Black week for the ruble as fall hits all-time low

Russia's currency on Friday slid to a historic low, losing over 10 percent in value over the course of the week amid falling oil prices and the fallout of the Ukraine crisis.
The fall sparked panic as the euro reached the 60 ruble mark for the first time and the dollar passed 48 rubles.
The ruble then gained slightly with the market expecting the Central Bank to step in.
"This is a full-scale panic with hints of a currency crisis based on self-fulfilling expectations," said ING analyst Dmitry Polevoy.
"It's difficult to stop panic among the public," he said, calling for an overdue intervention.
"The scale of the fall is likely to have set off alarm bells ringing among policymakers," said Capital Economics, predicting a one-off intervention by the Central Bank.
The ruble has lost a quarter of its value since the beginning of the year.
The decline increased Wednesday when the Central Bank announced it had dramatically reduced its support for the ruble to $350 million per day.
In October it spent a total of $27 billion to keep the ruble afloat, the Higher School of Economics calculated this week.
The currency has been hit hard by plunging oil prices and the consequences of Western sanctions against Moscow over its role in the separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine.
Russia's State Statistics Agency said this week that real wages in the country have decreased year-on-year in September for the first time since the 2008-09 economic crisis.