According to the FT, Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan have abandoned their attempt to join the World Trade Organization as a single customs union, after WTO members made clear the unprecedented suggestion would elongate the process by some years.  The trio will reportedly attempt to join simultaneously.  French retailer Carrefour has made a swift exit from Russia, only four months after the opening of its first store.  Bad news for Avtovaz: Sberbank and VTB have declined an offer to take stakes in the company in exchange for debt.  Gazprombank had its worst month of the year in September, posting losses of $529 million, the sixth time this year that the bank has posted a monthly loss.  Italy's Cremonini Group is set to open a $148 million meat-processing plant in the Moscow region to produce hamburgers for McDonalds by ...

Non-dollar currencies give back very little…The Unemployed are remaining unemployed… FOMC puts away the board games today… China invokes a “Public Morals” defense…

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[Editor’s Note: When it comes to global investing, longtime market guru Martin Hutchinson is one of the very best – because he knows the markets firsthand. After years of advising government finance ministers, crafting deals with global investment banks, and analyzing the world’s financial markets, Hutchinson has used his creative insights to create a trading service for savvy investors.

The Permanent Wealth Investorassembles high-yeilding dividend stocks, profit plays on gold and specially designated “Alpha Bull Dog” stocks into high-income/high-return portfolios for subscribers. Hutchinson’s strategy is tailor-made for periods of market uncertainty, during which investors all too often go completely to cash – only to miss some of the biggest market returns in history when market sentiment turns positive. But it can work in virtually every market environment.

To find out about this strategy – or Hutchinson’s new service, …

[Editor's Note: When it comes to global investing, longtime market guru Martin Hutchinson is one of the very best - because he knows the markets firsthand. After years of advising government finance ministers, crafting deals with global investment banks, and analyzing the world's financial markets, Hutchinson has used his creative insights to create a trading service for savvy investors.

The Permanent Wealth Investorassembles high-yeilding dividend stocks, profit plays on gold and specially designated “Alpha Bull Dog” stocks into high-income/high-return portfolios for subscribers. Hutchinson’s strategy is tailor-made for periods of market uncertainty, during which investors all too often go completely to cash – only to miss some of the biggest market returns in history when market sentiment turns positive. But it can work in virtually every market environment.

To find out about this strategy – or Hutchinson’s new service, …

Manas Petroleum Corp., the Swiss-based international oil exploration and development company, stands out in its cost-sensitive approach to acquiring land positions in major oil basins around the world. The Manas strategy is to acquire and farm-out the holdings to partners, with those partners paying all costs until commercial production is undertaken. This approach allows Manas to retain substantial carried interests, maximizing potential growth while significantly reducing financial costs and risk. An additional element of the strategy is diversification, which further reduces risk.

One area of focus for the company is the exploration and development of giant hydrocarbon assets in the former Soviet Union or its satellites. Although Soviet exploration and development technologies were decades behind those of the West, their record keeping of geological results was excellent. These records indicate the existence of numerous and large un-drilled structures with potential oil. In areas where drilling did occur, such as the

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Currencies sold overnight…  But rebound in early morning trading…  China throws cold water on stock values… German exports rival the Big Kahuna! And Now… Today’s Pfennig! Good day… And a Terrific Tuesday to you! I returned home from San Francisco last night, and am back in the saddle today! Not the way I like to travel, where I get a day when returning home to recharge the batteries, but it is what it is… I did an interview with MarketWatch yesterday morning, talking about… Well, what else? The deficits, and diversification! My presentations in S.F. were well attended… On Saturday, my power point froze up, but I carried on in spite of the technical difficulties!

You know… I really, heard a lot of people talking about the rumor / conspiracy story that there will be a bank holiday at the end of the month (this weekend) and the Gov’t will announce major changes to

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World trade experiencing a “huge drop”, according to the World Trade Organization.  Rather than the gloomy 9% predicted earlier this year, volume will likely contract by 10%.

WTO Director General Pascal Lamy, told Reuters Television:

That’s the situation and I’m afraid I can’t read any good news in my trade numbers.

This news doesn’t bode well for any type of recovery. “Jobs picture turns gloomier” say the headlines. The U.S. unemployment rate officially popped up to 9.5% as nonfarm payrolls shed 467,000 jobs in June. The market is tanking today on this “brown shoot”… But the real story is far worse. And as reality seeps into the empty head of Joe Investor it could spell the end for the post-2008 wipe-out sucker’s rally…

As James Davidson points out in Crisis Strategy Alert, the BLS numbers have been massaged, manipulated, and contorted into giving only half the story. He says,

To get a real

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This is all news to me, but in an article in Foreign Policy, Peter Savodnik argues that Russia has given up on its quest to build itself back into a superpower, and is instead settling for the push for "a new international system" and other institutions and coalitions of multilateralism.  The rub of it is that Russia can't afford to keep up the confrontation status quo with Washington in the midst of an economic crisis.  If Russia wants to get more involved in rule-based international institutions, that can only be a good thing.

The basic answer is that Moscow, after years of trying unsuccessfully to reclaim its superpower status, has concluded that a new system is needed. Of course, a greatly weakened Russia is in no position to coauthor, with the United States, a new geopolitics. But it can initiate a conversation meant to

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This week’s video-o-rama comes to you a day late as I make my away from Cape Town to Europe. Notwithstanding terribly slow broadband at South African airports, I have managed to compile an interesting potpourri of clips.

Topics ranged from another round of discussions about the proposed regulatory reform to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke facing a grilling on Capital Hill over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch deal to the usual dose of debate on the outlook for the economy and financial markets.

The stars of this week’s round-up include Steven Pearlstein, Pete Peterson, Warren Buffett (US economy in “shambles”), Nouriel Roubini (US economy “sort of stabilizing”), Puru Saxena, Edmund Phelps, Mohamed El-Erian, Robert Prechter (a “lot more” bear market) and T. Boone Pickens.

The compilation kicks of with Barry Ritholtz, author of must-read “Bailout Nation” and editor of The Big Picture blog, sharing his views on

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The feud between authorities in China and Google Inc. (Nasdaq: GOOG) escalated Wednesday night when Chinese users were blocked from Google’s global Web site for a period of at least two hours.

For weeks China has been chastising Google for disseminating “huge amounts of porn and lewd information.” The company has made a strong effort to accommodate Beijing’s high “moral” standard by launching a separate Chinese Web site, Google.cn, to filter out sensitive information.

Still, China’s war on the search engine has only intensified. That has led some analysts to believe that the communist government is acting on behalf of Baidu Inc. (Nasdaq ADR: BIDU), or perhaps as part of a smear campaign to drum up support for its latest attempt to tighten its grip on Internet content that is becoming harder to control.

Google’s word association feature – a drop-down box that offers suggestions based on the terms typed

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