Talk:Russian financial crisis (2014–2016)

Updating (Feb 2017)
The article is in serious need of being updated. I've done some changes today, but there is much more to do and some parts of the article read like a good old anti-Russian propaganda today. I am concerned that there has been no motivation to update the article since March 2016, which was the absolute peak of the problems. I sure hope that's just a coincidence. The article in current state seems to be misleading as it suggests Russia is minutes away from defaulting, while the reality couldn't differ more. I am not suggesting adding OR to the article, of course, there are many solid sources that can help showing the current reality. Few examples of the problems that still exist:
 * Article should provide more views that sanctions against Russia are not nearly as important as they seem to be in this article. It seems to be almost consensus today that the main reason is the oil price, not the sanctions.
 * There is a claim in the article that Central Bank of Russia was not doing good job and could have been part of the reason for the crisis. From what I read online, the Central Bank is being praised for its actions, its Governor has received multiple awards in 2015 and 2016 by Western financial institutions for her work, for example The Banker (Financial Times) award. This must be added to the article.
 * The inflation chart stops at the huge 2015 spike. It should be updated with 5.4% inflation rate for 2016.
 * The capital outflow chart stops at the huge 2014 spike of 152 billion. It should be updated with 56.9 billion for 2015 and around 10.5 billion in 2016.
 * Russia has decreased foreign debt from 729 billion in 2014 to 519 billion in 2017.
 * Impact in Russia could be updated with some new data.46.11.55.111 (talk) 05:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC)

Situation after "Black Tuesday"
It is probably worth mentioning that the dramatic spike of the exchange rates was one-day only, after which they went down significantly and are currently holding at bad, but not that critical levels, with rouble going up every day since.89.233.128.158 (talk) 14:21, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

The "alleged" Russian assistance to Novorossiya militants
Any objections to me removing the "alleged"? While it is true that Russia is denying everything, it doesn't mean that Wikipedia shouldn't report the unambiguous truth. We have enough independent reports, as well as Russian soldiers captured in Ukraine, to know that the Russian support does exist. We don't report other obviously false propaganda, such as Kim Jong-Il's sporting achievements, as disputed facts either. Thue (talk) 14:28, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Great insight into the "unambiguous truth". And yet, until the "independent reports" are produced, should not the word alleged stay? As for the lack of "obviously false propaganda" - what about attempting to paint the Syrian rebels as some kind of freedom-fighters? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.20.230.229 (talk) 22:28, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

AFP - an unreliable source?
Whoever edit this article?, a teenager from Saudi Arabia?. AFP is serious, bloggers are no so.186.93.161.246 (talk) 15:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

Original research?
I seen a table of ruble changes serving as timeline of related events. I wonder if more sources are needed to determine that events are contributors to changes in ruble. --George Ho (talk) 19:43, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Those are arbitrarily chosen events that may or may have not contributed to the crisis. -- Ե րևանցի talk  20:29, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * The table is fine. The table makes no claim as to how the events affect the valuation of the ruble; it simply presents the valuation of the ruble at the time of certain events, and readers are then free to draw their own conclusions from the data. —Lowellian (reply) 02:30, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * To reinforce that idea why not add a valuation from a year ago from the Euromaidan thing? So that people can see whether the Ruble was appreciating or depreciating beforehand. And some dates inbetween so as to see whether the Ruble was recovering or not between the listed events. Unless doing this counts as Original Research somehow. --86.129.178.125 (talk) 22:36, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Russian ruble recovering or central bank trying to prevent?
I was briefly reading this article and that article. I wonder if we can add recoveries as significant. --George Ho (talk) 03:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Is it "former Soviet countries" or "neighboring countries"?
I don't want an edit battleground between two names in sections. Perhaps we need a compromise. We have information on former Soviet regions, but they are also considered Russia's neighbours. Which one shall be preferred? --George Ho (talk) 05:39, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I, in my amateur opinion, would recommend keeping it as "former soviet countries" until we find sources/evidence for non-fomer Soviet countries neighbouring Russia have been affected by the Rouble devaluation. --86.129.178.125 (talk) 22:39, 18 December 2014 (UTC)


 * OK. Moorrests (talk) 19:06, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Impact on former Soviet countries section: proposed edit
Maybe we can change all the depreciation values so that they only cite the percentage, leaving a [when?] citation so that we can find a source that gives an exact date for when the percentage was calculated. I'm not making the edit myself since I am not used to editing. --86.129.178.125 (talk) 22:32, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Too complicated and confusing for those unaware of percentages. They are good enough as prose. --George Ho (talk) 08:43, 19 December 2014 (UTC)

Cold War II > Russian Financial Crisis
Given growing reports that the US government is the key player in pushing a cold war-based policy toward Russia, and considering that this (highly-dangerous) policy has played a major role in the present crisis in Russian - would it not be useful to include sections here from Wikipedia's Cold War II article? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.17.178.100 (talk) 22:24, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Attempts to isolate Russia have been thwarted – senator

“It is due to the efforts in foreign policy that thwarted the plans on international isolation of our country – and the authors of these plans wanted to make such isolation an independent means of political and economic blackmail against Russia,” Konstantin Kosachev said in a message posted on the Federation Council’s official website on Wednesday. Russia Today, December 31, 2014 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.86.61 (talk) 14:14, 3 January 2015 (UTC) - i agree, the US is clearly pushing here speculation on the Oil markets. Even western outlets brag about it.--Crossswords (talk) 19:38, 11 January 2015 (UTC) http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/konjunktur/usa-boomen-russland-rutscht-in-die-rezession-kalter-wirtschaftskrieg-warum-die-usa-gewinnen-und-russland-verliert_id_4374241.html http://www.focus.de/finanzen/news/konjunktur/usa-boomen-russland-rutscht-in-die-rezession-kalter-wirtschaftskrieg-warum-die-usa-gewinnen-und-russland-verliert_id_4374241.html

fixing the lede
Just a reader (and over involved editor): A simple way of fixing the non-congruent lede is to work through all the citations, move them into the body, which assures coverage in the body AND unclutters the raw/wiki-code lede and makes it easier to edit subsequently. No references in the lede are required.--Wuerzele (talk) 17:21, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

copyedits
Made brief copyediting fixes, changing of headings from sentence case to heading case. I edited this page as part of this course. Oboudr5 (talk) 15:58, 10 February 2015 (UTC)

in EU?
7 may 2014: 1 EUR = 1.39 USD, 15 mar 2015: 1 EUR = 1.04 USD. Russian sanctions work? Or what? 2002:558C:E007:0:0:0:558C:E007 (talk) 19:12, 29 March 2015 (UTC)
 * To compare the slow dollar/euro pendulum (started at about 1 USD per EUR, was about 0.9 at one point and about 1.6 at another) with rapid sinking (from about 30 per USD to about 70 in less than a year) of the wooden rubble (during its brief history, has anyone ever seen the woody grow significantly against USD or EUR)? Silly? Or what?B-2Admirer (talk) 07:45, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Chart and table of Russian ruble
We have a bar chart of Russian ruble against the Euro and the Dollar on monthly basis. We also have table data of Russian ruble with recorded events. Is either or both needed? --George Ho (talk) 18:31, 8 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep both charts - I find both charts helpful. The bar charts helps with visualizing the change, and the event chart helps to understand the cause of the change. Some price / time charts include links to causal events at specific dates, but at this time I don't think Wikipedia has a template for that, so keeping both makes sense. Waters.Justin (talk) 21:33, 9 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Keep - I agree that it makes following the trends a bit easier, being able to correlate them with the events discussed in the body of the text. AdventurousSquirrel (talk) 21:45, 13 July 2015 (UTC)

"shrinking Russian economy"
I took out the above phrase as it's really too early to tell what the impact on the real economy has been, much less what portion of it can be attributed to the "financial crisis" (personally I wouldn't call this a "crisis" myself, rather just a recession) rather than other factors.Volunteer Marek (talk) 00:56, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Dr. Osipian's comment on this article
Dr. Osipian has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

"The authors need to put a clear time frame on the Russian financial crisis of 2014, otherwise this is going to be an endless story."

We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Osipian has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:


 * Reference : Osipian, Ararat, 2008. "Introducing Vouchers and Standardized Tests for Higher Education in Russia: Expectations and Measurements," MPRA Paper 11059, University Library of Munich, Germany.

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 12:40, 22 May 2016 (UTC)

RfC: Charts and tables

 * The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Which charts and tables shall be retained? Which ones shall be removed? --George Ho (talk) 05:30, 11 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Is there something wrong with the charts? Funkyman99 (talk) 03:51, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I thought that US/Euro chart is no longer necessary, Funkyman99. I do not see the relevance of the chart other than to waste space. Also, the timeline table may violate the "no original research" rule. Unsure about the bar charts. George Ho (talk) 08:42, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
 * I see it as important for showing it's value compared to some of the most widely used/known currencies in the world. On the no original research I'm not quite sure if it is so I guess that's up for debate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Funkyman99 (talk • contribs) 01:27, 16 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep all I'm not sure why any should be removed. More information is always better than less when people research something. Damotclese (talk) 16:27, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep all - As noted above, its better to have more information than we need than not enough. If space is an issue, as far as the page's layout, why not just make the tables and charts collapsable? Meatsgains (talk) 04:20, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * Keep all. See ^  Adotchar | reply here  10:54, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
 * In other words, per MOS:COLLAPSE, any purely supplementary table can be collapsed, even when the rule says not to collapse the table by default, Meatsgains? George Ho (talk) 04:55, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
 * If consensus is to remove the tables and charts, I think the closer should consider collapsing them before removing. Meatsgains (talk) 23:47, 18 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep the GDP and inflation charts. Improve or remove the exchange rate charts and tables. My suggestions -- and these are just suggestions for improving the article --not complying with policy -- would be:
 * The currency exchange rate charts are there to make the point that the crisis drove down the ruble, but they don't show the pre-crisis levels, which really dulls the value of the charts.
 * The currency exchange rate charts aren't well labeled. They need a legend that makes it clear that bars going up means the ruble is going down. Replacing it with the inverse chart would be even better.
 * Having both the EUR and USD chart may be slightly redundant, you can get the point with just one.
 * Line charts are more a bit intuitive for continuously traded prices, but that's just my opinion.
 * Hope that is helpful, thanks for giving the page the attention it needs! Chris vLS (talk) 16:32, 18 November 2016 (UTC)


 * Keep all, and WP:SNOW close as essentially an invalid RfC, since it non-neutrally presents a "begging the question" fallacy, in stating as a prerequisite premise that some of the charts "shall be removed". Agreed with the above comments that nothing appears to be wrong with charts, and that more [relevant] information is better.  Even the one response that isn't simply a "keep all" amounts to "keep all then add more info to two of them"; there's no support for any removal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ≼  15:55, 22 November 2016 (UTC)


 * The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Why does this article exist? (pure propaganda!)
A sharp decline in currency value does not constitute financial crisis. This is actually a common occurence among the emerging markets. Neither do limited Western sanctions constitute a crisis. Diplomatic crisis - maybe, but not a financial one. I would like to note, that no Russian banks collapsed during this "crisis", and the country's ability to repay foreign debt was never in doubt.

As a Russian, I frequently meet Westerners on the internet, who would smugly tell me, that my country's economy is "collapsing". Personally, I'm not sure what to say to these people: their views are a product of ignorance and a lot of anti-Russian propaganda. So is this article: it is mostly speculative, based on misleading, inaccurate Western media coverage.37.147.226.243 (talk) 11:31, 1 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Indeed in Russian https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%B0%D0%BB%D1%8E%D1%82%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%B8%D1%81_%D0%B2_%D0%A0%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8_(2014%E2%80%942015) it is called just currency crisis. We should rename the article as it is anyway a translation. "Diplomatic crisis" just maybe? Really? It is not just crisis in Russia. It is a crisis in United Nations. Too much power they have. And you are mistaken that there is no financial crisis; currency crisis is a financial crisis too, though it is just a play of words. Also just look into https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Mac_Index Russian rubles are on third place after Ucraine and Egypt. It is a calamity and means that UN destroyed Russian economics, even though Russia does fill good inside, but internationally it is as good as dead... ZBalling (talk) 07:14, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Title change?
about this move - diff What sources?-- Renat 18:19, 13 February 2021 (UTC)


 * I added a couple references for the first sentence. Mellk (talk) 19:50, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * it looks like it's not that easy, because we have RS that say "2014-2016": "... crisis years of 2014-16." "... crisis of 2014-2016." "... Crisis of 2014-2016" "... 2014–2016 crisis ..." "... 2014-16 crisis ..." "2014 - 2016 crisis". One source even says "2014-2017":"... Crisis 2014-2017". So I suggest renaming to "2014-2016".-- Renat 22:17, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * The Meduza article is not consistent. It refers to a "2014 – 2015 economic crisis" while one of the images refers to a "2014 – 2016 crisis". The report by Anastasia Nesvetailova was published in July 2015 but calls it a 2014–2016 crisis? While a FT article that quotes Nesvetailova calls it a 2014–2015 crisis. There are other sources that refer to it as the 2014–2015 crisis such as this this and this (from a quick search) so I'm not sure, there are conflicting sources. Mellk (talk) 23:24, 13 February 2021 (UTC)
 * some researchers study the time period of the crisis from 2014 to 2015, while the crisis itself was from 2014 to 2016. It's not a conflict. I am not sure if we have a lot of RS for 2014-2017, but I restored the previous title before this discussion is over.-- Renat 00:42, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what you mean, there are sources that explicitly define it the financial crisis or economic crisis as 2014–2015. Mellk (talk) 00:47, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * well, I mean this crisis has no name of its own. It only has a time frame. 2014-2015 crisis is the same as 2014-2016 crisis (the same crisis). Or those who studied the period from 2014 to 2015 claim that the crisis ended in 2015?-- Renat 00:56, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I am saying that they are defining the timeframe of the crisis as 2014–2015, it is clear in the context. Mellk (talk) 01:02, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * so do you want to compare sources or what's your suggestion? Or we should start from the definition of "financial crisis" and when it starts, ends and its indicators?-- Renat 01:48, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * All RS seem to agree that the start was 2014 (of course due to Ukraine situation and oil prices). However, the end year is not clear because various sources give either 2015 or 2016 (or 2017 to a much lesser extent). First I would suggest examining the sources again. Mellk (talk) 02:15, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
 * I'd suggest renaming the article to Russian financial crisis (2014–2016) for the time being since nearly all sources seem to state either 2014–2015 or 2014–2016. It is better to leave this with either one of them rather than 2014–2017 which is rarely used. Mellk (talk) 12:19, 28 February 2021 (UTC)