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

• Gerard Lyons (Times Online): Discovering if we learnt the lessons of Black Monday, October 19, 2009. Today (Monday) is the twenty-second anniversary of Black Monday. On this day in 1987 stock markets around the world crashed. The Dow Jones fell 22.6 per cent in one day, London shed one fifth of its value over two days. The newspapers and television were full of pictures of traders in panic. Sound familiar? Reflecting on 1987 is interesting in its own right and has lessons for today.

• Allan Dodds Frank (The Daily Beast): Hedge fund dominoes, October 18, 2009. Friday’s insider-trading charges against the founder of Galleon could be the tip of the iceberg. Other hedge funds and the McKinsey consulting

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A very interesting if not controversial article from Luke Harding makes the argument that we are seeing continuity in foreign policy toward Russia under both Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel.  In my experience, the change has been night and day in terms of getting high level politicians willing to talk about human rights issues (just look at Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger), though Harding does make a good point that this has not produced any concrete or measurable changes on the ground or any visible political costs of the relationship.  He has a point, but my response would be that we should wait and see.

During her first visit to Russia as chancellor, in January 2006, Merkel made a point of meeting human rights activists - an apparent break with the sleazy Schröder era. She also promised to

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TODAY: Medvedev admits terrorists have strong hand in Caucasus; proposes sidestepping trial by jury for special cases; technological breakthrough to solve missile defence situation?  Ukraine-Russia issues still making waves; church reacts on exposé article.At a security conference on the North Caucasus, Dmitry Medvedev has said that terrorists must be killed 'without emotion or doubt', and that they should be tried elsewhere in Russia if a 'quality trial' cannot be assured in the region itself.  He also told police officers that police safety must be ensured at all costs: 'Chiefs of any rank will be taken to task, or even fired, for failing to provide such [security] measures'.  Medvedev has pledged a commitment to regaining stability in ...

I earlier had meant to link over to this holocaust article by Timothy Snyder published in the New York Review of Books, which although a few weeks old, still seems relevant given yesterday's news of the Russian government shutting down yet another history resource, www.hrono.info.  Snyder's article explores how certain dominant works skew our understanding of Germany's war crimes toward Auschwitz and Birkenau and those of Joseph Stalin toward only the gulags of the East (given the hostile reception to the recent film Katyn, we can see that this is still a very contentious issue).  I only excerpt a relatively short amount here - I recommend readers visit NYRB for interesting arguments on the primacy of Soviet victims of Stalin.

Yet as Auschwitz draws attention away from the still greater horrors of Treblinka, the Gulag distracts us from

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Back in February, I wrote about an impending crisis in Eastern Europe. In my column, I mentioned that if Eastern Europe begins to head downhill, we could see a domino effect, with the contagion spreading very quickly. Yesterday, the first domino may have fallen, courtesy of debt-laden Latvia. The country attempted to raise $100 million by selling debt securities. But there were no takers. Let me repeat that. Latvia didn’t raise one measly dollar. That is staggering.

So why should we even care about this tiny Baltic country whose population is equivalent to that of Houston?

Simple. Because these things ripple across borders. Here’s what it means for the rest of Europe - and how to play it…

The Little Guys Need A Bailout, Too

In March, we noted the prospect of Latvia going bankrupt by this month. And as a result of Latvia’s failed auction, the currencies of other Eastern European

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Irina Filatova has a new comment piece over on the Guardian about Dmitry Medvedev's formation of a new commission to fight back against the "falsification" of history.  She points out that despite some seemingly noble endeavours of the council (such as declassification of Soviet-era documents from the War), most observers and academics are quite leery of the proposal - beginning with the fact that there are only three historians on the 28-member commission.  Filatova predicts that by early June the legislation will sail through the Duma, and the Kremlin will have a new instrument to imprison journalists and place sanctions on individuals in foreign states, such as the Baltics.

Every historian knows that history as an academic discipline can only exist when its contents are

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TODAY: Russia rejoins Georgia talks; US-Russia nuclear talks constructive so far; policy report recommends US cancel plans for missile defense in eastern Europe; Medvedev creates body to counter 'revisionist' readings of Russian historyEncouragement from international mediators, and receiving a delayed UN report, have seen Russia return to talks on Georgia.  Apparently the talks have been 'constructive' so far and will continue in July.  The Georgian Foreign Ministry believes that the UN report was changed under pressure from Russia, as the amended version makes no reference to Georgian sovereignty over Abkhazia.  Russia will deploy fewer troops in Abkhazia and South Ossetia than had been originally envisaged after last year's conflict.  Again concerns are emerging about consensus at the upcoming EU-Russia summit in ...

This Financial Times editorial came across my email alerts last night, reminding us that somewhere along the line either the U.S. government or the media or both came up with this mythic assumption that talking to Russia about security issues became mutually exclusive from any discussion on values.  The whole "sphere of influences" topic is quickly rising as the #1 problem between Russia and the United States - and, as pointed out by this editorial, Mr. Obama's July trip could easily be ruined by an "unexpected incident" in these unstable regions.

But the real test of the Obama approach to Russia will come in how the US responds to Moscow's claims for primacy in its "near abroad", the former Soviet Union. Washington has postponed talk of soon bringing Ukraine

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How much does it cost to think?

The real cost of ambitious gas projects is surely unknown

Grigory Pasko, journalist

On Lenta.Ru I read: «The cost of construction of the "Nord Stream" pipeline is measured at 7.4 billion euros, while that of "South stream" - up to 25 billion euros». I got to thinking about these numbers. And not only because one of the head employees of the company Nord Stream, Gerhard Schroeder, had cited the cost of Nord Stream at 9 bln euros ( while in the mass media there have been mentions of a number of even 12 bln euros), and his friend, Russian premier Putin, has named a cost of construction of the «South Stream» of 10 bln euros. (In so doing, Putin

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US Federal Reserve’s announcement of its plan to begin formal quantitative easing policy caught financial markets off guard. We have surprised by some of the recent moves being made in FX markets, especially the EUR. Earlier in March positive comments from some bank CEO’s kicked-off a bear market rally in equities, with FX risk aversion trades, also reversing. Add in the most recent US toxic asset purchase plan and that has meant a sharp EURUSD rally. Quantitative easing by the Fed Reserve has been a significant drag on the USD in recent weeks, boosting the EUR from under 1.30 to be trading at around 1.35.

We have been bearish on the medium-term prospects for the EUR for some time now, and there are a host of reasons for the view. The two big ones are firstly the rapid onset of economic weakness across the Eurozone, and the second is the reluctance

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