Buried down at the bottom of this blog post attacking Obama's Russia policy (mostly just picking on Joe Biden - it is the National Journal after all), are some interesting quotes from Igor Yurgens - a key advisor to Medvedev and one of those few remaining in the Kremlin who make quite a lot of sense."The dichotomy of attitudes towards Russia in the U.S. administration does not make things easy for us," said Igor Yurgens, an economic policy adviser to Medvedev, at a Nov. 5 lecture in London hosted by the International Institute of Strategic Studies. "It is a problem." (...)

Putting historical wrongs, real and perceived, to rest is especially important because there are issues where Washington's and Moscow's interests converge, none bigger than Afghanistan. (...)

Stabilizing Afghanistan is even more crucial. While

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You've got to respect Global Witness ... for a watchdog NGO, they bring a lot of creativity and innovation to their cause (see this past campaign for another example).  GW has also done a tremendous job in the past unearthing all the corruption surrounding RosUkrEnergo, a subject which has come up again and again (let's just say the corruption scandal reaches pretty high).  Today they published another hot report to remind the European Commission how they've got it all wrong in selling out human rights and democracy to the brutal dictatorship in Turkmenistan in exchange for eventual access to natural gas ... including a collaboration with the political cartoonist David Rees.Click here ...

Asia has proven comparatively resilient against the current downturn, but hurdles still lie ahead. In order to maintain robust growth rates in the face of weak US demand, the region’s dynamic economies must stoke domestic consumption and embrace environmentally sustainable development policies. So says Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia and author of The Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization.  Clay Chandler, Asia editor with McKinsey’s publishing group, spoke to Roach in Hong Kong.

Source: Clay Chandler, McKinsey Quarterly, November 13, 2009.

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The video clips below provide a handy summary of the reports expected on the economic, financial and corporate front around the globe during the week ahead.

US: Retail results, economy in focus Retailers including Home Depot and Target will report results and key economic data will include retail sales and industrial output. Meanwhile, nine speakers from the Federal Reserve will offer their views on the economy.

Europe: Air France-KLM report Airbus owner EADS reports quarterly results along with airline Air France-KLM. In the UK luxury-goods group Burberry will provide an update.

Asia: Obama tour, data in focus U.S. President Barack Obama will tour the region, making stops in Japan and China to start

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Dmitri Trenin, Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, dissects Russia's foreign policy in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs in an article entitled, "Russia Reborn." Following is the passage I think resonates the most. I'm going to keep my lead-in short here because the excerpt is long and not all of you are going to like it, so brace yourselves:

Although the Kremlin did succeed in proving its strategic independence from Europe and the United States, there can be no talk of Russia's overall equality with either of the two. This leaves Moscow with a paradox: it is unwilling to become a junior partner to Brussels and Washington, but they will not accept it as an equal. Likewise, as Medvedev has pointed out, Russia is excluded from any meaningful security structure in

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Daniel Gross (Newsweek): The greatest trade ever, November 10, 2009. How hedge fund manager John Paulson bet against the real estate bubble and made $15 billion in a single year.

• abc News: SocGen’s top analyst sees market lows next year, November 9, 2009. Albert Edwards, a top analyst with French bank Societe Generale, expects global markets to hit a new low in 2010, adding that he would not be surprised if the global economy enters another recession next year. Edwards, one of the leading equities bears and a long-term critic of the policies of Western central banks, is skeptical of popular opinion that extreme policy response will safeguard the West against a repeat of Japan’s lost decade of the 1990’s.

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Reprinted from Robert Amsterdam's latest in the Huffington Post:

The effusive praise President Barack Obama has for former Singaporean Prime Minister and now Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew is another gesture that has led many to wonder where the present administration sits on human rights issues. The forthcoming APEC summit in Singapore presents an opportunity for the president to set the record straight.

Asia is vital for the Obama Administration for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the imperative that even perceptions of democracy must be judged against not just American values, but universal values. Amnesty International recently released an open letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper calling attention to this very topic.

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We have just received a copy of an open letter from Amnesty International Canada to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in advance of his upcoming trip to the forthcoming APEC meeting in Singapore, followed by a visit to India. The letter urges Prime Minister Harper to uphold Canada's well-known reputation as a staunch human rights supporter by raising concerns with and presenting recommendations to Singapore authorities regarding the case of Dr. Chee Soon Juan and other civil society representatives and to address ongoing human rights challenges in India. Below is an excerpt from the letter, followed by a link that will allow you access to the letter in full.

Singapore has two realities: its appearance as a progressive country with regular elections and economic success; and its record of human rights violations designed

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One of my favorite blogs, Business Monitor International's Risk Watchdog, had a post yesterday discussing the wider historical context of the Berlin Wall's fall. The discussion of the persistence of Communism and the comparison between 1979 and 1989 I personally found to be the most thought-provoking observations but the entire posting is worth reading, accessible here.

Observation 6: Communism did not entirely die.

China, Vietnam, North Korea, Cuba, and Laos all retain Communist leaderships, although in the former two countries the free market has largely prevailed. Many of the 'Communists' in Eastern Europe merely changed their names to 'social democrats' and returned to power, albeit in reconstructed form. Overall, the phenomenon of significant state interventionism in economies lives on long after 1989,

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This post provides links to a number of interesting articles I have read over the past few days that you may also enjoy.

• Nelson Schwartz (HeraldTribune.com): Inside the global gold frenzy, November 8, 2009. Long considered the ultimate refuge for nervous investors, gold has climbed as the dollar has steadily weakened, budget deficits have expanded in the United States and Europe, and central banks have continued to pump trillions of dollars into weak economies, creating fears of another asset bubble that will ultimately pop. “It’s not that gold has changed, but gold buyers have changed,” said Suki Cooper, a precious-metals strategist for Barclays Capital. “It’s a structural shift we’re seeing on the investing side, from Asian central banks right down to individual investors buying ingots and coins.”

• William Rees-Mogg (Times Online): Which will come out on top: paper or gold? November

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