If you're a Russian who's been saving every ruble you can under a pillow, I have some extremely bad news for you:

The ruble plunged to a record low of less than 1 U.S. cent in value Monday after Russia was cut off from the global bank payments system in retaliation for Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

The Russian currency dropped nearly 26% to 105.27 per dollar, down from about 84 per dollar late Friday.

The U.S., Japan and other Western nations moved over the weekend to impose additional sanctions against Russia, including restrictions on access for some Russian banks to the SWIFT global bank payments system.

That 26% drop follows a much larger drop last week.

Somehow I don't think the Russian people are gonna be happy with ol' Vlad for this one.

The disconnection from SWIFT announced Saturday was partial, leaving Europe and the United States room to escalate penalties later. Officials said they had not fully settled on which banks would be cut off and that the aim was for targeted, functional restrictions.

Part of me is glad to see that the West can still exercise some muscle when it comes to finances.

With all this money printing and blowout spending we're doing though, you have to wonder what happens when our own money is worthless!

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