by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /The Russian ruble strengthened the most in more than three months against the dollar yesterday (gaining 1.7 percent to 32.2247 per dollar at one point) as oil rebounded above $60 a barrel and OAO Sberbank reported better-than-expected earnings. Sberbank shares jumped 5.1 percent after first-quarter net income turned out to be above analyst estimates. But the rise was also helped by the fact that Russia’s central bank spent approximately $2 billion from reserves to try to stop the ruble from falling yesterday, taking central bank reserve spending over the two working days since they lowered interest rates half a percantage point on Friday to around $4 billion, a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchiveamp;sid=aTqgrOY1vdEo"according to reports in the newspaper Kommersant/a.br /br /Russia’s central bank cut its main interest rates for the fourth time in less than three months at the end of last week after the government estimated the ...

If you read just one of my Money and Markets issues this year, make sure it’s this one. You will not hear what I’m about to say from our nation’s leaders. Nor will it pour forth from talking heads on Wall Street. They are still driven by their zeal for bigger campaign contributions or the lust for fatter year-end bonuses. My sole mission is to help you preserve your wealth and your income — to set you free from escalating worries about how deeply this great crisis could threaten your financial security. That done, you can actually use this massive global crisis to grow your wealth, even while millions of other investors could lose nearly everything. My New Warning Some will say that the new warning I’m about to ...

By Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /The Italian economy continued to contract sharply in the third quarter of 2008 as exports fell sharply - declining at the fastest rate in three years - under the impact of a global slump which weighed down on foreign demand for Italian products, and pushed the Italian economy into its worst recession since at least 1975. Sales of Italian goods abroad fell 1.6 percent from the previous quarter, their biggest decline since 2005.br /br /Pressure is of course on the government to offer a fiscal reponse to the problem, but given Italy's outstanding debt issues and the fact that a large part of the problem is long term structural and not cyclical it is hard to see much of note happening, and indeed Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti's statement this week that additional stimulus packages were pretty pointless could be read as more of an admission ...

Look past the headlines and you will find the Reserve Bank achieved little yesterday to lower mortgage rates for most people. The effects will dribble through to home owners over the coming year or so, but not as quickly and not as much as the Reserve Bank would like.

This is not the Reserve Bank’s fault. We are an open economy with debt-loving home buyers that are price-takers when it comes to interest rates. The price-makers are international markets. The nightly woes of Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, European Central Bank President Jean Claude Trichet and the hapless British Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling are just as important to New Zealand home owners as anything Reserve Bank Governor Alan Bollard does. Most just don’t know it.

It is the inevitable result of our

...