New sanctions were levied against Russia on July 16th by both the United States and the European Union. America has taken the lead in explaining the sanctions, claiming continued unrest in Eastern Ukraine is primarily because of tacit Russian support behind-the-scenes. This new round is a bit broader than the original sanctions from a few…

With the souring of relations between the United States and Russia, Russia has expressed its desire to become less dependent on the US dollar. This is an understandable concern, given the political tension between the two countries, coupled with the threat of tougher US Sanctions on the Russian economy[1]. Simply put, the Russian government knows that…

Currency Wars follows the actions of governments and central banks to manipulate their currencies and currency denominated securities to their advantage and to the disadvantages of foreign markets. At the present day the focus will be on China and the United States, as China has expressed concerns about the safety and reliability of the US dollar…

With leaders of the BRICS group gathering in Brazil to discuss socially inclusive growth and sustainable solutions the issue of accommodating the presence of Islamic populations within the alliance is missing from their agenda.
 
Avoiding an important conversation
The BRICS have branded the Brazil meetings as the beginning of the…

I am currently visiting Bangladesh for meetings with the Private Sector and Government Officials on sustainable economic development. Russia will be supplying Bangladesh with Nuclear technology for Energy production purposes. Bangladesh is a country that is starved of energy, and this stumps economic growth in all sectors. As an entrepreneur, when you…

On July 14-16, the heads of state of the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) will gather in Fortaleza and Brasilia for their sixth annual summit. It is, as the newly launched website proudly notes, the beginning of “the second cycle of BRICS.” What the authors intend is that, since each BRICS member state…

The views in this blog are, of course, solely the author's own, and do not represent the official views of either the U of Michigan, Ann Arbor, or its Energy Institute, of which the author has been a Fellow since 2008 or so. I have been following the world energy industry, and the oil industry in particular, on a daily basis, ever since my MBA thesis…

As much as the media eyes have been focus on Iraq and Syria where ISIL fighters – Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – have secured devastating advances against both Iraq and Syria armed forces, Bahrain has been left to suffer, its people’s plight for justice ignored by the international community.  For well over three years…

When ISIL – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – announced its independence from Al Qaeda in February 2014, most analysts understood such a divorce within the Islamic radical family as a clear sign of the group disintegration along contradictory terror narratives.
 
More fundamental in its view than its sister group in Syria, Al…

The “Heavenly Hundred” who fell during the Euromaidan protests and the soldiers who resisted the Russian invasion of Crimea had the potential to contribute to a unifying national narrative in Ukraine. This opportunity was quickly lost, with fighting and rising casualties in Luhansk and Donetsk cementing regional divisions. The failure of…

The Eurasian Economic Union and European Union have been ensuring free movement of goods, services, capital and labor as their core principles[1] that necessary for achieving economic and social goals in either Union. In contrary to the EU-28, the EUEA - Eurasian Economic Union, which has come a long way building a customs union and a common economic…

The exacerbation of tensions between the EU and Gazprom has led to black-and-white analyses. This makes it difficult to get to grips with Gazprom activities in the European energy market, while several crucial questions are never – or inadequately – raised. Although the constitution of the single EU energy market is still underway and…