THE IRRITATED AMERICAN Folks walk right over huge stacks of rubles on the street of Moscow (PIC: wn.com) It has most emphatically not been a good stretch as of late for Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose country's currency--and economy, blasted by the incredible crude oil plunge--has been pounded down by an endless spate of bad news. The ruble was the second worst performing currency in the world in 2014; the situation has grown so awful that--famously--even prostitutes north, south, east and west have had to adjust their prices out of desperation to compensate for the reduced spending power of the ruble. The Russian government yesterday announced that it would dip into its $88 Billion reserve wealth fund and convert all or most of it to rubles over the course of the present Jan-Feb time frame. . . which would convert to somewhere in the ballpark of 500 billion rubles. "Together with the central bank, we are selling a part of our foreign currency reserves," Russian Finance Minister Anoton Siluanov declared yesterday in Moscow. "We'll get rubles and place them in deposits for banks, giving liquidity to the economy." With the disastrous effects of plummeting of crude oil prices on this oil-rich nation, and a complex combination of additional economic and political factors potentiating the crisis, global economists are understandably cautious when it comes to this conversion of the Russian wealth fund into ruble currency and the ability of the subsequent deposits to profoundly restore it's value. A formal recession seems a fait accompli. In a sign of the worsening times, the Russian owner of the NBA Brooklyn Nets, tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, finally quieted the rumor-mongering and officially announced that he is formally placing his franchise up for sale, and has hired Evercore Partners to manage the process for him. Prokhorov, one of the wealthiest businessmen in Russia, is selling off the team for one reason only: to offset terrible losses at home. Although it's true that the billionaire entrepreneur has watched his team and corresponding stadium lose money here in NYC--generally somewhere in the ballpark (no pun intended) of $144 million running thru the 2013/14 NBA season--this is child's-play compared to his losses on his home turf in Russia, Frankly, the Nets loss is a minor irritant. In one 48 hour Russian stretch alone in mid-December of 2014, he lost $411.1 million on the back of Russia's central bank rate hike of 17% (on the 16th of December). In total, running up to that point over the course of the year of 2014, Prokhorov lost a mind-blowing $2.5 Billion, much of it due to the fact that the ruble lost 40% of its value versus the US dollar. He presently is worth, post losses and pre-sale of the Nets, in the zone of $10-11 Billion. From tycoons to prostitutes, the ruble is laid out in heavy-duty traction, with two black eyes, and not much in the pharmacy when it comes to the subject of painkilling. Whether or not the wealth fund conversion and ruble injection will trigger anything resembling a rebound remains to be seen, and it will most definitely be in the lo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-on-n-ng term. Preston Clive 1/15/2015***