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Ruble Chaos Sparks Russian Spending Spree
Themoscowtimes
At 8 p.m. on Wednesday, GUM, a historic chic shopping mall near the Kremlin, had more salespeople than customers.
But on the other side of town, Swedish furniture retailer IKEA was making money hand over fist at its flagship store just north of Moscow after the chain announced it would raise prices on Thursday.
“There was no place to park a car. … There were people from Moscow, the regions, a lot of small trucks with unfamiliar license plates,” said Artemy Pushkaryov, a history researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences and an eye witness to the rush.
It took three attempts and hours of standing in lines for Artemy to purchase a wardrobe. By the end of the day, he said, people in the queue began to think of the Soviet times when standing in lines for hours to purchase basic food, clothes or furniture was as normal as a winter’s snowfall.
IKEA on Thursday said it had temporarily stopped selling kitchen appliances because it could not meet the increased demand.
The violent fluctuations of the ruble, which on Tuesday lost 20 percent of its value only to rebound back to nearly previous rates the next day, is encouraging Russians to speed up purchases of goods before retailers adjust prices to the new economic reality.
Even after pulling back from Tuesday’s record lows, the ruble has lost over 35 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar in the past two months.
Read More Here and Here
It makes sense, go spend that money before it turns into worthless toilet paper.It sounds like the early stages for the set up of a one world currency if you ask me.The dollar could be next, just because it’s still standing doesn’t mean it has a pulse.It doesn’t, it should be flatlining sometime real soon.The Liberator.
