TODAY: Lavrov keeps eagle eye on Georgia; Netanyahu's fears about Russian rogue scientists; Chubais takes the fall for hydropower plant disaster.  Litvinenko widow despairs over apparent British moves towards rapprochement.  Luzhkov-Baturina to take Nemtsov to court. UN report pessimistic on Russia's demographic decline; Ban Ki-moon voices approval for ecological care.According to the Moscow Times, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says that Russia will survey shipping in the Black Sea to monitor Georgian 'provocations' which are a 'serious concern'.  Jorg Himmelreich in the International Herald Tribune suggests that much analysis of last year's Georgia-Russia conflict has overlooked the crucial matter of President Bush's Georgia policy.  Spokesman Andrei Nesterenko says that he believes that the ratification of the Lisbon treaty would benefit ...

For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL - June 10, 2009 - Zacks.com announces the list of stocks featured in the Analyst Blog. Every day the Zacks Equity Research analysts discuss the latest news and events impacting stocks and the financial markets. Stocks recently featured in the blog include: The Gap (GPS), Rex Stores (RSC), HH Gregg (HGG), Transocean (RIG) and Diamond Offshore (DO).

Get the most recent insight from Zacks Equity Research with the free Profit from the Pros newsletter: http://at.zacks.com/?id=4579.

Here are highlights from Tuesday's Analyst Blog:

Will Oil Prices Prevent a Recovery?

Higher oil prices are coming at a time when the economy is still very fragile. Retail spending on goods other than energy face strong headwinds from both the need for consumers to rebuild their personal balance sheets (pay down past debts

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The following two charts (and the comments in between them) are part of a very interesting article by James Hamilton. The collapse in oil prices last fall acted as a key economic stabilizer and helped ameliorate the economic decline. It showed up in two key places. The first was in the trade deficit numbers, which have shown a very dramatic improvement over the last year (see here and here). The other place it showed up was in retail sales, since a dollar spent at the gas pump is a dollar that can not be spent elsewhere. Since last Christmas, prices at the pump have climbed sharply, as shown in the first graph. While prices are still far below the levels of a year ago, the current levels are high enough to start hurting, especially those who have seen their incomes drop due to the ...

GoldDrivers 2009 - Extraordinary Bullish Outlook For Gold Eric Hommelberg

Gold proves itself as only true alternative for the dollar Confidence in currencies shaken to the core Gulf countries are keen to break away from the link with the US dollar Chinese appetite for US debt in decline Former Bank of England official expects dollar collapse Investors fleeing into gold as US prints trillions HSBC, Citigroup, Merril Lynch, Goldman Sachs all turning bullish on gold Senior gold shares ready to move higher after impressive 100% bull run since October 2008 Junior gold shares waking up - bottomed out in December 2008

This piece is an update on “GoldDrivers

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As expected, the Thursday morning rally at the Sydney open got snuffed out in short order. Gold remained flat in Hong Kong until 4:00 p.m. in their afternoon …3:00 a.m. in New York. Then the boyz showed up, and down gold went until the London open, a short rally got turned over, and the bottom for the gold price came at the London a.m. fix. From there it rallied gently until the London p.m. fix…and then away it went to the upside.

Silver was the same, except it didn’t wait around for the London p.m. fix before it headed up. Its rally began promptly with the Comex open in New York. Both metals remained strong even in electronic trading after the Comex closed…and despite the strength of the US$.

Gold open interest dropped another sizeable chunk on Wednesday…down 8,387 contracts to 345,804. In silver, o.i. went the other way for the second

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Hedge Fund TurmoilState of the Hedge Fund Industry(http://HedgeFundBlogger.com) An increasing number of hedge funds are telling customers they cannot have their money back just now (though not a new practice) as rising withdrawals on top of problems in getting collateral back from prime brokerages’ rehypothecations (such as most notably at Lehman Brothers), plus talk of the past year being especially bad for hedge funds’ performance – are all supposedly hitting retail and institutional confidence in hedge funds. Hedge fund performance at minus 10% is described as “shocking!”, but as many have done better than that as have done worse than that.There are at least 3 thousand relatively reputable hedge funds. They are not a homogeneous instrument or asset class that performs as one. When the stock market has fallen 25% and given the ...