A friend of mine sharply rebuked me the other day for not writing enough on my blog.  While I can assure you all I haven't exactly been napping in the recliner, I will do my best to start picking up the slack while still juggling my legal workload (which lately consists several sharp knives, a hot potato, a bowling ball, and a nuclear warhead - let's hope I don't drop anything).  To begin with, why not revisit one of my favorite subjects:  the murky machinations of Gazprom-related business in Hungary, where the goulash state corporatism and Russia's most cheerful barracks live on despite the ravages of the economic crisis.  Although much of this story is background for the initiated, ...

This is a rather strange story from Moscow News, but it seems that one Russian businessman wants to express his solidarity with Mikhail Khodorkovsky by producing a perfume line bearing the Yukos company name.  It will be tough to sell more of this stuff than Putinka vodka, but I'm sure it smells much nicer.

The owner of a perfumery firm has filed an appeal to register the trademark of the embattled Yukos oil firm for a new line of perfumes.

Mikhail Sannikov, owner of the Sunny perfumeries production, wants to use the green and yellow triangle with the word YUKOS as the trademark for perfumes and at the same time express his solidarity with the jailed Yukos owner, former billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

"It's a good name, I like it," Sannikov told

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“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Justice Litle thinks Dickens’ classic line  provides an apt description of today’s markets. Sure, this year has been hell. But it has also created some amazing opportunities for contrarian investors. Justice says this is most apparent in the oil and natural gas market, where irrational risk aversion has made most people forget the fundamentals.

This from Taipan Daily:

Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking.

— Vice–President-Elect Joe Biden

Just a few weeks ago, Vice–President-elect Joe Biden (back when he was plain old Senator Joe Biden) promised the world that Barack Obama will be “tested” by America’s enemies.

“Remember I said it standing here,” Biden told his Seattle audience, “if you don’t remember

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This one comes from from Silicon Alley Insider: The Russian government blocked Google from acquiring contextual advertising firm Begun. Google would have paid Russian portal Rambler $140 million for its subsidiary, but Russian authorities say Google failed to provide "documented information about individuals that may influence the business group Google." A Rambler shareholder told Russian newspaper Vedomosti that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin actually blocked the deal because he did not want to see US company Google take over the Russian market as it has elsewhere. Why do we find that so easy to believe?

The following exclusive translation comes from the Russian newspaper Vedomosti - it appears that his release would represent a boon to the stock market. Person of the week: Mikhail Khodorkovsky Kirill Kharatyan 25.08.2008, №158 (2180) The words of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, that he would bring society and family much more benefit at liberty, than in confinement, in practice turned out to be susprisingly true. It so happened that at 11:23 MOW «Interfax» erroneously broadcast that the court had supposedly satisfied his petition on conditional early release. Shares of Russian companies instantly shot up: literally in a couple of minutes the MICEX index, depressed by the forcing of peace on Georgia, jumped up by more than a percent. At 11:28 the agency corrected the error, and the index rolled back to starting positions just as suddenly. I think that in exactly the same way ...

The following is an exclusive translation of an interview with Mikhail Khodorkovsky that appeared in the Russian Vedomosti newspaper on Thursday, in the middle of Khodorkovsky's two-day parole hearing, before the request for parole was denied. "For me the oil theme is already in the past" — Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former owner of NK YUKOS Five years ago people considered Khodorkovsky the richest person in the country. Now he regrets that he had remained in Russian then, in spite of the risk of arrest, but says that he could not have acted otherwise Irina Reznik, Vedomosti, 22.08.2008, №157 (2179) Yesterday the Ingodinsky court in Chita could not issue a decision with respect to a petition of the lawyers of Mikhail Khodorkovsky about conditional early release (parole). The judge promised to adopt a decision today. The convoyers did not allow journalists to come ...