Archive for January, 2009

  • Russia Cuts Gas to Ukraine
    , January 1st, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    This looks ugly:

    Russia halted gas supplies to Ukraine today for the second time in three years in a payments dispute, raising the threat of disruption to natural-gas shipments to Europe, as both sides said they wanted talks to resume.
    Negotiations broke down shortly before midnight after Ukraine rejected an offer from OAO Gazprom, Russia’s state gas exporter, to sell it the fuel this year at $250 per 1,000 cubic meters, and insisted that Russia also pay higher transit fees. Ukraine said today it is seeking a price of $201.
    The repeat of an energy standoff between the former Soviet neighbors risks further souring Russia’s ties with the West, months after its war with U.S. ally Georgia. Gazprom, which supplies a quarter of Europe’s natural gas, mostly through Ukraine, cut Ukrainian deliveries in January 2006 amid a similar pricing dispute. The shutdown reduced gas flows to Europe and led to questions over both countries’ reliability as suppliers.

    The global economic meltdown will have geopolitical effects. We may already be seeing it.

  • A Year to Forget
    , January 1st, 2009 at 4:03 pm

    The Mercury News has the details on the Wall Street’s annus horribilis:

    The Russell 3000, which covers 98 percent of investable equities, shed $6.7 trillion or 39.7 percent of its value during 2008.
    The S&P 500 was down 38.5 percent, its worst performance since 1937.
    The Dow Jones industrial average was off 33.8 percent — the worst return since 1931.
    The five worst-performing stocks in Silicon Valley all lost more than 90 percent of their value.
    Every single technology index fell this year. Biotech did the “best,” with a 17.7 percent drop; Internet, computer, networking and semiconductor stocks all were down more than 40 percent, and disk-drive stocks were off nearly 61 percent.