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Strategies & Market Trends : Investment in Russia and Eastern Europe -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: P.T.Burnem who wrote (565)	8/28/1998 2:29:00 PM
From: Real Man	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1301

PTB, I believe sentiment over Russia is overly negative. I'm trying to get more or less objective picture, but so far it's a mess, and I don't know what's really happening. There was a rumor on the gold thread that Russian CB is buying gold. Gold-backed ruble? Western bankers are mad at Russia for a default on their loans. This is bad for them, but lifts Russia's burden. Russia paid most of its revenues to finance the debt. Without debt the budget even showed a surplus in 1998. Russia had no chance to get any more loans from the West anyway. The valuations are so low it seems a lot of risk to go short Russia. Very negative spin on the news. International investors are dumping Russian shares for nothing.

To: P.T.Burnem who wrote (565)	8/28/1998 3:40:00 PM
From: P.T.Burnem	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1301

(AP) Russia's government estimates the country imports 33 to 35 percent of its food and some 60 percent of its medicines. The ruble's plunge this week has interrupted deliveries. ... "The importation has almost stopped," said Manfred Hollstein, president of Swedish-Americian drugs group Pharmacia & Upjohn Inc in Moscow. "The banking system is not working, that means no bank transfers, no payments, no guarantees." .... Russia is no longer dependent on the vast grain imports it required in the 1970s, primarily because most of the livestock herds that the grain once fed have already been slaughtered and the domestic meat industry largely replaced with imports. But Russia needs some $14 billion worth of food imports each year for such things as vegetable oil, sugar, dairy products and meat.