Before we discuss The Empire of Chaos ongoing attacks on “The Assassin Putin” and The Master of the Universe attempts to topple any challenge to Washington’s global hegemony, we thought the following chart may give some much needed context for where the pain really is – the drop in the oil price in local currency terms has been the least of all major nations… for Russia

While a case can be made that for Moscow it would be a tremendous waste of hard-earned foreign exchange to try to counter a rig against their currency they simply cannot beat, as the entire fiat financial power of the US is against them.

As Pepe Escobar via DoomsteadDiner.net notes,  Russia’s Central Bank by now should be all-out selling rubles for gold, and building Russia’s gold reserves.