Kazakhstan suggests a new, non-cash currency.

Quick, someone come up with a joke about bartering goats! From Moscow Times:

Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev on Wednesday proposed a common currency for five former Soviet republics, a slap in the face for Russia, which has been promoting the ruble for the role.

Senior government officials did not react to the proposal, but a State Duma deputy said Nazarbayev was sending a signal that Russia's neighbors harbored concerns about embracing the ruble.

Nazarbayev said the Eurasian Economic Community, a loose group of five former Soviet republics including Kazakhstan and Russia, could adopt a single noncash currency -- the yevraz -- to insulate itself from the global economic crisis.

Yevraz is a newly coined word that sounds close to "Eurasia" in Russian.

"Its exchange rate shouldn't depend on the fluctuations of the world currencies," Nazarbayev said in a speech to an economic forum in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

The Eurasian Economic Community also includes Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.