One tidbit from my time in Moscow last week was when our host was dropping us off at the airport. As we retrieved our luggage from the back of his Lexus SUV (actually his wife's company car--she works for Gazprom), I noticed that he had an old-school, solid-wood baseball bat stashed there. Pretty sure he's not stopping by the Moscow batting cages on the way home from work.
Speaking of Gazprom:
President Vladimir Putin said Monday that he backed Dmitry Medvedev, his soft-spoken first deputy prime minister, as the next president, signaling an end to an era of escalating international tensions over an increasingly hawkish Kremlin.
The announcement, made at a Kremlin meeting attended by Medvedev and leaders from four Putin-friendly parties, should also end years of speculation over who will succeed Putin. Given Putin's enormous popularity, his preferred successor is likely to win the presidential election on March 2.
Medvedev's candidacy was welcomed by foreign investors, who see him as the most liberal person in Putin's inner circle. But opposition politicians scorned Medvedev as a weak figure who would allow Putin to continue to hold the reins.
By endorsing Medvedev--a 42-year-old lawyer with a strong academic background and the chairman of Gazprom--Putin is seeking to pass the torch to a younger generation that does not have ties to the siloviki, the Soviet-era military and intelligence officials whose hawkish stance has inflamed tensions with the West over the past eight years, political analysts said.
And you thought Hallibuton's stock was a good investment.
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