By John Helmer in Moscow The last time Russia took fighting pirates seriously was two centuries ago, when the Empress Catherine the Great, followed byher short-lived successor Tsar Paul I, backed the Knights of Malta, who in turn fought naval engagements with the pirates of Barbary — as the Arab statelets and fortress towns of […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, May 10th, 2009
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by John Helmer - Thursday, March 5th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow In outer space, as everyone knows, the absence of the force of gravity produces the appearance of weightlessness. Everything floats away. The markets have decided that Russia is now without gravity; its equities are without weight, and at risk of floating away. Late last year, the RTS, the principal stock […]

by John Helmer - Friday, January 30th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Once upon a time, in not so ancient Greece, a crooked banker had the idea of hedging the consequences of his crimes by buying a popular newspaper, and also a popular football team. But the risk hedges didn’t work quite as he intended. The banker was indicted and jailed in […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, January 27th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow When it comes to the heroics of the free press, London reporters and their proprietors prefer to tell of chests bared and bloody corpses on foreign streets, preferably in places designated by Her Majesty’s Secret Service as enemy country. Moscow, for example. In the City of London, by contrast, the […]

by John Helmer - Monday, January 26th, 2009
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By John Helmer in Moscow Before the global collapse of mine commodities and mining equities in the autumn of 2008, Mineweb, the Johannesburg-based mining publication, suffered a meltdown in asset valuation. Then, in July 2008, it incurred the worst cash loss in the publication’s history. The publisher and editor-in-chief of Mineweb is Alec Hogg. With […]

by John Helmer - Monday, December 29th, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow A Russian government effort to end special lobbying by major company shareholders, chief executives, sector cabinet ministers, and regional governors has either just ended; or else it has failed, because there isn’t enough government cash or credit for to satisfy everyone, and the political cost of saying no to some […]

by John Helmer - Friday, December 26th, 2008
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by John Helmer - Monday, December 22nd, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow In theory, Russia’s economic performance is correlated with global supply and demand for mined materials and commodities, and thus with the rate of global economic growth, especially China. In the Russian market, 80% of earnings come from commodity stocks. Before the collapse, the enormous gains in market capitalization of Russian […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008
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By John Helmer in Moscow Novlipetsk Metallurgical Company (NLMK), the third ranked Russian steelmaker owned by Vladimir Lisin, is considering whether to cancel two recently announced US acquisitions — John Macneely Corporation (JMC) and Beta Steel. JMC was purchased for $3.54 billion in August; Beta Steel for $400 million in September. The deals are not […]

by John Helmer - Monday, October 20th, 2008
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