Oligarchs
Not Much to Gawk About
By Sean at 6 September, 2009, 5:11 pm
Scott Anderson’s article “Vladimir Putin’s Dark Rise to Power” is a throwback to the 1990s when ex-KGBmen turned mafioso, private security, or hired hands to execute nefarious plots. It is also a showcase of bygone figures. Once powerful, influential, or at least in the public eye who have since drifted into memory only to be [...]
Read More >>Medvedev’s Generation
By Sean at 20 July, 2009, 11:30 am
If history is any indication, a gerontocracy can kill a political system. The Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc states suffered from it. It currently plagues China. And the recent protests in Iran certainly point to some kind of generational conflict is coming to a boil. The failure to ensure the mobility of young people [...]
Read More >>Russia’s Bubble Bursting
By Sean at 16 October, 2008, 9:25 am
Up and down. Down and up. Like all world markets,the Russian MICEX and RTS indexes have been on an endless roller coaster ride. Both markets didn’t benefit from Monday’s American and European rallies driven by American and European governments throwing capital a life line. Instead the MICEX and RTS plummeted . Some of those losses [...]
Read More >>Will the Russian Economic Crisis Create a Political One?
By Sean at 22 September, 2008, 7:48 am
Moscow’s stock market soared almost 30 percent on Friday thanks to the Russian government announcement it would dump about $130 billion into the sagging market. Today, it injected more credit into the market just to make sure. About $24 billion worth at 8.75 percent interest. The move was to disperse more capital among banks pushed [...]
Read More >>Oligarchs by Day, Nascent Democrats by Night
By Sean at 22 August, 2008, 7:08 am
Nato declares that relations with Russia can’t go on “business as usual.” Washington keeps demanding that the Russians leave Georgia “now.” Russia rethinks its cooperation with NATO. It is even unmasking a few Georgian spies for good measure. All of this coincides with three Cold War anniversaries: Russia’s 1998 financial default, the coup against Gorbachev, [...]
Read More >>Clan Illogic
By Sean at 16 June, 2008, 12:49 am
Jeffrey Tayler takes up clanology in his article “The Master and Medvedev” in hopes to map the innards of Kremlin Inc (hat tip to James at Robert Amsterdam for pointing to it). Tayler argues that Putin’s anointing of Medvedev as President, who in turn returned the favor by making his patron PM, was a [...]
Read More >>
