The week between Christmas and the new year is traditionally a quiet one on Wall Street, with volumes plummeting as traders enjoy a long vacation and many large firms shut down altogether. Indeed, the post-Christmas week of 2009 has seen little action, with most major benchmarks lacking direction in light trading. Russia, on the other hand, has been a hotbed of activity, with several major developments unfolding this week that could have a major impact on the country’s financial markets as the calendar turns to 2010. [click to continue…]
The Cold War may have ended decades ago, but relations between the U.S. and Russia have never fully recovered. In recent years, tensions between these world powers have been particularly strained, as the countries clashed on issues including democracy, missile defense, NATO expansion, and independence for Kosovo. Concerns of armed conflict and nuclear war are long gone, but mutual distrust and unease between the former Cold War opponents has remained.
Relations sank to a post-Cold War low during the Bush administration, but president Obama has made clear his intentions to “reset” relations with Russia. Recent events suggest that tensions may finally be thawing. [click to continue…]
Although Dmitry Medvedev was elected as Russia’s president nearly a year and a half ago, many Russians remain convinced that prime minister Vladimir Putin continues to call the shots. The skepticism over the president’s independence runs so deep that Medvedev joked this week that he would undergo blood tests to prove the two men aren’t [...]
China’s central bank once again stated the need for reform of the international currency system to reduce over-dependence on current reserve currencies (read: the U.S. dollar). While the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) didn’t specifically mention the dollar in its statement, the desire to replace the greenback as a central component of many countries’ foreign [...]
