Russia Tries to Stop Ruble from Falling, Gives Up

The emerging markets rout continues: Russia, she of the $500 billion war chest of foreign currency reserves, spent 19% of those reserves trying to fight off a currency devaluation. Today, Russia didn’t quite give up the fight, but conceded some ground, widening the allowed trading range and at the same time increasing interest rates. Just goes to show: fighting those nasty currency speculators rarely works, if ever.

(Thanks to Free Exchange for catching this.)