The ruble is tumbling after Russia’s central bank says the drop in inflation is due to temporary factors

The Russian ruble is weaker.

The currency is down by 0.4% at 62.9359 per dollar as of 7:37 a.m. ET.

The Central Bank of Russia held its key interest rate unchanged at 10.00% on Friday.

The bank had previously indicated at its September meeting that it was done easing until 2017, so the decision did not come as a surprise.

In its accompanying statement, the bank said that temporary factors (including the “good harvest”) were behind the falling inflation rate.

"Despite this hawkish rhetoric, we think there are good arguments for loosening policy," wrote William Jackson, senior emerging markets economist, at Capital Economics.

"If anything, the central bank's discussion of the factors behind the recent fall in inflation may have been overly-pessimistic. The decline in the headline rate to 6.4% y/y last month was indeed helped by a fall in food inflation, but core inflation also fell to its lowest rate since April 2014," he added.

As for the rest of the world, here's the scoreboard as of 7:44 a.m. ET:

The British pound is down by 0.3% at 1.2127 against the dollar after a landmark legal challenge surrounding parliamentary approval of Brexit was defeated in Northern Ireland. The Northern Irish High Court has ruled that Theresa May's government does not need to secure the approval of parliament before triggering Britain's exit from the European Union. The euro is up by 0.2% at 1.0918 against the dollar. Earlier, data showed that French GDP rose 0.2% in the third quarter, below expectations of 0.3%.The US dollar index is little changed at 98.84 ahead of the Employment Cost Index and GDP, which will be released at 8:30 a.m. ET, and University of Michigan consumer confidence, out at 10 a.m. ET.