Russia is in financial freefall

[strokeybeard]

Russia invades Ukraine

Here’s a piece in [Bloomberg - Are you a robot?](https://Matt Levine’s Bloomberg newsletter) about Russia’s finances. As of Friday Russia had about $630 billion of foreign currency reserves, a large cushion designed to allow it to withstand economic sanctions and prop up the value of the ruble. But “foreign currency reserves” are not an objective fact; they are mostly a series of entries on lists maintained by foreign-currency issuers and intermediaries (central banks, correspondent banks, sov…