia is running out of money – revisited

Ben Ares