With Russia’s economy in shambles, President Dmitry Medvedev has been distancing himself from his predecessor and friend of 20 years, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In doing so, Medvedev has fueled speculation that the former-KGB agent’s days in Moscow may be numbered.
Russia is reeling. GDP is down nearly 9% year-over-year. The ruble has lost a third of its value since September. Unemployment is rising so quickly, protests and riots are breaking out. And yet, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin assures his supporters that “no catastrophe” is in view in 2009.
The Russian ruble fell yesterday (Monday) to levels not seen since the 1998 banking crisis, as the nation’s central bank devalued the currency for the sixth time in seven days. The devaluation is seen as a sign of further deterioration in the Russian economy and comes despite government efforts to orchestrate an orderly retreat.
Emerging markets investors have always had famed investor Jim Rogers on their side. Now – after the bubbles of China, India, Latin America and more have popped – they can take comfort in the word of investor Mark Mobius, who said emerging markets are “bottoming” en route to a bull phase in 2009.
In Argentina – where Contrarian Profits is based – falling commodity prices threaten to open a deep hole in the government’s budget. Martin Hutchinson says the county, and other ‘rebel’ states like Russia and Venezuela, has shown little regard for economic laws in recent years. That’s why all three will find it much harder to recover from this crisis.
Once they started going long on oil it was fairly easy to perpetuate the run… all they have to do is buy at the ask price and oil just keeps going up and up.
The relationship between BP and the shareholders in its Russian joint venture, TNK-BP, Russia’s third largest oil firm, has very publicly fallen apart, reports Britain’s The Guardian newspaper:
Yesterday BP and the Russian shareholders were forced to acknowledge differences over strategy, with the Russian billionaires who own 50% of the company arguing that TNK-BP, Russia’s third-largest oil producer, should be able to expand abroad even if that meant its coming into direct competition with BP itself.
Yes, we are on the cusp of Peak Everything…The rising cost of steel is at the heart of much capital cost inflation around the world.
New Russian President Dmitry Medvedev wants better links with Europe.
Iran has stopped trading in US dollars for oil, according to a top Iranian oil ministry official.
The official, Hojjatollah Ghanimifard, told Iranian state-run television today that “the dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” and that the country has “agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”
The dollar’s spending power, like it or not, is at the mercy of Iranian president President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says Addison Wiggan