First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov has pledged not to fire workers from near-insolvent Avtovaz, but to create new subsidiaries employing up to 15,000 people.  Auto sales declined by 51% in the first 10 months of 2009, compared with the same period last year.  At the annual Foreign Investment Advisory Council, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has wooed foreign investors by concurring with their criticisms about 'excessive bureaucracy'.  The number of unemployed in Russia has begun to mount, having fallen successively for six months.  The Central Bank may buy gold from the state repository, says its First Deputy Chairman Alexei Ulyukayev.  Evraz Group plans to sell as much as $1.04 billion of 10-year bonds, the company has announced.  Coking coal miner Mechel has seen a reversal of fortune, now back to a pre-crisis level of production ...

Coal miner Peabody Energy Corp. (BTU) reported third-quarter earnings of 49 cents per share, beating the Zacks Consensus estimate of 22 cents. However, the quarterly results were down 70.4% from the year ago earnings of $1.35 per share.

Peabody’s revenues declined to $1.67 billion in the quarter from $1.89 billion a year ago. The company’s U.S. revenues per ton increased 11% over last year due to higher realized prices. Realized revenues for Australia averaged $82 per ton - $125 per ton for metallurgical coal and $72 per ton for thermal coal - up 33% from the second quarter of 2009.

The company’s total sales volumes were 63.5 million tons, down from 65.6 million tons a year ago. U.S. sales reflected planned Powder River Basin (PRB) reductions. But Australian sales of 6.5 million tons were 30% above the second quarter and Australian metallurgical coal exports were 2.7 million tons, nearly triple the pace of

...

PT Adaro Energy, Indonesia’s no. 2 coal miner (behind PT Bumi Resources Tbk, which by contrast will send 8 million tons to China this year), stated recently that it had already contracted much of its increase sales to China of 3.5 million tons in 2009–up from roughly 2 million tons last year–while reiterating that Chinese demand for overseas thermal coal would remain “robust”.  China imported over 11.5 million tons of Indonesian coal last year–more than a quarter of its total.  Australian coal prices on the globalCOAL Newcastle index, a benchmark for Asia, ended Friday at $74.31/ton, while port coal prices at China’s top coal port Qinhuangdao remain around $92 a ton.  “As long as there is a difference between domestic and import prices, China will still be buying coal from overseas,” commented Apimuk Taifayongvichit, chief marketing and logistics planner at PT Indo Tambangraya Megah, the Indonesian unit of

...

We spent the morning musing on the Maginot Line. The French built this elaborate line of fortifications along its border with Germany in the 1930s to thwart an invasion by its Great War enemy. When Germany invaded France in May 1940, Adolf Hitler’s armies simply bypassed the line and invaded France through neighbouring Belgium. The Maginot Line proved to be an elaborate dud.

As Nassim Taleb points out in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable:

The story of the Maginot Line shows how we are conditioned to be specific. The French, after the Great War, build a wall along the previous German invasion route to prevent reinvasion – Hitler just (almost) effortlessly went around it. The French had been excellent students of history; they just learned with too much precision.

...

Between September 2007 and June 2008, oil prices doubled, gold rose 30% and commodities, in general, advanced by a similar percentage. So why, six months later, when prices have fallen back below last year’s levels, does everybody think they won’t rise again? The difficulties of extraction haven’t gone away, nor have the prospects of increasing consumption in the faster-growing emerging markets such as China. Yes, the prices of commodities are severely affected by marginal moves in supply and demand, but this is ridiculous! Rest assured, commodities prices will rebound in the New Year. The reasons will soon become quite clear. The decline in commodities prices since the summer is broad-based. The Reuters Continuous Commodities Index traded recently at 341, down 25% from a year earlier and off about 45% from its June high. At $48 a barrel, oil is trading at less ...

I'm writing this while on a short holiday in Macau, Asia's booming Las Vegas. And let me tell you (again) — judging by what I'm seeing in Macau, there are very few signs of a slowdown in Asia! More than 1.5 million international visitors arrived in Macau in the first six months of 2008 — UP 47% over the same period last year. Mainland China visitors to Macau soared to a record 8.8 million, and in total, a record 14.92 million tourists visited in the first half of this year, handing Macau's government a whopping 51.4% increase in gaming tax revenues. Of course, that's Macau, and it may not represent the rest of Asia, right? Wrong. I am seeing the same vibrant economies wherever I go on my current tour through Asia. ...

TNK-BP chief Robert Dudley has sent a letter to five federal agencies, lodging official complaints over what he is calling “an abuse of power by the State Labor Inspectorate.” In a retaliatory measure following the war with Georgia, the US is set to put a civil nuclear deal with Russia on hold. On Nabucco and Azerbaijani gas. Severstal will pay $1.3 billion to acquire North American coal miner PBS Coals. Iran has started designing a new 360-megawatt nuclear power plant. Tropical Storm Fay is approaching the Gulf of Mexico, with analysts fearing she may disrupt oil and natural gas production this week. Chevron is set to hand over its role as operator of the planned Hebron oil project off the coast of Canada to ExxonMobil. Iranian Oil Terminals Co. has received the first cargo ...