Year: 2008

October 14, 2008

Enemies of Enemies

For a while now I have been checking out some entries at the Across the Pond blog managed by Deutsche Welle, sometimes finding interesting opinions and other times, well, not so much. Today’s entry is a reaction to the Vali Nasr op/ed on Ira...
October 14, 2008

Cash Freeze in Russia

Grigory Pasko has just contacted us with a breaking news report: today in Moscow, none of the Visa or MC Electron labeled ATMs were giving out any cash, possibly signifying a freeze on accounts. Pasko could not ascertain the functioning of other A...
October 14, 2008

Grigory Pasko: A Letter from Iceland, Part 2

See Pasko’s first dispatch from Iceland here. Descendants of the Vikings or Political Correctness in Iceland Grigory Pasko, journalist Если Вы хотите прочитать оригинал данной статьи на русском языке, нажмите сюда. On 5 October of this year ...
October 14, 2008

A Rogue Trader at Renaissance

It looks like Russia’s Renaissance Bank is experiencing its own small version of the Société Générale rogue trader scandal, as a young man placed several unauthorized trades on the market right before the crash, losing the group about $10 mi...
October 14, 2008

Russia’s Latin America Opportunity

Washington appears to finally be paying the cost of ignoring Latin America for so many years as Russia swoops into the vacuum. This comes from Dan Erikson of the Inter-American Dialogue: Moscow’s outreach to the region is by no means confine...
October 14, 2008

Audio: Russia Worries over Coming Job Losses

This report from National Public Radio interviews average Russians about their perceptions of the economic crisis: Russia is among the countries hardest hit by the world’s financial turmoil. Only recently, Moscow was bragging that its oil-ri...
October 14, 2008

Energy Blast – Oct 14, 2008

The President of Russia’s Gas Union insists that the financial crisis will have no effect on the country’s major natural gas pipelines. Will OPEC respond to the drop in oil prices with a cut in production? Likely so, says The Economist. The Presid...
October 14, 2008

Today in Russian Business – Oct 14, 2008

What’s the deal with the Kremlin’s opaque ‘secretive anti-crisis task force’, wonders the Moscow Times? An equities trader at Russia’s Renaissance Capital lost the company an estimated $10 million by placing unauthorized bets just as the stock mar...
October 14, 2008

RA’s Daily Russia News Blast – Oct 14, 2008

TODAY: Elections shut parties out; EU divided over resuming talks with Russia in aftermath of Georgia war; Medvedev never mentioned a ‘sphere of influence’, argues one reporter; Russian to sue US government over Aeroflot crash. Roscosmos. Hockey p...
October 13, 2008

Rewarding Bad Behavior

This characteristically bombastic Washington Times editorial argues that Europe’s response, and especially that of Germany, to Russia’s invasion of Georgia has been seen as rewarding of bad behavior – confirming Russia’s cl...