Russia

I gave a presentation on China/Japan at the “Rethinking Seminar” at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab.  My presentation was videotaped; video (both streaming and download), audio, and even cliff…

I’ll cover a lot of random subjects, but let me start with an invitation.  I was invited to give a talk about China and Japan at my alma mater, the…

I’ve received so many emails about the WSJ front page article in which the Russian expert, a professor and ex-KGB agent predicts that the US will falter and be split…

Bad decisions when times were fat spell a rough road ahead for those who hold their savings in Russian currency.  It is amazing how things change in a few months.…

If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that people don’t learn. Recently, I talked to my cousin who is an executive with a Russian airline company. In our discussion he…

Royal Dutch Shell’s $7.5 billion sale to Gazprom may have been coerced by the Russian government. Vitaliy Katsenelson looks at the Sakhalin-2 sale and examines the long-term implications if Russia…

The Russian government’s threat to suspend licenses for two giga-billion projects by TNK-BP, in part owned by BP (BP) and Royal Dutch Shell (RDS-A), is not uncharacteristic of Russia and its very short term thinking. The Russian government argues that it is based on environmental concerns. Nothing, I repeat nothing, in Russia gets done based on environmental concerns. The government simply wants to muscle in on a larger stake in the projects.