Posted by Sean on November 20, 2007
Ditch the dollar. That’s what Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged his fellow OPECers to embrace. It’s a move that makes the Financial Times‘ editorial board think that Iran’s strategy is to hit the United States’ “soft underbelly”: the dollar. “They get our oil and give us a worthless piece of paper,” Admadinejad told reporters after the summit.
It’s a good thing this man is pulpit puppet. He would have the get the Saudis to turn the key. That would be like asking them to cut off the leg that’s still holding their kingdom up: American power. So says the FT. Because,
Iran can invoice its oil customers in cowrie shells if it likes, but that would not change the underlying value of the product. Shifting oil markers to other currencies would only make for inefficient markets. It could potentially hit the dollar, though only through secondary effects: by knocking confidence and ..read more
Posted by Sean on November 20, 2007
Lenta.ru reports that Ivan Bolshakov, the Moscow head of Yabloko Youth, was subjected to a criminal search and detention. He has now been released from custody. Bolshakov was detained in the Kursk train station in Moscow as he and Ilya Yashin waited to board a train to Nizhny Novgorod for a pre-election trip. According to Lenta:
They put Bolshakov in handcuffs, and after this they took him to the Ziuzinskii Interdistrict Prosecutor’s Office for questioning. As his comrade in arms [Yashin] emphasized that according to existing law a candidate to the State Duma can only be detained with approval of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation. The officers who conducted the criminal search did not have this.
Bolshakov’s detention, according to Yashin was because he was accused of assaulting a police officer during the Butovo protests in June 2007. No charges have been filed against Bolshakov and Yabloko considers the ..read more
